Close to Death

‘We’re all friends, if that’s what you mean. At least, we were until the Kenworthys arrived. Please, come in . . .’

Andrew Pennington’s home was neat, comfortable, old-fashioned. The sitting room had a desk in one corner, a matching three-piece suite, bookshelves filled with mainly nineteenth-century English, French and Russian classics. The colour scheme tended towards the dark – walls painted in shades of green and mauve, with oak and mahogany furniture, thick carpets and curtains. Triple French windows at the back looked out into the garden, but only allowed a little afternoon sun to trickle in.

It was immediately obvious that he lived alone. The house had a sense of emptiness. It felt stuck in time, as if nothing had changed, but it was immediately obvious what was missing. There were photographs on every surface, mounted in a variety of frames, but all of them showing the same subject: a beautiful woman, always smiling, her face filled with life. Iris Pennington at work, Iris on the beach, Iris and Andrew arm in arm on a swing chair, Iris and Andrew dancing, Iris making a heart sign with both hands, Iris in bed, ill and wasted but still smiling for the camera. Well House spoke equally of her death and her surviving husband’s life.

Andrew was in his early sixties, a handsome, softly spoken black man with hair that was tinged with white around his ears. It would be easy to imagine him in court. He would be courteous, precise . . . but he would miss nothing. Those grey eyes of his would pick up the slightest nuance and when he sensed a weak spot he would strike with lethal accuracy. Of course, all of that was far behind him now. He had not so much embraced retirement as allowed it to engulf him. The slippers he was wearing, the cardigan pushed out of shape by the bulge of his stomach, the glasses, the tiredness in his face . . . He was tumbling into old age.

‘Can I get you tea or coffee?’ he asked as he showed them to a seat.

‘No, thank you. We just had lunch.’ Hawthorne picked up on what Dudley had been asking. ‘We’ve been told that you and your friends had a meeting,’ he said. ‘You were going to confront your new neighbours about their behaviour.’

‘You’re referring to the meeting we had six weeks ago at Adam Strauss’s house. But I don’t think “confront” is the right word.’

‘What word would you use?’

The barrister shrugged. ‘I haven’t quite put my finger on what it was about the Kenworthys that annoyed so many of us. I’m not convinced it was the issues – the noise and all the rest of it. I think it was the people themselves. There was something about them that was deeply off-putting. I’ve seen it in court, many a time. A jury takes against a defendant for no clear reason and it’s almost impossible to make them see sense, no matter how many facts you have at your fingertips.

‘For what it’s worth, I would have said the meeting was more about conciliation than confrontation. It seemed a good idea to discuss the issues before they got out of hand.’

‘They got out of hand – big time,’ Dudley muttered.

‘It was unfortunate that the Kenworthys decided not to come. They sent a text while we were together, after we’d arrived. It didn’t go down well.’

‘The meeting was your idea?’ Hawthorne asked.

‘The idea presented itself when I was talking to Adam. It’s long been my experience that it’s all too easy to get a false impression of someone if you don’t talk to them. You imagine the worst and that’s what they become. There’s a poem by William Blake.’ He closed his eyes, recalling the words. ‘“I was angry with my friend; I told my wrath, my wrath did end. I was angry with my foe: I told it not, my wrath did grow.

”’ He smiled. ‘The poem is called “A Poison Tree”. I suppose we met to avoid cultivating one.’

‘There must have been a lot of anger in the room,’ Hawthorne said.

‘Wrath,’ Dudley corrected him.

‘Again, that’s not the case. Tom was probably more annoyed than anyone because of the parking situation – quite rightly, as it turned out. A man died in his surgery when he couldn’t get there to save him. Roderick and Felicity were determined to fight the swimming pool. They’d just received notice of the planning application. We all had. If it went through, they would lose their view – not at all helpful when you’re bedridden. But nobody said anything particularly aggressive and certainly nothing that might be deemed illegal. Adam didn’t complain at all, as far as I can recall, although of course his most precious chess set hadn’t been smashed at the time. That happened later. May actually said what a lot of us were thinking, which was that we should do everything by the book. The important thing was not to let the situation escalate. In the end, it was quite a pleasant evening, albeit a short one. There was no point hanging around if they weren’t going to show up.’

‘But then things got worse,’ Dudley said.