Close to Death

As soon as I reached my office, I sat down and tore open the envelope, leafing through the notes and transcripts that poured onto my desk. What I was looking for wasn’t there. There was no personal note from Hawthorne, no explanation as to why he had cancelled our meeting at the last minute, not even something about Fenchurch International and the mistake I’d made going there. I tried to focus. All I saw was words, thousands more words to add to the tens of thousands I’d already written.

I couldn’t connect with them. Riverview Close, Hawthorne and John Dudley, Khan, the doctor, the dentist, the dog, the dear old ladies . . . they’d all somehow fused into each other. The sun was glaring at me through the window. I was suffocating.

I knew what I had to do.

I got up, left my own locked room behind me and took a train to Richmond.

2

Richmond station was only an hour away, although all the time I’d been writing, it could have been on the other side of the planet. A flight of steps led up from the platform and I realised that this must have been where Adam Strauss had fallen. Or had he been pushed? The steps were quite wide and empty at this time of the day, but I could imagine that in the rush hour they would present a very different prospect. I wondered if Dudley had managed to look at the CCTV camera footage yet. The answer to that question might be sitting on my desk even now.

I emerged into sunlight and looked around me. The station was on the edge of the town and had an attractive façade and, unusually, a clock that worked. I was intending to walk straight down to Riverview Close, but since I was on the High Street and surrounded by shops, it made sense to start with The Tea Cosy, always assuming it was still in business. Five years had passed since the events I have been describing; it was one of the reasons why I’d never made it a priority to come out here. May Winslow and Phyllis Moore could both be dead by now. The other neighbours might well have left. I wasn’t returning to the scene of the crime so much as to a distant memory of it.

I found a Waterstones on a corner and knew I must be getting near. This was where the two ladies had sent any customers looking for books they considered violent or profane. I continued past an incredibly tatty Odeon cinema (‘Fanatical about film’, it said, with the first F falling off) and up the hill. After that, I passed an estate agent, two coffee bars, a fireplace shop and a health centre – but there was no sign of anyone selling golden age crime or humorous tea towels. I retraced my steps and went into what looked like a well-established flower shop. A woman with frizzy fair hair was standing behind a counter, surrounded by an abundance of exotic plants. I asked her about The Tea Cosy.

‘That was two doors away,’ she told me. ‘May Winslow was the owner. I used to see her – and was it her sister? – from time to time. They were quite sweet, although no business sense at all! They didn’t carry any of the new bestsellers.’

‘Do you know where they went?’

‘I heard a rumour they’d gone back north. The story was that they’d spent years in a convent and maybe they went back there.’ She sighed. ‘The rates are too high. It’s just not fair. If they’re not careful, the whole High Street will turn into telephones and tat.’

It was a disappointing start. I’d been looking forward to meeting May and Phyllis, browsing through their bookshelves and finding out if they stocked me. I put all that behind me and set off back down the hill, then followed the road in the direction of Petersham, with a quite extraordinary view of the River Thames and the fields beyond that could have inspired Constable or Turner: a huge azure sky and a ribbon of glinting water twisting all the way to the horizon. The Italian Gothic towers of the Petersham Hotel rose up in front of me – the building had been there since the nineteenth century – and for the first time I understood something of what it must have meant to live in Riverview Close. Richmond was exclusive in the true sense of the word. It excluded much of the worst of modern life.

I recognised the archway before I saw the road sign that named it and walked through with a sense of unreality, even though this was the first ‘real’ thing I had done. And there I was. Standing in my own book! Well House was on my right. I could see Riverview Lodge in front of me and noticed at once that the swimming pool had not been built after all. I walked forward, taking in the roundabout, which looked neat and tidy with a blaze of bright colours. There was Gardener’s Cottage, where the Beresfords had lived, over to the left. Were they still here? Was anyone? It was only now that I realised how odd it would be to meet some of the characters I had been writing about.