Close to Death

The basic fact of the matter is this. We had taken part in what we have described as a fantasy, a party game. But everything had changed when Giles Kenworthy was killed. We were guilty of conspiracy to commit murder as defined by the Criminal Law Act of 1977. Looking back, I can’t believe I allowed it to continue. We had selected the victim and discussed various weapons. We had drawn straws to decide who was going to do it, for heaven’s sake! Even if Giles Kenworthy hadn’t been touched, we had still committed a crime – technically speaking. But if any of it had come out during the police investigation, we could all of us have been facing a life sentence.

May Winslow

The moment I left the garage, I telephoned Mr Pennington. I told him what had happened and he came straight round to my house. He couldn’t believe it. Nor could I. He warned me that we might all be in serious trouble. We couldn’t lie to the police. That would be an offence in itself. We couldn’t obstruct their investigation. But nor could we tell them about the meeting we’d had on Sunday night. That was what he told me. We had to keep absolutely quiet about that.

Andrew Pennington

I telephoned everyone on the Thursday morning when Roderick’s body was discovered. We could not lie. But the law does not compel a witness to provide information to the police. Our silence was not itself illegal and there was no reason why anyone should have asked us what we were doing on Sunday evening. I’m afraid this has also coloured our dealings with you, Mr Hawthorne, and for that I must apologise. I suppose there’s nothing to prevent you passing on what you know to Detective Superintendent Khan.

Tom Beresford

What’s the point? We all know the truth. Roderick Browne was a decent enough man. I liked him. We all did. And we’re all desperately sorry for Felicity. But what we said and what we did that evening have got nothing to do with the end result. Roderick was the one who had the most to lose if Giles Kenworthy went on living. It was his crossbow. I have never doubted, not for a minute, that he was the one who committed the crime.

And then he got scared. The police knew it was him: Detective Superintendent Khan had made that clear. He was going to be arrested. So he sent his wife off to Woking, wrote a suicide note and killed himself. A dead man in a locked car in a locked garage with a suicide note in his lap. What other explanation can there be?

5

Hawthorne and Dudley let themselves into Woodlands with the keys that Felicity Browne had given them. There were cameras in Gardener’s Cottage and burglar alarms in both The Stables and the Lodge, but otherwise the houses in Riverview Close were surprisingly lacking in electronic security. It was part of the charm of the place that it existed in the world as it had been fifty years ago, when neighbours left their doors open or their keys under the mat and burglaries were rare enough to be news.

The house was still in pain. Both Hawthorne and Dudley sensed it the moment they crossed the threshold, the strange atmosphere, almost an awareness, that always lingers after a sudden death, as if the bricks and the plasterwork that have embraced so much day-to-day activity somehow know. Roderick Browne’s absence was everywhere. The police had been and gone, taking with them their photographic markers and crime-scene tape. But they had been unable to erase the memories.

It was late afternoon and still bright, but Hawthorne reached out and flicked on the light switch beside the door. The lights in the hallway, above the stairs and on the upper floor came on. He looked around him as if he had just proved a point. Andrew Pennington had described the last thing he had seen before Roderick took his own life. The light going out, in every sense.

Hawthorne went back through the kitchen and into the garage where Roderick had been found. The door had not been locked. The space on the other side was empty. The Skoda Octavia Mark 3 had been removed by the police and would be thoroughly examined for the coroner’s report, even if the conclusions had already been reached. In its absence, a drain with a cast-iron gully grid had been revealed, set in the concrete floor. Dudley knelt down and tried to move the cover. It was stuck fast.

The up-and-over door was locked in place. The various bits and pieces that Hawthorne had seen when he had last been here hadn’t moved. The crossbow had been taken, but it too had left its ghost behind, an empty space on the shelf. The interior was lit by the sun, not quite overhead, streaming diagonally through the skylight and picking out a thousand motes of dust.

‘If I was going to kill myself, I’m not sure this is the place I’d choose.’ Dudley had followed Hawthorne in and was looking around him with a sour expression on his face.

‘People who kill themselves don’t usually care,’ Hawthorne said.