A Line to Kill

It was definitely time to go. I walked out of the house and climbed into the first taxi I saw. I had to wait a few minutes until two more guests arrived to fill the other seats, but then we set off. Without realising it, I’d had too much to drink. I wasn’t drunk, but I could feel the self-disgust that alcohol always inspires when it doesn’t make you happy. Ten minutes later, we arrived at the hotel. I grabbed my key and went up to my room. I got undressed, throwing all my clothes onto one of the armchairs. I cleaned my teeth. I went to bed.

The next thing I knew, it was morning and I was aware that I was no longer alone in the room. Someone had woken me up. I opened my eyes and then closed them again. Hawthorne was standing at the end of my bed. I couldn’t believe he was there. How had he even got into the room?

‘Hawthorne …’ I muttered. It was outrageous. I was asleep, unshaven, in my undershorts, in bed.

‘Tony, mate, get up and get dressed,’ Hawthorne said. ‘There’s been a murder.’

8 The Snuggery

‘Who’s been killed?’ I asked. It was the one thing Hawthorne hadn’t told me. Actually, so far he hadn’t told me anything.

‘Charles le Mesurier. Who do you think?’

It was true. Le Mesurier was rich. He was also obnoxious. He had sneered at almost everybody he met. And since we were sitting in the back of a taxi on the way to The Lookout, the victim could only have been him or his wife.

‘Who told you?’ I asked.

‘Colin Matheson. Helen le Mesurier found the body and called him over to the house. He’s waiting for us there.’

The driver had been listening to all this. He twisted round. ‘There’s never been a murder in Alderney!’ he told us, his voice full of excitement. It was as if he had been waiting for it all his life.

‘What’s your name?’ Hawthorne asked.

‘It’s Terry.’

‘All right, Terry. Do me a favour and keep your eyes on the road.’

‘Yes, sir. Whatever you say.’ He stayed silent for about thirty seconds but then he couldn’t stop himself. ‘Did it happen last night? There was a party and I was there! Maybe I gave the killer a lift!’

There were more cars parked outside The Lookout, but none of them had any police markings. The front door was open and we walked straight into the three rooms, which still hadn’t been reassembled. Someone had cleared away all the plates and glasses but the furniture hadn’t been moved back into place and there was a sense of emptiness, heightened by the fact that the man who had designed and created all this had been permanently taken from it. Colin and Judith Matheson were already there waiting for us, along with a third man who had not been at the party and who was introduced to us as Dr Queripel.

‘Thank you for coming, Mr Hawthorne,’ Matheson began. I had never seen a man more out of his depth. It was as if he had no idea why he had been summoned here and, worse than that, no idea what to do. His wife was sitting in an armchair, as white as the pearls around her neck, clutching a ball of tissue in her fist. She didn’t look as if she had been crying, though. If anything, she looked angry.

‘I didn’t know if it was right to call you or not, and you may consider it an impertinence – but this couldn’t have happened at a worse time,’ Colin began. ‘There’s no good time for it to have happened, but what I mean is that, unfortunately, two of our constables are on holiday and the third, Sergeant Wilkins, is in bed with a bad back. To be honest, I think this would be beyond his pay grade anyway. We’ve sent for backup from Guernsey and there are two officers on their way, but in the meantime I thought it sensible to get at least some sort of investigation started. Strike while the iron is hot, so to speak.’

‘You did exactly the right thing,’ Hawthorne assured him. He turned to the doctor. ‘You examined the body?’

‘It’s the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen,’ Dr Queripel replied. He was in his thirties with fair hair that was already thinning and a lean face. He looked thoroughly decent in his old-fashioned suit. I could imagine him walking a dog, smoking a pipe. Perhaps not at the same time.

‘Cause of death?’

‘Mr le Mesurier has been stabbed with a paperknife. I think the knife belonged to him, by the way.’

‘You’d seen him use it?’ Hawthorne asked.

‘Yes. I wasn’t actually his GP but I’d come over to the house once or twice. He has an office upstairs and it was on his desk.’ He lowered his voice and took a step closer so that Judith Matheson wouldn’t hear. ‘As far as I can see, there’s a single deep incision at the front of the neck. I imagine the knife will be lodged in the vertebral body and may have penetrated the spinal cord. There’s quite a lot of blood, so it could have nicked the carotid artery too.’

‘No chance of suicide?’

‘Absolutely not. You can see for yourself.’

Hawthorne nodded. ‘I should take a look …’

‘Of course. We have to go out through the garden.’ Dr Queripel glanced at me, acknowledging my presence for the first time. ‘You’ll go alone?’