A Line to Kill

‘No. Who would have come upstairs? Only Charles, and he didn’t, did he?’ She reached forward and stubbed out her cigarette. When she looked up again, there were fresh tears in her eyes. ‘And now we know why.’

Hawthorne took pity on her. ‘Thank you, Mrs le Mesurier. You’ve been helpful. There is just one last thing. Was your husband left-handed or right-handed?’

‘Why would you want to know that?’ She shook her head and sighed. ‘He was right-handed.’

‘Did he wear his Rolex on his right wrist?’

‘Yes.’

‘And do you know where he got it?’

‘He bought it in Hong Kong. It was gold – and very expensive.’

‘How expensive?’

‘He told me he’d paid £20,000, but it might have been more. Why do you want to know?’

‘The watch has gone. Do you know if he was wearing it last night?’

‘Of course he was. He never took it off.’ She corrected herself. ‘Only sometimes … before he went to bed.’ She looked uncomfortable. ‘He’d do that as a signal.’

‘What sort of signal?’

‘When he wanted to be intimate, he took off his watch.’

Hawthorne considered this. ‘But he didn’t come to bed.’

‘Not with me.’ She reached out and picked up her cup of tea as if to say that she’d had enough of these questions and wanted to be left alone. Hawthorne examined her for a moment. Then, with a nod, he left. Colin Matheson and I followed.

‘The office …’ Hawthorne said, as we stepped outside.

Matheson looked at him blankly.

‘I want to see where the paperknife came from.’

‘Oh, yes … This way.’

He led us down a corridor painted white with a single dazzle of colour at the end: a photomontage of Charles le Mesurier done in the style of Andy Warhol. There was an open door beside it and the three of us went into a modern home office with lots of bookshelves but very few books. An angular black wooden desk dominated the room. Buy two and put them together and you could have made a swastika. A black leather chair with a high back stood behind. A gleaming chrome desk lamp – possibly Italian, certainly expensive – curved towards a giant computer screen. A mobile phone, presumably le Mesurier’s, lay to one side. Using a handkerchief, Hawthorne picked it up and examined it. He showed it to me.

‘What do you make of that, Tony?’

There was a smear of something rust-coloured on the back. ‘Blood?’ I asked.

‘I think so.’

‘But how is that possible? If he was killed in the Snuggery, how did the phone get to be here?’ I thought it through. ‘Maybe it’s somebody else’s blood.’

‘We’ll have to get a test.’ He laid the phone down again.

The room was so neat and minimalist that it was impossible to tell if anything had been disturbed. Hawthorne said nothing as he opened three of the desk drawers – the fourth was locked – and tapped the computer to see if it was turned on. It wasn’t. There was another vibrant artwork on the wall, matching the one outside in both size and style. This one showed Helen le Mesurier standing beside a roulette wheel, holding a paddle. The face that launched a thousand chips.

‘I’m not sure we should really be here,’ Colin Matheson said.

‘Nobody’s asking you to be here,’ Hawthorne replied, affably.

He searched around, possibly looking for the key to the locked drawer, then gave up. There was nothing here. But at least he had established a sequence of events … or so I imagined. Whoever had killed Charles le Mesurier had come back into the house from the Snuggery and continued upstairs. They had searched for something in the study while Helen le Mesurier slept a few doors away. Perhaps they had picked up the mobile phone, transferring a bloodstain to the back. Could that even be the reason why he had been murdered? Was there something on the phone or in the computer that the killer needed? Le Mesurier had been tied down. Perhaps he had been threatened with torture unless he gave up the password. Yes. That made sense.

We heard the front door open and I heard Kathryn Harris’s voice coming from downstairs. She sounded indignant. That reminded me of what had happened the night before in the kitchen: Charles le Mesurier almost assaulting her. Quickly, I drew Hawthorne aside and told him what I’d seen.

‘If anyone had a motive to kill him,’ I said, ‘it was her.’

‘When was this?’ Hawthorne asked.

‘It was just after his wife had gone to bed.’

Hawthorne smiled. ‘At least he had the decency to wait until she was out of the way.’

We made our way back downstairs to the entrance hall. Marc Bellamy and Kathryn Harris had arrived together. He was looking very much the worse for wear, pale and dishevelled, as if he had slept badly. Someone had just woken him up, bundled him into a taxi and brought him here. I probably didn’t look much better.

‘What’s all this about?’ Marc asked. No ‘How do!’ today. He was wearing a hoody from his own television show, with the words ‘Lovely Grub’ stitched across the chest. He hadn’t had time to shave and the stubble did him no favours, emphasising his poor skin, his jowls. ‘What’s happened?’

‘Let’s talk in the kitchen,’ Hawthorne suggested.