A Line to Kill

She performs much of her work in Cauchois, a largely forgotten dialect which she learned from her grandfather. Le Monde described her as ‘a leading light in the revival of Cauchois culture’ and in 2011 she was given the Freedom of the City of Lille. Her poems have been published in French, German, Italian and Spanish.

Selected works

L’Autostop et autres poèmes (Hitchhiking and Other Poems), Cheyne éditeur, France, 2009, ISBN 978–2-84116–147-8

L’École en lames de rasoir (The School Made of Razor Blades), Cheyne éditeur, France, 2006, ISBN 978–2-84116–116-4, republished in 2008^[14]

Le Livre de feuilles et d’ombres (The Book of Leaves and Shadows), Cheyne éditeur, France, 2004, ISBN 978–2-84116–096-9

Awards and honours

Prix Louis-Guilloux – 2014

Prix Mallarmé – 2012

Grand Prix de poésie de la SGDL – 2009

The entry told me nothing that I didn’t already know, but the mention of Japanese haikus reminded me of the final poem she had recited. It had meant something to me, even though, as far as I could see, none of her work had been quoted on the internet and her three books weren’t available on Amazon or Kindle, so how could I possibly have known it? I tried to remember how it went.

I see the light

And something comes after me.

Your place or mine?

It wasn’t quite that, but I put the words into the search engine anyway. It revealed nothing. I fiddled with the first line, without success, then turned to the third. Your shadow or mine. That was it! I entered the words and immediately the entire poem appeared on the screen, all three lines of it.

I look to the light

But a dark shape pursues me.

Your shadow or mine?

There it was – but the author was not Maïssa Lamar. The very mention of a haiku should have taken me back to my not entirely comfortable encounter with Akira Anno, the feminist writer who had actually produced an entire book containing two hundred haikus. One of them had turned out to be a major clue in the murder of the celebrity divorce lawyer Richard Pryce, but while turning the pages, I had happened to notice an earlier haiku written by Akira and this was it.

Maïssa had stolen it!

I stood up with a sense of excitement. In the course of two investigations with Hawthorne, I had worked out precisely nothing. I had written about him, but I had been no help at all and it was quite possible that everything I had written here, all my deductions so far, were completely wrong. But this was, unquestionably, a breakthrough. I had been right at the airport. Maïssa wasn’t what she seemed.

I couldn’t wait to tell Hawthorne and I was out of my room at twenty-five past seven, on my way to meet him for dinner. In fact, about halfway down the corridor a door opened and Hawthorne emerged. I couldn’t help but notice, incidentally, that his room was rather larger than mine and had a sea view.

‘Hawthorne—’ I began.

He stopped me. I wasn’t going to tell him about Maïssa right then. Nor were we going to have dinner together. The séance was going to be cancelled, too, because, it turned out, he’d just had a telephone call from Deputy Chief Torode.

‘It’s bad news, mate,’ he said. ‘Helen le Mesurier has disappeared.’

15 The Isle is Full of Noises

It was the housekeeper who had raised the alarm. Deputy Chief Torode was waiting for us in the hallway when we arrived at The Lookout and he explained what had happened.

‘Her name is Nora Carlisle,’ he said. He hadn’t expected to be called back to the house and he didn’t look too pleased about it, somehow communicating that first a murder and now a disappearance shouldn’t have been allowed to intrude on his quiet Sunday evening. ‘She arrived at the house just after the two of you left. Did Whitlock turn up with the information I sent you?’

‘Yes. We got it, thanks,’ Hawthorne said.

‘I’m worried about Whitlock. Why is she so bloody miserable all the time?’

‘Nora Carlisle …’ Hawthorne reminded him.

‘Oh, yes.’ He lowered his voice. The housekeeper must have been somewhere near. ‘She just came marching in as if nothing had happened and even when we told her what was going on, she didn’t seem to care. What did it matter that her employer had just been murdered? She had a house to clean.’

‘She works on a Sunday?’ Hawthorne asked.

‘Not normally. She’d agreed to come in to help clear up after the party. Her husband had brought her over. He’s a car mechanic in a local garage, two kids – but she’ll tell you all this. It’s hard to get her to stop talking, to be honest.’

‘You let her in?’