A Line to Kill

We waited in silence. Did Elizabeth know that Helen le Mesurier had also been killed? It was quite possible that she hadn’t been told … especially if she’d spent the whole day in the hotel. Her focus was only on Charles.

She cried out, her voice catching in her throat. ‘Marlon is calling him!’ she told us. There was another long wait. ‘He’s there!’ She called out to him: ‘Charles? Can you hear me? I want to help you.’

A long silence, broken only by the sound of Elizabeth’s breathing.

‘Charles isn’t sure,’ she explained. ‘He’s very confused. But I think he’s going to talk to me.’ She shivered. ‘Sid, I’m terribly cold.’

Sid slipped off his jacket and placed it over her shoulders.

‘Charles is here!’ she whispered.

The strange thing was that I was unsure how much time had actually passed. Maybe it was down to all the theatrics or simply because we were in an enclosed space, in a basement, with no connection to the outside world. I still didn’t believe any of it, but I would be doing Elizabeth Lovell an injustice if I didn’t admit that I was captivated by her performance.

‘He’s talking but I can’t hear what he’s saying,’ she continued. She lowered her head. ‘Charles, do you remember me? We met at your house … your home on this side of the mirror. The Lookout. Do you remember?’ We had no way of knowing if he did or didn’t. Elizabeth cried out and writhed in her chair. ‘No! We want to help you! We want to find the person who hurt you. Can you tell us who it was?’

‘They always hate talking about the moment of their passing,’ Sid explained quietly. ‘It’s too traumatic.’

‘You were at the party. You drank champagne. But then you went into the garden.’ Elizabeth said all this as if she was merely repeating what she was being told. Then she asked: ‘What time was it? Who was with you?’

We all waited for the answer.

‘A friend. He was close to you. You trusted him.’ Elizabeth was breathing more and more heavily. ‘He worked for you. Can you tell me who he was?’

Hawthorne was leaning forward, listening intently. Sid rested his hand on Elizabeth’s arm.

‘It was just before ten o’clock,’ Elizabeth said. She wasn’t reminding him. Again, she was repeating what he was telling her. ‘He went with you across the garden, to the Snuggery. He had a walking stick.’

Derek Abbott! Who else could it be? And of all the people she could have chosen, why had Elizabeth decided to light on his name? So many different thoughts were going through my head, but first and foremost I realised that she had given Hawthorne the final piece of the jigsaw that Torode had been asking for, even though it was completely useless. How could he hope to arrest Abbott using a witness statement that had come from ‘the other side of the mirror’?

‘You went in together and then, and then—’

Elizabeth cried out. She jerked in her seat as if she had just been electrocuted.

Sid sprang to his feet and put his arms around her, his head against hers. ‘It’s all right, love,’ he muttered. ‘It’s all right. You’re back with us.’

‘So much pain!’ Elizabeth moaned. Her shoulders were rising and falling. Her hands were writhing. Sid rubbed her shoulders and slowly she recovered. She turned to him and asked weakly: ‘Can I have a glass of water?’

‘I’ve got some wine,’ Hawthorne said.

‘No, no …’

But he was already reaching down. Before anyone could stop him, he picked up the glass of wine he had brought with him. I thought he was going to pass it to her, but to my horror he suddenly hurled the contents in her face. Elizabeth cried out and raised a hand in self-defence. Sid reacted with shock. I couldn’t believe what I had just seen. What was Hawthorne doing?

And then I saw that the wine was still in the glass. It was like a magic trick. Not a single drop of it had reached Elizabeth.

What had just happened? I looked back at the glass and saw the thin sheet of plastic wrapped across the top. I remembered Hawthorne asking me to get him some cling film from the kitchen. I’d never actually done it. He must have gone in himself. Now I understood why he’d needed it.

And Elizabeth had reacted! She had held up a hand to protect herself.

She had seen!

‘That was a great performance, love,’ he said to Elizabeth. ‘But you can take off those stupid glasses. We know you can see.’

‘What?’ I couldn’t believe what he had just said. ‘She’s faking being blind?’ It was one of the most disgusting things I’d ever heard.

‘I told you she was a fraud,’ Hawthorne said. ‘She did it very well on stage. A complete pro. But outside that, she made so many bloody mistakes.’ He peeled off the cling film and slid the glass of wine across the table. ‘Why don’t you drink this, love? You look like you need it.’

‘You bastard!’ Sid exclaimed.