The Twist of a Knife

‘That would be helpful,’ Hawthorne said. ‘I know it may seem like a waste of time, but when you repeat things, you can often remember details you might have forgotten the first time round. Anyway, I prefer to hear it straight from you, if you don’t mind.’

‘Let’s go into the kitchen. Do you want a coffee?’

‘No, thank you.’ Hawthorne answered for both of us.

We walked down the corridor, passing a half-open door that gave me a glimpse of an untidy room with an unmade bed, clothes everywhere, a Lord of the Rings poster on the wall.

‘That’s Olivia’s room,’ Arthur said. He had noticed me staring in and pulled the door shut.

We went into the kitchen. There was a pine table and a breakfast bar. Between the scattered coffee mugs, the unpaid bills, the theatre programmes, the day’s newspapers still open at the obituary columns and the unwashed plates piled up in the sink, it gave me a pretty good insight into life before and after Harriet Throsby. She hadn’t been gone forty-eight hours and her memories were everywhere. But the mess, I suspected, was Arthur’s. I glanced through the windows at a small, well-tended garden and I wondered how long it would be before it went to seed.

We sat down.

‘Nice place,’ I said, breaking the silence.

‘Do you think so?’ Arthur Throsby didn’t look so sure. ‘Harriet wanted to move. She’d been talking about it for a while, but I suppose I’ll stay here now that she’s—’ He broke off. ‘Where do you want me to start?’

He was exactly the sort of man I’d expected to be married to someone like Harriet. She had been dominating, assertive. He was softly spoken, downtrodden, with thinning hair and a face that was mournful now for good reason but which might have been the same since the day he got married. He hadn’t shaved and the clothes he was wearing looked old and unironed. He made himself a coffee without once looking at his hands, almost robotically. He didn’t want the coffee. It was just something to do.

‘Why don’t you tell us your movements on the morning of your wife’s death?’ Hawthorne suggested.

‘All right.’ He stirred his coffee and brought it over to us. It sat there, steaming gently in front of him. ‘Harriet was still in bed when I got up. That was at seven fifteen. I don’t set the alarm because she didn’t like being disturbed, but I always wake up on the dot. I made myself breakfast and squeezed some fresh orange juice for her to have later. She wouldn’t drink it if it wasn’t fresh. I tiptoed in and left it by the bed, then I set off for work shortly after eight.’

‘Where do you work?’

‘I teach history at the Harris Academy in St John’s Wood. I usually go there by bike. It’s about twenty minutes away. Otherwise, I take the tube from Paddington.’

‘Did you go by tube or bike yesterday?’

‘I took the bike. Olivia saw me leave. We spoke a few words. Nothing of any interest.’

‘Your daughter went to the theatre with your wife, but you didn’t,’ Hawthorne said. I’d told him that I’d met Olivia at the party and that she was a friend of Sky Palmer, the actress who played Nurse Plimpton.

‘That’s right.’

‘Why was that?’

Arthur shrugged as if the answer was obvious. ‘I don’t much like theatre. Anyway, Harriet preferred it if I didn’t come. I have a slight problem with asthma and she used to say the sound of my breathing put her off.’

‘So when was the last time you spoke to your wife?’

‘I called her from school. That was a few minutes before ten o’clock, between lessons. She was already up and at work by then.’

‘How did you know?’ I asked.

Hawthorne wasn’t pleased. He never liked it when I chipped in and perhaps it was a bit inappropriate, me being the main suspect.

‘I FaceTimed,’ Arthur replied. ‘I could see her. She was sitting in her study.’ He pointed at a door leading off from the kitchen. ‘It’s the dining room, but we never used it for eating. We never had guests. That was where she worked.’

‘Can we see it?’

‘If you want.’ He got up, leaving his coffee behind.

Harriet’s office could be accessed directly from both the kitchen and the corridor: there was a second door opposite Olivia’s bedroom. It was a rectangular space, running to the bay window I had seen as I approached the house. Most of the area was dominated by a dining table, which was evidently where she had worked. It was piled up with notepads, files, newspaper clippings and theatre programmes. There were about a dozen pens spilling out of a Book of Mormon mug, a half-empty bottle of wine and a glass decorated with a lipstick smear that must have been made by Harriet, the last mark she had left in this world. I glanced at the bookshelves. I wasn’t surprised to see play texts, actors’ and directors’ biographies, histories of different theatres. She also had a strong interest in crime and I remembered her telling me that it was something she had written about. I hadn’t realised she had meant books, though. I noticed three of them spread out on the table with her name on the covers, placed there as if to impress.