The Twist of a Knife

As Hawthorne rang the front bell, yellow light spilling out of the front windows and the sound of a Chopin nocturne being played on a speaker system, it struck me that this was exactly the sort of home I would have expected Ewan to live in. It reflected his single-mindedness, the way he presented himself, as if the light and the music had been arranged specially for our arrival. It was also the house of a divorced man. Ahmet had told me that he’d been married with four children and it was impossible to imagine them all living here. I wondered if he was still on his own.

The nocturne stopped mid-trill and a few moments later, Ewan opened the door and stood there, blinking through his round-framed spectacles. Hawthorne had told him we were on our way and he had dressed for the occasion in a velvet jacket with another long scarf dangling from his shoulders. At the same time, he wasn’t happy to see us. He filled the entire door frame … but then again, it was a small door.

‘Mr Hawthorne?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m afraid I can only give you a few minutes. My wife will be home soon and I’m just cooking dinner.’

Well, that answered the question I’d just been asking myself.

‘A few minutes is all I need.’ Hawthorne replied. Of course, he would say that. Once he was inside, he would stay as long as he wanted.

The front door opened directly into the main living area, effectively a single space with an open-plan kitchen, modern furniture, a spiral staircase leading up to the next floor, and more than a thousand books. Like Harriet’s office, these focused almost entirely on the theatre. I ran my eye across biographies of Trevor Nunn, Laurence Olivier, Peter O’Toole, Harold Pinter – and was surprised to see that he arranged his shelves alphabetically. There were framed posters from landmark productions that he might have seen when he was much younger: Look Back in Anger, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. No musicals or comedies. The awards he had won peeked out of various corners, but none of them were recognisable in the way of a Tony or a BAFTA. Over in the kitchen, a large copper pan sat on the flame, the lid gently rising and falling and something bubbling away at the edges. The smell of onions and spices permeated the room and I was reminded that Ewan was a vegetarian. I’d found this out when we’d had dinner together in Colchester.

‘Can I get you a glass of wine?’ he asked.

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

Ewan already had a glass of red wine. He gestured at a sofa shaped like an L, arranged around a crowded coffee table with a widescreen TV beyond. I took the short end, leaving Hawthorne with the full width. Ewan sat down in an armchair, setting his wine beside him. He took off his glasses and wiped the lenses with a handkerchief.

‘This is such a horrible thing to have happened,’ he began. ‘I couldn’t believe it when I heard.’

‘And why was that?’ Hawthorne asked, innocently. ‘A woman like Harriet Throsby would have had a lot of enemies.’

‘That’s true. But even so …’

‘And a death threat was made against her right in front of you.’

‘You’re talking about Jordan.’ Ewan waved the idea aside. ‘He was just letting off steam.’

‘Really? He specifically announced his intention to put a knife in her … the same knife that was used, as things turned out.’

‘I understood that it was a different knife.’ Ewan had not taken to Hawthorne. I could see that already. And no matter how he felt about Harriet, he had an almost proprietorial interest in protecting his cast. ‘Jordan is a good actor and a good man, the father of two children. If he has a fault, it’s that he sometimes doesn’t think through what he’s saying. He can get angry. We all do. Theatre can be a very demanding business. But whatever he may have said that night, I can assure you he didn’t mean it. If you think about it, Mr Hawthorne, if you were planning to kill someone, would you announce it to the whole world first?’

‘Maybe someone else in the room got the idea from him.’

‘I think it’s very unlikely.’ Ewan finished his wine. His little eyes blinked at us. ‘I know the people in that room better than anyone, and I think I’m the best judge of what they might and might not be capable of doing. I remember working on an improvisation with Jordan – the scene when he attacks Nurse Plimpton – and I can assure you that he found it incredibly difficult to find the trigger … the well of anger inside him.’

‘Was that before or after he nearly put her in hospital?’

‘I think you’re exaggerating. It was just a few bruises.’ He paused. ‘I’m not saying Jordan isn’t emotional. Quite the opposite. It’s not helped by the fact that he’s having marriage difficulties at the moment …’

‘I had no idea,’ Hawthorne lied.