The Twist of a Knife

But what he had said outside the accountant’s office was true. It was extremely unlikely that Harriet had been killed because she’d written a bad review. The events at Moxham Heath provided a much more likely explanation. A man had died. Two boys had gone to prison. A family had been destroyed. And Harriet had written about it all. Badly. Maybe someone had decided it was time she paid the price.

We took a taxi from Chippenham station, moving from ring road to motorway to country lane. The driver had been glum at first, reluctant to come out so far, but he’d cheered up when Hawthorne told him that we’d be using him all day. I swear I’ve spent more on taxi fares than I’ve earned from the books I’ve written about Hawthorne, but for once I didn’t complain. We’d just missed the eleven o’clock train from Paddington and we’d had to wait thirty minutes for the next one. This was the slow service, stopping at Reading, Slough, Swindon and another half-dozen stations I’d never heard of. As much as I’d tried to concentrate on the book, I hadn’t been able to keep Cara Grunshaw out of my thoughts. I half expected to see her waiting on the next platform. I felt like a fugitive in a Hitchcock film.

We were travelling down a country lane, through a tunnel of beech trees sporting their new spring leaves and between verges scattered with wild flowers. The light had turned green and there were motes of dust dancing in the sunlight. Ahead of us, a drystone wall twisted into the distance as if beckoning us to follow. I’m always dazzled by the beauty of the English countryside at the start of spring, but Wiltshire has a particular trick of throwing you back in time. At that moment, there was nothing to suggest we were still in the twenty-first century, apart from the car we were sitting in.

‘Hold it!’ Hawthorne broke into my reverie, calling out to the driver. ‘Turn right here.’

For a moment, I was puzzled. Then I saw that we had been about to pass an open gate with a faded stone lion standing guard and a wooden sign marked Moxham Hall. We must have arrived at the outskirts of the village. This was the house where Trevor and Annabel Longhurst had been living – at least occasionally – when their ten-year-old son had managed to kill his deputy head.

The driver had reacted too slowly and shot a few metres past the entrance. He muttered to himself as he reversed the car and then turned into a ribbon of neatly laid gravel that led us through the thick woodland purposely designed to hide the house from the road. After about a minute, we emerged into an estate that could have been described as a kingdom in itself. Moxham Hall was a sprawling, nineteenth-century manor surrounded by perfectly striped lawns reaching as far as a low metal railing. Miles of grassland stretched out on the other side, different shades of green rising and falling over hills and continuing as far as the eye could see. As we swung round an improbable white marble fountain – Neptune holding a trident, fighting off an army of cupids and dolphins – my eyes took in rose gardens, ornamental gardens, vegetable gardens and rockeries. And there was the famous helicopter pad, a white H stamped into a circle of mauve asphalt. My first impression was that the house was beautiful, with its patterned brick and limestone façade, the rows of symmetrical windows, the grey tiles and chimneys. But as we drew closer, I noticed the modern additions: the out-of-scale conservatory, the fake portico around the front door, the glass and steel shell surrounding the swimming pool. There was something a little soulless about Moxham Hall. I could imagine it being rented out as a posh wedding venue. It wasn’t somewhere I would want to live.

The taxi stopped. We got out.

‘What are you hoping to find here, Hawthorne?’ I asked.

‘Nothing much, mate. But this is where Harriet’s book opens. And since we were passing, I thought we might as well have a look.’

‘I don’t think anyone’s around.’

And yet someone had to be working here. It was obvious from the lawns and the flower beds, the exaggerated neatness of everything. The house was being looked after – and with all this land, so many rooms, it was going to take more than one visit a week. Feeling very much like a trespasser, I followed Hawthorne to the front entrance and watched him press the doorbell. It made no sound, or at least none that we could hear from outside. We waited. Nobody came.

‘What now?’ I asked, thinking we ought to move on to the village.