The Twist of a Knife

And what of Rosemary herself? She must have been in her seventies, but she could have been ten years older. Age had shrunk her, tightening her arms and her shoulders, making the sinews in her neck stand out. She was not well. She could barely walk and the stroke that she had suffered a year ago had frozen half her face, the eye on that side bulging unpleasantly, like a marble. She was wearing a smart floral dress that came down to her ankles, clip-on earrings and a pearl necklace. Her hair had been groomed, her make-up carefully applied. I assumed all this had been done by Tara. She could have been about to go out – perhaps for tea or bridge – but it was unlikely that this was something she ever did. This was her entire world. She was living the illusion of a life.

‘You can leave now, Tara.’

‘Are you sure, Mrs Alden?’

‘For heaven’s sake, girl, I can look after myself!’

‘I’ve put your supper in the oven.’

‘I know. I know. Thank you, Tara.’ It was not an expression of gratitude. It was a dismissal.

Tara was unhappy, but she knew better than to argue. She snatched a quilted jacket off a chair and went back out through the front door. Nobody spoke until we heard it close. Mrs Alden turned to us, examining us with that obtruding eye.

‘I would like a whisky,’ she announced. ‘There’s a bottle of Dalwhinnie over there in the corner. I’d like two inches with a splash of water, if you don’t mind.’

She had a drinks trolley crowded with different bottles. I found the whisky and poured some into a heavy tumbler, then added water from a jug. I carried it over to her.

‘Tara doesn’t like me to drink. The doctor says it’ll kill me, but he’s a damn fool. I’m seventy-eight years old and look at me! I’m dying inch by inch. What difference do you think it will make?’ Her hand trembled as she raised the glass to her lips. She swallowed with difficulty. ‘You want to talk to me about Philip?’

‘If you don’t mind.’

‘Why? I heard you tell Tara you were a detective. You don’t look like a detective. You look more like an undertaker. Are you investigating me?’

It seemed an odd thing to ask, but Hawthorne didn’t blink. ‘No. We’re looking into a death that took place in London. We believe there may be a connection with what happened here.’

‘Whose death?’

‘A woman called Harriet Throsby.’

‘I remember her. She came here a while ago. She wrote a book about what happened at the school. I never read it.’

‘It seems that a great deal of what she wrote was untrue.’

‘Of course it was. She didn’t know anything.’ She smiled to herself, but only half of her mouth moved. ‘Is that why you’ve come here? Because you want to know the truth?’

‘I already know the truth, Mrs Alden, and so do you. I just wanted to hear it …’ he glanced at one of the hunting photographs ‘… from the horse’s mouth.’

She stared at him. At least, one of her eyes did. The other was fixed on something in the middle distance. ‘That sounds very impertinent, Mr …’ Her voice trailed off. ‘What did you say your name was?’

‘Hawthorne.’

‘Hawthorne! How can you know anything about me? You’ve only just walked in!’

Hawthorne didn’t reply.

Mrs Alden tilted the glass and finished the whisky. She handed it to me. ‘I’ll have another.’

‘Are you sure?’

I didn’t actually say the words, but I must have shown what I was thinking because she glared at me. ‘What do you think I’m going to do?’ she snapped. ‘Get drunk and dance on the table? You can have one yourself, if you like. Perhaps it will make you a little less po-faced.’

When she spoke like that, I glimpsed the woman who had once patrolled the corridors at Moxham Heath Primary School as the deputy headmaster’s wife. I knew exactly what she must have been like. ‘Tuck in your shirt tail! Let’s have a little less noise, please. No running in the corridor!’ We’d had a matron just like that at my prep school. We’d all been terrified of her.

I went back to the trolley and poured a second measure, but I made sure it was smaller than the first. Hawthorne wouldn’t be too pleased if she passed out before she could tell us what he wanted to know. I gave her the glass and she took another swig. It was quite a performance, especially considering it was only four o’clock in the afternoon – but then I suspected that time had no meaning for her. There were no clocks in the room, perhaps deliberately.

‘I’m not frightened of you, Mr Hawthorne.’ She wasn’t quite slurring her words, but the alcohol had certainly had an effect on her speech. It had released her inhibitions, emboldened her. ‘Those two boys deserved everything they got. They crept into Philip’s study and they put that bust on the top of the door and when he walked in, it fell onto his head and broke his skull. He went into a coma and the next day he died.’ It took her a few moments to recover. ‘I always told him to get rid of that stupid thing. He had no interest in Cicero. But he thought it impressed the children.’