In fact, Alderney had been a complete washout. I had been sidelined during our session, there had been no books to sell and there had been none of the camaraderie that usually made festivals such fun. How could there have been when every other writer I’d met had been a suspect in two violent murders? I felt particularly sorry for Judith Matheson. She’d put so much work into organising the weekend and what had she got out of it? A dead sponsor, a cut-up lawn and a divorce.
I was hoping that Anne Cleary or even Marc Bellamy might turn up and join us, but the room was almost empty. This was a Monday night and anyone who had come for the weekend had long since checked out. Maybe the other writers had found somewhere cheaper to eat in town now that the festival was no longer picking up the tab. But just as we were finishing the main course, Hawthorne looked up, and turning round, I saw two people I knew approaching the table. One of them was Elizabeth Lovell. The other, guiding her by the arm, was her husband, Sid.
‘They’re here,’ I heard him say. ‘Just finished eating. Fish, by the look of it. Mr Hawthorne facing us. His friend on the other side.’
They came over to our table and stopped, hovering over us a little awkwardly. I wondered if I should invite them to sit down, but the truth was, I didn’t want their company. ‘Are you going home tomorrow?’ Elizabeth asked.
‘That’s right,’ Hawthorne said. ‘And yourself?’
‘We have a flight to Southampton and then back to Jersey. We’re leaving very early.’ She stared over the table. ‘That only leaves tonight, if you still want to take me up on my offer.’
She was referring to the séance that she had suggested the night before and Hawthorne didn’t hesitate. ‘I’d like that very much,’ he said.
I was less keen. ‘Actually, I was just going to bed,’ I said.
‘No, Tony. I think you should join us. Four feels like a better number and Elizabeth here has got form. She helped the police in Jersey.’ Was he being sarcastic? He sounded completely straightforward.
‘Well, all right …’
‘I’m so glad.’ Elizabeth Lovell smiled, an action that stretched the tendons on either side of her neck. It was perhaps unfair to be judgemental, but with her hunched-up body and the dark glasses masking so much of her face, I found her rather alarming. ‘Shall we say the screening room at ten o’clock, then? Sid can ask at the reception desk, but the hotel seems to be half empty so I’m sure it will be free.’
The two of them walked away and as soon as they were out of the room, I turned to Hawthorne. ‘What are you playing at?’ I demanded. ‘You’ve already told me you don’t believe in this stuff!’
‘She may be able to help us,’ Hawthorne replied, simply.
‘What? By chatting to Charles le Mesurier? Maybe she can get Helen along too …’
‘What else have you got to do tonight, mate? Wash your hair? Watch TV?’ I had no answer to that, so he went on. ‘You said it yourself. We’re out of here tomorrow. So let’s use what time we’ve got.’ He took out a packet of cigarettes and stood up. ‘I’ll see you there.’
I knew he was heading outside. For my part, I went back to my room and actually I did watch TV for half an hour; anything to get my mind off the events of the day. I was half tempted to ignore Hawthorne and give the whole thing a miss. I was convinced it would be a waste of time. But if there was one thing I’d learned in our time together, it was never to second-guess Hawthorne. If he believed something was worth doing, he would probably be right, even if it wasn’t for the reason you thought.
So at ten o’clock, I made my way down to the hotel’s screening room, which was certainly not the sort of place Noel Coward would have chosen to set a séance. It was relentlessly functional, windowless, of course, with chunky leather chairs on a modern black and white striped carpet and recessed lights. Presumably it had been put in for the hotel’s corporate guests. Certainly it was nothing like the antiquated cinema just up the road.
Sid had arranged for a table and four seats to be brought in. These had been placed on a raised platform in front of the screen. Elizabeth Lovell was already sitting down. Sid was fussing over her, pouring her coffee, making sure she was comfortable.
Hawthorne had arrived just ahead of me. To my surprise, he was holding a glass of red wine that he must have brought from the bar. It made no sense. That very same evening he’d told me that he never drank alcohol. Maybe it was for me. He sat down at the table and placed the glass beside him, on the floor. I took the last place, next to him. If anyone had come in, they might have thought that we were about to play bridge, but, foolishly, had forgotten to bring the cards.
Sid was the first to speak. He was so short, he had slipped down behind the table and, like a child, peered across the top. ‘They’re both here,’ he told his wife unnecessarily, as she must have heard us. ‘Let me explain a few things,’ he continued. ‘This is very hard for Liz. It’s not usually what she does and she’s only doing it because she wants to help you.’ He grimaced. ‘Personally, I advised against it. When she deliberately makes the journey to the other side of the mirror, she has no idea who she may come up against. You were there when she gave her talk on Saturday. They’re not ghosts. They’re not spirits. They’re not always friends. What she’s doing tonight is the difference between wandering into someone’s private property by accident and deliberately trespassing. There can be repercussions. Whatever happens, do not get out of your seats. Do not touch her. Do not interrupt. Do you both understand? If she needs help, that’s what I’m here for. I know what to do. You just stay where you are.’
It was well rehearsed and smoothly delivered. But it was still mumbo-jumbo. It might have convinced the Jersey police when they were searching for a lost kid in a nature reserve, but I didn’t believe a word of it and nor – I was sure – did Hawthorne. He was sitting silently with his hands folded in front of him. I tried to catch his eye, but he avoided me.
‘Are you ready, love?’ Sid asked.
Elizabeth nodded.
‘I’m right next to you. I’m with you all the way.’
‘Thank you, Sid.’ She took a deep breath, her chest rising and falling, her hands resting on the arms of the chair. She didn’t go into a trance. There were no exhalations, no rolling of the eyes. If anything, she might simply have dozed off. I had thought Sid would lower the lights, but they were still on at full strength. Despite that, I was aware of the shadows in the corners of the room. The four of us were very still.
‘Is there anybody there?’ Elizabeth asked. I was surprised that she had started with such a cliché. Surely she could do better than that?
Nothing. Just the sound of her breathing.
‘Phyllis? Consuela? Alessandro?’
‘These are reflections who have appeared to her before,’ Sid explained, in a whisper. ‘With a bit of luck, one of them might come forward.’
Consuela was a Spanish name and Alessandro an Italian one. I wondered if Elizabeth would be able to speak to them in their own language. Or did everyone speak the same language when they died, trapped in some sort of eternal Google Translate?
Three or four minutes passed. Elizabeth seemed to be searching with her unseeing eyes while Sid waited nervously. Hawthorne was showing no emotion at all. The séance was about as action-packed as the empty screen behind us and I was beginning to think that the main feature might have been cancelled when Elizabeth suddenly tensed. Her head jerked, first one way, then the other.
‘There is someone …’ she announced.
‘Who?’ Sid whispered.
‘I can’t see. I can’t see. They’re getting closer. They’re coming towards me now.’ Her voice wavered, on the edge of fear. ‘I don’t want to hurt you! I just need your help!’ She was addressing whatever presence was gliding towards her and I was annoyed with myself: I was almost unnerved. ‘It’s Marlon!’ she exclaimed.
Sid visibly relaxed. ‘Marlon is a friend,’ he whispered. ‘He’s helped us before.’
‘Dear Marlon!
Please forgive me for disturbing your rest, but I need help. Can you help me? Can you tell me anything about a man who has recently crossed to the other side? His name is Charles le Mesurier and he was taken before his time, violently. He must be in great pain and we only want to give him comfort.’
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.
‘Now, now!’ Hawthorne warned him. ‘If you’re going to get nasty, the whole world’s going to know about this. I’m not sure what your fans will think when they find out you’ve been ripping them off, but I’ve got a feeling it’s not exactly going to catapult you into the best-seller lists. At the moment, there’s just the four of us who know that your wife is a cold-hearted, manipulative bitch. Maybe it would be a good idea to keep it that way. What do you think?’
There was a silence even more dramatic than the one that had opened the séance.
Elizabeth Lovell was the first to recover. ‘Let me explain something to you,’ she said. She picked up the wine and downed it in one. When she continued, she sounded desperate – and genuine, for perhaps the first time. ‘It wasn’t a lie,’ she insisted. ‘Not completely. Everything I have written about in my books is true, I swear to you, and I’ve been an inspiration to many, many people. I do have diabetes, and in my twenties this resulted in serious damage to my eyesight – proliferative retinopathy. I can show you the certificates. For a while I suffered almost total vision loss. This happened at the same time that I realised I had the abilities which I discussed in my talk—’
‘So how come the miracle recovery?’ Hawthorne interrupted.
‘I had eye surgery to remove scar tissue from the back of my retina and although it was still damaged, some of my sight returned.’
‘Enough to see Derek Abbott and Charles le Mesurier walk to the Snuggery together just before ten o’clock on Saturday night?’
She nodded.
‘But why all this pretence?’ I demanded. I knew Hawthorne didn’t like it when I interrupted, but I couldn’t stop myself.
‘It was Sid’s idea,’ Elizabeth said. ‘The whole thing with Blind Sight.’
‘That’s not true!’ Sid snarled. ‘Don’t you bloody say that.’
‘You suggested it.’
‘All right! All right!’ Sid drew a breath, then turned to us. ‘There are psychics up and down the country,’ he grumbled. ‘Half of them are fake. Not like Liz. She’s the real thing. But that’s not good enough, not these days, when everyone’s looking for something more. How were we going to get her on Good Morning Britain? I told her she needed something special, a trademark. We weren’t telling a lie. We were just embroidering the truth.’
‘But all that rubbish just now …’
I understood exactly what had happened. Elizabeth had been sitting outside The Lookout on the night of the party, smoking a cigarette. She had clearly seen Derek Abbott and Charles le Mesurier walk past her, crossing the garden, but she couldn’t say anything without giving herself away. At the same time, Derek hadn’t realised he’d been spotted. That was why he had been able to deny entering the Snuggery with such confidence. He thought she was blind! As for the charade we had just sat through, Elizabeth could h
ave sent Hawthorne an anonymous message, but she and her husband must have been thinking about the publicity value. A psychic helping the police to solve a double murder! How many books would that sell?
‘What time did you see them leave the house?’ Hawthorne asked.
Elizabeth had no choice. ‘About ten to ten.’
Le Mesurier had been killed about twenty minutes later. Two guests had heard him cry out.
‘Were they talking?’
‘Yes. I couldn’t hear what they were saying.’
That was probably true. Elizabeth had been sitting over to one side of the house.
‘But you must have been able to tell something from their body language.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Come on, love!’ Hawthorne was irritated. Elizabeth Lovell’s entire act was based on her ability to ‘read’ a room, to pick up innocent cues from people and to turn them into a narrative of her own making. ‘Were they friendly?’
‘I can’t tell you what you want to know, Mr Hawthorne. It was dark. They were a distance away. They had their backs to me. But if it’s any help, they were quite close together, side by side. They weren’t unfriendly. Charles le Mesurier was doing most of the talking. I saw them for less than a minute. Then they went into the building.’
‘Did you see Abbott come out again?’
‘No. Sid came for me a few minutes later. That would have been ten o’clock. We went back into the house and then we took a taxi to the hotel.’
‘Derek Abbott was the last person to see le Mesurier alive,’ Sid said. ‘That’s useful information. Maybe he was the killer and it’s thanks to her that you’ll have cracked the case.’
‘What are you suggesting, Mr Lovell?’
Sid licked his lips nervously. ‘Look, I know we got off to the wrong start, but we can put all that behind us. And maybe we could come to some sort of arrangement. I mean, it would be very useful to us if you could see your way to acknowledging her contribution publicly.’
A Line to Kill Page 22