A Line to Kill

by Anthony Horowitz

  ‘I killed both those people. I will pay for it.’ She looked at him with a growing desperation. ‘What more do you want, Mr Hawthorne?’

  ‘Colin Matheson asked me that when I was doing my talk in Alderney,’ Hawthorne replied. ‘I told him I wanted the truth, and I suppose that’s close enough. But actually, it’s more than that. I want you to face up to what you did because here you are sitting in this nice house, surrounded by nice things, but you’re not nice, are you? You’re a killer.’

  ‘You don’t think he deserved it? Charles le Mesurier destroyed my son and made money out of his pain – and the pain of hundreds like him! Go on the website. Look at it.’

  ‘I’ve been on their website. I’ve seen what you saw and I’m sorry about your boy. I really am. But nobody deserves to die, Anne. You know that, even if you’ve persuaded yourself otherwise. That was the mistake you made.’

  Silence. The clock ticking. Then …

  ‘Why don’t you ask your daughter to come down?’

  Anne stiffened. ‘She’s not here.’

  ‘Her car’s parked outside. I’ve had a friend of mine watching the house since you got back. I thought you would have got that by now. You can’t lie to me.’

  The door opened and a young woman came in. ‘Mum,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t—’ Anne began.

  ‘It’s all right, Mum. He knows.’

  Kathryn Harris was wearing jeans and a shirt knotted at the waist. She had taken off the overlarge spectacles that she had used to disguise her face and as she sat down I thought how similar the two women were. But then, from the very start I had said that Anne Cleary reminded me of someone’s mother. I just hadn’t realised whose.

  ‘How did you know?’ Kathryn asked Hawthorne.

  ‘That you were related? Well, we could start with your mum’s books. I really did love those books, by the way. Me and my son couldn’t get enough of them. Bill and Kitty Flashbang.’ He glanced at Anne. ‘You told Tony that you’d named the two characters after your own kids. Bill was William, obviously. And Kitty …’

  ‘… Kathryn,’ I said.

  ‘Harris is your married name, is that right?’

  ‘Yes.’ Kathryn nodded, suddenly fearful. I guessed that her husband knew nothing of all this.

  ‘There were plenty of clues. You look like each other. You’ve got the same-coloured eyes. You’ve obviously lived together for a long time, so you talk in the same way. It’s going to be a hot one. That’s how Kathryn described the summer weather when we met her at breakfast. And Anne, you used exactly the same phrase when you asked if you could leave the hotel. They say it’s going to be a hot one, so I might go for a walk.

  ‘There were other things, too.’ Hawthorne was still addressing Anne. ‘Marc Bellamy told me that you’d lent Kathryn your pen. That struck me as strange, if it was so precious to you. Right now you were pretending you couldn’t even remember her name. And finally, you’re both vegetarians.’

  Anne had told us she was a vegetarian when we interviewed her at the hotel, but I was sure that Kathryn hadn’t provided us with the same information. I thought back. At Southampton Airport she had ordered a cheese salad. At The Divers Inn she had been nibbling a stick of celery. Her breakfast at the hotel had been muesli and yoghurt. Even at The Lookout, after serving steak and kidney puddings, she had helped herself only to a cheese pastry. Never once had I seen her eat any meat or fish.

  ‘Kathryn never did anything!’ Anne insisted.

  ‘Let me tell you what you both did,’ Hawthorne cut in. His voice was cold. ‘My guess is that this all started with you, Anne. You were invited to a literary festival in Alderney, probably at the end of last year, and you noticed that it was being sponsored by Spin-the-wheel.com. I can imagine how angry you must have felt, though probably your first instinct was to forget the whole thing. But then you started thinking. Maybe you could use it to your advantage. Maybe it was a chance to get close to the people who were responsible for the death of your son.

  ‘At about the same time, Kathryn moved in on Marc Bellamy. She happened to be sharing a room with his assistant, who’d just been offered a job on another cookery show. It was a perfect opportunity. Kathryn was a vegetarian; she didn’t like meat. But she persuaded Bellamy to take her on and he was delighted because she was asking for so little money. As soon as she was in there, she contacted Judith Matheson and got Marc invited.’ He looked at Kathryn for the first time. ‘Is that right?’

  ‘I spoke to his publishers,’ Kathryn said. ‘He had a new book coming out and they thought it was a great idea.’

  ‘The end result was that you both turned up on the island, but as far as everyone was concerned, you were complete strangers. You’d planned what you were going to do down to the last detail, even bringing the parcel tape with you. You can buy Duck Brand in one shop in Oxford, by the way, just down the road from here. I’m sure the owner will remember you – you being a famous author. If not, there are always credit-card slips.’

  ‘I think you’ve made your point,’ Anne said.

  ‘Gambling.’ Hawthorne smiled a little sadly. ‘That’s what this was all about right from the start. I’m surprised you didn’t see that, Tony. What was it you found on Charles le Mesurier’s Mercedes?’

  ‘A playing card,’ I said.

  ‘That’s right. And there was another clue on the floor of the Snuggery, after he was killed.’

  ‘A coin.’

  ‘Cards and coins. They could have left a bloody roulette wheel if they’d wanted to make it any more obvious. So here’s what was in their heads.’ He was talking directly to me now, ignoring Anne and Kathryn. ‘They’d come to Alderney. Somehow, they’d get le Mesurier on his own. They’d tie him down and they’d make him pay for what he’d done to William. And as it happened, le Mesurier played right into their hands. He took a fancy to Kathryn, which made the whole thing a lot easier. But here’s something else you’ve got to understand, Tony. When they came to Alderney, they only had one target: le Mesurier. We were both there when that changed and – I hate to say this, mate – once again you sort of talked out of turn.’

  My heart sank. ‘What did I say this time?’

  ‘The three of us – you, me and Anne – arrived at The Lookout at about the same time. Anne stopped in the hallway. She’d seen something that had shocked her.’

  I remembered. ‘It was Derek Abbott talking to Helen le Mesurier.’

  ‘That’s right. But it wasn’t Derek that she recognised. It was Helen! You’ve got to remember that Helen wasn’t seen out with her husband very often. They had separate lives. At the same time, she was “the face that launched a thousand chips”. She’d been an actress and he’d employed her to work on his website. If you check it out, you can still see her now. She’s the one spinning the wheel. She’s the one pouting and giving the boys the come-on. All very sexy and sultry, and she was probably William’s pin-up. Anne recognised her at once. And she was shocked.’

  ‘But she said she’d met Derek in prison!’

  ‘No, mate. You suggested that she might have met him in prison and she grabbed at that to explain why she was so surprised. I think you’re right. That’s exactly where I met him. Of course, later on, she had to say that maybe, after all, he hadn’t been in one of her reading groups … just in case we asked him and he denied it.

  ‘Meanwhile, Kathryn had seen what had happened. She had arrived at the house earlier and she had also recognised Helen. That’s why she came rushing over with the drinks and burbled on about the food. She hadn’t been able to warn Anne that Helen would be there. So she came over to rescue her before she gave herself away.’

  Mother and daughter were listening to all this in silence. They weren’t looking at each other. They were barely breathing.

  ‘Anyway, that was when one murder became two murders,’ Hawthorne went on. ‘And let’s see how the rest of the evening plays out.

  ‘At nine twenty-five, Anne leaves the party. She
has a fake conversation with Kathryn which establishes the exact time and also makes it clear that she leaves long before the murder takes place. She does the same thing with the minibus driver, Tom McKinley. She tells him that she’s in a hurry to get back to the hotel. She’s nervous. But that’s ridiculous! The hotel’s only ten minutes away and she’s got thirty-five minutes to get there. She wants him to remember her. She knows that we’ll talk to him.’

  ‘She said he was standing by the door,’ I said.

  ‘Yes – but not the door of the minibus. McKinley told you he met her coming out of the house … so it must have been the front door, which gives her a bit more room for manoeuvre. It was too dark to see who was actually on the bus. So all she did was nip out, wait a moment and then slip back into the house again. If anyone had seen her, she could just say that she’d forgotten something. But there were still a hundred people at the party. Who was going to notice one person moving in a crowd?’

  It was true. I’d been in the hallway myself at that time. But I’d had my head buried in Marc Bellamy’s cookbook and then I’d been talking to Maïssa Lamar. I hadn’t seen her.

  ‘Anne Cleary has two people who will swear she’s left the house,’ Hawthorne went on. ‘She tracks back through the kitchen and straight out along the edge of the garden and across to the Snuggery. She knows that Charles le Mesurier is going to be coming there because he’s already arranged a meeting with Kathryn and she’s agreed.’

  ‘But I spoke to her!’ I said. ‘I went into the kitchen. She was almost in tears.’

  ‘I think what you saw was an act, Tony. In fact, she couldn’t have been happier. Le Mesurier had played right into her hands.

  ‘At ten to ten, le Mesurier goes to the Snuggery and Derek Abbott goes with him. They’re still friends. They’re going to take cocaine together. Maybe they notice Elizabeth Lovell in the garden, but neither of them is aware that she can actually see them. It’s only when they’re inside the Snuggery, and perhaps after they’ve had a couple of lines, that Derek demands the £20,000 that he’s owed for his part in blackmailing Colin Matheson. He’d had to pretend to be the bad guy. He was the one with the hidden camera. He was the one who would tell Charles le Mesurier that Colin was having an affair with Helen. Of course, as we now know, all three of them – Charles, Helen and Derek – were in it together.

  ‘Anyway, Derek wants his £20,000, which is actually going to be his pay-off. Le Mesurier fires him, and Anne hears the entire conversation, hiding behind one of those velvet curtains. Why would Charles le Mesurier have told her anything about Abbott at the party? That never made any sense. But it’s a gift as far as she’s concerned. When she tells us that le Mesurier complained about Abbott earlier in the evening, it’s as if she’s looking into the future, using her knowledge of what happened at ten o’clock to point the finger at a known criminal and a man who’s hated across the whole island.

  ‘In fact, le Mesurier is very much alive when Derek leaves the Snuggery. At that moment, Helen le Mesurier looks out of her bedroom window and later on she’ll assume that since he was there just before her husband died, he must be the one who killed him. That’s why she sends Derek a text. And that’s what will eventually get her killed.

  ‘So now everything is set up. Charles le Mesurier is on his own in the Snuggery, high on cocaine, waiting for his new girlfriend to arrive. But the moment Kathryn appears, Anne steps out from her hiding place and stuns him with a rock or a brick or whatever she’s picked up from the garden. Together, the two women drag him into the chair and tie him down with the parcel tape. But they leave one hand free.’

  ‘Why?’ I couldn’t help myself. ‘Why did they do that?’

  ‘I’ve told you, mate. This is all about gambling. So what they did at the very end was give Charles le Mesurier a taste of his own medicine. Think about it! He’s tied to a chair. His head’s been cracked open. He’s frightened and in pain and worse than that, he’s got two loony women facing him and one of them has got the paperknife that she’s nicked from his study. Kathryn could have done that any time during the day. But they want the punishment to fit the crime, so they give him one chance. Just like William Cleary, they’re going to let him gamble for his life.’

  Suddenly I saw it. ‘Heads or tails,’ I said.

  ‘They’d nicked a coin from Maïssa’s handbag in the hall. It’s got a tree on one side and a map of Europe on the other, so it’s not exactly heads or tails, but it makes sense to use a foreign coin, one that can’t be connected to them, and they also wipe it clean to make sure it didn’t have their fingerprints.’ For the first time in a while, he looked at Anne. ‘Am I right?’

  ‘I wanted him to know what it felt like … to gamble for his life,’ Anne said. ‘I left his hand free so that he could toss the coin. I told him to call and that if he got it right, I would let him go.’

  ‘And would you have?’

  ‘Of course not. But it didn’t matter anyway. He couldn’t do it.’

  Right then, I saw the whole dreadful scene. Charles le Mesurier, tied to the chair, sitting in his Snuggery, still half stunned from the blow he had received. Kathryn with the knife at his throat. Anne balancing the two-euro coin on his thumb, forcing him to toss it and call. Screaming at him: ‘Heads or tails? Heads or tails?’ Terrified. But Charles finally doing what he was told, trying to get the coin to spin, hoping to save his own life.

  ‘He dropped it,’ Anne said. ‘He tried to toss the coin but it fell onto the carpet and we couldn’t find it.’

  ‘And then you killed him.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Hawthorne. I killed him. Not Kathryn. She had left by then.’

  ‘We’ll get back to that later, shall we?’ Hawthorne continued his explanation. ‘It was Helen’s turn next. Luck was still with you because Helen had seen Derek Abbott out of the bedroom window and arranged to meet him. You’d never have been able to get back into the house with all the police around, but you decided to watch the house in the hope that she’d step out for a breath of fresh air. When she set off for Quesnard Cottage, you followed her.’

  ‘How did they get her into the cave?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s a good question,’ Hawthorne said.

  ‘You’ve got this part of it wrong, Mr Hawthorne,’ Anne replied, quite calmly. ‘Kathryn wasn’t with me on the Sunday. You’re right that I followed Mrs le Mesurier. I caught up with her before she reached the quarry and the railway line and we walked together, chatting quite normally. She mentioned the cave and I asked her to show it to me. It was a little out of her way, but I said I was nervous to go in on my own, so she took me to the entrance. That was where I hit her. I then carried her inside and finished the job inside.’

  Was she telling the truth? I’m not sure that Anne Cleary would have been strong enough to carry Helen le Mesurier all the way down the dark passage that led into the rock face. But Hawthorne didn’t challenge her. ‘Did she deserve to die too?’ he asked.

  ‘She was just as guilty as him,’ Anne said. But I thought she sounded less sure.

  ‘She was an actress, playing a part.’

  ‘My son died. It destroyed my marriage. I have never had a moment’s peace ever since.’

  ‘They were horrible people,’ Kathryn agreed.

  ‘I don’t want you to say anything, Kitty! It’s very important that you understand that, now and moving forward.’ Her mother had drawn herself up in her seat. She knew exactly what she was going to say. Even as Hawthorne had been speaking, she had rehearsed it. ‘Could you please get the letter off the sideboard?’ she asked.

  ‘Mum …’

  ‘Please, dear.’

  Kathryn wasn’t happy, but she got up and did as she was told. She handed her mother an envelope.

  ‘This may not make a great deal of difference to what you decide to do, Mr Hawthorne,’ Anne said. ‘For what it’s worth, I accept your conclusion. What I did was wrong and I expect to pay. Except that it seems I am paying already.’

 
She held out the letter. Hawthorne took it, a single typed page. I saw the NHS logo at the top.

  ‘You have heart disease,’ he said.

  ‘Left ventricular systolic dysfunction, to be precise,’ Anne told him. ‘I’m taking various medications … enzyme inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers. But my prognosis is not good. I have weeks, maybe months. It could just be days.’

  I knew she was telling the truth. I remembered her breathlessness and the so-called antibiotics she had mentioned. On the morning after the murder, she’d said she had to leave the island for a doctor’s appointment and that was probably true.

  ‘This isn’t a payment,’ Hawthorne said.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘If you’re suggesting to me that you were sent this heart condition as a punishment for what you intended to do, that makes as much sense as Elizabeth Lovell and her stupid ghosts.’

  ‘Does it matter what I call it? The point I am making, and the only point that should be of interest to you, is that I am going to die very soon.’ She half smiled. ‘Funnily enough, what I told you about my deal with Disney was true. It just arrived a little too late to be of any use to me.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I won’t stand trial. I certainly won’t go to prison. I knew that long before I went to Alderney.’

  ‘It was part of the reason why you went.’

  ‘Yes. When the doctor told me that my time was limited, I thought a lot about William and how I might make amends. And then, when I was asked to come to Alderney and I saw Spin-the-wheel on the invitation, it felt like it was meant. I had been given an opportunity, in the last days of my life, to take some sort of action … Punishment, retribution. Call it what you like.’

  Hawthorne briefly considered what he had just been told. ‘So what are you suggesting, Anne?’

  ‘I killed Charles le Mesurier. I also killed Helen le Mesurier. Kathryn wasn’t even there when the second crime took place.’