The Word is Murder (Hawthorne & Horowitz #1)

by Anthony Horowitz

books that had that peculiar sense of sadness that comes with being unread.

Diana Cowper had planned her funeral and she was going to need it. She was murdered about six hours later that same day.

The Meaning of Treason, by Rebecca West, a classic study of life in Britain after the Second World War.

got the feeling that he might have been very handsome as a child but something had happened to him at some time in his life so that, although he still wasn’t ugly, he was curiously unattractive. It was as if he had become a bad photograph of himself.

These are my words but they were his actions and the truth is that, to begin with, the two didn’t quite fit.

‘A psalm! The Beatles!’ ‘But which psalm? Which Beatles track? Don’t you think it might be important?’ He took out a notebook and opened it. ‘Psalm 34. I will bless the Lord at all times: his praise shall continually be in my mouth. The song was “Eleanor Rigby”. The poem was by someone called Sylvia Plath. Maybe you can help me with that one, Tony, because I read it and it didn’t make a word of bleeding sense. The classical music was the Trumpet Voluntary by Jeremiah Clarke. She wanted her son to give the main address . . . what do you call it?’ ‘The eulogy.’

As for Chapter One, forget the bell and the Mont Blanc pen. Diana Cowper had lunch with Raymond Clunes. And Andrea Kluvánek may not have been telling the truth. But be assured that the rest of it, including a clue which would indicate, quite clearly, the identity of the killer, is spot on.

Hawthorne came into the room, dressed in the same suit as usual – and that’s one sentence I definitely don’t need to write again. He was eating a sandwich and it took me a moment to realise that he must have made it for himself, in Mrs Cowper’s kitchen, using her food. I stared at him.

👁️👄👁️

‘Shame to waste it,’ he said. ‘And she don’t need it any more.’ He waved the sandwich around the room.

The page contained a screenshot of the text that Diana Cowper had sent to her son just before she died. I have seen the boy who was lacerated and I’m afraid

‘Nobody should be allowed to get behind the wheel of a car if they can’t see. If that’s not against the law then the law should be changed. My son is dead. My other son has been crippled. And she just gets a slap on the wrist. That can’t be right.’

For him, politeness was a surgical mask, something he slipped on before he took out his scalpel.

She couldn’t stop in time – but that didn’t stop the family blaming her. I actually had a long chat with the judge and he was quite clear that Diana wasn’t in any way responsible. Of course she was terribly upset by the whole thing. She moved back to London shortly after that – and as far as I know she never got behind the wheel of a car again. Well, you can’t blame her, can you? The whole thing was a horrible experience.’

‘So what you’re saying to me, Mr Clunes, is that Diana Cowper ran over and killed a child. She was an investor in your shows. And she was acquitted by a judge who was also an investor. Out of interest, had the two of them met?’

‘What?’ I was genuinely shocked – not by what he thought. I’d already guessed that. But by the way he’d expressed it. He pronounced queer ‘quee-ah’, making it sound like something alien as well as unpleasant.

There are some people who argue that we are too sensitive these days, that because we’re so afraid of causing offence, we no longer engage in any serious sort of argument at all. But that’s how it is. It’s why political chat-shows on television have become so very boring. There are narrow lines between which all public conversations have to take place and even a single poorly chosen word can bring all sorts of trouble down on your head.

The wheels on the bus go round and round, Round and round Round and round

Could they actually bury the dead woman with this hideously inappropriate song accompanying her?

‘It was Timothy Godwin’s favourite song. They played it when they buried him . . . in Harrow Weald.’

‘Mr Tibbs is the reason everything happened, Tony. If it hadn’t been for him, Mrs Cowper might never have been killed. And nor would her son.’