A Line to Kill (Hawthorne & Horowitz #3)

by Anthony Horowitz

Hawthorne had this effect on people. I have described him often enough: his slight build, short hair cut to the scalp around the ears, the oddly searching eyes. But perhaps I have never done justice to the way he could dominate a room from the moment he entered it. He had an extraordinary presence that could be saturnine, threatening or magnetic, depending on his mood.

Tamara went back to her laptop. ‘We were just talking about literary festivals,’ she went on. ‘And as a matter of fact, we have had an invitation.’

‘It’s in Alderney. They’re launching a new festival in August and they’d love to have you both.’

THE ALDERNEY LITERARY TRUST – SUMMER FESTIVAL. SPONSORED BY SPIN-THE-WHEEL.COM. ‘Who are Spin-the-wheel?’ I asked. ‘They’re an online casino.’ She obviously shared none of my misgivings. ‘Alderney is a world centre for online gambling. Spin-the-wheel sponsor a lot of things on the island.’ She brought up another page. ‘They have a historical fiction festival in March and it was so successful that they’ve decided to start another.

‘They seem like a nice bunch of people.’ Hawthorne contemplated the end of his cigarette. ‘And maybe you should be a bit more charitable. Your agent’s obviously worried about the results of her test.’ ‘What test? What are you talking about?’ ‘And Graham’s getting a divorce from his wife.’ ‘He never said anything about that!’

If you ignore the atrocities committed when the island was occupied during the Second World War, throughout the entire history of the place there hasn’t been a single murder. That was about to change.

‘Well, let’s start with Hilda. Did you see her arm?’ ‘She was wearing a jacket.’ ‘No. She’d taken it off and put it on the back of her chair. There was a little patch where the skin was a bit paler, right over the median cubital vein.’ ‘I don’t even know what that is.’ ‘It’s where the needle goes in for a blood test. She was nervous about something. She was puffing on that vape and she kept on looking at her phone like she was waiting for a text . . . maybe from the doctor. And that lunch of hers in Weymouth Street. I bet she made it up. It’s just round the corner from Harley Street, which is where all the doctors hang out.’

Daniel Hawthorne is explaining to Horowitz how he knew that Hilda, Horowitz’s agent, was waiting for results of a medical test.

‘The intern – Trish – told him his wife had called twice and that it was important, but he didn’t even ask what it was about. It was obviously something that had been going on for a while. Trish didn’t even wait for him to make a decision, which is a bit strange when you think about it. I can tell her you’re in a meeting, she said. But she was looking at Tamara when she said it.’ ‘That doesn’t necessarily mean they are having an affair.’ ‘Didn’t you smell Tamara’s perfume?’ ‘No. I didn’t.’ ‘Well, I did. And it was all over Graham.’

Hawthorne is now explaining how he knows that the publisher is having an affair with Tamara, a woman who works with him in his office, and that he’s getting a divorce.

So that was it: an unhealthy chef, a blind psychic, a war historian, a children’s author, a French performance poet, Hawthorne and me. Not quite the magnificent seven, I couldn’t help thinking.

As I approached the table, I heard someone speaking rapidly in French and, looking around, I spotted Maïssa outside the toilet, talking to a younger man in a black leather jacket. She had her back to me so she didn’t know I was there. The man was in his twenties with long, greasy blond hair, a thin face and a wispy moustache. I suppose he could have been someone she had met by chance but there was something about their body language and the tone of her voice that told me otherwise. Maïssa was speaking very quickly, annoyed about something. I might have been wrong, but I thought I heard her mention the name Hawthorne.

Hawthorne and Horowitz were in the airport, waiting for a plane for Alderney. They come across three other of the writers going to Alderney. Marc, the food chef; Anne, the children adventure book writer and Maissa, the French Algerian poet. They all sit and chat together over coffee and Horowitz covers the check, leaving a £5 bill. He walks out but forgot his phone. Going back inside, he sees Maissa talking to someone in low tones and saying what he believed was Hawthorne’s name. And then he noticed the table was as he left it except the £5 bill was gone.

The card was the ace of spades.

I like decks of playing cards. I have a lot of them. And I remembered that the double-sized black pip at the centre of the ace is often thought to resemble, even to have been inspired by, the spade used by an undertaker. The Americans deployed it as a weapon in the Vietnam War, dropping it on the bodies of the

soldiers they killed in order to frighten the survivors. In Iraq, the ace of spades was the card that identified and targeted Saddam Hussein. Charles le Mesurier thought it was lucky. I knew better. It was the death card.

Suddenly, everything was clear. This was the reason Hawthorne had been so keen to come to Alderney. Derek Abbott! He was the child pornographer who had ‘fallen’ down a flight of stairs while Hawthorne was escorting him to the interview room.

The first thing I saw was the knife handle protruding from Charles le Mesurier’s throat. It was slim, silver, ornate; a letter opener, Dr Queripel had said. The silk jacket and trousers he had worn at the party clung to him, glued there by the blood that had fountained down from the wound. There was a dark pool of it around his tasselled suede loafers.

His right hand had been left free and now lay palm upwards, limp, the fingers curled as if he was asking for money. It was a bizarre detail. What could possibly have been done to him before he was murdered, and what had his one hand been needed for?

‘Was he left-handed or right-handed?’ he asked.

‘His watch,’ Hawthorne said. ‘He wore a Rolex, but it’s gone.’ It was true. The shirtsleeve, saturated in blood, hung open, revealing a wrist that was bare.

The doctor stopped and Hawthorne pointed to an area of carpet about halfway between the chair and the door into the garden. The dark red and mauve pattern made it difficult to make out what he had seen, but looking closer, I noticed the shape of a partial footprint. There was a curve where the toecap had come into contact with the blood. It could have been left behind by a man or a woman, but from the size I got the impression that it was someone with small feet.

He made his way back towards us, then stopped and knelt down. As I stood there watching, he reached into his jacket pocket and took out a business card from the Braye Beach Hotel and used it to scoop up a coin that had been lying on the rug near one of the curtains. He held it up and showed it to me. It was a two-euro piece.

‘Well, first of all, nobody must leave the island.’ ‘Absolutely. Mr Torode said the same thing.’ ‘Who is Mr Torode?’ ‘He’s the deputy chief officer of the Guernsey Crime Services. He’s one of the officers who’s coming over.’

‘I’m interested to know what you were doing in his study. You said you’d been in there a couple of times and that was how you knew about the paperknife. But you weren’t his GP and there was obviously no love lost between you . . .’ ‘How can you possibly say that?’ ‘Well, you haven’t exactly been shedding tears over his demise. You referred to him as Mr le Mesurier, so you weren’t on first-name terms, and I didn’t see you at the party last night. Given that Alderney isn’t exactly a whirl of social activity, I’m assuming you weren’t invited.’ Dr Queripel was the sort of man who blushed easily and he did so now. ‘As a matter of fact, there’s plenty to do on Alderney,’ he replied. ‘And last night, my wife and I had a very pleasant evening playing bridge. But you’re right. I was not on friendly terms with Mr le Mesurier and the reason I saw him on two occasions was strictly business.’

After le Mesurier was killed, the doctor stated that he’d been in the Suggery a number of times. In response, Hawthorne believed the doctor was not on friendly terms and there would thus be little reason for him to have been in the Snuggery.

‘Dr Queripel is one of the most vocal opponents to the Normandy-Alderney-Britain power line,’ Matheson cut in.

‘You should be careful what you say, Henry,’ Matheson cut in, glaring at Dr Queripel. ‘And it might help if you were a little less hypocritical. Everyone knows that the only reason you’re against this project is because you’re worried about your view.’ ‘What is Alderney without its views?’ ‘It’s a beautiful island and it’s a shame that the converter station has to go between your house and the sea, but it had to go somewhere.’ ‘And it’s just a coincidence that it goes on le Mesurier’s land?’ Queripel was fighting to keep his self-control. ‘Who knows what deals he was making with Électricité du Nord? Without him, this whole thing would never have got as far as it did and – with a bit of luck – now that he’s dead, perhaps it’ll all go away.’

There was a smear of something rust-coloured on the back. ‘Blood?’ I asked. ‘I think so.’ ‘But how is that possible? If he was killed in the Snuggery, how did the phone get to be here?’ I thought it through. ‘Maybe it’s somebody else’s blood.’

Clue: The murder took place in a separate building, yet in a home office on the 2nd floor of the main building the dead man's phone was found with what looked like a smear of blood. This room was also where the murder weapon, the knife, came from.

Hawthorne closed the door, then opened it again. There was something wrong. He took out a pen and inserted it into the strike plate, the rectangular opening into which the latch bolt should have slid. There was something blocking it – a little ball of newspaper. He let it fall into his hand, examined it, then showed it to me. The writing was in French. He folded it carefully and slipped it into his pocket. He sat back at the table.

Another clue. The lock for the door was a slide bolt. A small piece of paper with French writing was balled up and blocking where the bolt would have gone. Hawthorne put it in his pocket.

‘Do you know what time you left?’ Hawthorne was testing her. He already knew the answer to that. ‘As a matter of fact, I can tell you exactly. I asked Kathryn in the hallway – you know, Marc Bellamy’s assistant. It was nine twenty-five.

According to Kathryn, the time was 9:10

If you read Agatha Christie, you may have noticed that every single one of her killers manages to elicit a modicum of sympathy.