‘You didn’t see him head towards Mr Browne’s house?’
‘Definitely not. He disappeared into the shadows.’
‘Like he didn’t want to be seen?’
‘No. It was ten o’clock at night and it was dark. He was there one moment and gone the next.’ Pennington walked to the front door and opened it. ‘Maybe Tom had left something in the car,’ he continued. ‘It could have been as simple as that.’ He turned to Khan. ‘I know you have a job to do, Detective Superintendent, but you must understand that we’ve all known each other for years. This is our home. You’re suggesting that Roderick committed the murder and killed himself out of remorse, and I have to say I’m inclined to agree with you. There seems to be no alternative explanation. So why are you continuing with this investigation? Can’t you just move on and leave us all in peace?’
They left Well House and stood outside, near the gate. It was early afternoon and once again the police presence was thinning out. Khan seemed to come to a decision. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Are you satisfied, Hawthorne? I’d say we’ve come to the end of the road.’
‘What road’s that, Detective Superintendent?’ Hawthorne asked.
‘We now know that Roderick Browne threatened to kill Giles Kenworthy. It was his crossbow and he had the most obvious motive. He was under a lot of pressure, having to deal with his wife’s illness, and it seems fair to say that he was acting on her behalf. If Kenworthy was dead, the pool wouldn’t be built, her view would be protected and they wouldn’t have to move.
‘So let’s move on to the suicide itself. It may well be that my interview with him upset him more than I thought, but I was not alone in the interrogation room. The whole thing was recorded. I observed all the correct procedures and Mr Browne was absolutely fine when he was taken home. We’ve now learned that he became distressed later in the evening and called Adam Strauss for help. He drank whisky and took an overdose of sleeping pills. He used nitrous oxide and other apparatus consistent with his work as a dentist. He wrote a suicide letter. The garage door was double-locked, the skylight was securely fastened and there was no other way in or out.
‘So when I say we’ve come to the end of the road, I mean that I am going to recommend that we close this inquiry or, at least, that we do not interview any other witnesses. Mr Browne killed Mr Kenworthy and, out of remorse, took his own life. It’s as simple as that.’
‘Can I just say one thing?’ Hawthorne asked.
‘What?’
‘If Browne’s suicide is so cut and dried, why didn’t he cancel the carer? If he was going to kill himself, wouldn’t he have told Damien Shaw not to come in? And while we’re on the subject of Damien, he doesn’t believe the suicide theory either. He agreed that Browne would never have left his wife on her own. He was devoted to her! May Winslow and Phyllis Moore said much the same thing.
‘But according to you, that’s just what he did, and although there are a lot of unanswered questions, you seem to be ignoring them. What happened to his missing phone? And the missing car key? For someone about to top himself, Mr Browne seems to have been missing a lot. And here’s something else that may not have crossed your mind. You told us that one set of keys to the Skoda were found in Browne’s trouser pocket. But doesn’t that strike you as odd? For a start, he didn’t need the key. He wasn’t going anywhere. And if he’d used it to open and shut the doors, wouldn’t it have been in his hand or on the seat next to him? No one ever puts car keys in their trouser pockets – and nor do they carry a one-inch drinking straw with them, not even if they fancy a quick sniff of cocaine. Anyway, as far as I can see, Browne wasn’t into that. Lots and lots of questions, but for some reason you don’t seem to want to do your job.’
Khan was about to argue, but he’d had enough. ‘I don’t need to take this from you,’ he said. ‘Your work here is over and I want you to leave. I’ve heard a lot about you, Hawthorne, and to be honest, none of it is good. I had misgivings about inviting you here in the first place and now I see why. You meet a police officer who’s making good in his career and all you want to do is stir things up. But it’s not going to work with me. I’ll wish you a good day.’
Khan turned on his heel and walked off.
Six
A Locked-Room Mystery
1
I have never been a huge fan of so-called ‘locked-room’ mysteries.
There’s a very specific subgenre in the murder mystery/crime arena that has its own rules and effectively presents the reader with a seemingly impossible puzzle. It’s not enough for the characters to be isolated (The Mousetrap, Orient Express). Everything has to be so fiendishly arranged that the detective has no chance of solving the puzzle . . . until he or she does.
The first and still the most famous locked-room mystery is said to be The Murders in the Rue Morgue, written in 1841 by Edgar Allan Poe, the man who inspired Sherlock Holmes. Here, a mother and a daughter are brutally murdered in their flat, the daughter stuffed up a chimney, but the door and the shutters are securely fastened from inside and the flat is four floors up from the street, with no way to climb in. The story has a great ending, but one that doesn’t really play fair. I’m not sure a modern writer would get away with it.
The real problem of the locked-room mystery is that the mechanics are often so complicated and even contorted that it’s hard to believe the murderer could go to so much trouble, and the emotions of the story can disappear in a Heath Robinson construction of cogs and wheels, mirrors, sliding doors and body doubles. As much as you may admire the solution, you are forced to suspend disbelief. The killers are so clever that they seem positively inhuman, literally so in Poe’s story. It’s difficult to avoid a sense of contrivance.
Try reading The Hollow Man, written by the ‘king of crime’, John Dickson Carr, in 1935. It’s unquestionably brilliant, often cited as the best locked-room mystery ever written. Here a man is seen entering a professor’s study, a shot rings out and the professor is found dead. There is a window, but the ground outside is covered in snow, there are no footprints and the killer has disappeared. The explanation is interminable and eventually blots out the actual reason for the murder – another crime committed long ago, blackmail and betrayal. The solution relies on chance and coincidence. The clock had broken. The snow wasn’t forecast. It left me cold.
It’s my belief that, these days, the best locked-room mysteries come from Japan. Try Murder in the Crooked House by Soji Shimada, or The Honjin Murders by Seishi Yokomizo, a true master of the art and the author of almost eighty books. They are both fiendish and elegant. In the first, the entire setting becomes an accomplice to the crime. As for the second, the gurgle of the waterwheel and the music played on the koto (a sort of zither), both integral to the plot, will always stay with me. Sheer genius. But far removed from real life.
I only mention all this to explain why my immediate reaction to the last batch of material I had received had been one of dismay. Hawthorne was insisting that Roderick Browne had not committed suicide and all the ingredients of the locked-room mystery were set out in front of me. Nobody could have got into the garage. There was only one key fob, which Roderick must have used to lock the car doors after he got inside. He couldn’t have been carried there. And he had written a suicide note! It was always possible that Hawthorne was wrong. After all, he had said that the case hadn’t worked out the way he wanted and Alastair Morton, the CEO of Fenchurch International, had also warned me that I shouldn’t write the book because it would show Hawthorne in a bad light.