I was feeling increasingly uncomfortable, just standing there. It dawned on me that I was effectively trespassing – I wondered how many tourists and ghouls strolled in here every month. After all, this was the site of two unnatural deaths and there are parts of London where murder walks are very much an attraction. Follow in the footsteps of Jack the Ripper or the Kray brothers or Sherlock Holmes. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself, so I headed meaningfully for The Stables – as if I was expected and had every right to be there. Adam Strauss was low on my list of suspects, but he would probably know more than anyone else. I rang the front doorbell. There was no answer. I looked through a gap in the net curtains (Hawthorne hadn’t mentioned these) and saw that the room had changed. There were no chessboards, no refectory table. Adam and his wife must have moved.
I glanced across at Gardener’s Cottage, but there was no sign of any movement. Dr Beresford was probably at his surgery, his wife in town, his children – nine years old now – at school. That really only left me with one option. I walked over to Well House and rang the bell. This time I was in luck. The door opened. Andrew Pennington stood in front of me.
‘Yes?’
It was so odd to be seeing him in the flesh that it took me a few moments to find a way to introduce myself. Up until now, he had been little more than a figment of my imagination. When I was writing, I’d felt that I owned him. I’d used the photographs and the transcripts I’d been sent and had tried to be as accurate as possible, but I’d invented lots of things too. Neither Hawthorne nor Dudley had been there, for example, when Ellery was found in the well and I’d had to recreate the entire scene. I didn’t know if he drank gin and tonic. It was almost like meeting a penfriend for the first time. I had formed a picture of him that might turn out to be far from the truth.
Well, at least he looked more or less the same, though he had aged considerably in the last five years. The white edges of his hair were more pronounced than I had described. He looked thinner, too, as if he was recovering from an illness. There was a pinched quality to his face, with its sunken cheeks and hollow eyes. He was dressed in a tracksuit, a pair of spectacles hanging on a chain around his neck. His eyesight must have got worse as I was sure I had never mentioned them.
‘Andrew Pennington,’ I said.
‘Yes.’
‘I wonder if I could have a word.’ I told him my name. ‘I’m a writer,’ I said.
‘A journalist?’
‘No. Not at all. I’m a children’s author.’ I don’t know why I said that. I suppose it wouldn’t have done me any favours, turning up at a crime scene and announcing I wrote murder mysteries. ‘I think you met a friend of mine once, a while ago. Daniel Hawthorne. He came here when Giles Kenworthy was killed.’
‘Oh, yes.’ His face gave nothing away. ‘He spoke to me a few times.’
‘I’m writing a book about him. Not a children’s book. A sort of biography. I was wondering if I could talk to you about the time you spent with him . . . how it was to meet him.’
Pennington considered. ‘You know my name,’ he said. ‘Did he talk to you about me?’
‘A little.’
‘You know what happened here?’
‘I know some of it.’
He surprised me. ‘Come in,’ he said. ‘Let me make you a cup of coffee.’
He led me into the kitchen and, for what it’s worth, I’d got his house exactly right. We chatted about the many attractions of Richmond while he went through the business of grinding the beans, percolating the coffee, warming the milk. He seemed pleased to see me and I guessed that he didn’t have many visitors. At last he came over and sat opposite me.
‘It’s not the same here,’ he said. ‘Almost everyone’s gone. May and Phyllis were the first to leave.’
I had told him about the bookshop that had closed. ‘Did they leave a forwarding address?’ I asked.
‘They didn’t need to. They never received any mail and I don’t think I saw anyone visit them either. They only had each other, and although it saddens me to say it, I’m not sure they were all that close. I got the sense it was more that they needed the company and tolerated each other.’
‘The flower-shop lady said they went back to their convent.’
‘They may well have. They came out of nowhere and that’s where they went. They didn’t even say goodbye. They dropped a note through my door and that was it. The next day, they had gone. We’d been neighbours for fourteen years and we’d been on friendly terms, but perhaps that terrible night when their dog fell into my well changed things. They were never the same after that.’
‘They blamed you?’
‘No. I obviously had nothing to do with it. But I suppose my house, even its name, had bad associations for them. They didn’t like coming here after that and we drifted apart.’
‘You say the dog fell in. Is that what you believe?’
‘They had it in their heads that the Kenworthys might been involved, but they had absolutely no evidence and I’d prefer to give them the benefit of the doubt.’
‘Who lives at The Gables now?’
‘A retired couple. An artist and his wife. They’re very pleasant, but I don’t see a lot of them. Felicity Browne never came back, by the way. She’s still with her sister in Woking, I believe. It’s ironic because the swimming pool was never built in the end. But there was nothing for her here.’
‘Who else went?’ I asked.
‘Dr Beresford and his wife were the next to go. They left shortly afterwards. It had nothing to do with the murder or anything like that. I don’t think Tom had ever been that comfortable here. It was too far out of London for him. He and Gemma went back to Notting Hill Gate with their girls and they’re all much happier. They send me a Christmas card every year, which is nice. Gemma Beresford is doing very well. There was a piece about her in Vogue magazine. Her new range of jewellery is inspired by bacteria and viruses. According to what she said in the article, they have very beautiful shapes. I can’t see it myself, and I can imagine what my wife would have said. They sold their house to a Bangladeshi family, the Hossains. Three children . . . and cats! That makes a change from Ellery. Is the coffee all right?’
‘It’s fine, thank you.’ It wasn’t. He had made it too strong and I could feel the grounds sticking to my tongue.
‘You wanted to talk to me about Daniel Hawthorne,’ he reminded me. ‘I have to say, I think he’d make an interesting subject for a book. You said he’s a friend of yours?’
‘Yes.’ I wasn’t ready to talk about him yet. ‘What about Adam Strauss and his wife?’ I asked. ‘Have they gone too?’
‘Yes.’ He paused. ‘I can’t say I particularly miss them.’
‘Why is that?’
‘Well, I sometimes think that Adam was responsible for much of what happened. It was he who sold Riverview Lodge, which allowed the Kenworthys to move in. Of course, it’s not fair to blame him – but he did have a way of being in control, of placing himself centre stage, so to speak. And I always thought that he could have done more to help poor Roderick. He was there that last night. I saw them together. He just walked away and a few hours later, Roderick went into the garage and . . .’ He shook his head. ‘Mind you, Adam was just as upset as the rest of us. He wasn’t to know what was going to happen. And anyway, I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead.’
I had to play back what he had just said. ‘Adam died?’ I asked.
‘Yes. It was a terrible business, especially after everything that had happened. He fell off a hotel balcony in London. The first I heard of it was when I saw it reported in the papers.’