‘She was found out here, next to the entrance?’ Hawthorne asked.
Arthur nodded. ‘The police were in the flat all day and much of the evening. They took samples and covered the whole place in fingerprint powder. They asked me a lot of questions – and my daughter too, as if she had anything to do with it. Neither of us were even here! And now, I suppose, you want me to go over it all again.’
‘That would be helpful,’ Hawthorne said. ‘I know it may seem like a waste of time, but when you repeat things, you can often remember details you might have forgotten the first time round. Anyway, I prefer to hear it straight from you, if you don’t mind.’
‘Let’s go into the kitchen. Do you want a coffee?’
‘No, thank you.’ Hawthorne answered for both of us.
We walked down the corridor, passing a half-open door that gave me a glimpse of an untidy room with an unmade bed, clothes everywhere, a Lord of the Rings poster on the wall.
‘That’s Olivia’s room,’ Arthur said. He had noticed me staring in and pulled the door shut.
We went into the kitchen. There was a pine table and a breakfast bar. Between the scattered coffee mugs, the unpaid bills, the theatre programmes, the day’s newspapers still open at the obituary columns and the unwashed plates piled up in the sink, it gave me a pretty good insight into life before and after Harriet Throsby. She hadn’t been gone forty-eight hours and her memories were everywhere. But the mess, I suspected, was Arthur’s. I glanced through the windows at a small, well-tended garden and I wondered how long it would be before it went to seed.
We sat down.
‘Nice place,’ I said, breaking the silence.
‘Do you think so?’ Arthur Throsby didn’t look so sure. ‘Harriet wanted to move. She’d been talking about it for a while, but I suppose I’ll stay here now that she’s—’ He broke off. ‘Where do you want me to start?’
He was exactly the sort of man I’d expected to be married to someone like Harriet. She had been dominating, assertive. He was softly spoken, downtrodden, with thinning hair and a face that was mournful now for good reason but which might have been the same since the day he got married. He hadn’t shaved and the clothes he was wearing looked old and unironed. He made himself a coffee without once looking at his hands, almost robotically. He didn’t want the coffee. It was just something to do.
‘Why don’t you tell us your movements on the morning of your wife’s death?’ Hawthorne suggested.
‘All right.’ He stirred his coffee and brought it over to us. It sat there, steaming gently in front of him. ‘Harriet was still in bed when I got up. That was at seven fifteen. I don’t set the alarm because she didn’t like being disturbed, but I always wake up on the dot. I made myself breakfast and squeezed some fresh orange juice for her to have later. She wouldn’t drink it if it wasn’t fresh. I tiptoed in and left it by the bed, then I set off for work shortly after eight.’
‘Where do you work?’
‘I teach history at the Harris Academy in St John’s Wood. I usually go there by bike. It’s about twenty minutes away. Otherwise, I take the tube from Paddington.’
‘Did you go by tube or bike yesterday?’
‘I took the bike. Olivia saw me leave. We spoke a few words. Nothing of any interest.’
‘Your daughter went to the theatre with your wife, but you didn’t,’ Hawthorne said. I’d told him that I’d met Olivia at the party and that she was a friend of Sky Palmer, the actress who played Nurse Plimpton.
‘That’s right.’
‘Why was that?’
Arthur shrugged as if the answer was obvious. ‘I don’t much like theatre. Anyway, Harriet preferred it if I didn’t come. I have a slight problem with asthma and she used to say the sound of my breathing put her off.’
‘So when was the last time you spoke to your wife?’
‘I called her from school. That was a few minutes before ten o’clock, between lessons. She was already up and at work by then.’
‘How did you know?’ I asked.
Hawthorne wasn’t pleased. He never liked it when I chipped in and perhaps it was a bit inappropriate, me being the main suspect.
‘I FaceTimed,’ Arthur replied. ‘I could see her. She was sitting in her study.’ He pointed at a door leading off from the kitchen. ‘It’s the dining room, but we never used it for eating. We never had guests. That was where she worked.’
‘Can we see it?’
‘If you want.’ He got up, leaving his coffee behind.
Harriet’s office could be accessed directly from both the kitchen and the corridor: there was a second door opposite Olivia’s bedroom. It was a rectangular space, running to the bay window I had seen as I approached the house. Most of the area was dominated by a dining table, which was evidently where she had worked. It was piled up with notepads, files, newspaper clippings and theatre programmes. There were about a dozen pens spilling out of a Book of Mormon mug, a half-empty bottle of wine and a glass decorated with a lipstick smear that must have been made by Harriet, the last mark she had left in this world. I glanced at the bookshelves. I wasn’t surprised to see play texts, actors’ and directors’ biographies, histories of different theatres. She also had a strong interest in crime and I remembered her telling me that it was something she had written about. I hadn’t realised she had meant books, though. I noticed three of them spread out on the table with her name on the covers, placed there as if to impress.
‘This is her room,’ Arthur said. ‘It doesn’t get enough light … she was never happy with it. That’s the trouble having a house that’s north-facing.’ He looked around him. ‘Your lot have taken her computer and some of her papers,’ he went on. ‘But otherwise this is more or less how she left it.’
Hawthorne peered out of the window. ‘She could see whoever was at the front door,’ he said. ‘So it’s quite likely she knew the person who killed her.’
‘Unless he was dressed as a postman,’ I said.
Hawthorne ignored this. ‘Why did you call your wife?’ he asked.
‘She liked me to ring her every morning around then. She would tell me if she wanted any shopping done.’
‘And did she?’
‘She wanted some avocados. There were avocados in the fridge, but they were too hard.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘She was always going on about that fridge. She hated the temperature control. We could never get it right.’
‘Anything else?’
Arthur thought for a minute and shook his head. ‘I can’t think of anything that might be relevant.’
‘How long had you been married, Mr Throsby?’
‘Twenty-five years.’ He pointed to an ornamental silver candlestick at the end of the table. ‘I bought her that as a wedding-anniversary present. She didn’t much like it, though. She didn’t see the point.’
‘I think it’s very nice,’ Hawthorne said.
‘Thank you.’
Hawthorne hesitated. ‘Would you say you were happily married, Mr Throsby?’
Arthur had to think about that. ‘Well, she wasn’t an easy woman. I’ll be honest with you. She could be …’ He searched for the word.
‘Critical?’ Hawthorne suggested.
‘Yes. I suppose you could say that. Perhaps it went with the territory.’ Astonishingly, he was talking as if it had never occurred to him before. ‘She could be quite judgemental.’
‘You never lost your temper with her?’
‘Certainly not. You’re not suggesting …’ Arthur blushed. ‘I was nowhere near the house when she was attacked, and I can assure you, there were dozens of witnesses who saw me at school. You think I would do anything to harm her? The mother of my child?’ He looked genuinely pained. ‘I loved Harriet! I knew the two of us were going to be together the day I met her. She was a very attractive young woman and a terrific journalist. I’d never met anyone so ambitious, so determined.’