‘You were angry too,’ Hawthorne pointed out. ‘You said Harriet Throsby was a liar and that what she wrote was shit.’
Maureen visibly winced when she heard that. She didn’t like bad language. Ahmet glanced at me sadly. ‘Did you tell him that?’ It was clear to me that he felt I had betrayed him. Jordan Williams had said the same. ‘I was upset, of course. It was the first review. But I had no ill feelings towards her personally. She is a woman. She is doing her job. And sometimes, you know, there is nothing you can do. My company has had a run of bad luck. I can blame the critics. I can blame the audiences. But in the end, what good will that do? I made the choices. I blame myself.’
‘You’re going out of business,’ Hawthorne said.
Ahmet didn’t even try to deny it. He nodded. ‘I was meeting with my accountant when you came in. Martin has told me there is no other option. It is not just Mindgame. We lost a great deal of money on Macbeth.’
‘We should have taken out weather insurance,’ Maureen muttered.
‘We discussed this at the time,’ Ahmet snapped back. ‘It was either weather insurance or costumes.’ He collected himself. ‘That was just one in a sea of misfortunes. There are other plays, also, which I have developed and which have never reached the stage and these have also cost money. I have overheads … the rent on this office, the photocopier. Martin has persuaded me that we have come to the end of the road.’
‘It’s a crying shame,’ Maureen exclaimed. She sounded more outraged than upset. Two circles of pink had appeared on her cheeks. ‘Nobody has worked harder than Ahmet. I’ve known him twenty years and he deserves better than this.’
‘Were you also at the Really Useful Company?’ Hawthorne asked.
‘No. We met at the New London Theatre. Ahmet organised a very special evening for me.’ Hawthorne looked at her enquiringly and she realised she was going to have to continue. ‘It was an anniversary.’
‘My software told me that Maureen had seen Cats one hundred times,’ Ahmet explained.
‘I loved that show. I can’t explain why.’ Maureen looked into the far distance. ‘It was the music, of course. “Memory”! “The Rum Tum Tugger”. That always used to make me laugh, every time. There wasn’t a song in that show I didn’t know off by heart.’ She stopped herself, aware that she might look foolish. ‘It filled a hole in my life after my husband died,’ she explained. ‘I went once. Then I thought I’d see it again. And after a while I found that I was only happy when I was in the theatre. It was like a barrier against the world.
‘I couldn’t afford the best seats, but that night I got a surprise. I found myself in the front row. Ahmet had arranged that for me. I had a free glass of champagne in the interval and afterwards I went backstage and met some of the cast. It was a wonderful evening and after that we sort of became friends.’
‘Maureen came to work for me when I set up on my own.’
‘What were you doing before that?’ Hawthorne asked.
‘I was a secretary at Hewlett-Packard in Reading.’
Right then I felt a sense of guilt and sadness that might have been unjustified but which nonetheless affected me. Maureen and Ahmet truly were an odd couple. I’d known that from the start, but I’d been so eager to see Mindgame on the stage that I had ignored my misgivings and let them go ahead. But it wasn’t the failure of the play that upset me. It was the sense that it was all my fault. I was the one who’d brought them down, and although I would go on to other things – there were other books in the pipeline – they’d come to the end of the road. Right then, I wanted to go back outside and never see either of them again. I hoped Hawthorne had found out everything he wanted and we could leave.
But he hadn’t finished yet. He reached into his pocket and took out the crumpled packet of American cigarettes he had found at the theatre. ‘Are these yours, Mr Yurdakul?’ he asked.
Ahmet was puzzled. ‘It’s the brand I smoke. Yes.’
‘I found this in the green room at the Vaudeville.’ He opened the packet, showing Ahmet the three broken white tubes spilling out their tobacco. ‘I wondered why you didn’t finish the pack.’
‘I don’t remember. Where were they?’
‘They were in the bin.’
‘Maybe somebody found them and threw them away. I don’t remember leaving them behind.’
‘What have three broken cigarettes got to do with anything?’ Maureen asked, scornful now.
‘Probably nothing.’ Hawthorne smiled and got to his feet. ‘Thank you, Mr Yurdakul. You’ve been very helpful.’
‘I’ll show you out.’
We left the office and went back into the hallway. Maureen closed the door behind us as we came out. ‘Mr Yurdakul is very upset,’ she said in a low voice. She was almost admonishing Hawthorne, as if he had no right to come barging in with his questions. ‘You can’t possibly think he had anything to do with that woman’s death.’
‘He had the most to lose,’ Hawthorne remarked, pragmatically.
‘If he’d wanted to kill someone, he’d have killed Anthony.’ I was shocked to hear her say that, but she had already turned on me with fury in her eyes and there was no stopping her. ‘I warned him against your play. I said that it was too peculiar for a modern audience and that nobody would understand what you were trying to get at. Is it a comedy? Is it a thriller? What is it, exactly? But he had complete faith in you, and now you turn up with your detective friend and cast aspersions on a man who is absolutely blameless and wouldn’t dream of hurting anyone. Mr Yurdakul has been wonderful to work with. I’d do anything for him! And just so you know, I’ve never seen him lose his temper … not once. He’s a gentleman in every sense of the word.’
‘So where was he on Wednesday morning?’ Hawthorne asked, cutting her short.
She looked at him in disbelief. ‘He was nowhere near Palgrove Gardens. He had a meeting at Frost and Longhurst at eleven o’clock.’
‘Who are Frost and Longhurst?’
‘His accountants. That was Martin Longhurst you met just now.’
‘And where are they based?’
‘In Holborn.’
Hawthorne sighed. ‘Holborn is less than thirty minutes from Little Venice on the tube. That would have left him plenty of time to kill Harriet Throsby.’
Maureen stared at him with poison in her eyes. ‘You clearly haven’t listened to a word I’ve said …’ she sniffed.
‘You think she didn’t deserve it?’ He was deliberately provoking her.
‘Just so you know, I agree with every single word she said – about the play, anyway. Maybe I wouldn’t have couched it in quite those terms, but of course she didn’t deserve to die. Nobody does.’
‘Just out of interest, how did you know she lived in Palgrove Gardens.’
‘I didn’t.’
‘You just said that Ahmet was nowhere near that address.’
Maureen took a deep breath. I thought she might be about to scream. ‘The police told me where she lived,’ she explained, simply. ‘Before they came here, I knew almost nothing about Harriet Throsby. As far as I’m concerned, I never want to hear her name again.’ She opened the door, allowing the cold air to rush in. ‘I very much hope you won’t come back,’ she continued. ‘We’ve got nothing more to tell you and as far as I can see, you’re not helping at all.’
We walked past her and climbed back up to street level.
‘Frost and Longhurst,’ Hawthorne said.
‘The accountants …’ I muttered.
‘The name doesn’t mean anything to you?’
‘No. Should it?’
‘It’s lucky you’re not a detective.’ Hawthorne glanced at his watch. ‘Time for one more visit. If you’re up for it.’