‘And who was that?’ Hawthorne asked.
‘Him!’
Him? I glanced left and right, but there could be no avoiding it. She meant me!
‘What are you talking about …？’ I began.
‘You threatened her!’
‘That’s nonsense. That’s absolutely untrue.’ I could feel the blood draining from my face. Or possibly rushing into it. ‘We chatted at the party in the Turkish restaurant. That was all. I didn’t say anything!’
‘You asked her what she thought of your play.’
‘Well, yes …’
‘It was the way you asked her. She felt threatened by you. She said so on the way home.’
‘It was a reasonable question!’
‘She didn’t think so. You frightened her!’
‘Did she say that?’ Hawthorne asked.
‘She didn’t need to. I could tell just by looking at her.’
‘I think you should leave,’ Arthur said, again.
Hawthorne nodded and, much to my relief, we did. It was only when we were out in the street that he asked me: ‘Is it true … what Olivia said?’
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. ‘Hawthorne,’ I said. ‘You can’t be serious. All I did was ask Harriet Throsby what she thought of the play. We hardly spoke otherwise. I didn’t threaten her! There were lots of people there. Ask them!’
The policeman who was still standing there, on duty, overheard us. ‘Are you the writer?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘My son really likes your books.’
‘Thank you.’
‘He’ll be very sorry to hear what you did, sir. I can understand you being angry, being criticised that way. But I think you’ve let down all your readers.’
I’d had enough. I stormed down the street. I looked back and saw Hawthorne hadn’t moved. ‘We’re going back to the theatre,’ he called out to me.
Right. The Vaudeville was near Charing Cross. We could get there from Warwick Avenue station on the Bakerloo line – but that was at the other end of the street.
I turned round and stormed off that way.
9
Seven Suspects
It was a very different experience returning to the Vaudeville Theatre that evening. Two nights before, I had been nervous almost to the point of feeling sick – but it was clear to me now that I’d got things out of proportion. The failure or success of Mindgame was rather less significant than the prospect of twenty years in jail, and although I knew I hadn’t gone anywhere near Harriet Throsby, I could see the evidence inexorably piling up against me with two malignant police officers bulldozing their way to a false conviction. Why had Olivia been so malicious? She knew I hadn’t threatened her mother. Worse still, why had Hawthorne been so ready to believe her? His lack of faith was almost as dispiriting as the accusation itself, and although it was true that he’d managed to delay the police investigation – with Kevin’s help – that was all he’d done so far. Couldn’t he at least have been a bit more worried about me? Weren’t we supposed to be friends?
I was also aware that time was trickling away. Hawthorne had said that we had forty-eight hours to solve the crime and two of those had already gone. Fighting my way into the station, getting stuck behind a woman searching for her Oyster card, waiting for the next train, which, the departure board told me, was going to take an infuriating seven minutes to arrive, stopping at a red signal with the driver refusing to announce when we would be moving … all this played havoc with my nervous system. I’m the sort of person who gets panic attacks about the average-speed cameras on a motorway. Having Grunshaw and Mills lumbering up in the fast lane behind me, flashing their lights and shouting ‘Murder’， terrified me. It was something that had never happened to me before.
But Hawthorne was in no hurry as we climbed back up to street level at Charing Cross station. I saw him take out his cigarettes and knew what he wanted. ‘Fancy a coffee?’ he asked.
‘Not really,’ I said. I looked at my watch. ‘The play begins in an hour.’
‘I’ve already seen it.’
‘I wasn’t suggesting we go in and see it, Hawthorne. I mean—’ I played back what he had said. ‘You’ve seen it? When?’
‘I went to the Wednesday matinée. I was on my way home when you called from the custody centre.’
‘What did you think of it?’ After everything that had happened in the last two days, was that really the question I’d just asked? But it was out of my mouth before I could stop it. It really mattered to me.