Rosemary Alden caught her breath. The colour had drained out of her face, leaving her make-up sitting as if on parchment. At last she replied. ‘I gave a statement. Yes.’
‘A false statement. Because the Longhursts’ lawyers got to you, didn’t they? They told you to say that Wayne was the troublemaker, that Stephen didn’t know what he was doing. And this is what you got out of it. This cottage. Somewhere to live. You supported their version of events and this place was your reward.’
‘No!’ Rosemary Alden was sitting bolt upright in her chair. It was as if she had been electrocuted. ‘Get out of here!’ she quavered, her voice catching in her throat.
‘I’ll leave when you’ve told me what I want to know.’
‘Tara … !’
‘Tara’s not here. You sent her away.’
Hawthorne was ferocious. It didn’t bother him that the subject of his interrogation was sick and in her seventies. I was seriously worried Rosemary might have a fatal heart attack or another stroke. Cara Grunshaw would love that. Another death – five minutes after I’d been in the room.
‘Who defaced the library books?’ Hawthorne asked.
‘I don’t know.’
‘But it wasn’t Stephen or Wayne!’
‘I don’t know who it was!’ She struggled for breath. ‘Nor did Philip …’
And there it was, finally, the admission.
‘Philip knew it wasn’t them,’ she went on. ‘He told me! He couldn’t find the real culprits, so he decided to make them an example.’
‘And the rest of it?’
‘I don’t know what you mean …’
‘The lawyers.’
She nodded. All she wanted was to get Hawthorne out of the room. ‘One of them came to see me before the trial. A smarmy young man with his hair greased back. He didn’t tell me his name. He said that he represented the family and that maybe he could help me if I agreed to help them. I testified that Stephen was a good boy, that he didn’t know what he was doing, that the other boy influenced him. I didn’t lie. It wasn’t my lie. All I had to do was support their version of the truth.’
‘To commit perjury.’
‘You can call it that if you like, but what was I to do? I was desperate. I would have had to move out. I had no job, no income, nowhere to go. Philip was in the cemetery and nobody cared about me.’
A single tear leaked from her good eye.
Hawthorne stood up. ‘We’ll leave you alone now, Mrs Alden. You did the right thing, telling us the truth.’
‘Will I have to leave Glebe Cottage?’
‘No. You can stay here. That wasn’t why we came.’
He began to move towards the door, but she stopped him. ‘Could you do something for me, Mr Hawthorne? If you ever find those two boys, could you tell them that I know what I did was wrong and I am so very sorry? Neither of them should have gone to prison. It was a prank. Can you tell them how sorry I am?’
Hawthorne stopped. ‘I’d say it’s a bit late for that now, love.’
He left the room. I gave her a half-apologetic shrug and followed.
21
The Jai Mahal
I thought we would be going straight back to London, but Hawthorne had called ahead and made one final appointment. Adrian Wells had been chief editor at the Bristol Argus when Harriet had written for it, first as a crime reporter, then as the drama critic. He still lived in Bristol and that was where we were now headed. We would take the train home from there.
I was feeling increasingly uneasy – and not because I was aware of time running out for me. On the contrary, things were happening at whirlwind speed. My play had premiered on Tuesday. Harriet was killed on Wednesday. Hawthorne had shown up on Thursday and today was only Friday. My problem was that although I knew we had achieved a great deal, I couldn’t see how it would help.
We knew the truth about Stephen Longhurst. Contrary to what everybody thought and what the judge had clearly believed, he had not been the innocent that he seemed to be. We had learned of a conspiracy to pervert the cause of justice, with Rosemary Alden bribed by an anonymous London lawyer to perjure herself in court. Major Alden himself had been exposed as a vindictive bully. And then there was the strange behaviour of Martin Longhurst. What had he been doing visiting the school, and why tell a lie about sending his children there?
But what had any of this got to do with the death of Harriet Throsby? Hawthorne had suggested that the reason for Harriet’s death might be found in Moxham Heath, but unless John Lamprey or the major’s wife had travelled to London to take revenge （which seemed unlikely）， it felt like a complete waste of time.