Adrian Wells was retired now and wanted the whole world to know it. He was sitting with his arms folded across his substantial belly, wearing an almost shapeless cardigan and slippers. His silver hair was long and tangled and he hadn’t shaved. He was living alone in a flat carved out of a converted church in Clifton. Some of the stained-glass windows had been left behind and they suited him. He looked like a debauched saint.
‘Of course I remember Harriet,’ he was telling us. ‘A frightful woman. Good writer, though. She never let the facts get in the way of a good story.’ He laughed at his own cliché.
‘What exactly do you mean by that?’ Hawthorne asked.
‘She didn’t lie, but she embroidered the truth. She saw things a certain way and she made sure her articles reflected her own point of view – she didn’t care if the entire world believed otherwise. So if she liked someone, she’d make them appear sympathetic, even if they’d hacked up their wife and stored the pieces in a freezer … which was actually one of the stories she covered.’
‘Did she like the company of criminals?’
‘That’s a good question.’ Wells laughed a second time. ‘She certainly had a way of ingratiating herself with them – and, for that matter, with their wives, their husbands, their neighbours or their victims! That’s how she was able to get so many of her insights. She went places other journalists never dared. I don’t suppose the name Robert Thirkell means anything to you?’
‘She wrote a book about him.’
‘That’s the one. He was a doctor who polished off half a dozen old ladies in various care homes. Well, he was under suspicion for two or three months before he was arrested and in that time she became good chums with him. I think there was a part of her that was attracted to people who kill.’
‘She admired them?’
‘I wouldn’t go that far, but she was certainly fascinated by them.’
‘She told me she found criminals dull,’ I interjected. That was what Harriet had said during the brief exchange we’d had at the party. Once again, I reflected how strange it was that just a short while ago she had been standing there with a drink in her hand, alive.
‘Harriet found everyone dull in the end. Her friends, her colleagues, her husband … me! That was because she had such a high opinion of herself.’
‘Arthur Throsby also worked on the paper.’
‘That’s right. I was at their wedding. Since you mention it, I was surprised their marriage lasted as long as it did. A single man would never have been enough to satisfy Harriet and I’m sure Arthur knew she was playing the field.’
‘She was having affairs?’
‘Don’t be so surprised, Mr Hawthorne. She was an attractive woman back then. I half fancied her myself! There was something about her – the energy, the ambition. I don’t know. She used sex to get what she wanted. She wouldn’t let anything stand in her way.’
‘Was she having an affair with Frank Heywood?’
‘I wouldn’t be surprised. I can’t really tell you, to be honest. They were certainly close. He often took her with him to the theatre and that was how she got the idea she wanted to be a critic. I told her she was barking mad. Why swap real-life drama for a bunch of tossers leaping about on the stage? Anyway, she was too old-fashioned to be a theatre critic, too set in her ways. The first play she covered after Frank died was a lesbian love story and she slated it – not because it was bad but because she didn’t approve of the subject matter. I think she’d have been much better off sticking where she was, but she wouldn’t listen to me.’
‘It was Frank Heywood who introduced her to Moxham Heath.’
‘When the teacher got killed? Yes. That was Frank. He lived in the village.’
‘Was there any kickback from the book she wrote?’
‘God, yes! She had the Longhursts and their lawyers threatening her with libel. The Moxham Village Trust wrote letters. She even had the local MP involved. But it all went away, just as she knew it would. When you read her stuff, you may not like it. You may think it all a bit ghastly. But she knew what she was doing. She always judged it exactly right.’
‘How long was she the drama critic on the Argus?’
‘Less than eighteen months. She didn’t wait long before pushing off, but I sort of suspected that she was only using her position on the newspaper as a launch pad for better things. I’ve already said – she knew what she wanted. I didn’t want to give her the job, but she left me no choice. The week after Frank died – she wrote his obituary, by the way – she was in my office with her ultimatums. It was that or lose her altogether.’