Khan was unimpressed with the interrogation he had just witnessed. It seemed to him that Hawthorne had been unnecessarily hostile and had learned very little that Khan didn’t already know.
‘I’ve got things to do, so I’m going to let you get on with it,’ he said as they left the Kenworthys’ house. ‘We allowed Dr Beresford to leave for work . . . NHS doctor and all that. And the two old ladies – May Winslow and Phyllis Moore – own some sort of gift shop in Richmond. I thought they were better off out of it too.’
‘Not on your suspect list?’ Hawthorne asked.
Khan ignored him. ‘All the others are at home and you can talk to the whole lot of them, but I think it would be better if you didn’t mention you’re freelance. Just say you’re part of my support team or something. And maybe you could try to be a little more sympathetic? These people are in shock.’
‘One of them may not be,’ Dudley said.
But Khan was already walking away, catching up with DC Goodwin, who had just arrived in a police car.
Dudley watched him go. ‘Where do you want to start?’ he asked.
‘The murder weapon belonged to Roderick Browne,’ Hawthorne replied.
‘I don’t like dentists,’ Dudley sighed.
They walked the short distance across the courtyard and rang the bell of Woodlands, the last house in the terrace of three. The door opened almost at once, as if Roderick Browne had been waiting for them on the other side. He looked ill. He clearly wasn’t going into work today and had forsaken his morning routine, not shaving, not picking out the right tie, not even flossing. He had pulled on a crumpled shirt that ballooned over his trousers. Looking at him, with his pink face and cloud of white hair, Dudley was reminded of something you might win at a funfair. At the same time, the way he was gazing at them, he could have just stepped off the ghost train.
He had been expecting Khan and looked at Hawthorne with bewilderment. ‘Yes?’
‘Mr Browne?’
‘Yes. Yes . . . That’s me.’
‘My name’s Hawthorne. I’m helping the police with this inquiry. This is my assistant, John Dudley. Can we come in?’
‘Of course you can. I spoke to the police yesterday, but if there’s anything I can do to help . . .’
He stood back and allowed them to enter a hallway which had an elegance and formality that might have mirrored the reception area of his clinic in Cadogan Square. Everything was very neat. A faux-antique chest of drawers stood against the back wall, with a small pile of magazines next to an art deco lamp. A photograph in a silver frame had been carefully placed to one side so that it was hard to miss. It showed Roderick standing next to Ewan McGregor, presumably one of his celebrity clients. Two wooden chairs had been positioned symmetrically, one on either side of the front door, and Hawthorne noticed a suitcase perched on one of them, with a woman’s light raincoat draped over the top. Roderick led them into the kitchen, which provided a complete contrast to the entrance: everything modern, white and silver, too brightly lit, and so clean it might never have been used. A true dentist’s kitchen. There was a window at the far end with views towards the Kenworthys’ garden.
‘Has anyone said anything?’ Roderick asked before they had even sat down. He hadn’t offered either of them a coffee. He didn’t look in any fit state to make it.
‘Are you talking about your neighbours?’ Hawthorne took a seat at the head of the table that stretched out in front of the window.
‘Yes.’
‘That seems a very strange question to ask, Mr Browne.’
‘Do you think so? I was just wondering if you’d talked to any of them and if they’d said anything . . .’
‘About you?’
‘No! About Giles Kenworthy. You’ll have to forgive me, Mr Hawthorne. For something like this to happen, not just in the close but right next door to me . . . and with my crossbow! As you can imagine, the whole thing is a complete nightmare and I find it hard to know what to think. Do you have any suspects?’
‘I would say that everyone who lives here is a suspect, Mr Browne.’ Hawthorne paused. ‘Including you.’
‘Well, that’s ridiculous. I’m a highly respected dental practitioner. I’ve never had so much as a speeding ticket in my life. Do I really look like a murderer to you?’
‘Well, actually . . .’ Dudley began.
‘It’s outrageous. We certainly had our issues with Giles Kenworthy. I’m not making any secret of that. But to come here, into my house, asking me all these questions . . .’
‘We haven’t asked you very much yet,’ Hawthorne said reasonably. ‘And we will be talking to everyone in Riverview Close.’
‘I’m sure you know who lives in this community. We’re very respectable people. A doctor. A barrister. Two ladies who used to be nuns. This is Richmond, for heaven’s sake! I feel as if I’ve woken up in Mexico City.’
Hawthorne waited for him to finish. ‘Why don’t you start by telling us when you came here?’ he suggested. ‘You and your wife?’
‘You haven’t told us her name,’ Dudley said.
‘Felicity. She’s upstairs in bed. She has ME.’ He leaned forward, confidentially. ‘That’s why this business with the swimming pool mattered so much to us. If you take away the view from her, you take away everything. And the noise! Their children are bad enough anyway, but with all their friends, shouting and screaming . . . We’d have had to move. And that’s not fair. We love it here.’
‘So when did you move in?’ Hawthorne repeated the question he’d asked earlier.
‘Fourteen years ago, just after the close had been developed. We arrived about a month after our neighbours, May Winslow and Phyllis Moore. They’re next door.’
‘Like most neighbours,’ Dudley said.
‘Yes. They’re quite elderly and they have a bookshop in the town centre. They sell crime novels. Then there’s Andrew Pennington next to them, Adam Strauss and his wife in The Stables and Dr Beresford and his family across the way. We’re all good friends – in a neighbourly sort of way. We like to have a drink together now and then. Nothing wrong with that! We look out for each other.’
‘When did the Kenworthys arrive?’
‘At the end of last year.’ Roderick Browne was speaking more confidently now. ‘Jon Emin and his wife were living in The Stables . . . a very nice couple. At that time, Adam was living in Riverview Lodge with his second wife, Teri, but she persuaded him that they would be more comfortable with something smaller. So they moved into The Stables when the Emins sold and that was when Giles Kenworthy bought the Lodge. We were all looking forward to meeting him. We really were. We’re not stand-offish here. Don’t let anyone tell you that.’
‘So what went wrong?’
‘Everything!’ Roderick Browne shook his head in dismay. ‘Nobody liked him,’ he went on. ‘Nobody! It wasn’t just me. Mr Kenworthy was a horrible man – not that he deserved what happened to him. He didn’t deserve that at all, and whatever I may have said in the heat of the moment, I never wished him any harm. None of us did. The fact is, he seemed to take a delight in putting our noses out of joint. He and his wife and his children. There were so many incidents, and they just got worse and worse until they were making all our lives unbearable.’
‘What sort of incidents?’
‘Well . . .’ Roderick already seemed to be regretting that he had volunteered so much, but now that he had started it was hard to stop. ‘There were lots of things. They may seem petty, describing them to you now, but they added up. The parking, the loud music, cricket and skateboards . . . The children were out of control. I said to Felicity things were going from bad to worse when he just dumped his Christmas tree in the drive as if it was up to us to get rid of it. No consideration! And then there were the parties. He never stopped having parties, although he never invited any of us. The swimming pool was the final straw. We never thought the council would give them permission, but it did and maybe that’s something you should look into. I wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t some sort of backhander involved. I mean . . . see for yourself.’ He pointed out of the window. ‘He was going to rip up the lawn – right there! You see that lovely magnolia? It attracts so many wild birds. Adam planted it, but they were going to chop it down . . . just like they did his yew trees when they moved in.’
Hawthorne glanced at John Dudley. ‘You put all that together, it does sound like a motive for murder,’ he said.
‘I agree.’ Dudley nodded. ‘If it was me, once the pool was finished, I’d have drowned him in it.’
‘No, no, no. You’re deliberately misunderstanding me.’ Roderick got up and grabbed a roll of paper towel. ‘It was just very upsetting. I’ve already told you. Fee and I might have had to move. We weren’t going to stay here with the noise, the chemicals, the disruption. And everyone agreed. We had a meeting!’ Something close to panic flitted across his eyes, as if he had inadvertently told Hawthorne something he had meant to keep back. ‘It was a while ago. Six weeks! A Monday evening. We all of us had complaints – not just about the pool. We invited Giles Kenworthy to meet us, to try and iron out our differences in a civilised way.’
‘Did he come?’ Hawthorne asked.
Roderick shook his head. ‘He was coming. He said he was coming. But at the last minute, he sent a text saying he was too busy.’ He paused. ‘It was absolutely bloody typical of him – and it was after that that things got really bad.’
‘In what way?’
‘Well . . .’ Roderick was sweating. He used the paper towel to wipe his face. ‘Ask May and Phyllis about their dog. Adam Strauss lost a beautiful chess set, smashed by a cricket ball. That was the two boys’ fault – Hugo and Tristram Kenworthy. They also ruined the flowers in the courtyard. That really upset Andrew. But the worst thing – by far the worst thing – was what happened to Tom.’
‘Tom?’
‘Dr Beresford. Giles Kenworthy blocked his driveway.’
‘What was so bad about that?’ Dudley asked.
‘He wasn’t able to get to his surgery and as a result, a patient died. He was extremely upset about it. You should talk to him.’
‘What can you tell us about the crossbow?’
‘I already told the police. I wish I hadn’t kept the bloody thing. I hadn’t fired it in years.’ Roderick sat down heavily. Perhaps he had been hoping that Hawthorne might have forgotten about the murder weapon.
‘Where did you get it?’
‘I was given it when I was at university. A Barnett Wildcat recurve. It’s quite old now. I’m surprised it was even working.’
‘It certainly worked two nights ago,’ Dudley observed.
‘Well, obviously, yes. But I wasn’t to know.’ From the look of him, Roderick was almost begging them to believe him. ‘For a short while, after I moved to Richmond, I belonged to the London School of Archery. We both did. But when Felicity became ill, it was one of the first things she had to give up, and as for me, I had less and less time. Fee has a carer now. Damien comes in three times a week but he’s not here today, so, if you don’t mind, I’m afraid I’ll have to go upstairs in a minute. Fee may need help getting dressed.’
‘Where did you keep the crossbow?’ Hawthorne wasn’t interested in Felicity’s needs.
‘In the garage.’
‘Locked?’ Dudley asked.
‘The garage is usually kept locked. Not because of the crossbow. Fee insists. If a burglar broke in, the garage is connected directly to the house and they could easily come through to us.’
‘How many keys do you have?’
Roderick had to think for a moment. ‘Three,’ he announced. ‘There’s one in the door, which I suppose is mine. Fee has a spare on her keyring. And our neighbour, May Winslow, keeps a set in case of emergencies.’
‘What about the carer?’
‘He has a key to the front door. Not to the garage.’
‘Can we see inside?’ Hawthorne made it sound like a question but he was only expecting one response.
‘Of course.’
Roderick got up and the two detectives followed him out of the kitchen, through an archway and into a narrow corridor with a solid-looking door at the end. Just as he said, there was a key in the lock and Roderick turned it and opened the door, leading them into a small garage that jutted out of the back of the house. Much of the space was taken up by a navy-blue Skoda Octavia Mark 3. It was Roderick’s pride and joy and he had loaded it with enough extras to make it top of the range: tinted windows, rain sensors, satnav and more besides. An up-and-over door – manual, not electric – closed off the far end of the garage, with metal bolts on either side locking into the framework. The sun was streaming in through a square skylight set in the roof and they could see the upper floor of the house and what looked like a bathroom window. A single shelf ran down both of the long walls, with an array of tools, paint pots and brushes, gardening equipment and bits of old machinery that might have been there for years. There was an electric mower plugged into a socket and, on the opposite wall, a tap with water dripping into a plastic bucket. A spade, a fork and a rake hung on hooks, with a sack of compost slumped beneath. That hardly left enough room to reach the car.
Roderick pointed at an empty space in the middle of a shelf. ‘That’s where it was kept,’ he said.
‘The crossbow?’
‘And the bolts. The police took them all.’
‘You said you weren’t using it any more, so why did you keep it?’ Dudley asked.
Roderick shrugged. ‘I couldn’t sell it and why would I want to throw it away?’
‘Who apart from you came into this garage?’ This time it was Hawthorne who had posed the question.
‘Well, Sarah, I suppose. She does all the gardens in the close and she’s also a general handyman – or handywoman, I should say. She’s a fine young woman, very hard-working and always helpful. I suppose Damien could have come in if he’d wanted to. He has his key to the house and we trust him one hundred per cent. Felicity will come through the kitchen when I’m driving her to a doctor’s appointment or whatever. Look, I really have told the police everything I know. To be honest with you, a complete stranger could have taken the crossbow when I was upstairs and I’m not sure I’d have noticed. They could have come through the house or through the garden. I leave the garage open sometimes when I drive to work.’ He looked exhausted. ‘I don’t think I can help you any more.’
‘I have one more question,’ Hawthorne said. ‘Are you planning on going somewhere?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I noticed a suitcase in your hall.’
‘That’s for Felicity. We’ve spoken about it and I just don’t think it’s good for her being here. I have to think of her. All my life, that’s all I’ve ever done.’ Roderick blinked, as if holding back tears. ‘I’m sending her off to her sister in Woking . . . just for a few days. I’ve already told Superintendent Khan.’ He had seemed more at ease in the garage, but mentioning the suitcase had upset him again. ‘You have no idea what it’s like for her,’ he continued. ‘It’s very upsetting. She has no part in this terrible murder and I want to get her far away. I have to protect her!’
As he finished speaking, his phone rang. Roderick fished it out and glanced at the screen, tilting it away from Dudley, who was standing behind him. Quickly, he flicked it off and slid it back into his pocket.
‘Anyone important?’ Hawthorne asked.
‘No. Nothing at all.’
‘Well, we’ve seen enough. Can we leave this way?’
‘Of course. I’ll open the door for you.’
The bolts on the garage door didn’t need keys. They simply drew back. Roderick pulled the door up and the two men stepped out into the fresh air. Roderick looked at them as if trying to find one last thing to say to persuade them of his innocence. Then he slid the door back down.
Hawthorne and Dudley found themselves standing in the driveway that led back to the main courtyard. But Hawthorne hadn’t quite finished. There was a gate beside the garage, opening into the Brownes’ garden, and he walked through it, pulling out a cigarette and lighting it as he went. He stopped on the other side, taking in his surroundings.
The garden was long and rectangular, with a fence on one side and a line of shrubs at the end. It hadn’t rained for a while and the lawn was covered with brown patches. Many of the flowers were wilting in their beds. At the same time, the fruit trees had been left to look after themselves and the branches were spreading out, fighting each other for space. Looking over the shrubs, Hawthorne could see that the garden belonging to the Brownes’ elderly neighbours was in much the same state.
‘Did you get the caller’s number?’ Hawthorne asked.
Dudley nodded. ‘The name came up on the screen. Sarah Baines.’
‘Sarah the gardener?’
‘Must be. He didn’t want me to see.’
Hawthorne examined the garden. ‘Funny, isn’t it. He described her as hard-working and helpful . . .’
‘Yeah. I thought that. It doesn’t look as if she’s done anything hard or helpful here!’
Meanwhile, on the other side of the folding garage door, Roderick Browne had taken his phone out again. He listened carefully to make sure that Hawthorne was nowhere close.
Then he opened his phone to see what he had missed.