The Word Is Murder

by Anthony Horowitz

  And then, quite suddenly, music began to play. It was a song. A children’s song.

  The wheels on the bus go round and round,

  Round and round

  Round and round

  The wheels on the bus go round and round

  All day long.

  The sound quality was thin and tinkly and my immediate thought was that it was somebody’s mobile phone. The mourners were looking among themselves, wondering whose it was and who was going to be embarrassed. Irene Laws stepped forward, alarmed. Damian Cowper was standing closest to the grave. I saw him look over the edge with an expression that was somewhere between horror and fury. He pointed down and said something to Grace Lovell. That was when I understood.

  The music was coming from inside the grave.

  It was inside the coffin.

  The second verse began.

  The wipers on the bus go swish, swish, swish

  Swish, swish, swish,

  Swish, swish, swish …

  The four pall-bearers had frozen, not knowing whether to drop the coffin the rest of the way and hope that the depth of the grave would muffle the sound or whether to pull it out again and somehow deal with it. Could they actually bury the dead woman with this hideously inappropriate song accompanying her? It was quite obvious now that the source of the music was some sort of digital recorder or radio inside the coffin. Had Diana Cowper chosen a more traditional material, mahogany for example, there’s every chance that we would have been unable to hear it. The dead woman might have been left to rest in peace … at least, once the battery ran out. But the words were leaking out of the twisted willow branches. There was no escaping them.

  The driver on the bus goes ‘Move on back’

  On the far side of the cemetery, the photographers raised their cameras and moved forward, sensing that something was wrong. At the same time, Damian Cowper lashed out at the vicar, not physically but ferociously. He needed someone to blame and she was close by. ‘What’s going on?’ he snarled. ‘Who did this?’

  Irene Laws had reached the edge of the grave, moving as fast as her short, stubby legs would allow. ‘Mr Cowper …’ she began, breathlessly.

  ‘Is this some sort of joke?’ Damian looked ill. ‘Why are they playing that song?’

  ‘Raise the coffin.’ Irene had taken charge. ‘Lift it back out again.’

  ‘Move on back, move on back …’

  ‘I want you to know I’m going to sue your fucking company for every penny—’

  ‘I’m most dreadfully sorry!’ Irene was talking over him. ‘I just don’t understand …’

  The four men pulled the coffin back out rather faster than they had lowered it. It came clear over the edge of the grave and bumped onto the grass, almost toppling onto its side. I could imagine Diana Cowper inside, being rocked to and fro. I examined the other mourners, wondering if one of them was responsible, for presumably this had been done deliberately. Was it a sick joke? Was it some sort of message?

  Raymond Clunes was clutching on to his partner. Bruno Wang was staring, his hand over his mouth. Andrea Kluvánek – I could have been wrong but she seemed to be smiling. Next to her, the man with the handkerchief was gazing at the coffin with an expression I couldn’t make out at all. He brought his hand to his mouth as if he was going either to throw up or to burst into laughter, then twisted round and backed away. I watched him as he hurried out of the cemetery, heading up the path that would lead him to the Brompton Road.

  The driver on the bus goes ‘Move on back’

  All day long.

  It wouldn’t stop. That was the worst of it. The music was so trite, the voice full of that hideous cheerfulness that adults put on when they sing for children.

  ‘I’ve had enough of this,’ Damian announced. From the look of him, he was in total shock. It was the first real emotion he had shown since the funeral began.

  ‘Damian …’ Grace reached out to take his arm.

  He shook her off. ‘I’m going home. You go to the pub. I’ll see you at the flat.’

  I was aware of the photographers snapping with their cameras, their long-distance lenses protruding obscenely over the gravestones. The personal-trainer-cum-bodyguard was doing his best to stand in their way but the lenses swivelled to follow Damian as he stormed off.

  The vicar turned to Irene, helpless. ‘What should we do?’ she asked.

  ‘Let’s take the coffin back to the chapel.’ Irene was trying not to lose her composure. ‘Quickly,’ she snapped in an undertone.

  The pall-bearers picked Diana Cowper up and carried her back across the grass, away from the grave, moving as quickly as they could without actually running, still trying to display some measure of decorum. They weren’t succeeding. They looked ridiculous, I thought, moving out of sync, bumping into each other and almost tripping over in their haste to get away. The tinkling music faded into the distance.

  The horn on the bus goes …

  Hawthorne watched them disappear. I could almost see the different thoughts turning over in his head.

  ‘Beep, beep, beep,’ he muttered tunelessly, then set off at a brisk pace, following the coffin back towards the chapel.

  Twelve

  The Smell of Blood

  We had left the other mourners standing in a confused circle around the empty grave as we set off after the coffin, which now reminded me of a tiny ship being tossed around in a stormy sea.

  I had a suspicion that Hawthorne was amused by what had happened. It might be that the bleak, vindictive joke – if that’s what it was – had appealed to the darker side of his nature. More likely, it was the knowledge that the theory Meadows had put forward had been completely blown apart. Just a few minutes ago, he had been talking about a burglary that had gone wrong. There was no question of that now. Everything that had happened had pushed the crime far outside normal police experience and gave Hawthorne all the more opportunity to call the investigation his own.

  I looked back and saw Meadows lumbering after us but for the time being Hawthorne and I were alone as we headed towards the chapel, which lay a short way ahead.

  ‘What do you think that was all about?’ I asked.

  ‘It was a message,’ Hawthorne said.

  ‘A message … who for?’

  ‘Well, Damian Cowper, for one. You saw his face.’

  ‘He was upset.’

  ‘That’s putting it mildly. He was white as a bloody sheet. I thought he was going to pass out!’

  ‘This has got to be about Jeremy Godwin,’ I said.

  ‘He wasn’t run over by a bus.’

  ‘No. But maybe he was carrying a toy bus when he was hit. Maybe he liked travelling on buses …’

  ‘You’re right about one thing, mate. It was a kiddy’s nursery rhyme so it’s likely to have something to do with a dead kiddy.’ Hawthorne stepped delicately over a grave. ‘Damian’s gone home,’ he went on. ‘But we’ll catch up with him soon enough. I wonder what he’s got to say.’

  ‘It’s been ten years since the accident in Deal.’ I was thinking out loud. ‘First Diana Cowper is killed. Then this. Someone’s certainly trying to make a point.’

  We had reached the chapel. The coffin had already gone in. We waited until Meadows caught up with us.

  ‘I always knew things would go pear-shaped once you were involved,’ he grunted. He was terribly out of shape. Even the short walk had left him breathless. If he didn’t watch his diet, quit smoking and take exercise, he would soon be back in the cemetery for a more permanent visit.

  ‘I’ll be interested to hear how your burglar pulled this one off,’ Hawthorne said. ‘I can’t say I noticed anyone dressed up as a dispatch rider.’

  ‘What happened here may have nothing to do with the murder and you know it,’ Meadows replied. ‘There’s a Hollywood celebrity involved. It was a practical joke … someone with a twisted mind. That’s all.’

  ‘You might be right.’ Hawthorne’s tone of voice made it clear he didn’t
believe a word of it.

  We went into the chapel. By now the coffin was back on the trestles and Irene Laws was busily undoing the straps, watched by the vicar – wide-eyed with shock – and the four men from Cornwallis and Sons. She looked up as we came in.

  ‘I’ve been in this business for twenty-seven years,’ she said. ‘And nothing like this – nothing – has ever happened before.’

  At least the nursery-rhyme music had stopped. I heard only the creak of willow as Irene finished her work and lifted the lid. I flinched. I had no desire to see Diana Cowper a week after she had died. Fortunately, she was covered by a muslin shroud and although I could make out the shape of her body, I was spared the sight of the staring eyes or the sewn-together lips. Irene leaned in and removed what looked like a bright orange cricket ball which had been placed between Diana Cowper’s hands. She handed it to Meadows.

  He examined it with distaste. ‘I don’t know what this is,’ he said.

  ‘It’s an alarm clock.’ Hawthorne reached out and Meadows handed it to him, glad to be rid of it.

  I saw that it was indeed a digital alarm clock, with the correct time displayed in a circular panel on one side. It had a number of perforations, like an old-fashioned radio, and two switches. Hawthorne flicked one of them up and it began again.

  The wheels on the bus go round and round …

  ‘Turn it off!’ Irene Laws shuddered.

  He did as she asked. ‘It’s an MP3 recording alarm clock,’ he explained. ‘There are plenty of them on the internet. The idea is, you can download your kids’ favourite songs so it wakes them up in the morning. I got one for my boy except I put my own voice on it. “Wake up, you little bastard, and get a move on.” He thinks it’s hilarious.’

  ‘How was it activated?’ I asked.

  Hawthorne turned it over in his hands. ‘It was set for eleven thirty. Whoever put it there timed it to go off in the middle of the funeral. They couldn’t have done a better job.’ He rounded on Irene Laws. ‘Have you got an explanation for how it got there?’ he asked.

  ‘No!’ She was taken aback, as if he was accusing her.

  ‘Was the coffin left on its own at any time?’

  ‘You’d really have to ask Mr Cornwallis.’

  Hawthorne paused. ‘Where is Cornwallis?’

  ‘He had to leave early. It’s his son’s school play this afternoon.’ She was staring at the orange ball. ‘Nobody in our company would have done something like this.’

  ‘Then it must have been someone from outside, hence my question: was the coffin left on its own?’

  ‘Yes.’ Irene squirmed, hating to admit it. ‘The deceased was laid out at our facility on the Fulham Palace Road. She was brought from there today. Unfortunately, we don’t have enough space at our South Kensington office. We have a chapel close to Hammersmith roundabout, a place of bereavement. Members of the family and close friends would have been able to visit Mrs Cowper if they so wished.’

  ‘And how many of them so wished?’

  ‘I can’t tell you now. But we have a visitors’ book and nobody would have been allowed in without some form of identification.’

  ‘How about here at the cemetery?’ Hawthorne asked. Irene said nothing, so he went on: ‘When we arrived, the coffin was inside the hearse, which was parked around the back. Was there someone there the whole time?’

  Irene deflected the question to one of the pall-bearers, who shuffled his feet and looked down. ‘We were there most of the time,’ he muttered. ‘But not all of it.’

  ‘And who are you?’

  ‘Alfred Laws. I’m a director of the company.’ He took a breath. ‘Irene is my wife.’

  Hawthorne smiled mirthlessly. ‘Keep it all in the family, don’t you! So where were you?’

  ‘When we first arrived, we parked the vehicle and came in here.’

  ‘All of you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  And was the hearse locked?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘In our experience, nobody has ever tried to remove a dead person,’ Irene remarked, icily.

  ‘Well, maybe that’s something you should think about in the future.’ Hawthorne closed in her, almost menacing. ‘I’ll need to talk to Mr Cornwallis. Where can I find him?’

  ‘I’ll give you his address.’ Irene held out a hand and her husband passed her a notebook and a pen. She scribbled a few lines on the first page, then tore it out and handed it to Hawthorne.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Wait a minute!’ Meadows had been standing to one side throughout all this and it was as if he had only just realised he hadn’t said anything. At the same time – I saw it in his eyes – he knew he had nothing more to say. ‘I’ll take the alarm clock,’ he muttered, asserting his authority. ‘It shouldn’t have been handled,’ he added, forgetting that he had been the one who had taken it from Irene in the first place. ‘Forensics aren’t going to like that.’

  ‘I doubt forensics will find very much,’ Hawthorne said.

  ‘Well, if it was bought on the internet, there’s a good chance we’ll be able to find the identity of the purchaser.’

  Hawthorne handed it to him. Meadows made a point of gripping it very carefully, with his thumb and second finger each side of the digital clock.

  ‘Good luck,’ Hawthorne said.

  It was a dismissal.

  The wake, if that was what it was, was being held at a gastropub on the corner of Finborough Road, a few minutes’ walk from the cemetery. This was the place that Damian had mentioned before he had stormed off. He wasn’t the only one who had gone straight home: half the mourners had decided to give it a miss too. That left Grace Lovell and about a dozen men and women hitting the Prosecco and miniature sausages, trying to console each other not just on the loss of an old friend but on the terrible farce that her funeral had become.

  Hawthorne had said he wanted to talk to Damian Cowper and he had already called through to Robert Cornwallis, leaving a message on his mobile phone. But first of all he wanted to catch up with the other mourners. After all, if they hadn’t known Diana Cowper well, they wouldn’t have come to the funeral and it was his one chance to catch them while they were all together. There was a definite spring in his step as we crossed the Fulham Road and went in. Any sort of mystery energised him – and the more bizarre the better.

  We saw Grace straight away. Although she was wearing black, her dress was very short and she had a velvet tuxedo jacket with extravagantly padded shoulders. Leaning against the bar, she could just as easily have come from a film premiere as a funeral. She wasn’t talking to anyone and smiled anxiously as we came over to her.

  ‘Mr Hawthorne!’ She was clearly glad to see him. ‘I don’t know what I’m doing here. I hardly know any of these people.’

  ‘Who are they?’ Hawthorne asked.

  She looked around, then pointed. ‘That’s Raymond Clunes. He’s a theatre producer. Damian was in one of his plays.’

  ‘We’ve met.’

  ‘And that’s Diana’s GP.’ She nodded at a man, in his sixties, pigeon-shaped in a dark, three-piece suit. ‘His name’s Dr Butterworth, I think. The woman next to him is his wife. The man standing in the corner is Diana’s lawyer, Charles Kenworthy. He’s dealing with the will. But I don’t know anyone else.’

  ‘Damian went home.’

  ‘He was very upset. That song was deliberately chosen to upset him. It was a horrible joke to play.’

  ‘You know about the song?’

  ‘Well, yes!’ She hesitated, unsure if she could continue. ‘It goes back to that horrible business with those two children,’ she said. ‘It was Timothy Godwin’s favourite song. They played it when they buried him … in Harrow Weald.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ Hawthorne asked.

  ‘Damian told me. He often talked about it.’ For some reason she felt a need to defend him. ‘He’s not someone to show his feelings but it really mattered to him, what happened all those years ago.’ She had a glass
of Prosecco and drained it. ‘God, what a horrible day. I knew it was going to be horrible when I woke up this morning but I never dreamed it would be anything like this!’

  Hawthorne was examining her. ‘I got the impression you didn’t much like Damian’s mother,’ he said, suddenly.

  Grace blushed, the straight lines at the very top of her cheekbones darkening. ‘That’s not true! Who told you that?’

  ‘You said she ignored you.’

  ‘I said nothing of the sort. She was just more interested in Ashleigh, that’s all.’

  ‘Where is Ashleigh?’

  ‘In Hounslow, at my parents’ place. I’m picking her up when I leave here.’ She put her glass down on the bar and picked up another one from a passing waiter.

  ‘So you were close to her, then,’ Hawthorne said.

  ‘I wouldn’t say that.’ She thought for a moment. ‘Damian and I had only been together a short while before Ashleigh arrived and she was nervous that being a father would hold him back.’ She stopped herself. ‘I know how that sounds but you have to understand that she was quite a lonely person. After Lawrence died, she only had Damian and she doted on him. His success meant the world to her.’

  ‘And the baby was in the way?’

  ‘She wasn’t planned, if that’s what you mean. But Damian loves her now. He wouldn’t have it any other way.’

  ‘How about you, Miss Lovell? Ashleigh can’t have helped your career.’

  ‘You do say the most unpleasant things, Mr Hawthorne. I’m only thirty-three. I love Ashleigh to bits. And it doesn’t make any difference to me if I don’t work for a few years. I’m very happy with the way things are.’

  She can’t have been that good an actress, I thought. I certainly wasn’t convinced by her now.

  ‘Do you enjoy Los Angeles?’ Hawthorne asked.

  ‘It’s taken me a while to get used to it. We have a house in the Hollywood Hills and when I wake up in the morning, I can’t believe I’m there. It was always my dream when I was at drama school – to wake up and see the Hollywood sign.’