The doorway was arched, the door fake-medieval with thick panels of frosted glass. There was a novelty welcome mat which read: ‘Never mind the dog – beware of the owner!’ When Hawthorne pressed the doorbell, it played the opening notes of the theme from Star Wars. Chopin’s Funeral March might have been more appropriate. For this was where Robert Cornwallis lived.
The woman who opened the door was almost aggressively cheerful, as if she had been looking forward to our visit all week. There you are, at last, she seemed to say as she beamed out at us. What took you so long?
She was about forty years old and was hurtling into middle age with complete recklessness, actually embracing it with a baggy, out-of-shape jersey, ill-fitting jeans (with a flower embroidered on one knee), frizzy hair and cheap, chunky jewellery. She was overweight – an earth mother, she might call herself. She had a huge pile of laundry under one arm and a cordless telephone in her hand but didn’t seem to notice either of them. I could imagine her balancing the laundry on her raised thigh with the phone squeezed between her ear and her shoulder as she struggled to open the door.
‘Mr Hawthorne?’ she asked, looking at me. She had a pleasant, well-educated voice.
‘No,’ I said. ‘That’s him.’
‘I’m Barbara. Please come in. I’m afraid you’re going to have to excuse the state of the house. It’s six o’clock and we’re just putting the children to bed. Robert’s in the other room. I’m sure you’ll understand, we’ve had a bit of a day! Irene told us what happened at the funeral. It’s shocking. You’re with the police. Is that right?’
‘I’m helping the police with this inquiry.’
‘This way! Mind the roller skate. I’ve told the children not to leave them in the hall. One day someone’s going to break their neck!’ She glanced down, noticing the laundry for the first time. ‘Look at me! I’m so sorry. I was just putting on the wash when the door rang. I don’t know what you must think of me!’
We stepped over the loose roller skate and went into a hallway cluttered with coats, wellington boots and different-sized shoes. A motorbike helmet sat on a chair. Two children were racing around the house. We heard them before we saw them – screaming, high-pitched voices. A second later, they came charging out of a doorway, two little boys, both fair-haired, aged about five and seven. They took one look at us, then turned round and disappeared, still screaming.
‘That’s Toby and Sebastian,’ Barbara said. ‘They’ll be going up for their bath in a minute and then maybe we’ll get a bit of peace. Do you have children? Honestly, sometimes this place is like a battlefield.’
The children had taken over the house. There were clothes on radiators, toys everywhere … footballs, plastic swords, stuffed animals, old tennis rackets, scattered playing cards and pieces of Lego. It was difficult to see past the mess but as we were shown through an archway and into the living room I got the impression of a comfortable, old-fashioned home, with dried flowers in the fireplace, seagrass carpets, an upright piano that would almost certainly be out of tune, throws on the sofas and those round paper lampshades that never seem to have gone completely out of fashion. The pictures on the walls were abstract and colourful, the sort of art that might have come out of a department store.
‘Do you work in your husband’s business, Mrs Cornwallis?’ Hawthorne asked as we followed her towards the kitchen.
‘God, no! And call me Barbara.’ She dumped the laundry on a chair. ‘We see enough of each other as it is. I’m a pharmacist … part-time, the local branch of Boots. I can’t say I love that either but we have to pay the bills. Watch out! That’s the other roller skate. Robert’s in here …’
The kitchen was bright and cluttered, with a breakfast bar and a white, rustic-style table. Dirty plates were piled up in the sink with clean ones beside them. I wondered how Barbara would be able to sort out which was which. French windows looked out over a garden that was little more than a green rectangle with a few shrubs growing down one side, boxed in by fences. Even this had been colonised by the children, with a trampoline and a climbing frame occupying – and killing – much of the lawn.
Robert Cornwallis, in the same suit that he had worn at the Brompton chapel but without the tie, was sitting at the table, going through some accounts. It was strange seeing him here, a funeral director outside his parlour. At least, it was strange because I knew he was a funeral director. I wondered what it was like to come home to this cosy, domestic normality after a day stitching up bodies in the morgue. Did he or his wife feel in any way tainted by it? Did his children know what their father did? I’ve never actually had an undertaker as a character in any of my books and I was rather hoping that Hawthorne would ask him more about his work. I store all sorts of information like that. You never know when it may be useful.
The kitchen had been invaded like the rest of the house. There were more plastic toys, crayons and paper on the table, brightly coloured scribbles sellotaped onto every wall. I remembered the house in Harrow-on-the-Hill and Judith Godwin’s life, destroyed by the loss of a child. The Cornwallises’ house was defined by children too but in a very different way.
‘Here’s Robert,’ Barbara announced, then chided him. ‘Are you still doing that? We’ve got the supper to cook and the children to put to bed and now we’ve got the police in the house!’
‘I’ve just finished, dear.’ Cornwallis closed his account books. He gestured at the empty seats in front of him. ‘Mr Hawthorne. Please, sit down.’
‘Would you like some tea?’ Barbara asked. ‘I can offer you English breakfast, Earl Grey or lapsang souchong.’
‘Nothing, thank you.’
‘How about something stronger, maybe? Robert – we’ve still got that wine in the fridge.’
I shook my head.
‘I might have a glass, if you don’t mind. After all, it’s the weekend … almost. Will you have one, Robbie?’
‘No, thank you, dear.’
Hawthorne and I sat down on the other side of the table. Hawthorne was about to start his interrogation when suddenly the two children came charging in, racing around the table, demanding a bedtime story. Robert Cornwallis raised his hands, trying to take control of the situation. ‘All right, you two. That’s enough!’ The children ignored him. ‘Why don’t you go out in the garden? As a special treat you can have ten minutes on the trampoline before bed!’
The children yelled with delight. Their father got up and opened the French windows. They ran out and we watched as they climbed onto the trampoline.
‘Lovely kids,’ Hawthorne muttered, with all the malice in the world.
‘They can be a bit of a handful at this time of day.’ Cornwallis sat down again. ‘Where’s Andrew?’ he called over to his wife, who was standing beside the fridge with a half-full bottle of white wine.
‘Upstairs, doing his homework.’
‘Or playing on his computer,’ Cornwallis said. ‘I can’t get him off it – but then he’s nine.’
‘All his friends are the same,’ Barbara agreed, pouring the wine. ‘I don’t know what it is with children these days. They’re not interested in the real world.’
There was a pause. In this house, a moment of silence was something of a luxury.
‘Irene told me about the funeral,’ Cornwallis began, echoing what Barbara had said in the hall. ‘I cannot tell you how dismayed I am. I have been ten years in this business. My father ran the company before me, and my grandfather before that. I can assure you that nothing like this has ever happened before.’ Hawthorne was about to ask him something but he continued. ‘I am particularly sorry that I wasn’t there. I try to be present at every funeral but, as I’m sure Irene will have told you, it was my son’s school play.’
‘He spent weeks learning his lines,’ Barbara exclaimed. ‘Every night before bed. He took it very seriously.’ She had filled a large glass with wine and came over and joined us. ‘He would never have forgiven us if we hadn’t been there. Acting runs in his blood …
it’s all he ever talks about. And he was absolutely brilliant. Well, I would say that, wouldn’t I? But he was!’
‘I shouldn’t have gone. I knew it at the time. I had this gut feeling that something was going to go wrong.’
‘Why was that, Mr Cornwallis?’
He thought back. ‘Well, everything about Mrs Cowper’s death had been unusual. It may surprise you, but I am no stranger to violent crime, Mr Hawthorne. We have another branch in south London and we have been summoned by the police on more than one occasion … knife crime, gang violence. But in this instance, for Mrs Cowper to have arranged her funeral the very day that it would be required …’
‘You said to me you were worried about it,’ Barbara agreed. ‘Only this morning, when you were getting dressed, you were going on about it.’ She ran her eyes over him. ‘Why are you still in that suit? I thought you were going to get changed.’
Barbara Cornwallis was a pleasant, friendly woman but she never stopped talking and being married to her would have driven me insane. Her husband ignored her last question. ‘That was why I asked Irene to be there,’ he explained. ‘I knew there would be police and journalists and of course Damian Cowper had a certain celebrity. I didn’t trust Alfred to handle it on his own. Even so, I should have stayed.’
‘You never even got to talk to Damian Cowper.’ There was a bowl of crisps on the table. Barbara slid them towards herself and took a handful. In the garden, the boys were bouncing up and down. We could hear their excited laughter on the other side of the double glazing. ‘And he’s one of your favourite actors too.’
‘That’s true.’
‘We’ve seen everything he’s done. What was the television programme he was in? The one about the journalists?’
‘I can’t remember, dear.’
‘Of course you can remember. You bought the DVD. You’ve watched it lots of times.’
‘State of Play.’
‘That’s the one. I couldn’t follow it myself. But he was very good. And we saw him in the theatre, didn’t we, in Oscar Wilde. The Importance of Being Earnest. I took Robert for our anniversary.’ She turned to her husband. ‘We both thought he was brilliant.’
‘He was a very good actor,’ Cornwallis agreed. ‘But I would never have approached him at his mother’s funeral, even if the opportunity had arisen. It wouldn’t have been appropriate.’ He allowed himself a little joke. ‘I was hardly going to ask him for an autograph!’
‘Well, I have some news that may surprise you,’ Hawthorne said. He helped himself to a single crisp, holding it as if it were evidence. ‘Damian Cowper is also dead.’
‘What?’ Cornwallis stared at him.
‘He was murdered this afternoon. Just an hour or so after the funeral.’
‘What are you talking about? That’s impossible!’ Cornwallis looked completely shocked. I would have thought the news had already been on TV or the internet but the two of them must have been too busy with their children to have seen it.
‘How was he killed?’ Barbara asked. She looked shocked too.
‘He was stabbed. In his flat in Brick Lane.’
‘Do you know who did it?’
‘Not yet. I’m surprised Detective Inspector Meadows hasn’t been in touch with you.’
‘We haven’t heard anything.’ Cornwallis gazed at us, searching for words. ‘What happened at the funeral … is there a connection? I mean, there must be! When Irene told me about it, I thought it was just an unpleasant joke …’
‘Someone with a grudge. That’s what you said,’ Barbara reminded him.
‘That seemed the obvious conclusion but, as I said, it was completely outside my experience. But if Damian’s been killed, I would imagine that puts everything in a very different light.’
Hawthorne had had second thoughts about the crisp. He dropped it back in the bowl. ‘Somebody put an MP3 recording alarm clock inside the coffin. It went off at half past eleven and played a nursery rhyme. I think it’s a safe bet that there is a connection. So I want to know how it got there.’
‘I have no idea.’
‘Why don’t you have a little think for a minute?’ Hawthorne was on edge. I think the mess of the place, the children bouncing up and down, Barbara with her wine and her crisps, everything about Willesden Green was beginning to get on his nerves.
Cornwallis looked at his wife as if seeking her support. ‘I can assure you that it wasn’t placed there by anyone who works for me. Everyone at Cornwallis and Sons has been with the company for at least five years and many of them are part of the family. I’m sure Irene told you. Mrs Cowper was taken directly from the hospital to our central mortuary at Hammersmith. We washed her and closed her eyes. Mrs Cowper did not wish to be embalmed. Nobody asked to view the body – even if they had, there would have been no opportunity to do anything amiss.
‘She was placed in the natural Willow Weave coffin which she had chosen. That would have been at around half past nine this morning. I wasn’t there but all four pall-bearers would have been in the room. She was then carried to the hearse. We have a private courtyard with an electric gate, so no-one can come in off the street. From there, she was taken directly to Brompton Cemetery.’
‘So she would have been in someone’s sight all the time.’
‘Yes. As far as I can see, there were perhaps three or four minutes when the coffin was left unattended: when it was in the car park behind the chapel – and, incidentally, I shall make sure that in future this never happens again.
‘But that was when the alarm clock could have been put in the coffin.’
‘Yes. I suppose so.’
‘How easy would it have been to open it?’
Cornwallis considered. ‘It would have been the work of just a few moments. If it had been a traditional coffin, made of solid wood, the lid would have been screwed down. But with a willow coffin there are just two straps.’
Barbara had finished her drink. ‘Are you sure you won’t have a glass of wine?’ she asked us.
‘No, thank you,’ I said.
‘Well, I’m going to have another. All this talk about murder and death! We never discuss Robert’s work in the house, usually. The children hate it. At Andrew’s school, they had to give a talk about their dad’s business in front of the whole class and he made everything up. He said Robert was an accountant.’ She gave a hoot of laughter. ‘I don’t know where he got his facts from. He doesn’t know anything about accountancy.’ She went to the fridge and poured herself a second glass of wine.
As she closed the fridge door, another boy came in, wearing tracksuit trousers and a T-shirt. He was taller than the other two, with darker hair that fell clumsily over his face. “Why are Tobes and Seb in the garden?’ he asked. He noticed us. ‘Who are you?’
‘This is Andrew,’ Barbara said. ‘These men are policemen.’
‘Why? What’s happened?’
‘It’s nothing for you to worry about, Andrew. Have you finished your homework?’ The boy nodded. ‘Then you can watch television if you want to.’ She smiled at him, showing him off. ‘I was just telling these gentlemen about your school play. Mr Pinocchio!’
‘He wasn’t very good,’ Cornwallis said. Then he mimed his nose stretching. ‘Wait a minute. That’s a lie. He was brilliant!’
Andrew plumped himself out, pleased with himself. ‘I’m going to be an actor when I grow up,’ he announced.
‘Let’s not talk about that right now, Andrew,’ Cornwallis interrupted him. ‘If you want to help, you can go out and tell your brothers it’s time for bed.’
Out in the garden, Toby and Sebastian had moved onto the climbing frame. They were shouting at each other, overtired, sliding into that zone where they lost almost any resemblance to rational human beings. It was something I remembered well from my own children. Andrew nodded and did as he had been told.
‘Can I ask you something?’ I knew I was risking Hawthorne’s anger but I was interested. ‘It’s not completely relevant but I??
?d like to know why you chose this line of work.’
‘Being an undertaker?’ Cornwallis didn’t seem bothered by the question. ‘In a way, it chose me. You saw the sign above the door of our South Kensington office. It’s a family business. I think it was started by my great-great-grandfather and it’s always been in the family. I have two cousins working in it. You met Irene. My cousin George does the books. Maybe one of my boys will take it over one day.’
‘Chance will be a fine thing!’ Barbara scoffed.
‘They may change their minds.’
‘Like you did?’
‘It’s not very easy for young people these days. It’ll be good for them to know there’s a job for them if they want it.’ He turned back to us. ‘After I left college, I did other things. I travelled and in my own way I suppose I sowed a few wild oats. There was a part of me that resisted the idea of becoming a funeral director – but if I hadn’t joined the firm, my life would have been very different.’ He reached out and took hold of his wife’s hand. ‘It was how we met.’
‘It was my uncle’s funeral!’
‘One of the very first where I was officiating.’ Cornwallis smiled. ‘It’s probably not the most romantic way to meet your life partner, but it was the best thing that came out of that day.’
‘I never much liked Uncle David anyway,’ Barbara said.
It was getting dark outside and the two children were now arguing with their older brother, who was trying to bring them in. ‘I’m afraid if you have no more questions, we’re going to have to ask you to leave,’ Cornwallis said. ‘We have to get the boys into bed.’
Hawthorne got to his feet. ‘You’ve been very helpful,’ he said.
I wasn’t sure if this was true.
‘Can you let us know if you find anything?’ Barbara asked. ‘It’s hard to believe that Damian Cowper has been killed. His mother first, then him. It makes you wonder who’ll be next!’