The Word is Murder

This motif permeates Diana Cowper’s life and death. Anthony notices that her home contains a photograph of her deceased husband, and Hawthorne comments, “If they were divorced, she wouldn’t keep his picture” (38). Both men are moved by Diana’s memorial garden to her husband. Anthony reflects, “Just for once, we were equally uncomfortable, standing there” (199). For all that Anthony is more comfortable with emotion, the depth of Diana’s mourning strikes him into silence along with Hawthorne. There is a similarly uncomfortable note in their visit to the Godwin family, as Anthony notes: “There was a sense of something in the air that might have been damp or dry rot but was actually just misery” (79). Judith Godwin mourns both her children, and her suffering permeates everything she touches.

Grief, too, explains why Diana goes into the funeral parlor the day of her murder: She believes Alan Godwin, Jeremy and Timothy’s father, murdered her cat in an act of revenge. In a sense, this links her to her killer: For all his rage and incoherence, Cornwallis’s quest for vengeance is a response to loss, the career he believed Damian Cowper stole from him.