Magpie Murders (31 page)

‘He didn’t send you a copy electronically?’

‘No. He never did that.’

It was true. Alan was a pen and paper man. He actually handwrote his first draft. Then he typed it into his computer. He always sent us a printed copy before he emailed it to us, as if he somehow mistrusted us reading it on the screen.

‘Well, we have to find the missing chapters,’ I said. ‘And the sooner the better.’ Charles looked doubtful so I went on. ‘They must be somewhere in the house. Did you manage to work out who did it?’

Charles shook his head. ‘I was thinking it might be the sister.’

‘Clarissa Pye. Yes. She was on my list too.’

‘There’s always a chance he didn’t actually finish it.’

‘I’m sure he’d have told you that when he handed it over – and what would have been the point?’ I thought about my diary, all the meetings I had in the week ahead. But this was more important. ‘Why don’t I drive up to Framlingham?’ I said.

‘Are you sure that’s a good idea? The police will still be at the house. If he committed suicide, there’ll have to be an enquiry.’

‘Yes, I know. But I’d like to get access to his computer.’

‘They’ll have removed it, won’t they?’

‘At least I can take a look around. The original could still be on his desk.’

He thought for a moment. ‘Well, I suppose so.’

I was surprised that he wasn’t more enthusiastic. Although neither of us had said as much, we both knew how much we needed
Magpie Murders
. We’d had a bad year. In May we’d published the biography of a comedian who’d made a joke in spectacularly poor taste, live on TV. Almost overnight, he’d stopped being funny and his book had more or less vanished from the shops. I’d just been touring with the author of a first novel called
The
One-Armed Juggler
, a comedy set in a circus. The tour might have gone well but the reviews had been merciless and we were having difficulty getting copies into the shops. We’d had trouble with the building, a lawsuit, trouble with the staff. We weren’t going under but we badly needed a hit.

‘I’ll go tomorrow,’ I said.

‘I suppose there’s no harm in trying. Would you like me to come with you?’

‘No. I’ll be fine on my own.’ Alan had never invited me to Abbey Grange. I would be interested to see what it was like. ‘Give my love to Laura,’ I said. ‘And if there’s any news, let me know.’

I got up and left the room and here’s the strange thing. It was only as I walked back to my office that I realised what I had seen, even though it had been in front of my eyes all the time. It was very odd. It made no sense at all.

Alan’s suicide note and the envelope it had come in had been on Charles’s desk. The letter was handwritten. The envelope was typed.

Abbey Grange, Framlingham

The next morning, bright and early, I was speeding across the top of Alexandra Park with the virtually empty carcass of the famous palace above me, heading for the A12. It was a perfect excuse to take out the MGB Roadster that I’d bought myself six years ago, on my fortieth birthday. It was a ridiculous car but I’d known I had to have it the moment I saw it for sale outside a garage in Highgate: a 1969 model, manual with overdrive, and an in-your-face, pillar-box red with black trim. Katie didn’t know what to say when I first showed up in it but her children went crazy for it and whenever I saw them I took them out, tearing around country lanes with the roof down and the two of them yelling in the back seat.

I was going against the traffic that was coming into London and made good time until I got to Earl Soham where a particularly annoying roadwork kept me waiting ten minutes. It was a warm day. The weather had been good throughout the summer and it looked as if September was going to be the same. I thought of putting the roof down but it would be too noisy on the motorway. Perhaps when I got nearer.

I’ve visited most of the seaside villages of Suffolk – Southwold, Walberswick, Dunwich and Orford – but I’d never been to Framlingham before. Maybe the very fact that Alan lived there had put me off. My first impressions as I drove in were of a pleasant, slightly down-at-heel town centring on a main square that wasn’t square at all. Some of the buildings had a certain charm but others, an Indian restaurant for example, looked oddly out of place, and if you were planning to go shopping, there wasn’t going to be anything very exciting to buy. A large brick structure had imposed itself in the middle and this turned out to contain a modern supermarket. I’d booked a room at the Crown Hotel, a coaching inn that had looked out onto the square for four hundred years and now found itself rubbing shoulders with a bank and a travel agency. It was actually very charming with the original flagstones, lots of fireplaces, and wooden beams. I was glad to see books on the shelves and board games piled up on a community chest. They gave the place a homely feel. I found the receptionist tucked away behind a tiny window and checked in. I had thought about staying with my sister but Woodbridge was a thirty-minute drive away and I would be happy enough here.

I went up to the room and dumped my case on the bed: a four-poster, no less. I wished Andreas was here to share it with me. He had a particular liking for olde England, especially if the olde was spelled with an e. He found things like croquet, cream teas and cricket both incomprehensible and irresistible and he would have been in his element here. I sent him a text, then washed and ran a comb through my hair. It was lunchtime but I didn’t feel like eating. I got back in the car and drove out to Abbey Grange.

Alan Conway’s home was a couple of miles outside Framlingham and it would have been almost impossible to find without sat nav. I’ve lived my whole life in a city where roads actually go somewhere because, frankly, they can’t afford not to. The same couldn’t be said for the country lane that twiddled its way through far too much country before an even narrower lane brought me to the private track that finally led me to the house itself. When did I realise that I was looking at the inspiration for Pye Hall? Well, the stone griffins beside the entrance gate would have been the first clue. The lodge house was exactly as described. The drive curved round to the front door, cutting through extensive lawns. I didn’t see any rose gardens but the lake was there and so was the woodland that might have been Dingle Dell. I could easily imagine Brent standing beside the corpse of Tom Blakiston while his brother desperately gave him mouth-to-mouth. Most of the work had been done for me.

And the house itself? ‘What remained was a single, elongated wing with an octagonal tower – constructed much later – at the far end.’ As I drew up, that was exactly what I saw: a long, narrow building with about a dozen windows spread out over two floors joined to a tower which might provide great views but which was, in itself, ridiculous. I guessed it had all been built in the nineteenth century, the creation of some Victorian industrialist who’d brought his memories of London’s mills and mausoleums to rural Suffolk. It was nowhere near as attractive as Sir Magnus Pye’s ancestral home, at least as Alan had described it. Abbey Grange was built out of the dirty red brick that I’ve always associated with Charles Dickens and William Blake. It didn’t belong here and it was saved only by its setting. The garden must have spread out over four or five acres with a huge sky and no other houses in sight. I wouldn’t want to live here and frankly I couldn’t see why it had appealed to Alan Conway either. Wouldn’t he have been too metrosexual for this folly?

This was where he had died. I was reminded of it as I got out of the car. Just four days ago, he had thrown himself off the tower that loomed over me even now. I examined the crenellations at the top. They didn’t look very safe. If you leant too far, suicidal or not, you might easily topple over. The tower was surrounded by lawn – the grass knotted and uneven. In Ian McEwan’s novel
Enduring Love
there’s an extremely good description of what happens to a human body when it falls from a great height and I could easily imagine Conway, all mangled up with his bones broken and his limbs pointing in the wrong direction. Would the fall have been enough to kill him instantly or would he have lain there in agony until someone came along and found him? He lived alone so it might have been a cleaner or a gardener who had raised the alarm. Did that make any sense? He had killed himself to avoid suffering but in fact he might have suffered horribly. It wasn’t the way I would have chosen. Get in a warm bath and cut your wrists. Jump in front of a train. Either would have been more certain.

I took out my iPhone and moved away from the front door so that I could get a picture of the whole thing. I didn’t know why I did that, but then why does anyone take photographs ever? We never look at them any more. I had driven past a large shrub (it wasn’t in the book) and, walking back, I noticed two tyre tracks. Quite recently, when the grass was damp, a car had parked behind it. I took a picture of the tyre tracks too; not because they meant anything but simply because I thought I should. I slipped the phone into my pocket and I was walking back to the front door when it opened and a man came out. I’d never met him but I knew instantly who he was. I’ve mentioned that Alan was married. Shortly after the third book in the Atticus Pünd series came out, so did Alan. He left his family for a young man called James Taylor – and by young I mean barely twenty at a time when Alan himself was in his mid-forties with a son aged twelve. His private life was no concern of mine but I will admit I was a little uneasy and worried about the effect it might have on sales. The story was reported in quite a lot of newspapers but fortunately this was 2009 and the journalists weren’t able to sneer too much. Alan’s wife, Melissa, and his son moved to the West Country. They agreed terms very quickly. That was when Alan had bought Abbey Grange.

I had never met James Taylor but knew I was looking at him now. He was wearing a leather jacket and jeans with a low-cut T-shirt that showed a thin gold chain around his neck. Although he was now twenty-eight or twenty-nine, he still looked incredibly young with a baby face that thick stubble did nothing to disguise. He had long, fair hair, which he hadn’t brushed. It was slightly greasy, following the curve of his neck. He could have just got out of bed. His eyes were haunted, suspicious. I got the feeling that he had been damaged at some time in his life. Or maybe it was just that he wasn’t pleased to see me.

‘Yes?’ he asked. ‘Who are you?’

‘I’m Susan Ryeland,’ I said. ‘I work at Cloverleaf Books. We’re Alan’s publishers.’ I fished in my handbag and gave him my business card.

He glanced at it, then looked past me. ‘I like your car.’

‘Thank you.’

‘It’s an MG.’

‘An MGB actually.’

He smiled. I could tell it amused him, a woman of my age driving a car like that. ‘I’m afraid that if you’re here to see Alan, you’re too late.’

‘I know. I know what happened. Do you think I could come in?’

‘Why?’

‘It’s difficult to explain. I’m looking for something.’

‘Sure.’ He shrugged and opened the door as if he owned the place. But I had read Alan’s letter. I knew he didn’t.

If this had been the world of
Magpie Murders
, the front door would have led into a grand hall with wood panels, a stone fireplace and a staircase leading up to a galleried landing. But all that must have come out of Conway’s imagination. In fact the interior was disappointing: a reception room, stripped wooden floor, country furniture, expensive modern art on the walls – all very tasteful, but ordinary. No suits of armour. No animal trophies. No dead bodies. We turned right and went along a corridor that ran the full length of the house, finally bringing us into a serious kitchen with an industrial oven, an American fridge, gleaming surfaces and a table that could seat twelve. James offered me a coffee, which I accepted. He fixed it in one of those machines that uses capsules and froths up the milk on the side.

‘So you’re his publisher,’ he said.

‘No. His editor.’

‘How well did you know Alan?’

I wasn’t sure how to answer that. ‘It was a working relationship,’ I said. ‘He never invited me here.’

‘This is my home – or at least it was until about two weeks ago when Alan asked me to move out. I hadn’t left yet because I didn’t have anywhere to go and now I suppose, I may not have to.’ He brought the coffees over and sat down.

‘Do you mind if I smoke?’ I asked. I’d noticed an ashtray on the table and the smell of cigarette smoke in the air.

‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘Actually, if you’ve got some cigarettes, I’ll have one too.’ I held out the packet and suddenly we were friends. That’s one of the only good things about being a smoker these days. You’re part of a persecuted minority. You bond easily. But actually I’d already decided that I liked James Taylor, this boy alone in a big house.

‘Were you here?’ I asked. ‘When Alan killed himself?’

‘No, thank God. We weren’t together at that stage. I was in London, hanging out with some people I know.’ I watched as he tapped ash. He had very long, slender fingers. His nails were dirty. ‘I got a call from Mr Khan – he was Alan’s solicitor – and I came back late on Monday. By then, the place was crawling with police officers. It was Mr Khan who found him, you know. He came over to drop off some papers, probably cutting me out of the will or something, and Alan was on the lawn in front of the tower. I have to say, I’m glad it wasn’t me. I’m not sure I’d have coped.’ He sucked in smoke, holding the cigarette cupped in his hand, like a soldier in an old film. ‘What is it you’re looking for?’

I told him the truth. I explained that Alan had delivered his last novel just a couple of days before he’d died and that it was missing the last chapter. I asked him if he had read any of
Magpie Murders
and he gave a sniff of laughter. ‘I read every one of the Atticus Pünd books,’ he said. ‘You know I’m in them?’

‘I didn’t know that,’ I said.

‘Oh yes. James Fraser, the dumb blond assistant – that’s me.’ He flicked his own hair. ‘When I met Alan, he was just about to start
Night Comes Calling
. That’s the fourth book in the series. At that time, Atticus Pünd didn’t have an assistant. He just worked by himself. But after Alan and I started going out together, he said he was going to change that and he put me in.’