These were the notes that I made, sitting in my office that Monday afternoon, and by the time I left I had got precisely nowhere. It’s all very well having suspects. When push comes to shove (as, indeed, it had) all seven of them – eight, counting John White – could have killed Alan Conway. For that matter, it could have been the postman, the milkman, someone I’ve forgotten to mention, or someone I hadn’t met. What I didn’t have was that interconnectivity you get in a murder mystery, the sense that all the characters are moving in tandem, like pieces on a Cluedo board. Any one of them could have knocked on the door of Abbey Grange on that Sunday morning. Any one of them could have done it.
In the end I shoved my notepad aside and went for a meeting with one of our copy editors. If I had just worked a little harder, I would have realised that the clue I had been seeking was actually there, that somebody had said something to me, quite recently, that had identified them as the killer, and that the motive for Alan’s murder had been in front of my eyes the moment I had begun reading Magpie Murders.
Just half an hour more might have made all the difference in the world. But I was late for my meeting and I was still thinking about Andreas. It was going to cost me dear.
Bradford-on-Avon
Bradford-on-Avon was the last stopping point of my journey into the fictitious world of Magpie Murders. Although Alan had used Orford as a model for Saxby-on-Avon, the very name shows where his thoughts lay. What he had done in effect was to synthesise the two. The church, the square, the two pubs, the castle, the meadowland and the general layout belonged to Orford. But it was Bradford-on-Avon, which lay a few miles outside Bath and which was filled with the ‘solid, Georgian constructions made of Bath stone with handsome porticos and gardens rising up in terraces’ that the book describes. I don’t think it was a coincidence that it happened to be the place where his ex-wife lived. Something had happened that had made him think of her. Somewhere inside Magpie Murders there was a message intended for her.
I had telephoned ahead and travelled down on Tuesday morning, taking the train from Paddington station and changing at Bath. I would have driven, but I had the manuscript with me and planned to work on the way. Melissa had been pleased to hear from me and had invited me to lunch. I arrived just after twelve.
She had given me an address – Middle Rank – that led me to a row of terraced houses high above the town, unreachable except on foot. It was in the middle of an extraordinary warren of walkways, staircases and gardens, which could have been Spanish or Italian in origin if they hadn’t been so determinedly English. The houses stretched out in three rows with perfectly proportioned Georgian windows, porticos above many of the front doors and, yes, that honey-coloured Bath stone. Melissa had three floors and a busy garden that picked its way in steps down the hill to a stone pavilion below. This was where she had moved after Orford, and although I hadn’t seen where she had lived when she was there, it struck me that this must be the antithesis. It was peculiar. It was secluded. It was somewhere you would come if you wanted to escape.
I rang the doorbell and Melissa answered it herself. My first impression was that she was much younger than I remembered her, although we must have been both about the same age. I had barely recognised her at the funeral. In her coat and scarf with the rain falling, she had blurred into the crowd. Now that she was standing in front of me, in her own home, she struck me as confident, attractive, relaxed. She was slim, with high cheekbones and an easy smile. I was sure her hair had been brown when she was married to Alan. Now it was a dark chestnut and cut short, down to the neck. She was wearing jeans and a cashmere jersey, a white gold chain and no make-up. It’s often occurred to me that divorce suits some women. I’d have said that about her.
She greeted me formally and led me upstairs to the main living room which ran the whole length of the house with lovely views over Bradford-on-Avon and on to the Mendip Hills. The furniture was modern/traditional and looked expensive. She’d laid out lunch – smoked salmon, salad, artisan bread. She offered me wine but I stuck to sparkling water.
‘I saw you at the funeral,’ she said as she sat down. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t speak to you but Freddy was in a hurry to be away. I’m afraid he’s not here. He’s got an open day in London. ‘
‘Oh yes?’
‘He’s applying to St Martin’s School of Art. He wants to do a course in ceramics.’ She went on quickly. ‘He didn’t really want to be there, you know, in Framlingham.’
‘I was quite surprised to see you.’
‘He was my husband, Susan. And Freddy’s father. I knew I had to go as soon as I heard he was dead. I thought it would be good for Freddy. He was quite badly hurt by what happened. More than me, I’d say. I thought it might give him some sort of closure.’
‘Did it?’
‘Not really. He complained all the way there and he said nothing on the way back. He was plugged into his iPad. Still, I’m glad we went. It felt like the right thing to do.’
‘Melissa …’ This was the difficult bit. ‘I wanted to ask you about you and Alan. There are some things I’m struggling to understand.’
‘I did wonder why you’d come all this way.’
On the telephone, I’d told her that I was searching for the missing chapters and that I was trying to work out why Alan had killed himself. She hadn’t needed any more explanation than that and I certainly wasn’t going to mention the fact that he might have been murdered. ‘I don’t want to embarrass you,’ I said.
‘You can ask me anything you want, Susan.’ She smiled. ‘We’d been apart for six years when he died and I don’t feel embarrassed about what happened. Why should I? Of course, it was very difficult at the time. I really loved Alan and I didn’t want to lose him. But it’s odd … Are you married?’
‘No.’
‘When your husband leaves you for another man, it sort of helps. I think I’d have been angrier if it had been a younger woman. When he told me about James, I saw it was his problem – if it was a problem. I couldn’t blame myself if that was the way he felt.’
‘Did you have any inkling of it, while you were married?’
‘If you’re talking about his sexuality, no. Not at all. Freddy was born two years after we were married. I’d say we had a normal relationship.’
‘You said it was harder for your son.’