‘The moment Atticus Pünd came out, he was trapped,’ Melissa went on. ‘That was what neither of us had anticipated. It was so successful that of course nobody wanted him to do anything else.’
‘It was better than his other books,’ I said.
‘You may have thought that, but Alan didn’t agree and nor do I.’ She sounded bitter. ‘He only wrote Atticus Pünd to get out of Woodbridge School and all it did was put him somewhere worse.’
‘But he was rich.’
‘He didn’t want the money! It was never about money.’ She sighed. Neither of us had eaten very much lunch. ‘Even if Alan hadn’t found this other side of himself, even if he hadn’t gone off with James, I don’t think we’d have stayed married much longer. He was never the same with me after he got famous. Do you understand what I’m saying, Susan? I’d betrayed him. Worse than that, I’d persuaded him to betray himself.’
After another half an hour – maybe forty minutes – I left. I had to wait for a train at Bradford-on-Avon station but that suited me. I needed time to think. Andreas and Melissa! Why did it bother me so much? It had been over before the two of us even met. I suppose part of it was natural, a spurt of involuntary jealousy. But at the same time I was remembering what Andreas had said to me, the last time we had spoken. ‘Is this the best we can do?’ I had always assumed that we had both liked the casual nature of our relationship and I had been annoyed about the hotel because it was changing all that. What Melissa had just told me made me think again. Suddenly I saw how easy it would be to lose him.
There was something else that occurred to me. Andreas had lost Melissa to Alan and he had made it clear that it still rankled. There was certainly no love lost between them. And this time, all these years later, Alan was the main reason why he might lose me. I was his editor. My career was largely predicated on the success of his books. ‘I’ve hated the way you’ve had to kowtow to him.’ That was what he had said.
I suddenly saw that Andreas, as much as anyone, must have been very glad to see him dead.
I needed to distract myself, so as soon as I was on the train, I took out Magpie Murders – but this time, instead of reading it, I tried to decipher it. I couldn’t get away from the idea that Alan Conway had concealed something inside the text and that it might even be the reason he was killed. I remembered the crossword that Clarissa Pye had solved and the code games the two boys had played at the Lodge. When Alan was at Chorley Hall, he had sent his sister acronyms and he had put dots under certain letters in books to send secret messages. There were no dots in the typescript of Magpie Murders. I had already checked. But his books had contained British rivers, tube stations, fountain pens, birds. This was a man who played electronic Scrabble in his spare time. ‘He was always great at puzzles – crosswords and things like that.’ It was the very reason why Melissa had persuaded him to try his hand at murder mystery in the first place. I was sure that if I looked hard enough there would be something I would find.
I figured I knew where the characters had originated so I ignored them. If I was looking for secret messages, acronyms seemed the more likely possibility. The first letters of the first word of each chapter, for example, spelled out TTAADA. Nothing there. Then I tried the first ten sentences, which began TTTBHTI and the first letters of the first word of each section: TSDW – I didn’t need to continue. That didn’t mean anything either. I looked at the title of the book. Magpie Murders could be rearranged to make Reared Pig Mums, Reread Smug Imp, Premium Grades and many more. It was a puerile activity. I wasn’t expecting to find anything, not really. But it occupied my mind as we trundled back to London. I didn’t want to think about what Melissa had told me.
And then, somewhere between Swindon and Didcot, I saw it. It just assembled itself in front of my eyes.
The titles of the books.
The clues had always been there. James had told me that the number of books was important. ‘Alan always said there would be nine books. He’d decided that from the very start.’ Why nine? Because that was his secret message. That was what he wanted to spell out. Look at the first letters.
Atticus Pünd Investigates
No Rest for the Wicked
Atticus Pünd Takes the Case
Night Comes Calling
Atticus Pünd’s Christmas
Gin & Cyanide
Red Roses for Atticus
Atticus Pünd Abroad
If you add the last title, Magpie Murders, what do you get?
AN ANAGRAM.
And finally that explained something that had been on my mind for a while. The Ivy Club. Alan had got angry when Charles had suggested changing the title of the last book. What was it that he had said? ‘I’m not having the—’ That was the moment when Donald Leigh dropped the plates.
But in fact there was no missing word. He had actually completed the sentence. What he was saying was, the book could not be called The Magpie Murders because that would spoil the joke that Alan had built into the series almost from the day it was conceived. He’d come up with an anagram.
But an anagram of what?
An hour later, the train pulled into Paddington and I still hadn’t seen it.
Paddington Station
I don’t like coincidences in novels, and particularly not in murder mysteries, which work because of logic and calculation. The detective really should be able to reach his conclusion without having providence on his side. But that’s just the editor in me speaking and unfortunately this is what happened. Getting off the train at two minutes past five in a city of eight and a half million people, with thousands of them crossing the concourse all around me, I bumped into someone I knew. Her name was Jemima Humphries. Until very recently, she had been Charles Clover’s PA at Cloverleaf.
I saw her and recognised her at once. Charles always said she had the sort of smile that could light up a crowd and that was what first caught my eye, the fact that she alone looked cheerful among the grey mass of commuters making their way home. She was slim and pretty with long blonde hair, and although she was in her mid-twenties, she had lost none of her schoolgirl exuberance. I remember her telling me that she had wanted to get into publishing because she loved reading. I’d already missed having her around the office. I had no idea why she’d left.
She saw me at the same moment and waved. We made our way towards each other and I thought we were just going to say hello and I was going to ask her how she was. But that wasn’t what happened.
‘How are you, Jemima?’ I asked.
‘I’m fine thanks, Susan. It’s really great to see you. I’m sorry I didn’t get to say goodbye.’
‘It all happened so quickly. I was away on a book tour and when I’d got back, you’d already gone.’
‘I know.’
‘So where are you now?’
‘I’m living with my parents in Chiswick. I was just on my way—’
‘Where are you working?’
‘I haven’t got a job yet.’ She giggled nervously. ‘I’m still looking.’