That puzzled me. I’d assumed she’d been poached. ‘So why did you leave?’ I asked.
‘I didn’t leave, Susan. Charles fired me. Well, he asked me to go. I didn’t want to.’
That wasn’t what Charles had told me. I was sure he’d said she’d handed in her notice. It was already half past five and I wanted to go to the office and go through my emails before I met Andreas. But something told me I couldn’t leave it like this. I had to know more. ‘Are you in a hurry?’ I asked.
‘No. Not really.’
‘Can I buy you a drink?’
We made our way to one of those grimy, frankly hellish pubs that edge onto the platforms at Paddington Station. I bought myself a gin and tonic, which arrived with not enough ice. Jemima had a glass of white wine. ‘So what happened?’ I asked.
Jemima frowned. ‘I’m not sure, to be honest with you, Susan. I really liked working at Cloverleaf and Charles was fine most of the time. He could be quite snappy now and then but I didn’t mind because in a way that was part of the job. Anyway, we had a big row – it must have been the day you went off on that book tour. He said I’d double-booked him for a lunch and there was an agent sitting in a restaurant waiting for him but it simply wasn’t true. I never made any mistakes with his diary. But when I tried to argue with him he got really angry. I’d never seen him like that before. He was completely over-the-top. And then, on the Friday morning, I took him a coffee in his office and, as I handed it to him, he sort of fumbled it and it went all over his desk. It was a terrible mess and I went out and got kitchen towel and cleared it up for him and that was when he said he didn’t think it was working, him and me, and that I should start looking for another job.’
‘He fired you on the spot?’
‘Not exactly. I was very upset. I mean, the thing with the coffee, it really wasn’t me. I was going to put it on his desk like I always did but he reached out to take it and knocked it out of my hand. And it wasn’t as if I’d made loads of mistakes. I’d been with him for a year and everything had gone all right. We had a long talk and I think it was me who said to him that it would be better if I went straight away and he said he’d pay me a month’s salary so that was it. He also said he’d give me a good reference and that if anyone asked, I hadn’t been fired, I’d just decided to leave.’ Charles had stuck with that. It was what he had told me. ‘I suppose that was nice of him,’ she went on. ‘I just left at the end of the day and that was that.’
‘What day was that?’ I asked.
‘It was Friday morning. You were on your way back from Dublin.’ She remembered something. ‘Did Andreas ever catch up with you?’ she asked.
‘I’m sorry?’ I could feel my head spinning. It was the second time that Andreas had been mentioned today. Melissa had suddenly dragged him into the conversation and now Jemima had done the same. She knew him, of course. She’d met him a few times and taken messages from him. But why was she mentioning him now?
‘He came in the day before,’ Jemima continued, cheerfully. ‘He wanted to see you. After his meeting with Charles.’
‘I’m sorry, Jemima.’ I tried to take this slowly. ‘You must be making a mistake. Andreas wasn’t in England that week. He was in Crete.’
‘He did look very tanned but I’m not making a mistake. It was a horrible week for me and I sort of remember everything that happened. He came in on Thursday at about three o’clock.’
‘And he saw Charles?’
‘That’s right.’ She looked perplexed. ‘I hope I haven’t done something wrong. He didn’t say not to tell you.’
But he hadn’t told me himself. Quite the opposite. We’d had our big reunion dinner. He had said he was in Crete.
I wanted to leave Andreas out of this. I went back to Charles. ‘There’s no way he’d want to lose you,’ I said. I wasn’t really talking to her. I was talking to myself, trying to work it out. And it was true. I could easily see Charles losing his temper in the way she’d described – but not with her. Jemima had been his third secretary in as many years and I know he liked her. There had been Olivia who’d got on his nerves. And Cat who was always late. Third time lucky – that was what he’d said. Jemima was efficient and hard-working. She made him laugh. How could he have changed his mind so suddenly?
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘He’d had a bad couple of weeks. When all the reviews came out for that book, The One-Armed Juggler, he was really upset and I know he wasn’t too happy about Magpie Murders either. He was worried about his daughter. Honestly, Susan, I was doing everything I could to help but he just needed someone to shout at and I was the one who happened to be in the room. Did Laura have her baby?’
‘Yes,’ I said, although actually I didn’t know. ‘I haven’t heard if it’s a boy or a girl.’
‘Well, send good wishes from me.’
We talked a little more. Jemima was working part-time, helping her mother who was a solicitor. She was thinking about spending the winter in Verbier. She was a keen snowboarder and thought she could get work as a chalet girl. But I didn’t really listen to what she was saying. I wanted to telephone Andreas. I wanted to know why he had lied to me.
It was just as we were separating that another thought struck me. I was replaying something she had said to me. ‘You mentioned that Charles wasn’t happy with Magpie Murders,’ I said. ‘What was the problem?’
‘I don’t know. He didn’t say. But he was definitely upset about something. I thought maybe it wasn’t any good.’
‘But he hadn’t read it yet.’
‘Hadn’t he?’ She sounded surprised.
She was anxious to be on her way but I stopped her. None of this was making any sense. Alan had delivered the new book after Jemima had left. He had given it to Charles at the Ivy Club on Thursday, 27 August, the same day – it now turned out – Andreas had visited him at Cloverleaf Books. I had got back on the twenty-eighth and had found a copy of the manuscript waiting for me. We had both read it over the weekend – the same weekend Alan died. So what could Charles have been unhappy about?
‘Charles was only given the book after you’d left,’ I said.
‘No. That’s not true. It came in the post.’
‘When?’
‘On Tuesday.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I opened it.’
I stared at her. ‘Did you see the title?’
‘Yes. It was on the front page.’
‘Was the book complete?’
That confused her. ‘I don’t know, Susan. I just gave it to Charles. He was very pleased to have it but he didn’t say anything afterwards and anyway a few days later the coffee thing happened and that was that.’
There were people swirling past. A voice boomed out over the tannoys, announcing the departure of a train. I thanked Jemima, gave her a brief hug and hurried off to find a taxi.
Cloverleaf Books