I didn’t call Andreas. I wanted to. But there was something else I had to do first.
The offices were closed by the time I got there but I had a key and let myself in, deactivated the alarms and climbed the stairs up to the first floor. I turned on the lights, but without anyone in there, the building still felt dark and oppressive, the shadows refusing to budge. I knew exactly where I was going. Charles’s office was never locked and I went straight in. There were the two armchairs in empty conference with Charles’s desk in front of me. The shelves with all his books, his awards, his photographs, were on one side. Bella’s basket was on the other, tucked next to a cabinet that contained bottles and glasses. How many times had I sat here, late into the evening, sipping Glenmorangie malt whisky, talking over the problems of the day? I was here now as an intruder and I had a sense that I was smashing everything that I had helped to build up over the past eleven years.
I walked over to the desk. I was in such a mood that if the drawers had been locked I wouldn’t have hesitated to break them open, antique or not. But Charles hadn’t taken even this measure of security. The drawers slid open eagerly in my hands to reveal contracts, cost reports, invoices, proofs, newspaper clippings, unwanted wires from old computers and mobile phones, photographs and, at the very bottom, clumsily concealed, a plastic folder containing about twenty sheets of paper. The first page was almost blank with a heading in capitals.
SEVEN: A SECRET NEVER TO BE TOLD
The missing chapters. They had been here all the time.
And in the end, the title had been absolutely true. The solution to the murder of Sir Magnus Pye had to be kept secret because of the way it related to the murder of Alan Conway. I thought I heard something. Had there been a creak on the stairs outside? I turned the page and began to read.
Atticus Pünd took one last walk around Saxby-on-Avon while James Fraser paid the bill at the Queen’s Arms. He had arranged to meet Detective Inspector Chubb – and two others – at the Bath police station in an hour’s time. He had not been here long but in a strange way he had come to know the village quite intimately. The church, the castle, the antique shop in the square, the bus shelter, the Queen’s Arms and the Ferryman … he could no longer see them separately. They had become the chessboard on which this particular game, surely his last, had been played.
It was his last game because he was dying. Atticus Pünd and Alan Conway were going out together. That was what this was all about. A writer and a character he hated, both heading towards their Reichenbach Falls.
It had all come to me at Paddington Station, the extraordinary moment that all of them must have felt – Poirot, Holmes, Wimsey, Marple, Morse – but which their authors had never fully explained. What was it like, for them? A slow process, like constructing a jigsaw? Or did it come in a rush, one last turn in a toy kaleidoscope when all the colours and shapes tumbled and twisted into each other, forming a recognisable image? That was what had happened to me. The truth had been there. But it had taken a final nudge for me to see it, all of it.
Would it have happened if I hadn’t met Jemima Humphries? I’ll never know for sure, but I think I would have got there in the end. There were little bits of information, red herrings that I’d had to get out of my head. For example, the television producer, Mark Redmond, hadn’t told me that he’d stayed at the Crown Hotel in Framlingham over the weekend. Why not? The answer was quite simple when I thought about it. When he’d talked to me, he’d deliberately made it seem that he was on his own. It was only the receptionist at the hotel who’d mentioned that he was with his wife. But suppose it wasn’t his wife? Suppose it was a secretary or a starlet? That would have been a good reason for a longer stay – and a good reason to lie about it. And then there was James Taylor. He really had been in London with friends. The photograph of John White and Alan on the tower? White had gone round to see Alan on that Sunday morning. No wonder he and his housekeeper had looked uncomfortable when I spoke to them. The two of them had argued about the lost investment. But it wasn’t White who had attempted to kill Alan. It was the other way round. Wasn’t that obvious? Alan had grabbed hold of him at the top of the tower and the two of them had grappled for a moment. That was what the photograph showed. It was actually Alan’s killer who had taken it.
I flicked through a few more pages. I’m not sure I particularly cared who had killed Sir Magnus Pye, not at that moment anyway. But I knew what I was looking for and, sure enough, there it was, in part two of the final chapter.
It took him a short time to write the letter.
Dear James,
By the time that you read this, it will all be finished. You will forgive me for not having spoken to you earlier, for not taking you into my confidence but I am sure that in time you will understand.
There are some notes which I have written and which you will find in my desk. They relate to my condition and to the decision that I have made. I want it to be understood that the doctor’s diagnosis is clear and, for me, there can be no possibility of reprieve. I have no fear of death. I would like to think that my name will be remembered.
‘What are you doing, Susan?
That was as far as I’d got when I heard the voice, coming from the door, and looked up to see Charles Clover standing there. So there had been someone on the stairs. He was wearing corduroy trousers and a baggy jersey with a coat hanging loosely open. He looked tired.
‘I’ve found the missing chapters,’ I said.
‘Yes. I can see that.’
There was a long silence. It was only half past six but it felt later. There was no sound of any traffic outside.
‘Why are you here?’ I asked.
‘I’m taking a few days off. I came to get some things.’
‘How’s Laura?’
‘She had a little boy. They’re going to call him George.’
‘That’s a nice name.’
‘I thought so.’ He moved into the room and sat down in one of the armchairs. I was standing behind his desk so it was as if our positions had been reversed. ‘I can explain to you why I hid the pages,’ Charles said. I knew that he had already started thinking up an explanation and that, whatever he said, it wouldn’t be true.
‘There’s no need to,’ I said. ‘I already know everything.’
‘Really?’
‘I know you killed Alan Conway. And I know why.’
‘Why don’t you sit down?’ He waved a hand towards the cabinet where he kept his drinks. ‘Would you like a glass of something?’