‘Thank you.’ I went over and poured two glasses of whisky. I was glad that Charles had made it easier for me. The two of us had known each other for a very long time and I was determined that we were going to be civilised. I still wasn’t sure what would happen next. I assumed that Charles would telephone Detective Superintendent Locke and turn himself in.
I gave him the drink and sat down opposite. ‘I think the tradition is that you tell me what happened,’ Charles said. ‘Although we can always do it the other way round – if you prefer.’
‘Aren’t you going to deny it?’
‘I can see it would be completely pointless. You’ve found the pages.’
‘You could have hidden them more carefully, Charles.’
‘I didn’t think you’d look. I must say, I was very surprised to find you in my office.’
‘I’m surprised to see you too.’
He raised his glass in an ironic toast. He was my boss, my mentor. A grandfather. The godfather. I couldn’t believe we were having this conversation. Nonetheless, I began … not quite at the beginning as I would have liked but I was finally wearing the hat of the detective, not the editor. ‘Alan Conway hated Atticus Pünd,’ I said. ‘He thought of himself as a great writer – a Salman Rushdie, a David Mitchell – someone people would take seriously, when all he was doing was churning out potboilers, murder mysteries which were making him a fortune but which he himself despised. That book that he showed you, The Slide – that was what he really wanted to write.’
‘It was dreadful.’
‘I know.’ Charles looked surprised, so I told him. ‘I found it in his office and I read it. I agree with you. It was derivative and it was rubbish. But it was about something. It was his view of society – how the old values of the literary classes had rotted away and how, without them, the rest of the country was slipping into some sort of moral and cultural abyss. It was his big statement. And he just couldn’t see that it would never be published and it would never be read because it was no good. He believed that was what he was born to write and he blamed Atticus Pünd for getting in the way and spoiling everything for him. Did you know that it was Melissa Conway who first suggested he should write a detective novel?’
‘No. She never told me that.’
‘It’s one of the reasons he divorced her.’
‘Those books made him a fortune.’
‘He didn’t care. He had a million pounds. Then he had ten million pounds. He could have had a hundred million pounds. But he didn’t have what he wanted which was respect, the imprimatur of the great writer. And as mad as it sounds, he wasn’t the only successful writer who felt that way. Look at Ian Fleming and Conan Doyle. Even A.A. Milne! Milne disliked Winnie the Pooh because he was so successful. But I think the big difference is that Alan hated Pünd from the very start. He never wanted to write any of the novels and when he became famous he couldn’t wait to get rid of him.’
‘Are you saying I killed him because he wouldn’t write any more?’
‘No, Charles.’ I dug into my handbag and took out a packet of cigarettes. To hell with office regulations. We were talking murder here. ‘We’ll get to why you killed him in a minute. But first of all I’m going to tell you what happened and also how you gave yourself away.’
‘Why don’t we start with that, Susan? I’d be interested to know.’
‘How you gave yourself away? The funny thing is I remember the moment exactly. It was like an alarm bell went off in my head but I didn’t make the connection. I suppose it was because I simply couldn’t imagine you as a killer. I kept thinking you were the last person to want Alan dead.’
‘Go on.’
‘Well, when I was in your office, the day we heard that Alan had committed suicide, you made a point of telling me that you hadn’t been to Framlingham for six months, not since March or April. It was an understandable lie. You were trying to distance yourself from the scene of the crime. But the trouble is, when we drove up to the funeral together, you warned me to take a different route to avoid the roadworks at Earl Soham. They’d only just started – Mark Redmond told me that – and the only way you could have known about them is if you’d been up more recently. You must have driven through Earl Soham on the Sunday morning when you killed Alan.’
Charles considered what I had said and smiled half-ruefully. ‘You know that’s exactly the sort of thing Alan would have put in one of his books.’
‘I thought so too.’
‘I’ll have a little more whisky if you don’t mind.’
I poured some for him and a little more for myself. I needed to keep a clear head but the Glenmorangie went very well with the cigarette. ‘Alan didn’t give you the manuscript of Magpie Murders at the Ivy Club,’ I said. ‘It actually came here in the post on Tuesday, 25 August. Jemima opened the envelope and saw it. You must have read it the same day.’
‘I finished it on Wednesday.’
‘You had dinner with Alan on Thursday evening. He was already in London because he had an afternoon appointment with his doctor – Sheila Bennett. Her initials were in his diary. I wonder if that was when she told him the bad news – that his cancer was terminal? I can’t imagine what must have been going through his head when he sat down with you, but of course it was a horrible evening for both of you. After dinner, Alan went back to his London flat and the following day he wrote you a letter, apologising for his bad behaviour. It was dated 28 August, which was the Friday, and my guess is that he dropped it in by hand. I’ll come back to that letter in a minute, but I want to get all my ducks in a row.’
‘Timelines, Susan. They always were your strong suit.’
‘You faked that business with the spilled coffee and fired Jemima on Friday morning. She was completely innocent but you were already planning to kill Alan. You were going to make it look like suicide but it would only work if you hadn’t read Magpie Murders. Jemima had actually handed you the novel a few days earlier. She’d probably seen Alan’s letter too. You knew I was coming back from Dublin on Friday afternoon and it was absolutely essential that she and I shouldn’t meet. As far as I was concerned, you would be at home over the weekend, reading Magpie Murders. The same as me. It was your alibi. But what mattered just as much was that you should have no reason to kill Alan.’
‘You still haven’t told me the reason.’