‘It was Lady Pye in the car,’ Pünd told him. ‘She had just returned from London.’
‘Well, I’m sorry I had to leave her to it. It must have been horrible for her. But all I wanted to do was get away. That was my only thought.’
‘Mr Blakiston, do you have any idea who may have been in the house with Sir Magnus Pye when you visited?’
‘How could I possibly know? I didn’t hear anyone. I didn’t see anyone.’
‘Could it have been a woman?’
‘Curiously, that was my thought. If he was having a secret assignation, or whatever you might want to call it, he might have behaved the same way.’
‘Are you aware that your son is amongst the suspects who are believed to have killed Sir Magnus?’
‘Robert? Why? That’s madness. He had no reason to kill him. In fact – I’ve told you – he always looked up to Sir Magnus. The two of them were thick as thieves.’
‘But he has precisely the same motivation as yourself. He could have held Sir Magnus responsible for the death of both his brother and his mother.’ Pünd raised a hand before Blakiston could answer. ‘I just find it puzzling that you did not come forward with the information that you have given me now. You say that you did not kill him and yet by remaining silent you have allowed the real killer to remain undetected. The matter of the bicycle, for example, is of great importance.’
‘Maybe I should have come forward,’ Blakiston replied. ‘But I knew it would go badly for me, like it always has. The truth of it is, I wish I’d never gone near the place. Sometimes you read books about houses that have a curse. I’ve always thought that was a lot of nonsense but I’d believe it about Pye Hall. It killed my wife and my child and if you tell the police what I’ve told you, I’ll probably end up being hanged.’ He smiled mirthlessly. ‘And then it will have killed me.’
2
Pünd barely spoke on the way back and James Fraser knew better than to interrupt his thoughts. He handled the Vauxhall expertly, pushing through the various gear changes and holding the middle of the road as the sun set and the shadows closed in on all sides. It was the only time he ever felt completely in control, when he was behind the wheel. They had taken the Aust ferry across the River Severn, sitting together in silence as the Welsh coast slipped away behind them. Fraser was hungry. He’d had nothing to eat since the morning. They sold sandwiches on the ferry but they were none too appetising and anyway, Pünd didn’t like food in the car.
They reached the other side and drove through the Gloucester countryside, the same route that Blakiston would have taken to see Sir Magnus Pye. Fraser hoped to be in Saxby-on-Avon by seven o’clock, in time for dinner.
Eventually, they reached Bath and began to follow the road that would bring them to Pye Hall, with the valley, now quite dark, stretching out on their left.
‘Gold!’ Pünd hadn’t spoken for so long that Fraser started, hearing his voice.
‘I’m sorry?’ he asked.
‘The fool’s gold concealed by Sir Magnus Pye. I am convinced that everything revolves around it.’
‘But fool’s gold isn’t worth anything.’
‘Not to you, James. Not to me. That is exactly the point.’
‘It killed Tom Blakiston. He tried to get it out of the lake.’
‘Ah yes. The lake, you know, has been a dark presence in this tale, as in the stories of King Arthur. The children played beside the lake. One of them died in the lake. And Sir Magnus’s silver, that too was concealed in the lake.’
‘You know, Pünd. You’re not making a lot of sense.’
‘I think of King Arthur and dragons and witches. In this story there was a witch and a dragon and a curse that could not be lifted …’
‘I take it you know who did it.’
‘I know everything, James. I had only to make the connections and it all became very clear. Sometimes, you know, it is not the physical clues that lead to the solution of the crime. The words spoken by the vicar at a funeral or a scrap of paper burned in a fire – they suggest one thing but then they lead to quite another. The room that is locked at the Lodge House. Why was it locked? We think we have the answer but a moment’s thought will assure us we are wrong. The letter addressed to Sir Magnus. We know who wrote it. We know why. But again, we are misled. We have to think. It is all conjecture but soon we see that there can be no other way.’
‘Did Matthew Blakiston help you?’
‘Matthew Blakiston told me everything I need to know. It was he who started all this.’
‘Really? What did he do?’
‘He killed his wife.’
Crouch End, London
Annoying, isn’t it?
I got to the end of the manuscript on Sunday afternoon and rang Charles Clover immediately. Charles is my boss, the CEO of Cloverleaf Books, publishers of the Atticus Pünd series. My call went straight to voicemail.
‘Charles?’ I said. ‘What happened to the last chapter? What exactly is the point of giving me a whodunnit to read when it doesn’t actually say who did it? Can you call me back?’
I went down to the kitchen. There were two empty bottles of white wine in the bedroom and tortilla crumbs on the duvet. I knew I’d been indoors too long but it was still cold and damp outside and I couldn’t be bothered to go out. There was nothing decent to drink in the house so I opened a bottle of raki that Andreas had brought back from his last trip to Crete, poured myself a glass and threw it back. It tasted like all foreign spirits do after they’ve passed through Heathrow. Wrong. I’d brought the manuscript down with me and I went through it again, trying to work out how much might be missing. The last section would have been called ‘A Secret Never to be Told’, which was certainly appropriate, given the circumstances. Since Pünd had announced that he’d already worked out the solution, it could only have had two or maybe three sections. Presumably, he would gather the suspects, tell them the truth, make an arrest, then go home and die. I knew that Alan Conway had wanted to end the series for a while but it had still come as an unpleasant surprise to find that he had done exactly that. The brain tumour struck me as a slightly unoriginal way to dispatch his main character but it was also unarguable, which I suppose is why he had chosen it. I have to admit that if I shed a tear, it was more for our future sales figures.
So who killed Sir Magnus Pye?
I had nothing better to do so I drew out a pad of paper and a pen and sat down in the kitchen with the typescript beside me. It even occurred to me that Charles might have done this on purpose, to test me. He’d be in the office when I got there on Monday – he was always the first to arrive – and he’d ask for the solution before he gave me the final pages. Charles does have a strange sense of humour. I’ve often seen him chuckling at jokes that nobody else in the room is aware that he’s made.