‘I knew absolutely nothing about it. He’d never told me and he certainly didn’t mention it on Thursday night. We had dinner. He gave me the manuscript. He was excited! He said it was his best work.’
I hadn’t been there and I’m writing this after the event, but this is what Charles told me had happened. Alan Conway had promised to deliver Magpie Murders by the end of the year and, unlike some writers I’ve worked with, he was always very prompt. The dinner had been planned a few weeks before and it was no coincidence, incidentally, that it had been arranged while I was away. Alan and I didn’t get on for reasons I’ll come to. He had met Charles at the Ivy, not the restaurant but a private, members only club just off Cambridge Circus. There’s a piano bar on the first floor and a restaurant above and all the windows have stained glass so you can’t see in – or, for that matter, out. Quite a few celebrities go there and it’s exactly the sort of place that Alan would have enjoyed. Charles had booked his usual table on the left of the door with a wall of bookshelves behind him. The scene couldn’t have been better staged if it had been in a theatre. In fact, the St Martin’s Theatre and the Ambassadors which had, between them, shown The Mousetrap for God knows how many years, were both down the road.
The two of them started with large martini cocktails, which The Club does very well. They talked about general stuff: family and friends, London, Suffolk, the book trade, a bit of gossip, what was selling, what wasn’t. They chose their food and because Alan liked expensive wine, Charles flattered him by ordering a bottle of Gevrey-Chambertin Grand Cru, most of which Alan drank. I could imagine him becoming louder and more loquacious as the meal went on. He always did have a tendency to drink too much. The first course arrived and it was after they had finished it that Alan produced the manuscript from the leather satchel he always carried.
‘I was very surprised,’ Charles said. ‘I wasn’t expecting it for at least another couple of months.’
‘You know that my copy is incomplete,’ I said. ‘It’s missing the last chapters.’
‘Mine too. I was just working on it when you came in.’
‘Did he say anything?’ I was wondering if Alan had done this on purpose. Perhaps he wanted Charles to guess the ending before it was actually revealed.
Charles thought back. ‘No. He just told me how good he thought it was and handed it over.’
That was interesting. Alan Conway must have believed all the chapters were there. Otherwise, surely, he would have explained what he was doing.
Charles had been delighted to receive the new work and made all the right noises. He told Alan he would read it over the weekend. Unfortunately, after that, the evening had taken a turn for the worse.
‘I don’t know what happened,’ Charles told me. ‘We were talking about the title. I wasn’t sure I liked it – and you know how touchy Alan could be. Maybe it was foolish of me to bring it up just then. And while we were talking, there was a rather odd incident. A waiter dropped a handful of plates. I suppose it could happen anywhere but The Club is such a quiet place that it was almost like a bomb going off and Alan actually got up and remonstrated with the waiter. He’d been on edge all evening, I had no idea why. But if he was ill and already thinking of doing away with himself, I suppose it’s hardly surprising.’
‘How did the meal end?’ I asked.
‘Alan calmed down a bit and we had coffee but he was still out of sorts. You know how he could be after a few glasses of wine. Remember that ghastly Specsavers event? Anyway, as he was getting into his taxi, he said there was a radio interview he wanted to pull.’
‘Simon Mayo,’ I said. ‘Radio Two.’
‘Yes. Next Friday. I tried to talk him out of it. You don’t want to let these media people down as you never know if they’ll invite you back. But he wasn’t having any or it.’ Charles turned the letter in his hands. I wondered if he should even be touching it. Wasn’t it evidence? ‘I suppose I should telephone the police,’ he said. ‘They’ll need to know about this.’
I left him to make the call.
Alan Conway
I was the one who discovered Alan Conway.
He was introduced to me by my sister, Katie, who lives in Suffolk and who sent her children to the local independent school. Alan was an English teacher there and had just finished a novel, a whodunnit called Atticus Pünd Investigates. I’m not sure how he found out that she knew me – I suppose she must have told him – but he asked her if she would show it to me. My sister and I have very different lives but we’ve stayed close and I agreed to take a look as a favour to her. I didn’t think it would be any good because books that come in this way, through the back door, seldom are.
I was pleasantly surprised.
Alan had captured something of ‘the golden age’ of British whodunnits with a country house setting, a complicated murder, a cast of suitably eccentric characters and a detective who arrived as an outsider. The book was set in 1946, just after the war, and although he was light with the period detail, he had still managed to capture something of the feelings of that time. Pünd was a sympathetic character and the fact that he had come out of the concentration camps – we eventually cut back on some of this – gave him a certain depth. I liked his Germanic mannerisms, particularly his obsession with his book, The Landscape of Criminal Investigation, which would become a regular feature. Setting the story in the forties also allowed for a gentler pace: no mobile phones, computers, forensics, no instant information. I had a few issues. Some of the writing was too clever. It often felt as if he was fighting for effect rather than simply telling the story. It was too long. But by the time I had come to the end of the manuscript, I was certain that I was going to publish it, my first commission for Cloverleaf Books.
And then I met the author.