Wesley & Khan, Framlingham
I drove back to Framlingham, parked the car in the main square and walked the rest of the way. The town really was a bit of a mishmash. At the far end there was a well-preserved castle surrounded by swathes of grass and a moat, a perfect fantasy of England as it might have been at the time of Shakespeare, complete with a pub and a duck pond nearby. But another fifty yards and the charm came to an abrupt end with Saxmundham Road, wide and modern, stretching into the distance, a Gulf garage one side and an assortment of very ordinary houses and bungalows on the other. Wesley & Khan, the firm of solicitors used by Alan Conway, occupied a mustard-coloured building on the edge of the town. It was a house, not an office, despite the signage beside the front door.
I wasn’t sure if Mr Khan would see me without an appointment but I walked in anyway. I needn’t have worried. The place was quite dead, with a girl reading a magazine behind the reception desk and a young man staring vacantly at a computer screen opposite. The building was old with uneven walls and floorboards that creaked. They’d added grey carpets and strip lighting but it still looked like somebody’s home.
The girl rang through. Mr Khan would see me. I was shown upstairs and into what must have been the master bedroom, now converted into a no-nonsense office looking out onto the garage. Sajid Khan – his full name was on the door – rose up from behind a reproduction antique desk with a green leather top and brass handles. It was the sort of desk you chose if you wanted to make a point. He was a large, effusive man in his forties, bullish in his movements and in the way he spoke.
‘Come in! Come in! Please take a seat. Have you been offered tea?’
He had very black hair and thick eyebrows that almost met. He was wearing a sports jacket with patches on the elbows and what might well be a club tie. It seemed unlikely that he had been born in Framlingham and I wondered what had brought him to such a backwater and, for that matter, how he fitted in with Mr Wesley. There was a photograph frame beside him, one of those modern, digital ones with the image changing every thirty seconds, either sliding or corkscrewing into itself. Before I’d even sat down, I’d been introduced to his wife, two daughters, his dog, and an elderly woman in a hijab who might have been his mother. I don’t know how he lived with it. It would have driven me mad.
I declined the offer of tea and sat down in front of the desk. He took his place and I briefly explained why I was there. His demeanour changed at the mention of Alan’s name.
‘I found him, you know,’ he told me. ‘I went round there on Sunday morning. Alan and I were having a meeting. Have you been out to the house? And although you may not believe it, I must tell you that I had a feeling something was wrong, even as I drove up. That was before I saw him – and to start with I had no idea what I was looking at. I thought someone had thrown some old clothes onto the lawn, really I did! Then I realised it was him. I knew at once he was dead. I did not go near! I called the police at once.’
‘You were quite close to him, I understand.’ Sajid Khan was SK in the diary. The two of them played tennis together, and he had gone over to the house on a Sunday.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’d read many of the Atticus Pünd novels before I met him and you could certainly say I was a great admirer of his work. As things turned out, we did a lot of business with him and I’m very happy to say that I got to know him well. In fact, I would go so far as to say that – yes, we were definitely friends.’
‘When did you last see him?’
‘About a week ago.’
‘Did you have any idea he was planning to kill himself?’
‘Absolutely none at all. Alan was in this office, sitting exactly where you are now. We were actually talking about the future and he seemed to be in perfectly good spirits.’
‘He was ill.’
‘So I understand. But he never mentioned it to me, Miss Ryeland. He called me on Saturday evening. I must have been one of the last people who spoke to him while he was still alive.’
It would have been hard to speak to him if he wasn’t, I thought. Always the editor. ‘May I ask what you talked about, Mr Khan? And why were you visiting him on a Sunday? I know it’s not my business …’ I smiled sympathetically, inviting him to take me into his confidence.
‘Well, I suppose it can’t hurt telling you now. There had been certain changes to his domestic arrangements and Alan had decided to rethink his will. I’d actually drawn up a new draft and I took it over to show it to him. He was going to sign it on Monday.’
‘He was going to cut out James Taylor.’
He frowned. ‘Forgive me if I do not go into the details. I don’t think it would be appropriate …’
‘It’s all right, Mr Kahn. He wrote to us at Cloverleaf Books. He actually told us he was going to take his own life. And he mentioned that James was no longer in his will.’
‘Again, I don’t think it’s my place to comment on any communication he may have had with you.’ Kahn paused, then let out a sigh. ‘I will be honest with you and say that I did find that side of Alan quite hard to fathom.’
‘You mean his sexuality?’
‘No. Of course not. That’s not what I meant at all! But having a partner who was quite so much younger than him.’ Kahn was getting himself into difficulties, trying to balance his different prejudices. A picture of him, arm in arm with his wife, slid across the frame. ‘I knew Mrs Conway quite well, you know.’
I had met Melissa Conway a few times at publishing events. I remembered her as a quiet, fairly intense woman. She always gave the impression that she knew something terrible was about to happen but didn’t want to put it in words. ‘How did you know her?’ I asked.
‘Well, actually, she introduced Alan to us. When they bought their first house in Suffolk – that was in Orford – she came to us for the conveyancing. Of course, very sadly, they parted company a few years later. We weren’t involved in the divorce, but we did act for Alan when he bought Abbey Grange – or Ridgeway Hall as it was known then. He actually changed the name.’
‘Where is she now?’
‘She remarried. I believe she lives near Bath.’
I played back what he had just told me. Sajid Khan had drawn up the new will and taken it round on Sunday morning. But when he had got there … ‘He never signed it!’ I exclaimed. ‘Alan died before he could sign the new will.’
‘That is correct. Yes.’
The unsigned will is one of those tropes of detective fiction that I’ve come to dislike, only because it’s so overused. In real life, a lot of people don’t even bother to make a will but then we’ve all managed to persuade ourselves that we’re going to live for ever. They certainly don’t go round the place threatening to change it in order to give someone the perfect excuse to come and kill them.