Claire Jenkins was not wearing a hat with three feathers. Her house wasn’t unpleasantly modern. In short, it was nothing like the building in Winsley Terrace that Alan had described. It was admittedly quite small, modest compared to some of the other properties in Orford, but it was cosy and tasteful and quite lacking in any religious iconography. She herself was a short, rather pugnacious woman dressed in a turtleneck jersey and jeans that didn’t flatter her. Unlike Clarissa Pye, she didn’t colour her hair, which was lost in the dead man’s land between brown and grey. It swept down in a fringe over eyes that were tired and filled with grief. She looked nothing like her brother – and the first thing I noticed when she showed me into her living room was that she had none of his books on display. Maybe she had turned them face down in mourning. She had invited me at lunchtime but she didn’t offer me any lunch. She gave every impression of wanting to get rid of me as soon as possible.
‘I was shocked when I heard about Alan,’ she said. ‘He was three years younger than me and we had been close all our lives. He’s the reason I moved to Orford. I had no idea he’d been ill. He never told me about it. I saw James only a week ago, shopping in Ipswich, and he didn’t tell me either. I always got on very well with him, by the way, although I was very surprised when he turned up as Alan’s partner. We all were. I can’t think what my parents would have said if they’d still been alive – my father was a headmaster, you know – but they died a very long time ago. James never mentioned anything about Alan being ill. I wonder if he even knew?’
When Atticus Pünd interviews people, they usually make sense. Perhaps it’s his skill as an interrogator but he manages to make them start at the beginning and answer his questions logically. Claire wasn’t like that. She talked in the way that someone with a punctured lung might breathe. The words came out in fits and starts and I had to concentrate to follow what she was saying. She was very upset. She told me that her brother’s death had knocked her for six. ‘What I can’t get over is that he didn’t reach out to me. We’d had our difficulties lately, but I’d have been happy to talk to him and if he was worried about something …’
‘He killed himself because of his illness,’ I said.
‘That’s what DS Locke told me. But there was no need to do anything quite so drastic. These days, there are so many sorts of palliative care. My husband had lung cancer, you know. The nurses were absolutely wonderful, the way they looked after him. I think he was happier in the last few months of his life than he’d ever been with me. He was the centre of attention. He liked that. I came to Orford after he died. It was Alan who brought me here. He said it would be nice if we were close. This house … I would never have been able to afford it if it hadn’t been for him. You really would have thought, after what I’d been through, that he would have confided in me. If he was really thinking of killing himself, why didn’t he let me know?’
‘Perhaps he was afraid you’d talk him out of it.’
‘I couldn’t have talked Alan out of anything. Or into it. We weren’t like that.’
‘You said you were close to him.’
‘Oh yes. I knew him better than anyone. There are so many things I could tell you about him. I’m surprised you never published his autobiography.’
‘He never wrote one.’
‘You could have got someone else to write it.’
I didn’t argue. ‘I’d be interested to know anything you could tell me,’ I said.
‘Would you?’ She leapt on my words. ‘Maybe I should write about him. I could tell you about our time at Chorley Hall when we were children. I’d like to do that, you know. I read the obituaries and they hardly described Alan at all.’
I tried to steer her towards the point. ‘James mentioned to me that you helped him with his work. He said that you typed up some of his manuscripts.’
‘That’s right. Alan always did the first draft by hand. He liked to use a fountain pen. He didn’t trust computers. He didn’t want to have all that technology between him and his work. He always said he preferred the intimacy of pen and ink. He said he felt closer to the page. I did his fan mail for him. People wrote him such lovely letters but he didn’t have time to answer them all. He taught me how to write in his voice. I would write the letters and he would sign them. And I also helped him with research: poisons and things like that. I was the one who introduced him to Richard Locke.’
It had been a Detective Superintendent Locke who had telephoned Charles with the news of Alan’s death.
‘I work for the Suffolk constabulary,’ Claire explained. ‘In Ipswich. We’re in Museum Street.’
‘Are you a police officer?’
‘I work in HR.’
‘Did you type Magpie Murders for him?’ I asked.
She shook her head. ‘I stopped after Gin and Cyanide. The thing is, you see, well, he never gave me anything. He was quite generous to me in some ways. He helped me to buy this house. He would take me out, and things like that. But after I’d done three of the books, I suggested that he might put me on … I don’t know … a salary. It seemed reasonable. I wasn’t asking for a great deal of money. I just thought I ought to be paid. Unfortunately I’d got it quite wrong because I saw at once that I’d upset him. He wasn’t mean. I’m not saying that. He just didn’t think it was right to employ me – because I was his sister. We didn’t exactly argue but after that he just typed the manuscripts himself. Or maybe he got James to help him. I don’t know.’
I told her about the missing chapters but she was unable to help me.
‘I didn’t read any of it. He never let me see it. I used to read all the books before they were published but after we argued he didn’t show them to me any more. Alan always was like that, you know. He was someone who was very easy to offend.’
‘If you do write about him, you should put all this down,’ I said. ‘The two of you grew up together. Did he always know he was going to be a writer? Why did he write whodunnits?’
‘Yes, I will. I’ll do exactly that.’ And then, in the blink of an eye, she came out with it. ‘I don’t think he killed himself.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I don’t!’ She blurted out the words as if she had wanted to from the moment I had arrived and couldn’t wait any longer. ‘I told DS Locke but he wouldn’t listen to me. Alan didn’t commit suicide. I don’t believe it for a minute.’
‘You think it was an accident?’
‘I think someone killed him.’
I stared at her. ‘Who would want to do that?’
‘There were plenty of people. There were people who were jealous of him and there were people who didn’t like him. Melissa, for one. She never forgave him for what he did to her and I suppose you can understand it. Leaving her for a young man. She was humiliated. And you should talk to his neighbour, John White. The two of them fell out over money. Alan talked to me about him. He said he was capable of anything. Of course, it may not have been someone who actually knew him. When you’re a famous writer, you always have stalkers. There was a time, not that long ago, when Alan got death threats. I know, because he showed them to me.’
‘Who were they from?’
‘They were anonymous. I could hardly bear to read them. The language in them was horrible. Swear words and obscenities. They were from some writer he’d met down in Devonshire, someone he was trying to help.’
‘Do you have any of them?’
‘They might have them in the police station. We had to go to the police in the end. I showed them to DS Locke and he said we should take them seriously but Alan had no idea who they’d come from and there was no way we could trace them. Alan loved life. Even if he was ill, he would have wanted to go on until the end.’