‘I’m not surprised. He borrowed lots of things from her, you know. Names. Places. It was almost like a game. I’m sure he did it quite deliberately but when I was reading the books, I’d find all sorts of references buried in the text. I’m quite certain he was doing it on purpose and I did sometimes think of writing to him, to ask him what he was up to.’ Prichard smiled one last time. He was too good-natured to accuse Alan of plagiarism, although it was a strange echo of my conversation with Donald Leigh.
We shook hands. I went back to the office, closed my door, and took the manuscript out to examine it one more time.
He was right. Magpie Murders pays quiet homage to Agatha Christie at least half a dozen times. For example, Sir Magnus Pye and his wife stay at the Hotel Genevieve in Cap Ferrat. There’s a villa in The Murder on the Links that has the same name. The Blue Boar is the pub in Bristol where Robert Blakiston is involved in a fight. But it also appears in St Mary Mead, home of Miss Marple. Lady Pye and Jack Dartford have lunch at Carlotta’s, which seems to have been named after the American actress in Lord Edgware Dies. There’s a joke, of sorts, on page 124. Fraser fails to notice a dead man on the three-fifty train from Paddington, an obvious reference to the 4.50 From Paddington. Mary Blakiston lives in Sheppard’s Farm. Dr James Sheppard is the narrator of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, which is set in King’s Abbott, a village that is also mentioned on page 62, which is where old Dr Rennard is buried.
For that matter, the entire mechanism of Magpie Murders, the use of the old nursery rhyme, deliberately imitates a device that Christie used many times. She liked children’s verse. One Two Buckle my Shoe, Five Little Pigs, Ten Little Indians (And Then There Were None as it later became), Hickory Dickory Dock – all of them appear in her work. You would have thought that any writer whose work has a similarity to an author much better known than himself would do everything he could to disguise the fact. Alan Conway, in his own peculiar way, seems to do the exact opposite. What exactly was going on in his mind when he put these obvious signposts in? Or to put it another way, what exactly were they pointing to?
Not for the first time, I got the sense that he had been trying to tell me something, that he hadn’t just written the Atticus Pünd mysteries to entertain people. He had created them for a purpose that was slowly becoming clear.
The road to Framlingham
The following Friday, I drove back to Suffolk for Alan Conway’s funeral. Neither me nor Charles had been invited and it was unclear who actually was making the arrangements: James Taylor, Claire Jenkins or Sajid Khan. I’d been tipped off by my sister who had read about it in the local newspaper and emailed me with the time and the place. She told me that the funeral was being conducted by the Reverend Tom Robeson, vicar of Saint Michael’s Church, and Charles and I decided to drive up together. We took my car. I was going to stop a little longer.
Andreas had been staying with me all week and he was annoyed that I wasn’t going to be around at the weekend. But I needed time alone. The whole question of Crete was hanging over us and, although we hadn’t discussed it again, I knew he was waiting for an answer that I wasn’t yet ready to give. Anyway, I couldn’t stop thinking about Alan’s death. I was convinced that another few days in Framlingham would lead me both to the discovery of the missing chapters and, more broadly, the truth of what had happened at Abbey Grange. I was quite sure that the two were related. Alan must have been killed because of something in his book. It might well be that if I could find out who had killed Sir Magnus Pye, I’d know who had killed him. Or vice versa.
The funeral started at three. Charles and I left London just after midday and from the very start I knew it was a mistake. We should have gone by train. The traffic was horrible and Charles looked awkward in the low-slung seat of my MGB. I felt uneasy myself and was wondering why until it dawned on me (just as we hit the M25) that the two of us had always had a face-to-face relationship. That is, I would meet him in his office and he would be on one side of the desk and I would be on the other. We would eat together, facing each other in restaurants. We were often on opposite sides of the conference table. But here we were, unusually, side-by-side and I was simply less familiar with his profile. Being so near to him was also peculiar. Of course, we’d been in taxis together and occasionally on trains, but somehow my little classic car brought us much closer than I would have liked. I had never noticed how unhealthy his skin looked; how years of shaving had scraped the life out of his cheeks and neck. He was dressed in a dark suit with a formal shirt and I was slightly fascinated by his Adam’s apple, which seemed to be constrained, bulging over his black tie. He was going back to London on his own and I rather wished I’d been a bit less forward with my invitation and had allowed him to do the same both ways.
Still, we chatted pleasantly enough once we’d left the worst of the traffic behind us. I was more relaxed by the time we hit the A12 and picked up speed. I mentioned that I’d met Mathew Prichard, which amused him, and that allowed me to ask him, once again, about his dinner at the Ivy Club and in particular about the argument concerning the title, Magpie Murders. I didn’t want him to feel that I was interrogating him and I still wasn’t sure why that last conversation meant so much to me.
Charles was also puzzled by my interest. ‘I told you I didn’t like the title,’ he said, simply. ‘I thought it was too similar to Midsomer Murders on TV.’
‘You asked him to change it.’
‘Yes.’
‘And he refused.’
‘That’s right. He got quite angry about it.’
I reminded him of what Alan had said, the four words he had spoken just before the waiter had dropped the plates. I’m not having the— Did he know what Alan had been about to say?
‘No. I can’t remember, Susan. I have no idea.’
‘Did you know that he thought up the title years ago?’
‘I didn’t. How do you know?’
In fact Mathew Prichard had overheard Alan telling him exactly that. ‘I think he mentioned it to me once,’ I lied.
We didn’t talk about Alan much more after that. Neither of us was looking forward to the funeral. Well, of course, you never do – but in Alan’s case we were only going out of a sense of obligation although I was interested to know who would be there. I’d actually called James Taylor that morning. We were going to have dinner later that evening at the Crown Hotel. I also wondered if Melissa Conway would show up. It had been several years since I had met her and, after what Andreas had said, I was keen to see her again. The three of them together at Woodbridge School – where Atticus Pünd had begun.
We drove in silence for about twenty minutes but then, just after we had entered the county of Suffolk, a sign helpfully informing us that was what we’d done, Charles suddenly announced: ‘I’m thinking of stepping aside.’