‘I’m sorry?’ I would have stared at him except that I was in the process of overtaking a monster four-axle lorry complete with tow-bar trailer, possibly on its way to Felixstowe.
‘I’ve been meaning to talk to you for some time, Susan – before this business with Alan. I suppose that’s the last nail in the coffin – if that’s not a horribly inappropriate expression, given the circumstances. But I’ll be sixty-five soon and Elaine has been on at me to slow down.’ Elaine, I may have mentioned, was his wife. I had only ever met her a couple of times and knew she had little interest in the publishing world. ‘And then, of course, there’s the new baby on its way. Becoming a grandfather certainly makes you think. It just might be the right time.’
‘How soon?’ I didn’t know what to say. The idea of Cloverleaf Books without Charles Clover was unthinkable. He was as much a part of the place as the wooden panelling.
‘Maybe next spring.’ He paused. ‘I was wondering if you might like to take over.’
‘What – me? As CEO?’
‘Why not? I’ll stay on as chairman so I’ll still have some involvement, but you’ll take over the day-to-day running. You know the business as well as anyone. And let’s face it, if I were to parachute someone in, I’m not sure you’d be happy working with them.’
He was right about that. I was hurtling through my forties and I was vaguely aware that the older I got, the more stuck in my ways I became. I suppose it’s something that happens in publishing, where people often stay in the same job for a very long time. I wasn’t good with new people. Could I do it? I knew about books but I had no real interest in the rest of it: employees, accountants, overheads, long-term strategy, the day-to-day running of a medium-sized business. At the same time, it occurred to me that this was my second job offer in less than a week. I could become CEO of Cloverleaf or I could run a small hotel in Agios Nikolaos. It was quite a choice.
‘Would I have complete autonomy?’ I asked.
‘Yes. We’d come to some sort of financial agreement, but effectively it would be your company.’ He smiled. ‘It changes your priorities, becoming a grandfather. Tell me you’ll consider it.’
‘Of course I will, Charles. It’s very kind of you to have such confidence in me.’
We stayed silent for the next ten or twenty miles. I’d misjudged the amount of time I needed to get out of London and it looked as if we were going to be late for the funeral. In fact we would have been if Charles hadn’t warned me to take a right, cutting round through Brandeston and so missing the roadworks that had held me up at Earl Soham the last time I had come through. That saved us a quarter of an hour and we pulled in to Framlingham comfortably at ten to three. I’d booked the same room at the Crown so I was able to leave the MGB in their car park. They were already setting up the front lounge for drinks after the funeral and we just had time to snatch a coffee, then hurried out the front entrance and across the road.
There was going to be a funeral …
The first words of Magpie Murders.
The irony wasn’t lost on me as I joined the other mourners who were assembling around the open grave.
The church of St Michael the Archangel, to give it its full name, is really much too large for the town in which it finds itself – but then the whole of Suffolk is studded with monumental buildings, locked in combat with the surrounding landscape as if each parish felt a need to bully its way into peoples’ lives. It feels uncomfortable – not just penned in but in the wrong place altogether. As you glance back through the cast-iron gates, it’s surprising to find yourself looking across a busy street to Mr Chan’s Chinese restaurant. There’s something odd about the cemetery too. It’s slightly raised up so that the dead bodies are actually buried above street level and the grass is too green, the graves clustered together in irregular lines with so much space around them that there’s no economy of scale. The cemetery is both too full and too empty at the same time and yet this was where Alan had chosen to be buried. I guessed that he had selected his plot with some care. It was right in the middle, between two Irish yews. Nobody would be able to miss it as they made their way to the church. His closest neighbours had died almost a century before him and the newly dug earth appeared as a fresh scar; as if it had no right to be there.
The weather had changed during the course of the day. The sun had been shining when we left London but now the sky was grey and there was a thin drizzle sweeping through the air. I understood why Alan had started Magpie Murders with a funeral. It had been a useful device, introducing all the main characters in a way that allowed him to consider them at leisure. I was able to do the same now. I was quite surprised how many of them I knew.
First there was James Taylor, wrapped in a black, designer raincoat with his damp hair sticking to his neck and looking for all the world as if he had just stepped out of a spy novel. He was doing his best to look sombre and composed but there was a smile about him that he could not control; not on his lips but in his eyes and the very way he stood. Sajid Khan was standing next to him, holding an umbrella. The two of them had arrived together. So James had inherited. He knew that Alan had failed to sign his most recent will and Abbey Grange and everything else was his. That was interesting. James saw me and nodded and I smiled back at him. I don’t know why, but I was really glad for him and it didn’t even bother me, the thought that Alan might have died at his hand.
Claire Jenkins was there. She was dressed in black and crying, really sobbing, with the tears coursing down her cheeks, helped on their way by the rain. She was holding a handkerchief but it must have been useless by now. A man stood next to her, awkwardly holding her arm with a gloved hand. I had not met him before but would easily remember him when I saw him again. For a start, he was black, the only black person to come to the funeral. He also had an extraordinary physical presence, very well built with solid arms and shoulders, a thick neck, intense eyes. I thought at first that he might be an ex-wrestler – he had the build – but then it occurred to me that he was more likely to be a policeman. Claire had told me that she worked for the Suffolk constabulary. Was this the elusive Detective Superintendent Locke whose enquiry had been parallel-tracking my own?