‘What was I going to do with Atticus Pünd in Japanese? And then there were the manuscripts, the proof copies, the notepads, all the different drafts. I actually had someone coming in a van from Ipswich to take it all to the local dump. But then two things happened. First of all, I got a call from some university in America. They said they were very sorry to hear of Alan’s death and that they were interested in acquiring his archive. Note the word “acquiring”! They didn’t say they would pay, at least not in so many words, but they did make it clear that all his old manuscripts and all the rest of it had a value.

‘And then – this was before probate came through and I was very short of cash – I decided to sell some of Alan’s books. I chose some of his Agatha Christies. He had the whole lot, you know. So I took a handful into a second-hand bookshop in Felixstowe and I was very lucky that the owner was honest because he told me that they were all first editions and they were worth a small fortune! The one about Roger Ackroyd was worth two thousand on its own. And there was me expecting to get enough money for fish and chips … and I’m not talking about the sort of fish and chips you get here!’

‘So you’ve still got everything,’ I said.

‘I’ve told the university to make an offer. I’m still waiting. But I kept everything else – the whole lot of it! I was meaning to go through it all and work out what was what, but I’m a lazy bastard and I still haven’t got round to it. Anyway, after you rang, I pulled out everything I could find relating to Atticus Pünd Takes the Case. That was the right book, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re lucky that everything is labelled. Alan was like that. If anyone wrote anything about him in the newspapers, he cut it out and stuck it in a book. He was quite an expert on himself.’ He laughed gleefully. ‘I’d like to have it all back, if you don’t mind. You might be looking at my old age pension.’

It was hard to imagine James Taylor ever being old.

‘Did he talk to you about the murder?’

‘Alan never talked to me about his books, even when he put me in them. But, like I say, he was in a much better mood when he came home and I’ll tell you one thing he did say: “They’ve got the wrong man.” He was quite smug about it.’

‘He was talking about Stefan Codrescu.’

‘I don’t know who that is.’

‘He was the man who was arrested.’

‘Well, I think that’s exactly what Alan meant. He actually knew the detective in charge of the investigation and he was quite convinced he’d ballsed it all up.’

‘But he didn’t tell you who the killer was.’

‘No. I’m sorry.’

‘You’d have thought if he really knew who murdered Frank Parris, he’d have said. Especially since Frank was his friend.’

James grimaced. ‘That’s not necessarily true. I was fond of Alan, but he could be a complete tosser. He was one of the most selfish men I’ve ever met. I don’t think he gave a damn about Frank Parris or whoever killed him.’ He prodded his fork in my direction. ‘Anyway, it’s quite possible he didn’t know. Do you?’

‘No,’ I admitted.

‘But you’ll find out.’ He smiled. ‘I must say, Susan, it is funny the two of us here, together again. And the ghost of Alan still hovering over us. I wonder if he’ll ever leave us alone?’ He picked up his glass. ‘To Alan!’

We clinked glasses.

But I didn’t drink.

Cecily Treherne

It was late when I got back to Ladbroke Grove but there was no way I was going to sleep. I upended the plastic bag that James had given me and allowed the contents to spill out onto the bed. There was a full typescript of Atticus Pünd Takes the Case with annotations in the margins, the whole thing bound in a plastic cover, several notebooks, half a dozen photographs, some drawings, newspaper clippings about the murder at Branlow Hall, including the pieces from the East Anglian Daily Times I had already read, various computer printouts and three memory sticks. Looking at this collection, I was quite certain that the answers I was looking for must be in front of me. Who had killed Frank Parris and where was Cecily Treherne? This was evidence that even the police hadn’t seen. But where was I to begin?

The manuscript was, as far as I could see, a second draft and it might have been of interest to a keen-eyed archivist. For example, the first sentence of the book originally read: Tawleigh-on-the-Water was a tiny village that consisted of little more than a harbour and two narrow streets surrounded by no fewer than four different stretches of water. Alan had circled three words, tiny, little and narrow, and I would have done the same. There are just too many descriptions relating to smallness in one sentence. He then crossed out the whole paragraph and used it later on in the first chapter, opening it instead in the kitchen of Clarence Keep, or Clarence Court, as it was originally called.

And so on. There was nothing here that would have been of any interest to the world at large and it certainly had no relevance to the murder.

The notebooks were similarly academic. I recognised Alan’s neat, cramped handwriting, the pale blue ink that he favoured. There were dozens of pages filled with questions, ideas, crossings-out, arrows.

Algernon knows about will.

Blackmails him?

Jason had one-night stand with Nancy.

￡60

Knickers stolen from drawer.

Some of the names would change but most of these ideas would turn up in one form or another. He had drawn detailed floor plans of Branlow Hall, which he had used as the basis of the Moonflower Hotel in his book, simply lifting it up brick by brick and depositing it in Devon. As with all of his books, the village where the crime takes place does not really exist, but looking at the maps, he seemed to have imagined it somewhere just down the coast from Appledore.

The computer printouts mainly came from the writer’s best friend, Wikipedia, and included articles about famous diamonds, cinema in the UK, the growth of St-Tropez, the Homicide Act of 21 March 1957, and other plot strands that I recognised from the novel.

One of the memory sticks contained images of the people he had met. I recognised Lawrence and Pauline Treherne, Lisa and Cecily, Aiden MacNeil and Derek. Another picture showed a short, stocky woman with cropped hair and narrow eyes wearing a black dress and a white apron. I assumed this must be Natasha M?lk, the Estonian maid who had found the body. Another man – possibly Lionel Corby – had been snapped posing outside the spa. There were also pictures of the building: room 12, the stable block, the bar, the lawn where the wedding had taken place. It gave me an uneasy feeling to recognise that, from the very start, I had been following in his footsteps.

James had added one old-fashioned photograph, actually printed on paper, and it caught my eye at once because Alan was in it. He was sitting between two people in what looked like an expensive restaurant, possibly in London. A very much younger James was on one side. A man with curly grey hair and a deep suntan, dressed in a velvet jacket, was on the other. This had to be Frank Parris. Had James been with Frank or with Alan that night? It was hard to be sure. The three of them were close together, smiling.

I had assumed that the picture must have been taken by a waiter, but looking at it more closely, I realised that the camera was too low and too close. The table was laid for four and it was being held by the fourth member of the group. Could this have been Leo, the rent boy James had mentioned? Two men and two boys. It seemed quite possible.

Downstairs, I heard the front door open and close. Craig had got back from the theatre. I had only put on one bedside lamp and had drawn the curtains before I sat down, and it was when I found myself staying quite still and holding my breath that I realised I had done all this quite deliberately, so that no light would escape and there was no chance that I would be disturbed. I waited as Craig climbed the stairs. I heard a second door open and close. I let out a breath.

I turned my attention to the other memory sticks. I plugged the second one into my laptop. It contained interviews with Lawrence, with Pauline and with Lisa. Those weren’t the ones I was interested in, not right now. I took the last one and plugged it in. And there it was – exactly what I had hoped for.

Cecily Treherne.

I’d brought headphones and, feeling quite nervous, I plugged them in. I didn’t know if Cecily was dead or alive, but she was the reason I was here and I had felt her ghost hovering over me from the moment I had arrived in Suffolk. Did I actually want to hear her voice? There was something quite macabre in the thought that this might be all that remained of her. For that matter, it had been quite a few years since I had heard Alan Conway and I certainly had no desire to commune with him beyond the grave. But this was the interview I most needed to hear. There was no way I was going to wait until the morning.

I moved the cursor and hit PLAY.