‘There was something else that Stefan said,’ I continued. ‘It made no sense at the time but I looked it up afterwards and it confirmed what I had suspected all along. Once again it relates to you, Aiden, and you’re not going to like it, but I wonder if you know anyway?’

‘What are you talking about?’ Aiden looked at me with poison in his eyes.

‘Stefan was saying how much he hated England, but then he added: “I could kill myself tomorrow and I would except for the one brightness in my life, the one dawn that gives me hope.” I wondered what he meant. At the same time, talking to him face-to-face, I knew he reminded me of someone.’ I couldn’t dress it up any more. I had to come out with it. ‘He’s Roxana’s father.’

‘No!’ A tortured cry from Aiden. He half rose from his chair and Andreas also got up, ready to protect me if he had to. On the other side of the room, Locke didn’t even move.

‘It’s a wicked lie. There’s no truth in it.’ Eloise took his hand.

‘How dare you—!’ Lawrence was spluttering, wanting to throw me out. But he didn’t because he knew I was right.

‘Aiden is fair-haired. Cecily was blonde. Roxana has black hair and she’s the spitting image of her father. Aiden told me that Cecily chose the name and I think she did so quite deliberately. She knew who the father was. Roxana is a very popular name in Romania. It means “brightness” or “dawn”.’ I went on quickly, wanting to get this part of it over with. ‘This is what happened. Lisa fired Stefan when he refused to have sex with her. And then she discovered that he was having sex with her sister, the same sister, incidentally, who had scarred her as a child. How did she feel about that? Wouldn’t it be a great revenge on both of them to kill a complete stranger and frame Stefan so that he went to prison for life? If Lisa had been in her office, she could easily have heard the phone call that Cecily made to the South of France. That’s what I’ve been thinking for a long time now. I was convinced that Lisa was behind both the crimes.’

‘Then you don’t know anything!’ Lisa snarled. ‘I didn’t kill anyone.’

‘I think we’ve all had quite enough,’ Lawrence said. ‘Detective Superintendent Locke, are you going to let her go on like this?’

Andreas cut in before he could reply. ‘Susan knows who killed Frank Parris,’ he said. He could have been a teacher once again, talking to a classroom full of boys. ‘If you sit down and let her finish, she’s going to tell you.’

The five of them – Lawrence and Pauline, Lisa, Aiden and Eloise, looked to each other. It was Aiden who made the decision for them. He sat down again. ‘Go on, then,’ he said. ‘But maybe you can get to the point. I think we’ve all had enough of this … speculation.’

For someone who had just been told that his daughter had been fathered by another man, he was surprisingly calm. But then I was sure he had always known.

‘It all begins with the book,’ I said. ‘Atticus Pünd Takes the Case. That’s what this has all been about. Cecily saw something in it and that’s why she had to disappear. The letter to Stefan that I mentioned just now – she wrote it after she had read the book.’

‘Did she tell him what she’d seen?’ Pauline asked.

‘Unfortunately not. She did say that she had always suspected who had killed Frank Parris, but it had been proved to her on the very first page. The question is, what page was she referring to? I assumed she meant the first page of Chapter One, but there’s nothing there. So maybe it was the author biography or the reviews or the chapter headings. I looked at them all. But actually, it was much simpler than that. It was the dedication. ‘For Frank and Leo: in remembrance’.

‘Why did Alan write that? Was it because they were both dead? Or could it actually mean something quite different? Frank, of course, was dead. But maybe Leo wasn’t and Alan was telling him that he remembered, that he knew who he was. Maybe it wasn’t a dedication at all. Maybe it was actually a warning.’

I let this sink in. Then I continued.

‘I never met Cecily and I wish I’d known her better because I’ve come to realise that her character is the key to everything that happened. When was she born, by the way? I’d imagine that it was sometime in November or December.’

‘It was November the twenty-fifth,’ Lawrence said. Then he added: ‘How did you know?’

‘That would make her a Sagittarius,’ I said. ‘And of course, astrology was very important to her. That was something that was impressed on me from the very start. Aiden told me that she started every day by reading her horoscope, but it was more than that. On the day of her wedding it told her to prepare for ups and downs and instead of just dismissing it with a smile or pretending she hadn’t read it, she became very upset. When she went down the aisle, she was wearing an astrological necklace. I’ve seen the photograph: three stars and an arrow. Sagittarius. We stopped in a pub on the way down from Norfolk – the Plough and Stars – and it was the name that made me realise what had been staring me in the face all along. Astrology pretty much defined Cecily’s life. Even her dog, Bear, was named after a constellation.’

Hearing its name mentioned, the dog thumped its tail once, lazily, against the floor.

‘But it goes further than that,’ I went on. ‘In his long email to me, Lawrence mentioned that Cecily was first drawn to Aiden because they were “compatible”. That’s a word you often find in astrological charts. He actually met Cecily on his birthday, when he was showing her round a flat, and we know that was the start of August 2005, which would make Aiden … ’

‘ … a Leo.’ Andreas completed the sentence.

‘Cecily would have known that Leo and Sagittarius go together very well. They’re both fire signs: they share the same values, the same emotions; they come together in security and trust. At least, that was what she believed. And of course, she would have been assured by the tattoo that Aiden has on his shoulder. Lionel told me that it is a cosmic snake, a big circle with a tail. But actually what he saw is a symbol – some people call it the glyph – that is used to represent Leo.’

‘I’m Leo,’ Aiden said. ‘She was Sagittarius. We suited each other. What’s the big deal?’

‘You knew Frank Parris.’

‘I’d never met him before in my life.’

‘That’s not true. You claimed you were working as an estate agent in London, but even Lawrence was surprised how well you’d managed to do for yourself. You were in your twenties so how could you possibly have made enough money to get yourself a place on the Edgware Road? You had to be making money some other way. And here’s another thing. When I asked a friend of mine who knows about these things, he was surprised that a twenty-something rent boy was able to work out of an expensive flat in Mayfair. He couldn’t possibly afford it. But suppose he had the keys to an unoccupied flat as part of his job? Suppose he worked as—’

‘You’re wrong,’ Aiden cut in before I could finish.

I ignored him. ‘Let’s go back to Frank’s arrival at Branlow Hall. He doesn’t like his room and you get sent in to sort it out. You meet and suddenly he’s your best friend. I’ve listened to the recording of Cecily’s interview and even she thought he was being too friendly. She said he was “all over” Aiden. Of course he was! He’d slept with you – quite a few times! And when he said goodbye, he folded his hands around yours. I remember that detail. It struck me as very strange.’

‘He was a creep.’

‘Cecily thought he was playing with you in some way. That he was sneering at you. And then there was that business with The Marriage of Figaro. He said it was his favourite opera, that it had a great story and that he was looking forward to seeing it at Snape Maltings. Except it was all lies. It wasn’t actually on. What was that all about?’

‘I’ve got no idea.’

‘That doesn’t matter, Aiden, because I think I have. What is the story of The Marriage of Figaro? It’s about a pervy nobleman, the Count Almaviva. He’s in love with Susanna, his wife’s maid, but she’s about to marry Figaro. So on the actual night of the wedding, the Count tries to use his “droit de seigneur”, which gives him the right to take Susanna to bed with him.

‘I learned a bit about Frank Parris when I was in London. He enjoyed sex games that included submission and humiliation. In a way, he saw himself as a bit of a Count Almaviva. Let’s imagine that he came to Branlow Hall and bumped into a rent boy he knew from years back. He’d often paid Leo for sex. But now Leo’s come up in the world. He’s about to get married into a nice family with a nice job waiting for him on a plate. What will Lawrence and Pauline say if they discover the truth about their new son-in-law? Frank has got Leo exactly where he wants him and a delicious idea comes into his mind. He will exercise his droit de seigneur. He will fuck the groom on his wedding night.

‘I think that when he put his hands round Aiden’s, he was passing him a duplicate of his room key. By then the two of them had come to an agreement. It probably gave him a real kick giving Aiden his room key right in front of the woman he was about to marry.’