Magpie Murders

by Anthony Horowitz

  ‘Can’t Yannis manage without you?’

  ‘I love you, Susan, and I want you to be with me. I promise you, if you’re not happy, we can come back together. I’ve already made that mistake. I’m not going to do it twice. If it doesn’t work, I can get another teaching job.’

  I didn’t feel like eating any more. I reached out and lit a cigarette. ‘There’s something I haven’t told you,’ I said. ‘Charles has asked me to take over the company.’

  His eyes widened when he heard that. ‘Do you want to?’

  ‘I have to consider it, Andreas. It’s a fantastic opportunity. I can take Cloverleaf in any direction I want.’

  ‘I thought you said Cloverleaf was finished.’

  ‘I never said that.’ He looked disappointed so I added: ‘Is that what you were hoping?’

  ‘Can I be honest, Susan? I thought, when Alan died, that it would be the end for you, yes. I thought the company would close and you would move on and that the hotel would be the answer for both of us.’

  ‘It’s not like that. It may not be easy for a couple of years but Cloverleaf isn’t going to disappear overnight. I’ll commission new authors—’

  ‘You want to find another Atticus Pünd?’

  He had said it with such scorn that I stopped, surprised. ‘I thought you liked the books.’

  He reached out and took the cigarette from me, smoked it for a moment, then handed it back. It was something we did unconsciously, even when we were angry with each other. ‘I never liked the books,’ he said. ‘I read them because you worked on them and obviously I cared about you. But I thought they were crap.’

  I was shocked. I didn’t know what to say. ‘They made a lot of money.’

  ‘Cigarettes make a lot of money. Toilet paper makes a lot of money. It doesn’t mean they’re worth anything.’

  ‘You can’t say that!’

  ‘Why not? Alan Conway was laughing at you, Susan. He was laughing at everyone. I know about writing. I teach Homer, for God’s sake. I teach Aeschylus. He knew what those books were – and he knew when he was putting them together. They’re badly written trash!’

  ‘I don’t agree. They’re very well written. Millions of people enjoyed them.’

  ‘They’re worth nothing! Eighty thousand words to prove that the butler did it?’

  ‘You’re just being snobbish.’

  ‘And you’re defending something that you always knew had no value at all.’

  I wasn’t sure when the discussion had turned into such an acrimonious argument. The table looked so beautiful with the candles and the flowers. The food was so good. But the two of us were at each other’s throats.

  ‘If I didn’t know you better, I’d say you were jealous,’ I complained. ‘You knew him before I did. You were both teachers. But he broke out …’

  ‘You’re right about one thing, Susan. I did know him before you and I didn’t like him.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’m not going to tell you. It’s all in the past and I don’t want to upset you.’

  ‘I’m already upset.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m just telling you the truth. As for the money he made, you’re right about that too. He didn’t deserve any of it, not one penny, and all the time I’ve known you, I’ve hated the way you’ve had to kowtow to him. I’m telling you, Susan. He wasn’t worthy of you.’

  ‘I was his editor. That’s all. I didn’t like him either!’ I forced myself to stop. I hated the way this was going. ‘Why did you never say any of this before?’

  ‘Because it wasn’t relevant. It is now. I’m asking you to be my wife!’

  ‘Well, you’ve got a funny way of going about it.’

  Andreas stayed the night but there was none of the companionship we’d had on the first night he’d got back from Crete. He went straight to sleep and left very early the next morning without breakfast. The candles had burned down. I wrapped the lamb in silver foil and put it in the fridge. Then I went to work.

  Cloverleaf Books

  I’ve always been fond of Mondays. Thursdays and Fridays make me edgy but there’s something that’s quite comforting about coming in to the pile on my desk; the unopened letters, the proofs waiting to be read, the Post-it notes from marketing, publicity and foreign rights. I chose my office because it’s at the back of the building. It’s quiet and cosy, tucked into the eaves. It’s the sort of room that really ought to have a coal fire and probably did once until some turn-of-the-century vandal filled in the fireplace. I used to share Jemima with Charles before she left and there’s always Tess on reception, who will do anything for me. When I came in that Monday morning, she made me tea and gave me my phone messages: nothing urgent. The Women’s Prize for Fiction had asked me to join their judging panel. My children’s author needed comforting. There were production problems with a dust jacket (I’d said it wouldn’t work).

  Charles wasn’t in. His daughter, Laura, had gone into labour early as expected and he was waiting at home with his wife. He’d also sent me an email that morning. I hope you had time to think about our conversation in the car. It would be great for you and I’m confident it would be great for the company too. Funnily enough, Andreas telephoned me just as I was reading it. Glancing at my watch I guessed he must have slipped out into the corridor, leaving the kids with their Greek primers. He was speaking in a low voice.

  ‘I’m sorry about last night,’ he said. ‘It was stupid of me just to throw everything at you like that. The school have asked me to reconsider and I won’t make any decision until you tell me what you want to do.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘And I didn’t mean what I said about Alan Conway either. Of course his books are worthwhile. It’s just that I knew him and …’ His voice trailed off. I could imagine him glancing up and down the corridor, like a schoolboy, afraid of getting caught.

  ‘We can talk about it later,’ I said.

  ‘I’ve got a parents’ meeting tonight. Why don’t we have dinner tomorrow night’

  ‘I’d like that.’

  ‘I’ll call you.’ He rang off.

  Quite unexpectedly, and without really wanting it, I had come to a crossroads – or more accurately, a T-junction – in my life. I could take over as CEO of Cloverleaf Books. There were writers I wanted to work with, ideas I’d had but which Charles had always vetoed. As I’d told Andreas the night before, I could develop the business the way I wanted.

  Or there was Crete.

  The choices were so different, the two directions so contrary, that considering the two of them side by side almost made me want to laugh. I was like the child who doesn’t know if he wants to be a brain surgeon or a train driver. It was quite frustrating. Why do these things always have to happen at the same time?

  I looked through my post. There was a letter addressed to Susan Ryland, which I was tempted to bin. I hate it when people misspell my name, especially when it’s so easy to check. There were a couple of invitations, invoices … the usual stuff. And at the bottom of the pile, a brown A4 envelope which clearly contained a manuscript. That was unusual. I never read unsolicited manuscripts. Nobody does any more. But it had my name on the envelope (correctly spelled) so I tore it open and looked at the front page.

  DEATH TREADS THE BOARDS

  Donald Leigh

  It took me a moment to remember that this was the book written by the waiter at the Ivy Club, the man who had dropped the plates when he saw Alan Conway. He claimed that Alan had stolen his ideas and used them for the fourth Atticus Pünd mystery, Night Comes Calling. I still didn’t like his title very much and the first sentence (‘There had been hundreds of murders in the Pavilion Theatre, Brighton but this was the first one that was real.’) didn’t quite work for me either. A nice idea, but too on-the-nose and expressed a little clumsily, I thought. But I had promised him I would r
ead it and with Charles away and with Alan so much on my mind, I thought I’d get to it straight away. I had my tea. Why not?

  I skim-read most of it. It’s something I’ve learned to do. I can usually tell if I’m going to like a book by the end of the second or third chapter but if I’m going to talk about it in conference, I’m obliged to hang in there to the last page. It took me three hours. Then I pulled out a copy of Night Comes Calling.

  And then I compared the two.

  Extract from Night Comes Calling by Alan Conway

  CHAPTER 26: CURTAIN CALL

  It ended where it had begun, in the theatre at Fawley Park. Looking around him, James Fraser had a sense of inevitability. He had abandoned his career as an actor to become the assistant of Atticus Pünd and this was where his first case had brought him. The building was even shabbier than when he had first seen it now that the stage had been stripped and most of the seats piled up against the walls. The red velvet curtains had been pulled aside. With nothing to conceal, no play about to begin, they looked tired and threadbare, hanging limply on their wires. The stage itself was a yawning mouth, an ironic reflection of the many young spectators who had been forced to sit through the headmaster’s productions of Agamemnon and Antigone. Well, Elliot Tweed would not be performing again. He had died in this very room, with a knife driven into the side of his throat. Fraser was not yet used to murder and there was one thought that chilled him in particular. What sort of person kills a man in a room filled with children? On the night of the school play, there had been three hundred people sitting together in the darkness: little boys and their parents. They would remember it for the rest of their lives.

  The theatre suited Pünd. He had arranged the seats so that they were facing him in two rows. He stood in front of the stage, leaning on his rosewood cane, but he could just as easily have been on it. This was his performance, the climax of a drama that had begun three weeks earlier with a frightened man visiting Tanner Court. The spotlights might not be illuminated but still they bowed their heads towards him. The people he had asked to be here were suspects but they were also his audience. Detective Inspector Ridgeway might be standing next to him but it was clear that he had been given only a supporting role.

  Fraser examined the staff members. Leonard Graveney had been the first to arrive, taking his place in the front row, his crutch resting awkwardly against the back of his chair. The stump of his leg jutted out in front of him as if purposefully blocking the way for everyone else. The history teacher, Dennis Cocker, had come and had sat next to him although Fraser noticed that neither of them had spoken. Both men had been involved in the last, fateful performance of Night Comes Calling when the murder had happened, Graveney as the author of the play, Cocker as its director. The lead part had been taken by Sebastian Fleet. Aged just twenty-one, he was the youngest teacher at Fawley Park and he had ambled in nonchalantly, winking at the matron who deliberately turned her head away, ignoring him. Lydia Gwendraeth was sitting in the row behind, ramrod straight, her hands folded on her lap, her white starched cap seemingly glued in place. Fraser was still convinced that she had been involved in Elliot Tweed’s murder. She certainly had a motive – he had behaved horribly towards her – and with her medical training she would have known exactly where to place the knife. Had she run through the audience that night, taking revenge for the humiliation she had suffered at his hands? As she sat, waiting for Pünd to begin, her eyes gave nothing away.

  Three more members of the staff came in – Harold Trent, Elizabeth Colne and Douglas Wye. Finally, the groundsman, Garry, arrived, his hands deep in his pockets and a scowl on his face. It was clear he had no idea why he had been summoned.

  ‘The question we must ask ourselves is not why Elliot Tweed was killed. As the headmaster of Fawley Park, he was a man with more, you might say, than his fair share of enemies. The boys feared him. He beat them mercilessly and on the slightest pretext. He made no attempt to disguise the fact that he took pleasure in their pain. His wife wanted to divorce him. His staff, who disagreed on so many issues, were united only by their dislike of him. No …’ Pünd’s eyes swept over the assembly. ‘What we must ask is this. I have said it from the start. Why was he murdered in this way, so publicly? The killer appears as if from nowhere and runs the full length of the building, pausing only to strike out with a scalpel taken from the biology laboratory. It is true that it is dark and that the eyes of the audience are focused on the stage. It is the most dramatic moment of the play. There is a mist, a flickering light, and in the shadow appears the ghost of the wounded soldier as portrayed by Mr Graveney. And yet, it is a huge risk. Surely someone will have seen where he comes from or where he goes. A preparatory school such as Fawley Park provides many simpler opportunities for murder. There is a timetable. It is known, at all times, where everyone will be. How convenient for a killer who can plan his movements in the sure knowledge that his victim will be alone and that he will be unseen.

  ‘Indeed, the darkness, the speed with which the crime is committed, results in catastrophe! Inspector Ridgeway was of the belief that the assistant headmaster, Mr Moriston, who was sitting next to Mr Tweed that night, must have witnessed something and that he was subsequently killed in order to silence him. Perhaps blackmail had been involved. The discovery of a large amount of cash in his locker would certainly seem to suggest this. We now know, however, that the two men had swapped seats just before the performance began. Mr Tweed was several inches shorter than Mr Moriston and had been unable to see over the head of the woman who was sitting in front of him as she was wearing a hat. It was Mr Moriston who was the true target. The death of Mr Tweed was an accident.

  ‘And yet it is strange because Mr Moriston was a very popular man. He had often come to the defence of Miss Gwendraeth. It was he who chose to employ Mr Garry, in the full knowledge of his criminal record. He was also able to prevent the suicide of a child. It is hard to find anyone at the school who spoke anything but well of John Moriston – hard, but not impossible. There was, of course, one exception.’ Pünd turned to the maths teacher but he did not need to name him. Everyone in the room knew who he meant.

  ‘You’re not saying I killed him!’ Leonard Graveney barked out the words. He couldn’t stop himself smiling.

  ‘Of course it is impossible that you could have committed the murder, Mr Graveney. You lost a leg in the war—’

  ‘Fighting your lot!’

  ‘And you now have a prosthetic. You could not have run through the auditorium. That much is painfully clear. However, you will agree that there was a great deal of enmity between you.’

  ‘He was a coward and a liar.’

  ‘He was your commanding officer in the Western Desert in 1941. You were both involved in the battle of Sidi Rezegh and it was there that you lost your leg.’

  ‘I lost more than that, Mr Pünd. I was in hospital, in constant pain, for six months. I lost a great many of my friends – all of them better men than Major bloody Moriston could ever hope to be. I’ve already told you all this. He gave the wrong orders. He sent us into that hellhole and then he abandoned us. We were being ripped apart and he was nowhere near.’

  ‘There was a court martial.’

  ‘There was an enquiry, after the war.’ Graveney sneered as he spoke the word. ‘Major Moriston insisted that we had acted on our own initiative and that he had done everything he could to bring us back to safety. It was my word against his. Useful, that, wasn’t it! All the other witnesses being blown apart.’

  ‘It must have been a great shock for you to find him teaching here.’

  ‘It made me sick. And everyone was the same as you. They thought the world of him. He was the war hero, the father figure, everyone’s best friend. I was the only one who saw through him – and I would have killed him. I’ll give you that much. Don’t think I wasn’t tempted.’

  ‘Why did you remain here?’

  Grave
ney shrugged. To Fraser, he looked worn out by his experiences, his shoulders slumped, his thick moustache drooping. ‘I had nowhere else to go. Tweed only gave me the job because I’d married Gemma. How else do you think a cripple with no qualifications manages to earn a living? I stayed because I had to and I avoided Moriston as best as I could.’

  ‘And when he was awarded his medal, when he was given the CBE?’

  ‘It meant nothing to me. You can stick a piece of metal on a coward and a liar but it won’t change what he is.’

  Pünd nodded as if this was the answer he had expected to hear. ‘And so we arrive at the contradiction that is at the heart of the matter,’ he said. ‘The only man at Fawley Park with a motive to kill John Moriston was also the one man who could not possibly have committed the deed.’ He paused. ‘Unless, that is, there was a second person who had also a motive – even the same motive – and who had come to the school with the express purpose of exacting his revenge.’

  Sebastian Fleet realised that the detective was staring directly at him. He straightened up, the colour rushing into his cheeks. ‘What are you saying, Mr Pünd? I wasn’t at Sidi Rezegh or anywhere near it. I was ten years old. Rather too young to fight in the war!’

  ‘That is indeed the case, Mr Fleet. Even so, I remarked when we met that you seemed to be unusually qualified to be working as an English teacher in a preparatory school in the middle of the countryside. You received a first from Oxford University. You have youth and talent. Why have you chosen to bury yourself away here?’

  ‘I told you that, when we first met. I’m working on a novel!’

  ‘The novel is important to you. But you interrupted it to write a play.’

  ‘I was asked to do it. Every year, a member of the staff writes a play, which the staff also performs. It’s a tradition here.’

  ‘And who was it who asked you?’

  Fleet hesitated as if unwilling to provide the answer. ‘It was Mr Graveney,’ he said.