Even as I parked the MG on the gravel it occurred to me that any writers wanting to set a murder in a classic country house would find all the material they needed here. And any killers wanting to get rid of a body would have hundreds of acres in which to do it. I wondered if the police had looked for Cecily Traherne in the grounds. She had said she was going for a walk and her car had been found at Woodbridge station, but how could anyone be sure that she had been the one who had driven it?
Before I had even turned off the ignition, a young man appeared and hauled the suitcase out of the boot. He led me into the entrance hall, which was square but gave the illusion of being circular with a round table, a round carpet and a ring of marble pillars supporting a ceiling decorated with a circle of very ornate stucco. Five doors – one of them a modern lift – led in different directions but the man escorted me into a second hallway with a reception desk tucked underneath an impressive stone staircase.
The stairs curved round on themselves and I could see all the way up to the vaulted roof, three floors above. It was almost like being inside a cathedral. A huge window rose up in front of me, some of the panes made of stained glass, although there was nothing religious about it. It was more like something you might find in an old school or even a railway station. Opposite, what I might describe as a landing ran from one side to the other, partly blocked off by a wall but with a semicircular opening cut into it so that if a guest walked past, they would almost certainly be seen from below. The landing connected two corridors that ran the full length of the hotel – the crossbar, if you like, in a large letter H.
A woman in a sharply cut black dress was sitting behind the reception desk, which was made of some dark, polished wood with mirrored edges. It looked out of place. I knew that much of Branlow Hall had been constructed at the start of the eighteenth century and all the other furnishings were deliberately traditional and old-fashioned. A rocking horse stood against the opposite wall, paint peeling and eyes staring. It reminded me of the famous horror story by D. H. Lawrence. There were two small offices behind the reception desk, one on each side. Later, I would learn that Lisa Treherne occupied one and her sister, Cecily, the other. The doors were open and I could see a pair of identical desks with telephones. I wondered if Cecily had made her call to France from here.
‘Ms Ryeland?’ The receptionist had been expecting me. When she offered me free accommodation, Pauline Treherne had said she would tell the staff I was helping her with a certain matter but not what it was. The girl was around the same age as the man who had met me; in fact, they could have been brother and sister. They were both fair-haired, slightly robotic, possibly Scandinavian.
‘Hello!’ I placed my handbag between us, ready to provide a credit card if asked.
‘I hope you had a good drive from London.’
‘Yes, thank you.’
‘Mrs Treherne has put you in the Moonflower Wing. You’ll be very comfortable there.’
Moonflower. That was the name Alan Conway had given the hotel in his book.
‘It’s up one flight of stairs or you can take the lift.’
‘I think I can manage the stairs, thank you.’
‘Lars will take the case for you and show you the room.’
Definitely Scandinavian, then. I followed Lars up the staircase to the first-floor landing. There were oil paintings on the walls – family members from across the centuries, none of them smiling. Lars turned right and we continued behind the opening that I had seen from below. Resting against the wall, I noticed a table with two glass candlesticks and, on a stand between them, a large silver brooch. This was in the shape of a circle with a silver pin and there was a typewritten card, folded in half, describing it as an eighteenth-century figeen, which pleased me as it was a word I had never come across. There was a dog basket with a tartan blanket under the table and I was reminded of Bear, Cecily Treherne’s golden retriever.
‘Where’s the dog?’ I asked.
‘He went for a walk,’ Lars answered vaguely, as if he was surprised I had even asked.
Everything I have described so far was antique but when we reached the corridor, I noticed that electric key-card operators had been fitted to the doors and that we were being watched by a CCTV camera mounted in a corner. It must have been added long after the murder and perhaps as a response to it – otherwise the killer would have been seen. The first door we came to was number ten. Eleven was next door. But what should have been room twelve was blank and there was no room thirteen either, presumably for reasons of superstition. Was it my imagination or had Lars quickened his pace? I could hear the floorboards creaking under his step, the wheels on my suitcase still squeaking as they bumped over the joints.
After room fourteen, we came to a fire door that opened onto a corridor which was obviously new, part of an extension that jutted out towards the rear of the building. It was as if a second, modern hotel had been added to the first and I wondered if it had been like this eight years ago, when Frank Parris had checked in . . . and out. The carpet in the new section had one of those nasty patterns that you would never find in anyone’s home. The doors were made out of wood that was both lighter and newer and they were closer together, suggesting smaller rooms on the other side. The lighting was recessed. Was this the Moonflower Wing? I didn’t ask Lars, who was well ahead of me, my suitcase still squeaking as it followed him.
I had been given not just a room but a suite at the very end. Lars swiped the key to let us in and I found myself in a bright, comfortable space in various shades of cream and beige with a widescreen TV mounted on the wall. The sheets on the bed were expensive. A complimentary bottle of wine and a bowl of fruit sat, waiting for me, on a table. I went over to the window and looked out at the courtyard behind the hotel and a row of what might have been converted stables on the far side. The health spa with the swimming pool was over to the right. A driveway led up to a large, modern house set back from the hotel. I saw its name, BRANLOW COTTAGE, by the gate.
Lars put my case on one of those folding luggage racks that we would never have had at the Polydorus because they took up too much space and also because they were ridiculous.
‘Fridge. Air conditioning. Minibar. Coffeemaker . . .’ He showed me round the room just in case I couldn’t find the way myself. He was polite rather than enthusiastic. ‘The Wi-Fi code is on the table and if there is anything you want, you can dial zero for the front desk.’
‘Thank you, Lars,’ I said.
‘Is there anything else you need?’
‘Actually, I’d like to go into room twelve. Could I have a key?’
He looked at me peculiarly for a moment but the Trehernes had prepared the way. ‘I’ll open it for you,’ he said.
He went over to the door and there was that nasty moment when I wasn’t sure if I should tip him and wondered whether he was expecting it or not. In Crete we had a straw hat in the bar and anyone with any euros to spare threw them in there to be shared out equally among the staff. Generally, I don’t like tipping. It feels old-fashioned, a throwback to the days when waiters and hotel staff were seen as belonging to a lower class. Lars didn’t agree. He scowled, turned on his heel and left.
I unpacked with a growing sense of discomfort. Transported to an expensive wardrobe in an expensive room, my clothes didn’t so much hang as droop. It was a reminder that I’d bought almost nothing new in two years.
Outside, a black Range Rover drove past the stables and into the drive of Branlow Cottage, the wheels crunching on the gravel. I heard the slam of a car door and looked out of the window in time to see a youngish man wearing a padded waistcoat and a cap get out. There was a dog with him. At the same time, the door of the house opened and a young girl with black hair ran towards him, followed by a dark, slim woman carrying a shopping bag. The man scooped the girl up in his arms. I couldn’t see much of his face but I knew that he must be Aiden MacNeil. The girl was his daughter, Roxana. The woman must be Eloise, the nanny. He spoke brief
ly to her and then they turned round and went back into the house.
I felt guilty, as if I had been spying on them. I turned away, snatched up my handbag with money, notepad and cigarettes and left the room, heading back through the fire door to the older part of the hotel and room twelve. It seemed the obvious place to begin. Lars had propped open the door with a wastepaper basket but I didn’t want to be disturbed so I removed the basket and the door swung shut behind me.
I found myself in a room that was actually half the size of the one I had been given. There was no bed and no carpet; presumably they had both been taken away, covered in blood. I’ve read in so many crime books that violent acts leave a sort of echo and I’ve never quite believed it, but there was definitely an atmosphere in that place . . . in the empty spaces where there should have been furniture, the faded paintwork on the walls showing where pictures had once hung, the curtains that would never be drawn. There were two trolleys heaped up with towels and cleaning equipment, a pile of boxes, an array of machines – toasters, coffeemakers – mops and buckets, all the junk you don’t want to see when you check into a smart hotel.
This was where Frank Parris had been killed. I tried to imagine the door opening and someone creeping in. If Frank had been asleep when he was attacked, they would have needed an electronic key card, but then surely Stefan Codrescu would have had one already. I could tell where the bed must have stood from the position of the electric sockets on either side and I imagined Frank lying in the darkness. On an impulse, I opened the door again. The hinges made no sound but there would have been a buzz or a click as the electric lock disengaged. Would that have been enough to wake him? There had been few details in the newspapers and the Trehernes hadn’t been able to add very much more. Somewhere there must be a police report that might tell me whether Frank had been standing up or lying down, what he was wearing, exactly when he had died. The storeroom, shabby and decrepit, told me very little.
Standing there, I was suddenly depressed. Why had I left Andreas? What the hell did I think I was doing? If it had been Atticus Pünd coming into Branlow Hall, he’d have solved the crime by now. Perhaps the position of room twelve or the dog basket might have given him a clue. What about the figeen? That was straight out of Agatha Christie, wasn’t it?
But I wasn’t a detective. I wasn’t even an editor any more. I knew nothing.
Lisa Treherne
Pauline and Lawrence Treherne had invited me to join them for supper on the first evening of my stay but when I entered the hotel dining room, Lawrence was sitting on his own. ‘I’m afraid Pauline has a headache,’ he explained. I noticed that the table was still laid for three. ‘Lisa said she would join us,’ he added. ‘But we’re to start without her.’
He looked older than he had in Crete, dressed in a check shirt that hung off him and red corduroy trousers. There were more lines under his eyes and his cheeks had those dark blotches that I’ve always associated with illness or old age. It was obvious that the disappearance of his daughter was taking its toll and I guessed that the same was true for Pauline, that her ‘headache’ had been caused by exactly the same thing.
I sat down opposite him. I was wearing a long dress and wedges but I wasn’t comfortable. I wanted to kick off my shoes and feel sand beneath my feet.
‘It’s very good of you to have come, Miss Ryeland,’ he began.
‘Please . . . call me Susan.’ I thought we had been through all that.
A waiter came over and we ordered drinks. He had a gin and tonic. I went for a glass of white wine.
‘How is your room?’ he asked.
‘It’s very nice, thank you. You have a lovely hotel.’
He sighed. ‘It’s not really mine any more. My daughters run it now. And it’s difficult to take very much pleasure from it at the moment. It was a life’s work for Pauline and me, creating the hotel and building it up, but when something like this happens, you have to ask yourself if it was worth it.’
‘When did you put in the extension?’
He looked puzzled, as if I had asked something odd.
‘Was the hotel like this when Frank Parris was killed?’
‘Oh . . . yes.’ He understood. ‘We did the renovation in 2005. We had two new wings added: Moonflower and Barn Owl.’ He half smiled. ‘The names were Cecily’s idea. The moonflower blooms after the sun has gone down and of course the barn owl comes out at night.’ He smiled. ‘Actually, you may have noticed, we’ve put owls everywhere.’ He picked up the menu and showed me an image stamped in gold on the cover. ‘That was Cecily too. She noticed that “barn owl” is an anagram of Branlow and so she had the bright idea to make it our logo.’
I felt my heart sink. Alan Conway had also had a fondness for anagrams. In one of his books, for example, all the characters were jumbled-up versions of London Tube stations. It was a strange game he played with his readers and one that only undermined the quality of his writing.
Lawrence was still talking. ‘When we were doing the rebuilding, we added a lift for disabled access,’ he explained. ‘And we knocked down a wall to enlarge the dining room.’
That was the room we were sitting in. I had reached it from the circular entrance hall and had noticed the new lift on my way in. The kitchen was at the far end, stretching all the way to the back of the hotel. ‘Can you get upstairs from the kitchen?’ I asked.
‘Yes. There’s a service lift and a staircase. We put those in at the same time. We also converted the stables into staff quarters and added the swimming pool and the spa.’
I took out my notepad and jotted down what he had just said. What it meant was that whoever had killed Frank Parris could have arrived at room twelve by four separate paths: the lift at the front of the hotel, another at the back, the main staircase and a set of service stairs. If they had already been in the hotel, they could have come down from the second floor. There had been someone on the reception desk all night but it would still have been perfectly easy to get past without being noticed.
But in Crete Pauline Treherne had told me that Stefan Codrescu had been seen entering the room. Why had he been so careless?
‘I don’t suppose you’ve had any news,’ I said. ‘About Cecily.’
Lawrence grimaced. ‘The police think she may have been caught on CCTV in Norwich, but that doesn’t make a lot of sense. She doesn’t know anyone there.’
‘Is Detective Superintendent Locke handling the disappearance?’
‘Detective Chief Superintendent, you mean. Yes. I can’t say I have a lot of faith in him. He was slow getting started – which was actually when it mattered most – and he doesn’t seem to be particularly efficient now.’ He glanced down gloomily, then asked: ‘Have you had a chance to reread the book?’
It was a good question.
You would have thought it would be the first thing I would do – go through the book from cover to cover. But I hadn’t even brought it with me. Actually, I didn’t have any of Alan’s books in Crete: they had too many unpleasant memories. I’d looked into a bookshop while I was in London, meaning to pick up a copy, and had been surprised to find they were out of stock. I could never decide if that was a good or a bad sign when I was in publishing. Great sales or bad distribution?
The truth was that I didn’t want to read it yet.
I remembered it well enough: the village of Tawleigh-on-the-Water, the death at Clarence Keep, the various clues, the identity of the killer. I still had my notes somewhere, the email ‘discussions’ I had with Alan during the editorial process (I’ve added those inverted commas because he never listened to a word I said). The story held no surprises for me. I knew the plot inside out.
But you have to remember that Alan hid things in the text: not just anagrams, but acrostics, acronyms, words within words. He did it partly to amuse himself but often to indulge the more unpleasant side of his nature. It was already clear to me that he had used many elements of Branlow Hall for Atticus Pünd Takes the Case, but what he hadn’t
done was describe what had actually happened in June 2008. There was no advertising executive, no wedding, no hammer. If Alan, during his brief visit to the hotel, had somehow discovered who had really killed Frank Parris, he could have concealed it in a single word or a name or a description of something completely irrelevant. He could have spelled out the name of the killer in the chapter headings. Something had caught Cecily Treherne’s eye when she read the book, but there was very little chance that it would catch mine – not until I knew a great deal more about her and everyone else at the hotel.
‘Not yet,’ I said, answering Lawrence’s question. ‘I thought it might be sensible to meet everyone and look round first. I don’t know what Alan found when he came here. The more I know about the hotel, the more chance I’ll have of making a connection.’
‘Yes. That’s a good thought.’
‘Would it be possible to see the room where Stefan Codrescu was living?’
‘I’ll take you there after supper. It’s being used by one of our other staff members. But I’m sure they won’t mind.’
The waiter came over with the drinks and at the same time Lisa Treherne arrived. At least, I assumed it was her. I had seen photographs of her sister, Cecily, in the newspaper: a pretty woman with a rather babyish face, pursed lips, round cheeks. Apart from her fair hair, cut short in an old-fashioned style, this woman looked nothing like her. She was solid, unsmiling, wearing clothes that were deliberately business-like with cheap spectacles and sensible shoes. She had a scar on the side of her mouth and I found it hard to stop myself staring. It was a dead straight line about half an inch long: it could have been cut with a knife. If it had been me I would have softened it with a little concealer but she had allowed it to define her. She was scowling and it was as if she was unable to smile, as if the scar prevented her.
Moonflower Murders Page 4