‘Well, that’s her view . . .’ Martin muttered.
‘It’s certainly not true now, is it! Things seem to have changed. You’re definitely the one in control, Martin. Why is that, I wonder? Maybe it’s because Joanne’s come to the conclusion that it was you who killed Frank and that actually you’re quite a dangerous character. And maybe, just maybe, you’ve encouraged her to believe it because it gives you a bit of power and freedom in this house.’
‘That’s ridiculous!’
‘Is it? It would explain why you told me about the will just now – and why you gave me such a rubbish answer when I challenged you about Frank seeing the marquee. From the very moment you and I met, you’ve been wanting me to suspect you!’
Martin stood up. ‘I’m not listening to any more of this,’ he said.
‘Yes, you are, Martin. Because you actually tried to kill me! I saw you yesterday, sneaking away from Branlow Hall. Maybe you wanted me to see you, but I know it was you who dropped the stone owl off the roof. The trouble for you is that I’ve also got proof.’ That stopped him in his tracks. ‘When you called the hotel to get me out of the door you were already up there, in position. You waited for me to come out and then you pushed it off the ledge.’ I turned to Joanne. ‘Did he tell you what had happened?’
‘He said he’d heard about it . . .’ Joanne was staring at her husband in a way that made this whole visit worthwhile.
‘Did he also tell you that he was recorded going in on CCTV and that the hotel switchboard can trace the call he made, that the number was logged? And did he mention if he was wearing gloves or not? Because the police are examining the fire door on the roof and the fragments of stone.’
This wasn’t true. The police weren’t actually involved. But they could well have been.
The colour had drained out of Martin’s face.
‘Tell me this one thing, Martin. While I’m in a slightly forgiving mood. Just reassure me that you weren’t really trying to kill me and that you actually intended for me to see you sneaking away from the hotel. All you wanted was to frighten me, to make me think you were a threat. Because that was part of the game you were playing with your wife. Martin the killer! Martin the real man! You didn’t kill Frank and you didn’t try to kill me. That was just an image you were trying to project.’
There was a long pause but then at last it came, exactly what I wanted, though only a whisper. ‘Yes.’
‘Was that a yes, Martin?’
‘Yes!’ Louder this time.
‘Thank you. That’s all I need to know.’
I got up and walked out of the house with Andreas at my side. We hadn’t made it to the garden gate before Martin Williams came up to us. He was looking contrite, pathetic. He shouldn’t have followed us out.
‘I didn’t mean any harm,’ he exclaimed. ‘You’re right – what you said about Frank. And what I did yesterday at the hotel. I swear to you, I didn’t want to hurt you. You won’t tell the police, will you?’
Before I could stop him, Andreas lashed out. He swung round and his fist crashed into Martin’s face. If this had been one of Alan’s books, Martin would have been knocked off his feet and thrown, unconscious, to the ground. In fact, it was a lot less dramatic than that. There was a soft thwack and Martin was left standing, dazed, with blood streaming over his lip. It was possible Andreas had broken his nose.
The two of us walked away.
‘You said you weren’t going to hurt him,’ I said, as we walked back to the car.
‘I know,’ Andreas replied. ‘I’m sorry.’
I opened the car door. ‘Apology accepted.’
Checkout
When I was editing Atticus Pünd Takes the Case, I had one other argument with Alan Conway. It concerned the last two chapters, in which Atticus gets all the characters together at the Moonflower Hotel.
I know scenes like this work well on television. I’ve seen David Suchet as Poirot, John Nettles as Barnaby, Angela Lansbury as Jessica Fletcher, and between them they must have done it a hundred times, closing in on one suspect after another until finally they reveal the real culprit. But that was exactly my point. I was worried that even in what was intended to be a homage to the Golden Age of detective fiction, the climax was a little overdone. I wondered if Alan could find another way of presenting the information.
Well, you’ve read the book. You know how much faith Alan had in my editorial judgement.
So he would probably have been amused to see me in the lounge of Branlow Hall, surrounded by no fewer than seven people and a dog. The dog was Bear, Cecily’s golden retriever, and he at least was asleep in a corner. But the rest of them had come to hear me explain myself. I could almost feel the invisible TV cameras pointing in my direction.
This was my last day at the hotel. In fact, it was already past my checkout time. Lisa Treherne had asked me to leave, she had said, with the full support of her father, but I had rung Lawrence and told him that I knew who had killed Frank Parris and also what had happened to his daughter. I had reminded him that so far he hadn’t paid me a penny of the money he had promised me, egged on, I’m sure, by Lisa. He had agreed to meet me in the afternoon.
‘Come to the lounge at three o’clock and I’ll explain the whole thing,’ I said. ‘And bring a cheque for what you owe me. Ten thousand pounds made out to Andreas Patakis.’ Of course it should have had my name on it but Andreas had flown about two thousand miles in time to save me from a falling missile. I wanted him to be the one to have the pleasure of cashing it.
I had hoped that Lawrence would come alone, but Pauline was with him when he arrived and Aiden MacNeil had joined them too. I suppose that was fair enough: he had the greatest stake in what had happened. He was still waiting for news of Cecily. I did think it a little odd, though, that he had brought Eloise Radmani along for support. The two of them were sitting next to each other on a sofa and it struck me that they seemed to have a nanny/employer relationship that was strange and rather sinister. At least they had left Roxana with Inga. Worst of all, as far as I was concerned, Lisa Treherne had also invited herself to the party. I had Andreas with me and she nodded briefly at him but ignored me, throwing herself into an armchair as if she’d already decided the whole thing was going to be a waste of time.
Finally, Detective Chief Superintendent Locke was sitting in a chair next to the door. It had been Andreas who had persuaded me to invite him, but it hadn’t been an easy decision. I had no wish to see him again after our last meeting at Martlesham Heath. He was a bully and a racist and he was largely responsible for the injustice that had been done to Stefan Codrescu. But Andreas had insisted that someone from the police should be present. We had to make this official.
I was actually quite surprised he had agreed to come. Andreas and I had driven over to his office and it struck me that a pair of local sex offenders would have been given a warmer welcome. He had dismissed the idea that I knew who had killed Frank and became angry when I refused to tell him there and then. It was only the letter that Stefan had given me that changed his mind. It proved that Cecily had been convinced of his innocence and it made it clear that her disappearance was connected to what had happened all those years ago. Locke should have known about the letter. Its very existence made him look weak. That, I think, was the reason he was here.
It wasn’t quite the assembly that Atticus Pünd would have addressed – no butlers, vicars or chambermaids – but even so I got a strange sense of his presence in the room. I could almost see him perching on one of the empty seats, his walking stick beside him, waiting for me to begin. I’d often thought that my whole approach to crime – the way I talked to people or examined the evidence – was somehow influenced by him and his ridiculous book, The Landscape of Criminal Investigation, and I suppose, all in all, I had warm feelings towards him. I thought of him as a mentor. This was strange, firstly because he was a fictitious character but mainly because I couldn’t stand the man who had created him.
�
��We’re waiting, Susan,’ Lisa said.
‘I’m sorry. I was just collecting my thoughts.’ I smiled. Maybe I could enjoy this after all. I was certainly never going to do it again. ‘Perhaps I should start by saying that I don’t know where Cecily is but I do know what happened to her. I also know exactly what she discovered in Atticus Pünd Takes the Case.’ There was a copy on the table in front of me. ‘I’m afraid Alan Conway left her a message – several messages, actually – and in doing so he put her in danger.’
I glanced at Andreas. He nodded at me. He was watching my back.
‘The thing about Frank Parris was that nobody at Branlow Hall had any reason to kill him,’ I went on. ‘He was passing through . . . on his way to visit his sister and his brother-in-law in Westleton. He’d just come back from Australia. Apart from his half-share in a house here, he had no links with Suffolk. My first thought was that he had been killed by Derek Endicott. It could all have happened by mistake because Frank hadn’t liked the room he’d been given and had been changed to room twelve, which was where a retired headmaster called George Saunders was meant to be staying. As it happened, Derek had gone to Bromeswell Grove, which was where Saunders taught, and he had a very rough time there. He was certainly very put out when he saw Saunders again.
‘I could imagine a scenario in which Derek took a hammer and went upstairs in the middle of the night. It’s dark in those corridors and he could have killed Frank without realising he’d got the wrong man. As it happens, we only have Derek’s word for it that Stefan ever went into the room. Nobody else saw him.’
‘That’s a ridiculous story,’ Aiden said. ‘Derek wouldn’t hurt anyone.’
‘I agree. Which is why I’ve ruled him out. Anyway, Derek could never have arranged all the other clues that pointed to Stefan; in particular, the money under the mattress and the blood splatter. I just don’t think he’s clever enough.
‘Now we’re left with just the four of you,’ I said. ‘But there are two people missing from the room and I want to deal with them first. Let’s start with Melissa Conway. She was staying in Oaklands Cottage on the edge of the estate and she was in and out of the hotel around the time of the wedding. She saw Frank and she wasn’t happy about it. Part of her blamed him for leading her husband down the garden path; the path in this instance taking him to gay bars and bathhouses. Suppose she’d decided to get her own back on him for stealing her husband? Though it often surprises me, she did actually love Alan.
‘What would have happened if Alan had discovered the truth – that his own ex-wife was guilty of the crime? Wouldn’t that have been a perfect motive for not revealing it in his book? He would have to keep quiet to protect her and, by extension, himself. The moment I heard she’d been here, I thought she was a likely suspect. But there was just one problem. She couldn’t possibly have overheard Cecily make the phone call to her parents. She was probably at her home in Bradford-on-Avon when Cecily disappeared.
‘However, Melissa said something to me that really got me thinking. She mentioned how she’d used the spa a lot when she was living in Oaklands Cottage and that she used to train with Lionel Corby. Only she didn’t call him Lionel. She knew him as Leo.
‘Now, as it happens, Frank Parris knew someone called Leo, a rent boy working in London. I found that out when I was there. The two of them slept together. Alan Conway even dedicated his book to Frank and Leo. I’m sorry if this is all a bit sordid by the way, Lawrence. And I’m afraid it gets worse. Frank wasn’t just gay. He had quite curious sexual tastes, including bondage, S&M, that sort of thing. Suppose Lionel was Leo and Frank recognised him when he booked into the hotel? When I met Lionel, he mentioned that he’d had a lot of private clients in London. ‘You have no idea of the sort of stuff I got up to!’ Those were his exact words. I assumed he was talking about personal training but who knows?
‘The trouble is, I’ve got the same problem as I had with Melissa. Lionel could have been Leo and he could have killed Frank but he wasn’t here when Cecily made the telephone call. I don’t see how he could have attacked or hurt her. How would he even know she’d read the book?
‘But Eloise was here and she did know.’
The moment I spoke the words, Eloise Radmani lost her temper in the way that Mediterranean people do so well. ‘How can you drag me into this!’ she cried out. ‘I have nothing to do with it.’
‘You were here when Cecily disappeared and you even overheard the telephone call she made to her parents about the book. You were outside the office.’
‘I had nothing to do with Frank Parris!’
‘That’s not true. You worked at the same advertising agency as him: McCann Erickson. You were the receptionist.’
That took her by surprise, the fact that I knew. She faltered. ‘I was there only for a few months.’
‘But you met him.’
‘I saw him. We never spoke.’
‘You were with your husband then, weren’t you? His name was Lucien.’
She looked away. ‘I’m not going to talk about him.’
‘I have just one question, Eloise. Did he have a nickname? Did you ever call him Leo?’
It was the one thing I needed to know, to be absolutely sure. I wasn’t going to say this to her, and certainly not in front of the others, but it had occurred to me that the AIDS that had killed him might not have been the result of a faulty blood transfusion. Was it possible that he had found other ways to support himself while he was training to be an architect? Had Lucien worked under the name of Leo? Had he contracted AIDS as a result of having unsafe sex? That was what I was really asking.
‘I never called him that. No one did.’
I believed her. Aiden and Cecily had hired her months after their wedding. I couldn’t see how she might have been at the hotel on the night of Frank’s death unless she had come under another name. And anyway, Derek had been sure he had seen a man stealing along the corridor towards room 12. Even as I confronted Eloise, I knew it couldn’t have been her.
Andreas had opened a bottle of mineral water. He handed me a glass and I drank. Over by the door, Locke was sitting ramrod straight, trying to pretend he wasn’t here. I was aware of the others watching me and dreaded what was coming next. But it wasn’t my fault. I had wanted to see Lawrence Treherne on his own. He was the one who had invited the entire family.
‘There is another possibility,’ I continued, choosing my words carefully. ‘It did occur to me that Frank Parris might not have been the target at all. Suppose the whole point of the murder was not to kill him but to frame Stefan Codrescu?’
This was greeted with a less than enthusiastic silence. Eventually, Lawrence spoke. ‘Who would want to do that?’ he asked.
I turned to Lisa. ‘I’m afraid we have to talk about you and Stefan,’ I said.
‘You want to trash us all? Is that your aim?’ She shifted in her seat, crossing her legs.
‘My aim is to tell the truth, Lisa, and like it or not you were very much part of what happened. You were “in a relationship” with Stefan.’ I drew the inverted commas with my fingers.
‘Yes.’ She had already admitted it to me. She couldn’t deny it now.
Her parents looked at us in dismay.
‘He refused to continue that relationship.’
She hesitated. ‘Yes.’
‘Were you aware that Stefan was also having sex with Cecily?’
Now it was Aiden who was angry. ‘That’s a lie!’
‘I’m afraid it’s not.’ I paused deliberately for effect. ‘I saw Stefan this morning.’
‘You saw him?’ Pauline was astonished.
‘I visited him in prison.’
‘And he told you that about Cecily?’ Aiden sneered at me. ‘And you believed him?’
‘He didn’t tell me. In fact, he did the best he could to cover it up. But all the evidence was there. I just had to put it together.
‘Lionel Corby told me that he had seen two people having sex in the wood near Oa
klands Cottage a couple of weeks before the wedding. At first, he thought one of them was you, Aiden. But then he saw that the man didn’t have a tattoo on his shoulder and realised it was Stefan. He couldn’t see the woman from where he was standing. She was underneath. But he knew that Stefan had been seeing Lisa – against his will – and assumed it was her.
‘He was wrong.’ Again I addressed Lisa. ‘How do I know? Actually, it’s very simple. There was something that you said to me over breakfast, just before you asked me to leave. You denied that you had fired him “because he wouldn’t come into my bed any more” and it was that turn of phrase that told me everything I needed to know.
‘Why would you take the risk – and the discomfort – of meeting him in the middle of a wood when you could quite easily have sex in your own home? You live alone in Woodbridge. You had no reason to hide. But of course, for Cecily it was different. She was sharing a house with Aiden. The two of them were engaged. She couldn’t even use a room in the hotel. She might be seen. Sex in the wood was the answer.’
‘Cecily would never have cheated on me!’ Aiden was furious. ‘We were happy together.’
‘I’m sorry—’
‘Lionel didn’t see her! You just said that.’
‘That’s true.’
‘Then you’re lying!’
‘I’m afraid not, Aiden. I’ve seen a letter that Cecily wrote to Stefan after he was sent to prison. It was very short and she hadn’t written to him for many years. But the tone of it was still intimate. It was signed “with love”.
‘And it wasn’t just that. When I asked Stefan if he had been with Lisa in the wood, he hesitated and then he told me that it was her, even though it directly contradicted what he’d said just a minute before. I knew immediately that he was lying and that he was protecting someone.’
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