I didn’t sleep well that night. I’m used to bad writing. I’ve looked at plenty of novels that have no hope of being published. But I’d known Alan Conway for eleven years, or I thought I had, and I found it almost impossible to believe that he could have produced this, all four hundred and twenty pages of it. It was as if he was whispering to me as I lay there in the darkness, telling me something I didn’t want to hear.
Orford, Suffolk
Magpie Murders is set in a fictitious village in Somerset. Most of the stories take place in villages that Alan has made up and even the two London-based novels (No Rest for the Wicked and Gin & Cyanide) use false names for anything that might be recognisable: hotels and restaurants, museums, hospitals and theatres. It’s as if the author is afraid of exposing his fantasy characters to the real world, even with the protection of a 1950s setting. Pünd is only comfortable when he’s strolling on the village green or drinking in the local pub. Murders take place during cricket and croquet matches. The sun always shines. Given that he had named his house after a Sherlock Holmes short story, it’s possible that Alan was inspired by Holmes’s famous dictum: ‘The lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.’
Why do English villages lend themselves so well to murder? I used to wonder about this but got the answer when I made the mistake of renting a cottage in a village near Chichester. Charles had advised against it but at the time I’d thought how nice it would be to get away now and then for the weekend. He was right. I couldn’t wait to get back. I soon discovered that every time I made one friend I made three enemies and that arguments about such issues as car parking, the church bells, dog waste and hanging flower baskets dominated daily life to such an extent that everyone was permanently at each other’s throats. That’s the truth of it. Emotions, which are quickly lost in the noise and chaos of the city, fester around the village square, driving people to psychosis and violence. It’s a gift to the whodunnit writer. There’s also the advantage of connectivity. Cities are anonymous but in a small, rural community everyone knows everyone, making it so much easier to create suspects and, for that matter, people to suspect them.
It was obvious to me that Alan had Orford in mind when he created Saxby-on-Avon. It wasn’t in Avon and there were no ‘Georgian constructions made of Bath stone with handsome porticos and gardens rising up in terraces’ but as soon as I passed the fire station with its bright yellow training tower and entered the village square, I knew exactly where I was. The church was called St Bartholemew’s not St Botolph’s, but it was in the right place and even had a few broken stone arches attached. There was a pub looking out over the graveyard. The Queen’s Arms, where Pünd had stayed, was actually called the King’s Head. The village noticeboard where Joy had posted her notice of infidelity was on one side of the square. The village shop and the bakery – it was called the Pump House – was on the other. The castle, which cast a shadow over Dr Redwing’s house, and which must have been built around the same time as the one I had seen in Framlingham, was a short distance away. There was even a Daphne Road. In the book it had been Neville Brent’s address but in the real world it was Alan’s sister who lived there. The house was very much as he had described it. I wondered what this meant.
Claire Jenkins had been unable to see me the day before but had agreed to meet me at lunchtime. I got there early and strolled around the village, following the main road all the way down to the River Alde. The river doesn’t exist in Alan’s book – it’s been replaced by the main road to Bath. Pye Hall is somewhere over to the left, which would in reality place it on land belonging to the Orford Yacht Club. I still had time in hand so I had a coffee at a second pub, the Jolly Sailor. In the book, it’s called the Ferryman although both names reference boats. I also walked past a wild meadow which had to have been the inspiration for Dingle Dell, although there was no vicarage that I could see, and only a small patch of woodland.
I was beginning to get an idea of the way Alan’s mind worked. He had taken his own house – Abbey Grange – and placed it, complete with lake and trees – in the village where he had lived until his divorce. Then he had taken the entire construction and transported it to Somerset – which was also, incidentally, where his ex-wife and son now lived. It was evident that he used everyone and everything around him. Charles Clover’s golden retriever, Bella, had made it into the narrative. James Taylor had a supporting role. And I had little doubt that Alan’s sister, Claire, would turn out to be recast as Clarissa.
Which made Alan Conway the real-life Magnus Pye. It was interesting that he identified with the main character of his book: an obnoxious and arrogant landowner. Did he know something I didn’t?
Claire Jenkins was not wearing a hat with three feathers. Her house wasn’t unpleasantly modern. In short, it was nothing like the building in Winsley Terrace that Alan had described. It was admittedly quite small, modest compared to some of the other properties in Orford, but it was cosy and tasteful and quite lacking in any religious iconography. She herself was a short, rather pugnacious woman dressed in a turtleneck jersey and jeans that didn’t flatter her. Unlike Clarissa Pye, she didn’t colour her hair, which was lost in the dead man’s land between brown and grey. It swept down in a fringe over eyes that were tired and filled with grief. She looked nothing like her brother – and the first thing I noticed when she showed me into her living room was that she had none of his books on display. Maybe she had turned them face down in mourning. She had invited me at lunchtime but she didn’t offer me any lunch. She gave every impression of wanting to get rid of me as soon as possible.
‘I was shocked when I heard about Alan,’ she said. ‘He was three years younger than me and we had been close all our lives. He’s the reason I moved to Orford. I had no idea he’d been ill. He never told me about it. I saw James only a week ago, shopping in Ipswich, and he didn’t tell me either. I always got on very well with him, by the way, although I was very surprised when he turned up as Alan’s partner. We all were. I can’t think what my parents would have said if they’d still been alive – my father was a headmaster, you know – but they died a very long time ago. James never mentioned anything about Alan being ill. I wonder if he even knew?’
When Atticus Pünd interviews people, they usually make sense. Perhaps it’s his skill as an interrogator but he manages to make them start at the beginning and answer his questions logically. Claire wasn’t like that. She talked in the way that someone with a punctured lung might breathe. The words came out in fits and starts and I had to concentrate to follow what she was saying. She was very upset. She told me that her brother’s death had knocked her for six. ‘What I can’t get over is that he didn’t reach out to me. We’d had our difficulties lately, but I’d have been happy to talk to him and if he was worried about something …’
‘He killed himself because of his illness,’ I said.
‘That’s what DS Locke told me. But there was no need to do anything quite so drastic. These days, there are so many sorts of palliative care. My husband had lung cancer, you know. The nurses were absolutely wonderful, the way they looked after him. I think he was happier in the last few months of his life than he’d ever been with me. He was the centre of attention. He liked that. I came to Orford after he died. It was Alan who brought me here. He said it would be nice if we were close. This house … I would never have been able to afford it if it hadn’t been for him. You really would have thought, after what I’d been through, that he would have confided in me. If he was really thinking of killing himself, why didn’t he let me know?’
‘Perhaps he was afraid you’d talk him out of it.’
‘I couldn’t have talked Alan out of anything. Or into it. We weren’t like that.’
‘You said you were close to him.’
‘Oh yes. I knew him better than anyone. There are so many things I could tell you about hi
m. I’m surprised you never published his autobiography.’
‘He never wrote one.’
‘You could have got someone else to write it.’
I didn’t argue. ‘I’d be interested to know anything you could tell me,’ I said.
‘Would you?’ She leapt on my words. ‘Maybe I should write about him. I could tell you about our time at Chorley Hall when we were children. I’d like to do that, you know. I read the obituaries and they hardly described Alan at all.’
I tried to steer her towards the point. ‘James mentioned to me that you helped him with his work. He said that you typed up some of his manuscripts.’
‘That’s right. Alan always did the first draft by hand. He liked to use a fountain pen. He didn’t trust computers. He didn’t want to have all that technology between him and his work. He always said he preferred the intimacy of pen and ink. He said he felt closer to the page. I did his fan mail for him. People wrote him such lovely letters but he didn’t have time to answer them all. He taught me how to write in his voice. I would write the letters and he would sign them. And I also helped him with research: poisons and things like that. I was the one who introduced him to Richard Locke.’
It had been a Detective Superintendent Locke who had telephoned Charles with the news of Alan’s death.
‘I work for the Suffolk constabulary,’ Claire explained. ‘In Ipswich. We’re in Museum Street.’
‘Are you a police officer?’
‘I work in HR.’
‘Did you type Magpie Murders for him?’ I asked.
She shook her head. ‘I stopped after Gin and Cyanide. The thing is, you see, well, he never gave me anything. He was quite generous to me in some ways. He helped me to buy this house. He would take me out, and things like that. But after I’d done three of the books, I suggested that he might put me on … I don’t know … a salary. It seemed reasonable. I wasn’t asking for a great deal of money. I just thought I ought to be paid. Unfortunately I’d got it quite wrong because I saw at once that I’d upset him. He wasn’t mean. I’m not saying that. He just didn’t think it was right to employ me – because I was his sister. We didn’t exactly argue but after that he just typed the manuscripts himself. Or maybe he got James to help him. I don’t know.’
I told her about the missing chapters but she was unable to help me.
‘I didn’t read any of it. He never let me see it. I used to read all the books before they were published but after we argued he didn’t show them to me any more. Alan always was like that, you know. He was someone who was very easy to offend.’
‘If you do write about him, you should put all this down,’ I said. ‘The two of you grew up together. Did he always know he was going to be a writer? Why did he write whodunnits?’
‘Yes, I will. I’ll do exactly that.’ And then, in the blink of an eye, she came out with it. ‘I don’t think he killed himself.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I don’t!’ She blurted out the words as if she had wanted to from the moment I had arrived and couldn’t wait any longer. ‘I told DS Locke but he wouldn’t listen to me. Alan didn’t commit suicide. I don’t believe it for a minute.’
‘You think it was an accident?’
‘I think someone killed him.’
I stared at her. ‘Who would want to do that?’
‘There were plenty of people. There were people who were jealous of him and there were people who didn’t like him. Melissa, for one. She never forgave him for what he did to her and I suppose you can understand it. Leaving her for a young man. She was humiliated. And you should talk to his neighbour, John White. The two of them fell out over money. Alan talked to me about him. He said he was capable of anything. Of course, it may not have been someone who actually knew him. When you’re a famous writer, you always have stalkers. There was a time, not that long ago, when Alan got death threats. I know, because he showed them to me.’
‘Who were they from?’
‘They were anonymous. I could hardly bear to read them. The language in them was horrible. Swear words and obscenities. They were from some writer he’d met down in Devonshire, someone he was trying to help.’
‘Do you have any of them?’
‘They might have them in the police station. We had to go to the police in the end. I showed them to DS Locke and he said we should take them seriously but Alan had no idea who they’d come from and there was no way we could trace them. Alan loved life. Even if he was ill, he would have wanted to go on until the end.’
‘He wrote a letter.’ I felt I had to tell her. ‘The day before he killed himself he wrote to us and told us what he was going to do.’
She looked at me with a mixture of disbelief and resentment in her eyes. ‘He wrote to you?’
‘Yes.’
‘To you personally?’
‘No. The letter was addressed to Charles Clover. His publisher.’
She considered this. ‘Why did he write to you? He didn’t write to me. I can’t understand that at all. We grew up together. Until he was sent away to boarding school, the two of us were inseparable. And even afterwards, when I saw him …’ Her voice trailed away and I realised that I had been foolish. I had really upset her.
‘Would you like me to leave?’ I asked.
She nodded. She had taken out a handkerchief but she wasn’t using it. She was balling it in her fist.
‘I’m very sorry,’ I said.
She didn’t come with me to the door. I showed myself out and when I looked back through the window, she was still sitting where I had left her. She wasn’t crying. She was just staring at the wall, offended, angry.
Woodbridge
Katie, my sister, is two years younger than me although she looks older. It’s a running joke between us. She complains that I’ve had it easy, living on my own in a small, chaotic flat while she’s looked after two hyperactive children, a variety of pets and an unreconstructed husband who can be kind and romantic but who still likes his food on the table at the right time. They have a large house and half an acre of garden, which Katie keeps like something out of a magazine. The house is seventies modern with sliding windows, gas-effect fires and a giant TV in the living room. There are almost no books. I’m not making any judgment. It’s just the sort of thing I can’t help but notice.
The two of us live in different worlds. She’s much slimmer than I am and takes more care with her appearance. She dresses in sensible clothes, which she buys from catalogues, and has her hair done once a fortnight, somewhere in Woodbridge where, she tells me, the hairdresser is her friend. I hardly know my hairdresser’s name – it’s Doz, Daz or Dez or something but I don’t know what it’s short for. Katie doesn’t need to work but she’s spent ten years managing a garden centre half a mile down the road. God knows how she’s been able to balance that with her full-time job as wife and mother. Of course, there’s been a succession of au pairs and nannies as the children have grown up. There was the anorexic one, the born-again Christian one, the lonely Australian one, and the one who disappeared. We talk to each other two or three times a week on FaceTime and it’s funny how, although we have so little in common, we’ve always been such good friends.
I certainly couldn’t leave Suffolk without seeing her. Woodbridge was only twelve miles from Orford and, as luck would have it, she had the afternoon off. Gordon was in London. He commuted there every single day: Woodbridge to Ipswich, Ipswich to Liverpool Street, and then back again. He said he didn’t mind but I didn’t like to think how many hours he’d wasted on trains. He could easily afford a pied-à-terre but he said he hated being apart from his family, even for one or two nights. They always made a big deal about going away together: summer holidays, skiing at Christmas, various expeditions at weekends. The only time I ever felt lonely was when I thought about them.
After I’d left Claire Jenkins, I dr
ove straight over. Katie was in the kitchen. Despite the size of the house, that’s where she always seemed to be. We embraced and she brought me tea and a great slab of cake, home-made of course. ‘So what are you doing in Suffolk?’ she asked. I told her that Alan Conway had died and she grimaced. ‘Oh yes. Of course. I heard about it on the news. Is that very bad?’
‘It’s not good,’ I said.
‘I thought you didn’t like him.’
Had I really said that to her? ‘My feelings have got nothing to do with it,’ I said. ‘He was our biggest author.’
‘Hadn’t he just finished another book?’
I told her that the manuscript was missing two or three chapters, that there was no trace of it on his computer and that all his handwritten notes had disappeared too. Even as I was explaining all this, I realised that it sounded very odd, like a conspiracy thriller. I remembered what Claire had said to me, that her brother would never have committed suicide.
‘That’s very awkward,’ Katie said. ‘What will you do if you can’t find them?’
It was something I had been thinking about and which I intended to raise with Charles. We needed Magpie Murders. But when you consider all the different types of story out there in the market, the whodunnit is the one that really, absolutely, needs to be complete. The Mystery of Edwin Drood was the one example I could think of that had managed to survive but Alan was no Charles Dickens. So what were we going to do? We could find another writer to step in and finish it. Sophie Hannah had done a great job with Poirot but she would have to solve the murder first, something which I had signally failed to do. We could publish it as a very annoying Christmas present: something to give someone you didn’t like. We could have a competition – Tell us who killed Sir Magnus Pye and win a weekend on the Orient Express. Or we could keep looking and just hope that the wretched chapters would turn up.