Magpie Murders (30 page)

The End.

As ever,
Alan

‘This came this morning?’ I asked.

‘Yes. You know, the two of us had dinner on Thursday night. I took him to the Club at the Ivy. This is dated 28 August, which is the next day. He must have written it as soon as he got home.’

Alan had a flat in Fitzrovia. He would have stayed overnight and taken the train from Liverpool Street the following morning.

‘What’s
The Slide
?’ I asked.

‘It was a book that Alan wrote a while back.’

‘You never showed it to me.’

‘I didn’t think you’d be interested, to be honest. It wasn’t a whodunnit. It was something more serious, a sort of satire about twenty-first century Britain, set in a stately home.’

‘I’d still have liked to have seen it.’

‘Trust me, Susan. You’d have been wasting your time. There was no way I was going to publish it.’

‘Did you tell Alan that?’

‘Not in so many words. I just said that it wouldn’t fit into our list.’ An old publishing euphemism. You don’t tell your most successful author that his new book is no bloody good.

The two of us sat in silence. Underneath the desk, the dog turned over and groaned. ‘This is a suicide letter,’ I said.

‘Yes.’

‘We have to send it to the police.’

‘I agree. I was about to call them.’

‘You didn’t know he was ill?’

‘I knew absolutely nothing about it. He’d never told me and he certainly didn’t mention it on Thursday night. We had dinner. He gave me the manuscript. He was excited! He said it was his best work.’

I hadn’t been there and I’m writing this after the event, but this is what Charles told me had happened. Alan Conway had promised to deliver
Magpie Murders
by the end of the year and, unlike some writers I’ve worked with, he was always very prompt. The dinner had been planned a few weeks before and it was no coincidence, incidentally, that it had been arranged while I was away. Alan and I didn’t get on for reasons I’ll come to. He had met Charles at the Ivy, not the restaurant but a private, members only club just off Cambridge Circus. There’s a piano bar on the first floor and a restaurant above and all the windows have stained glass so you can’t see in – or, for that matter, out. Quite a few celebrities go there and it’s exactly the sort of place that Alan would have enjoyed. Charles had booked his usual table on the left of the door with a wall of bookshelves behind him. The scene couldn’t have been better staged if it had been in a theatre. In fact, the St Martin’s Theatre and the Ambassadors which had, between them, shown
The Mousetrap
for God knows how many years, were both down the road.

The two of them started with large martini cocktails, which The Club does very well. They talked about general stuff: family and friends, London, Suffolk, the book trade, a bit of gossip, what was selling, what wasn’t. They chose their food and because Alan liked expensive wine, Charles flattered him by ordering a bottle of Gevrey-Chambertin Grand Cru, most of which Alan drank. I could imagine him becoming louder and more loquacious as the meal went on. He always did have a tendency to drink too much. The first course arrived and it was after they had finished it that Alan produced the manuscript from the leather satchel he always carried.

‘I was very surprised,’ Charles said. ‘I wasn’t expecting it for at least another couple of months.’

‘You know that my copy is incomplete,’ I said. ‘It’s missing the last chapters.’

‘Mine too. I was just working on it when you came in.’

‘Did he say anything?’ I was wondering if Alan had done this on purpose. Perhaps he wanted Charles to guess the ending before it was actually revealed.

Charles thought back. ‘No. He just told me how good he thought it was and handed it over.’

That was interesting. Alan Conway must have believed all the chapters were there. Otherwise, surely, he would have explained what he was doing.

Charles had been delighted to receive the new work and made all the right noises. He told Alan he would read it over the weekend. Unfortunately, after that, the evening had taken a turn for the worse.

‘I don’t know what happened,’ Charles told me. ‘We were talking about the title. I wasn’t sure I liked it – and you know how touchy Alan could be. Maybe it was foolish of me to bring it up just then. And while we were talking, there was a rather odd incident. A waiter dropped a handful of plates. I suppose it could happen anywhere but The Club is such a quiet place that it was almost like a bomb going off and Alan actually got up and remonstrated with the waiter. He’d been on edge all evening, I had no idea why. But if he was ill and already thinking of doing away with himself, I suppose it’s hardly surprising.’

‘How did the meal end?’ I asked.

‘Alan calmed down a bit and we had coffee but he was still out of sorts. You know how he could be after a few glasses of wine. Remember that ghastly Specsavers event? Anyway, as he was getting into his taxi, he said there was a radio interview he wanted to pull.’

‘Simon Mayo,’ I said. ‘Radio Two.’

‘Yes. Next Friday. I tried to talk him out of it. You don’t want to let these media people down as you never know if they’ll invite you back. But he wasn’t having any or it.’ Charles turned the letter in his hands. I wondered if he should even be touching it. Wasn’t it evidence? ‘I suppose I should telephone the police,’ he said. ‘They’ll need to know about this.’

I left him to make the call.

Alan Conway

I was the one who discovered Alan Conway.

He was introduced to me by my sister, Katie, who lives in Suffolk and who sent her children to the local independent school. Alan was an English teacher there and had just finished a novel, a whodunnit called
Atticus Pünd Investigates
. I’m not sure how he found out that she knew me – I suppose she must have told him – but he asked her if she would show it to me. My sister and I have very different lives but we’ve stayed close and I agreed to take a look as a favour to her. I didn’t think it would be any good because books that come in this way, through the back door, seldom are.

I was pleasantly surprised.

Alan had captured something of ‘the golden age’ of British whodunnits with a country house setting, a complicated murder, a cast of suitably eccentric characters and a detective who arrived as an outsider. The book was set in 1946, just after the war, and although he was light with the period detail, he had still managed to capture something of the feelings of that time. Pünd was a sympathetic character and the fact that he had come out of the concentration camps – we eventually cut back on some of this – gave him a certain depth. I liked his Germanic mannerisms, particularly his obsession with his book,
The Landscape of Criminal Investigation
, which would become a regular feature. Setting the story in the forties also allowed for a gentler pace: no mobile phones, computers, forensics, no instant information. I had a few issues. Some of the writing was too clever. It often felt as if he was fighting for effect rather than simply telling the story. It was too long. But by the time I had come to the end of the manuscript, I was certain that I was going to publish it, my first commission for Cloverleaf Books.

And then I met the author.

I didn’t like him. I’m sorry to say it but he just struck me as a bit of a cold fish. You’ll have seen photographs of him on the book jackets; the slim face, the closely cropped silver hair, the round, wire-frame glasses. On television or on the radio he’d always had a sort of eloquence, an easy charm. He was nothing like that then. He was puffy and a little overweight, wearing a suit with chalk marks on the sleeves. His manner was at once aggressive and eager to please. He wasted no time telling me how much he wanted to be a published author but he showed almost no enthusiasm now that the moment had come. I couldn’t work him out. When I mentioned some of the changes I wanted him to make to his book, he positively bristled. He struck me as one of the most humourless people I had ever met. Later on, Katie told me that he had never been popular with the children and I could understand why.

To be fair though, I have to say that I can’t have made a great first impression either. Some meetings just happen that way. We’d arranged lunch at a smart restaurant – him, Charles and me. It was pouring with rain that day, really chucking it down. I’d been at a meeting on the other side of town and my taxi hadn’t arrived so I’d had to run half a mile in high heels. I turned up late with my hair plastered down the side of my face, my shirt sodden and my bra showing through. I knocked over a glass of wine as I sat down. I really wanted a cigarette and that made me ratty. I remember we had an absurd argument about one section in the book – he’d gathered all the suspects in the library and I just thought it was too clichéd – but actually this wasn’t the right time to talk about that. Afterwards, Charles was quite angry with me and he was right to be. We could have lost him, and there were plenty of other publishers who would have taken the book, particularly with the promise of a series.

In fact, Charles took over and did most of the talking that day and the result was that he was the one who ended up working with Alan. Which is to say, it was Charles who went to all the festivals: Edinburgh, Hay-on-Wye, Oxford, Cheltenham. Charles had the relationship. I just did the work, editing the books with a nifty software programme that meant we didn’t even have to meet face to face. It’s funny to think that I worked with him for eleven years and never once visited his house: a little unfair considering I actually paid for it.

Of course, I saw him from time to time, whenever he came into the office and I have to admit, the more successful he got, the more attractive he became. He bought expensive clothes. He went to the gym. He drove a BMW i8 coupe. These days all writers have to be media performers and Alan Conway was soon touring the studios on programmes like
The Book Show
,
The Wright Stuff
and
Question Time
. He went to parties and awards ceremonies. He talked at schools and universities. He had been forty years old when he found fame and it was as if it was only then that he began to live his life. He changed in other ways too. He was married with an eight-year-old son when I met him. The marriage didn’t last long.

Reading what I’ve written I sound disenchanted, as if I resented the success that, to a large extent, I had created for him. But that wasn’t how I felt at all. I didn’t care what he thought about me and I was perfectly happy to let him and Charles hang out together at literary festivals while I set about the serious business, editing the text and overseeing the production of the books. At the end of the day, that was all that mattered to me. And the truth is that I really did love them. I grew up on Agatha Christie and when I’m on a plane or on a beach there’s nothing I’d rather read than a whodunnit. I’ve watched every episode of
Poirot
and
Midsomer Murders
on TV. I never guess the ending and I can’t wait for the moment when the detective gathers all the suspects in the room and, like a magician conjuring silk scarves out of the air, makes the whole thing make sense. So here’s the bottom line. I was a fan of Atticus Pünd. I didn’t need to be a fan of Alan Conway too.

I had to field quite a few phone calls after I left Charles’s office. Somehow, even before we had made the police aware of the letter, the news had got out that Alan had committed suicide and there were journalists chasing the story. Friends in the industry called to commiserate. An antiquarian bookshop in Cecil Court wanted to know if we had any signed copies as they were mounting a window display. I thought about Alan a lot that morning – but I thought more about a whodunnit that was missing its solution and, for that matter, a summer publishing schedule that had a huge hole at its centre.

After lunch, I went back in to see Charles.

‘I’ve spoken to the police,’ Charles told me. The letter was still in front of him with the envelope next to it. ‘They’re sending someone round to collect it. They say I shouldn’t have touched it.’

‘I don’t see how you could have known that before you opened it.’

‘Quite.’

‘Did they tell you how he did it?’ I asked. By ‘did it’ I meant ‘killed himself’.

Charles nodded. ‘There’s a sort of tower attached to his house. The last time I was there – it must have been March or April – I actually had a conversation with Alan about it. I said to him how dangerous it was. There’s only a low wall and no railings or anything. It’s funny, because when I heard there’d been an accident, I instantly assumed he must have fallen off the bloody thing. But now it looks as if he jumped.’

There was a long silence. Usually, Charles and I know what the other is thinking but this time we were deliberately avoiding each other’s eyes. It was really quite horrible that this had happened. Neither of us wanted to confront it.

‘What did you think of the book?’ I asked. It was the one question I hadn’t asked, the first thing, in normal circumstances, I would have wanted to know.

‘Well, I read it over the weekend and I was enjoying it very much. It seemed to me every bit as good as all the others. When I got to the last page, I was as irritated as you must have been. My first thought was that one of the girls must have made a mistake here in the office. I had two copies made – one for you, one for me.’

That reminded me. ‘Where’s Jemima?’ I asked.

‘She’s left. She handed in her notice while you were on the road.’ Suddenly he looked tired. ‘She couldn’t have chosen a worse time. This business with Alan – and there’s Laura to think about too.’

Laura was his pregnant daughter. ‘How is she?’ I asked.

‘She’s fine. But the doctors are saying it could happen any time. Apparently, with the first one, it’s more likely to be early.’ He went back to what he’d been saying before. ‘There are no missing pages, Susan. Not here anyway. We’ve checked the copy room. We printed up exactly what Alan gave us. I was going to call him to ask what had happened. And then, of course, I heard the news.’