Magpie Murders (50 page)

Andreas Patakis.
My
Andreas.

All at once, a whole lot of things fell into place. So this was the reason why Andreas had disliked Alan and why he resented Alan’s success! It was also the reason why, on Sunday evening, he had been so reluctant to tell me what it was about Alan that had annoyed him. How could he admit that he had been going out with Melissa before he met me? What should I think about it? Should I be upset? I had inherited him second-hand. No. That was ridiculous. Andreas had been married twice. There had been plenty of other women in his life. I knew that. But Melissa …? I found myself looking at her in a completely different light. She was definitely much less attractive than I had thought: too thin, boyish even, better suited to Alan than to Andreas.

She hadn’t stopped talking. She was still telling me about Alan.

‘I absolutely love books and I found him fascinating. I’d never met anyone so driven. He was always talking about stories and ideas, the books he’d read and the books he wanted to write. He’d done a course at East Anglia University and he was certain it was going to help him break through. It wasn’t enough for him to be published. He wanted to be famous – but it took a lot longer than he’d expected. I was with him throughout the whole process: writing the books, finishing them and then the horrible disappointment when nobody was interested. You have no idea what it’s like, Susan, being rejected, those letters that turn up in the post with six or seven lines dismissing the work of a whole year. Well, I suppose you’re the one who writes them. But to spend all that time writing something only to find that nobody wants it. It’s horribly destructive. They’re not just rejecting your work. They’re rejecting who you are.’

And who was Alan?

‘He took writing very seriously. The truth is, he didn’t want to write mysteries. The first book he showed me was called
Look to the Stars
. It was actually very clever and funny and a little sad. The main character was an astronaut but he never actually got into space. In a way, I suppose, that was a bit like Alan. Then there was a book set in the south of France. He said it was inspired by Henry James,
The Turn of the Screw
. It took him three years to finish but again no one was interested. I couldn’t understand it because I loved his writing and I completely believed in it. And what makes me angry is that, in the end, I was the one who spoiled it all.’

I poured myself more sparkling water. I was still thinking about Andreas. ‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

‘Atticus Pünd was my idea. No – really, it was! You’ve got to understand that what Alan wanted more than anything was to be published, to be recognised. It killed him to be stuck in a boring independent school in the middle of nowhere, teaching a bunch of kids he didn’t even like and who would forget him the moment they moved on to university. And one day – we’d just been to a bookshop – I suggested that he should write something simpler and more popular. He was always great at puzzles – crosswords and things like that. He had a fascination with tricks and trompe l’oeils. So I told him he should write a whodunnit. It seemed to me that there were writers out there who were earning thousands, millions of pounds from books that weren’t half as good as his. It would only take him a few months. It might be fun. And if it was a success he could leave Woodbridge and become a writer full-time, which is what he really wanted.

‘I actually helped him write
Atticus Pünd Investigates
. I was there when he thought up the main character. He told me all his ideas.’

‘Where did Atticus come from?’

‘They’d just shown
Schindler’s List
on TV and Alan took him from that. He may have been based on an old English teacher too. His name was Adrian Pound or something like that. Alan read loads of Agatha Christie books and tried to work out how she wrote her mysteries and only then did he begin writing. I was the first person to read it. I’m still proud of that. I was the first person in the world to read an Atticus Pünd novel. I loved it. Of course, it wasn’t as good as his other work. It was lighter and completely pointless, but I thought it was beautifully written – and of course, you published it. The rest you know.’

‘You said you spoiled things for him.’

‘Everything went wrong after the book came out. You have to understand, Alan was such a complex person. He could be very moody, introvert. For him, writing was something mysterious. It was like he was kneeling at the altar and the words were being sent down to him – or something like that. There were writers that he admired, and more than anything in the world he had always dreamed of being like them.’

‘What writers?’

‘Well, Salman Rushdie, for one. Martin Amis. David Mitchell. And Will Self.’

I remembered the four hundred and twenty pages of
The Slide
that I had read. I had thought it derivative at the time but now Melissa had told me where it had come from. Alan had been imitating a writer he’d admired but who, personally speaking, I had never been able to read. He had produced something close to a pastiche of Will Self.

‘The moment Atticus Pünd came out, he was trapped,’ Melissa went on. ‘That was what neither of us had anticipated. It was so successful that of course nobody wanted him to do anything else.’

‘It was better than his other books,’ I said.

‘You may have thought that, but Alan didn’t agree and nor do I.’ She sounded bitter. ‘He only wrote Atticus Pünd to get out of Woodbridge School and all it did was put him somewhere worse.’

‘But he was rich.’

‘He didn’t want the money! It was never about money.’ She sighed. Neither of us had eaten very much lunch. ‘Even if Alan hadn’t found this other side of himself, even if he hadn’t gone off with James, I don’t think we’d have stayed married much longer. He was never the same with me after he got famous. Do you understand what I’m saying, Susan? I’d betrayed him. Worse than that, I’d persuaded him to betray himself.’

After another half an hour – maybe forty minutes – I left. I had to wait for a train at Bradford-on-Avon station but that suited me. I needed time to think. Andreas and Melissa! Why did it bother me so much? It had been over before the two of us even met. I suppose part of it was natural, a spurt of involuntary jealousy. But at the same time I was remembering what Andreas had said to me, the last time we had spoken. ‘
Is this the best we can do?
’ I had always assumed that we had both liked the casual nature of our relationship and I had been annoyed about the hotel because it was changing all that. What Melissa had just told me made me think again. Suddenly I saw how easy it would be to lose him.

There was something else that occurred to me. Andreas had lost Melissa to Alan and he had made it clear that it still rankled. There was certainly no love lost between them. And this time, all these years later, Alan was the main reason why he might lose me. I was his editor. My career was largely predicated on the success of his books. ‘
I’ve hated the way you’ve had to kowtow to him.
’ That was what he had said.

I suddenly saw that Andreas, as much as anyone, must have been very glad to see him dead.

I needed to distract myself, so as soon as I was on the train, I took out
Magpie Murders
– but this time, instead of reading it, I tried to decipher it. I couldn’t get away from the idea that Alan Conway had concealed something inside the text and that it might even be the reason he was killed. I remembered the crossword that Clarissa Pye had solved and the code games the two boys had played at the Lodge. When Alan was at Chorley Hall, he had sent his sister acronyms and he had put dots under certain letters in books to send secret messages. There were no dots in the typescript of
Magpie Murders
. I had already checked. But his books had contained British rivers, tube stations, fountain pens, birds. This was a man who played electronic Scrabble in his spare time. ‘
He was always great at puzzles – crosswords and things like that.’
It was the very reason why Melissa had persuaded him to try his hand at murder mystery in the first place. I was sure that if I looked hard enough there would be something I would find.

I figured I knew where the characters had originated so I ignored them. If I was looking for secret messages, acronyms seemed the more likely possibility. The first letters of the first word of each chapter, for example, spelled out TTAADA. Nothing there. Then I tried the first ten sentences, which began TTTBHTI and the first letters of the first word of each section: TSDW – I didn’t need to continue. That didn’t mean anything either. I looked at the title of the book.
Magpie Murders
could be rearranged to make Reared Pig Mums, Reread Smug Imp, Premium Grades and many more. It was a puerile activity. I wasn’t expecting to find anything, not really. But it occupied my mind as we trundled back to London. I didn’t want to think about what Melissa had told me.

And then, somewhere between Swindon and Didcot, I saw it. It just assembled itself in front of my eyes.

The titles of the books.

The clues had always been there. James had told me that the number of books was important. ‘
Alan always said there would be nine books. He’d decided that from the very start
.’ Why nine? Because
that
was his secret message. That was what he wanted to spell out. Look at the first letters.

Atticus Pünd Investigates

No Rest for the Wicked

Atticus Pünd Takes the Case

Night Comes Calling

Atticus Pünd’s Christmas

Gin & Cyanide

Red Roses for Atticus

Atticus Pünd Abroad

If you add the last title,
Magpie Murders
, what do you get?

AN ANAGRAM.

And finally that explained something that had been on my mind for a while. The Ivy Club. Alan had got angry when Charles had suggested changing the title of the last book. What was it that he had said? ‘
I’m not having the
—’ That was the moment when Donald Leigh dropped the plates.

But in fact there was no missing word. He had actually completed the sentence. What he was saying was, the book could not be called
The
Magpie Murders because that would spoil the joke that Alan had built into the series almost from the day it was conceived. He’d come up with an anagram.

But an anagram of what?

An hour later, the train pulled into Paddington and I still hadn’t seen it.

Paddington Station

I don’t like coincidences in novels, and particularly not in murder mysteries, which work because of logic and calculation. The detective really should be able to reach his conclusion without having providence on his side. But that’s just the editor in me speaking and unfortunately this is what happened. Getting off the train at two minutes past five in a city of eight and a half million people, with thousands of them crossing the concourse all around me, I bumped into someone I knew. Her name was Jemima Humphries. Until very recently, she had been Charles Clover’s PA at Cloverleaf.

I saw her and recognised her at once. Charles always said she had the sort of smile that could light up a crowd and that was what first caught my eye, the fact that she alone looked cheerful among the grey mass of commuters making their way home. She was slim and pretty with long blonde hair, and although she was in her mid-twenties, she had lost none of her schoolgirl exuberance. I remember her telling me that she had wanted to get into publishing because she loved reading. I’d already missed having her around the office. I had no idea why she’d left.

She saw me at the same moment and waved. We made our way towards each other and I thought we were just going to say hello and I was going to ask her how she was. But that wasn’t what happened.

‘How are you, Jemima?’ I asked.

‘I’m fine thanks, Susan. It’s really great to see you. I’m sorry I didn’t get to say goodbye.’

‘It all happened so quickly. I was away on a book tour and when I’d got back, you’d already gone.’

‘I know.’

‘So where are you now?’

‘I’m living with my parents in Chiswick. I was just on my way—’

‘Where are you working?’

‘I haven’t got a job yet.’ She giggled nervously. ‘I’m still looking.’

That puzzled me. I’d assumed she’d been poached. ‘So why did you leave?’ I asked.

‘I didn’t leave, Susan. Charles fired me. Well, he asked me to go. I didn’t want to.’

That wasn’t what Charles had told me. I was sure he’d said she’d handed in her notice. It was already half past five and I wanted to go to the office and go through my emails before I met Andreas. But something told me I couldn’t leave it like this. I had to know more. ‘Are you in a hurry?’ I asked.

‘No. Not really.’

‘Can I buy you a drink?’

We made our way to one of those grimy, frankly hellish pubs that edge onto the platforms at Paddington Station. I bought myself a gin and tonic, which arrived with not enough ice. Jemima had a glass of white wine. ‘So what happened?’ I asked.

Jemima frowned. ‘I’m not sure, to be honest with you, Susan. I really liked working at Cloverleaf and Charles was fine most of the time. He could be quite snappy now and then but I didn’t mind because in a way that was part of the job. Anyway, we had a big row – it must have been the day you went off on that book tour. He said I’d double-booked him for a lunch and there was an agent sitting in a restaurant waiting for him but it simply wasn’t true. I never made any mistakes with his diary. But when I tried to argue with him he got really angry. I’d never seen him like that before. He was completely over-the-top. And then, on the Friday morning, I took him a coffee in his office and, as I handed it to him, he sort of fumbled it and it went all over his desk. It was a terrible mess and I went out and got kitchen towel and cleared it up for him and that was when he said he didn’t think it was working, him and me, and that I should start looking for another job.’