LongBench v2 / 670cf1c0bb02136c067d26e5 / Please try to deduce the true story based on the evidence currently known. Who…

CROUCH END, LONDON A bottle of wine. A family-sized packet of Nacho Cheese Flavoured Tortilla Chips and a jar of hot salsa dip. A packet of cigarettes on the side (I know, I know). The rain hammering against the windows. And a book. What could have been lovelier? Magpie Murders was number nine in the much-loved and world-bestselling Atticus Pünd series. When I first opened it on that wet August evening, it existed only as a typescript and it would be my job to edit it before it was published. First, I intended to enjoy it. I remember going straight into the kitchen when I came in, plucking a few things out of the fridge and putting everything on a tray. I undressed, leaving my clothes where they fell. The whole flat was a tip anyway. I showered, dried and pulled on a giant Maisie Mouse T-shirt that someone had given me at the Bologna Book Fair. It was too early to get into bed but I was going to read the book lying on top of it, the sheets still crumpled and unmade from the night before. I don’t always live like this, but my boyfriend had been away for six weeks and while I was on my own I’d deliberately allowed standards to slip. There’s something quite comforting about mess, especially when there’s no one else there to complain. Actually, I hate that word. Boyfriend. Especially when it’s used to describe a fifty-two-year-old, twice-divorced man. The trouble is, the English language doesn’t provide much in the way of an alternative. Andreas was not my partner. We didn’t see each other regularly enough for that. My lover? My other half? Both made me wince for different reasons. He was from Crete. He taught Ancient Greek at Westminster School and he rented a flat in Maida Vale, not so far from me. We’d talked about moving in together but we were afraid it would kill the relationship, so although I had a full wardrobe of his clothes, there were frequently times when I didn’t have him. This was one of them. Andreas had flown home during the school holidays to be with his family: his parents, his widowed grandmother, his two teenaged sons and his ex-wife’s brother all lived in the same house in one of those complicated sorts of arrangements that the Greeks seem to enjoy. He wouldn’t be back until Tuesday, the day before school began, and I wouldn’t see him until the following weekend. So there I was on my own in my Crouch End flat, which was spread over the basement and ground floor of a Victorian house in Clifton Road, about a fifteen-minute walk from Highgate tube station. It was probably the only sensible thing I ever bought. I liked living there. It was quiet and comfortable and I shared the garden with a choreographer who lived on the first floor but who was hardly ever in. I had far too many books, of course. Every inch of shelf space was taken. There were books on top of books. The shelves themselves were bending under the weight. I had converted the second bedroom into a study although I tried not to work at home. Andreas used it more than I did – when he was around. I opened the wine. I unscrewed the salsa. I lit a cigarette. I began to read the book as you are about to. But before you do that, I have to warn you. This book changed my life. You may have read that before. I’m embarrassed to say that I splashed it on the cover of the first novel I ever commissioned, a very ordinary Second World War thriller. I can’t even remember who said it, but the only way that book was going to change someone’s life was if it fell on them. Is it ever actually true? I still remember reading the Brontë sisters as a very young girl and falling in love with their world: the melodrama, the wild landscapes, the gothic romance of it all. You might say that Jane Eyre steered me towards my career in publishing, which is a touch ironic in view of what happened. There are plenty of books that have touched me very deeply: Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, McEwan’s Atonement. I’m told a great many children suddenly found themselves in boarding school as a result of the Harry Potter phenomenon and throughout history there have been books that have had a profound effect on our attitudes. Lady Chatterley’s Lover is one obvious example, 1984 another. But I’m not sure it actually matters what we read. Our lives continue along the straight lines that have been set out for us. Fiction merely allows us a glimpse of the alternative. Maybe that’s one of the reasons we enjoy it. But Magpie Murders really did change everything for me. I no longer live in Crouch End. I no longer have my job. I’ve managed to lose a great many friends. That evening, as I reached out and turned the first page of the typescript, I had no idea of the journey I was about to begin and, quite frankly, I wish I’d never allowed myself to get pulled on board. It was all down to that bastard Alan Conway. I hadn’t liked him the day I’d met him although the strange thing is that I’d always loved his books. As far as I’m concerned, you can’t beat a good whodunnit: the twists and turns, the clues and the red herrings and then, finally, the satisfaction of having everything explained to you in a way that makes you kick yourself because you hadn’t seen it from the start. That was what I was expecting when I began. But Magpie Murders wasn’t like that. It wasn’t like that at all. I hope I don’t need to spell it out any more. Unlike me, you have been warned. 
 Magpie Murders An Atticus Pünd Mystery Alan Conway 
 ABOUT THE AUTHOR ALAN CONWAY was born in Ipswich and educated first at Woodbridge School and then at the University of Leeds, where he gained a first in English Literature. He later enrolled as a mature student at the University of East Anglia to study creative writing. He spent the next six years as a teacher before achieving his first success with Atticus Pünd Investigates in 1995. The book spent twenty-eight weeks in the Sunday Times bestseller list and won the Gold Dagger Award given by the Crime Writers’ Association for the best crime novel of the year. Since then, the Atticus Pünd series has sold eighteen million books worldwide, and has been translated into thirty-five languages. In 2012, Alan Conway was awarded an MBE for services to literature. He has one child from a former marriage and lives in Framlingham in Suffolk. 
 PRAISE FOR ATTICUS PÜND ‘Everything you could want from a British whodunnit. Stylish, clever and unpredictable.’ Independent ‘Watch out Hercule Poirot! There’s a smart little foreigner in town – and he’s stepping into your shoes.’ Daily Mail ‘I’m a fan of Atticus Pünd. He takes us back to the golden age of crime fiction and reminds us where we all began.’ Ian Rankin ‘Sherlock Holmes, Lord Peter Wimsey, Father Brown, Philip Marlowe, Poirot . . . the truly great detectives can probably be numbered on the fingers of one hand. Well, with Atticus Pünd you may need an extra finger!’ Irish Independent ‘A great detective story needs a great detective, and Atticus Pünd is a worthy addition to the fold.’ Yorkshire Post ‘Germany has a new ambassador. And crime has its greatest detective.’ Der Tagesspiegel ‘Alan Conway is clearly channelling his inner Agatha Christie. And good luck to him! I loved it.’ Robert Harris ‘Half Greek, half German, but always 100 per cent right. The name? It’s Pünd – Atticus Pünd.’ Daily Express SOON TO BE A MAJOR BBC1 TELEVISION SERIES 
 THE ATTICUS PÜND SERIES 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 
 One Sorrow 
 1 23 July 1955 There was going to be a funeral. The two gravediggers, old Jeff Weaver and his son, Adam, had been out at first light and everything was ready, a grave dug to the exact proportions, the earth neatly piled to one side. The church of St Botolph’s in Saxby-on-Avon had never looked lovelier, the morning sun glinting off the stained glass windows. The church dated back to the twelfth century although of course it had been rebuilt many times. The new grave was to the east, close to the ruins of the old chancel where the grass was allowed to grow wild and daisies and dandelions sprouted around the broken arches. The village itself was quiet, the streets empty. The milkman had already made his deliveries and disappeared, the bottles rattling on the back of his van. The newspaper boys had done their rounds. This was a Saturday, so nobody would be going to work and it was still too early for the homeowners to begin their weekend chores. At nine o’clock, the village shop would open. The smell of bread, fresh out of the oven, was already seeping out of the baker’s shop next door. Their first customers would be arriving soon. Once breakfast was over, a chorus of lawnmowers would start up. It was July, the busiest time of the year for Saxby-on-Avon’s keen army of gardeners and with the Harvest Fair just a month away roses were already being pruned, marrows carefully measured. At half past one there was to be a cricket match on the village green. There would be an ice-cream van, children playing, visitors having picnics in front of their cars. The tea shop would be open for business. A perfect English summer’s afternoon. But not yet. It was as if the village was holding its breath in respectful silence, waiting for the coffin that was about to begin its journey from Bath. Even now it was being loaded into the hearse, surrounded by its sombre attendants – five men and a woman, all of them avoiding each other’s eye as if they were unsure where to look. Four of the men were professional undertakers from the highly respected firm of Lanner & Crane. The company had existed since Victorian times when it had been principally involved in carpentry and construction. At that time, coffins and funerals had been a sideline, almost an afterthought. But, perversely, it was this part of the business that had survived. Lanner & Crane no longer built homes, but their name had become a byword for respectful death. Today’s event was very much the economy package. The hearse was an older model. There were to be no black horses or extravagant wreaths. The coffin itself, though handsomely finished, had been manufactured from what was, without question, inferior wood. A simple plaque, silver-plated rather than silver, carried the name of the deceased and the two essential dates: Mary Elizabeth Blakiston5 April 1887 – 15 July 1955 Her life had not been as long as it seemed, crossing two centuries as it did, but then it had been cut short quite unexpectedly. There had not even been enough money in Mary’s funeral plan to cover the final costs – not that it mattered as the insurers would cover the difference – and she would have been glad to see that everything was proceeding according to her wishes. The hearse left exactly on time, setting out on the eight-mile journey as the minute hand reached half past nine. Continuing at an appropriately sedate pace, it would arrive at the church on the hour. If Lanner & Crane had had a slogan, it might well have been: ‘Never late’. And although the two mourners travelling with the coffin might not have noticed it, the countryside had never looked lovelier, the fields on the other side of the low flint walls sloping down towards the River Avon, which would follow them all the way. In the cemetery at St Botolph’s, the two gravediggers examined their handiwork. There are many things to be said about a funeral – profound, reflective, philosophical – but Jeff Weaver got it right as, leaning on his spade and rolling a cigarette in between his grubby fingers, he turned to his son. ‘If you’re going to die,’ he said, ‘you couldn’t choose a better day.’ 2 Sitting at the kitchen table in the vicarage, the Reverend Robin Osborne was making the final adjustments to his sermon. There were six pages spread out on the table in front of him, typed but already covered in annotations added in his spidery hand. Was it too long? There had been complaints recently from some of his congregation that his sermons had dragged on a bit and even the bishop had shown some impatience during his address on Pentecost Sunday. But this was different. Mrs Blakiston had lived her entire life in the village. Everybody knew her. Surely they could spare half an hour – or even forty minutes – of their time to say farewell. The kitchen was a large, cheerful room with an Aga radiating a gentle warmth the whole year round. Pots and pans hung from hooks and there were jars filled with fresh herbs and dried mushrooms that the Osbornes had picked themselves. Upstairs, there were two bedrooms, both snug and homely with shag carpets, hand-embroidered pillowcases and brand-new skylights that had only been added after much consultation with the church. But the main joy of the vicarage was its position, on the edge of the village, looking out onto the woodland that everyone knew as Dingle Dell. There was a wild meadow, speckled with flowers in the spring and summer, then a stretch of woodland whose trees, mainly oaks and elms, concealed the grounds of Pye Hall on the other side – the lake, the lawns, then the house itself. Every morning, Robin Osborne awoke to a view that could not fail to delight him. He sometimes thought he was living in a fairy tale. The vicarage hadn’t always been like this. When they had inherited the house – and the diocese – from the elderly Reverend Montagu, it had been very much an old man’s home, damp and unwelcoming. But Henrietta had worked her magic, throwing out all the furniture that she deemed too ugly or uncomfortable and scouring the second-hand shops of Wiltshire and Avon to find perfect replacements. Her energy never ceased to amaze him. That she had chosen to be a vicar’s wife in the first place was surprising enough but she had thrown herself into her duties with an enthusiasm that had made her popular from the day they had arrived. The two of them could not be happier than they were in Saxby-on-Avon. It was true that the church needed attention. The heating system was permanently on the blink. The roof had started leaking again. But their congregation was more than large enough to satisfy the bishop and many of the worshippers they now considered as friends. They wouldn’t have dreamed of being anywhere else. ‘She was part of the village. Although we are here today to mourn her departure, we should remember what she left behind. Mary made Saxby-on-Avon a better place for everyone else, whether it was arranging the flowers every Sunday in this very church, visiting the elderly both here and at Ashton House, collecting for the RSPB or greeting visitors to Pye Hall. Her home-made cakes were always the star of the village fête and I can tell you there were many occasions when she would surprise me in the vestry with one of her almond bites or perhaps a slice of Victoria sponge.’ Osborne tried to picture the woman who had spent most of her life working as the housekeeper at Pye Hall. Small, dark-haired and determined, she had always been in a rush, as if on a personal crusade. His memories of her seemed mainly to be in the mid-distance because, in truth, they had never spent that much time in the same room. They had been together at one or two social occasions perhaps, but not that many. The sort of people who lived in Saxby-on-Avon weren’t outright snobs, but at the same time they were very well aware of class and although a vicar might be deemed a suitable addition to any social gathering, the same could not be said of someone who was, at the end of the day, a cleaner. Perhaps she had been aware of this. Even at church she had tended to take a pew at the very back. There was something quite deferential about the way she insisted on helping people, as if she somehow owed it to them. Or was it simpler than that? When he thought about her and looked at what he had just written, a single word came to mind. Busybody. It wasn’t fair and it certainly wasn’t something he would ever have spoken out loud, but he had to admit there was some truth to it. She was the sort of woman who had a finger in every pie (apple and blackberry included), who had made it her business to connect with everyone in the village. Somehow, she was always there when you needed her. The trouble was, she was also there when you didn’t. He remembered finding her here in this very room, just over a fortnight ago. He was annoyed with himself. He should have expected it. Henrietta was always complaining about the way he left the front door open, as if the vicarage were merely an appendage to the church, rather than their private home. He should have listened to her. Mary had shown herself in and she was standing there, holding up a little bottle of green liquid as if it were some medieval talisman used to ward off demons. ‘Good morning, vicar! I heard you were having trouble with wasps. I’ve brought you some peppermint oil. That’ll get rid of them. My mother always used to swear by it!’ It was true. There had been wasps in the vicarage – but how had she known? Osborne hadn’t told anyone except Henrietta and she surely wouldn’t have mentioned it. Of course, that was to be expected of a community like Saxby-on-Avon. Somehow, in some unfathomable way, everyone knew everything about everyone and it had often been said that if you sneezed in the bath someone would appear with a tissue. Seeing her there, Osborne hadn’t been sure whether to be grateful or annoyed. He had muttered a word of thanks but at the same time he had glanced down at the kitchen table. And there they were, just lying there in the middle of all his papers. How long had she been in the room? Had she seen them? She wasn’t saying anything and of course he didn’t dare ask her. He had ushered her out as quickly as he could and that had been the last time he had seen her. He and Henrietta had been away on holiday when she had died. They had only just returned in time to bury her. He heard footsteps and looked up as Henrietta came into the room. She was fresh out of the bath, still wrapped in a towelling dressing gown. Now in her late forties, she was still a very attractive woman with chestnut hair tumbling down and a figure that clothing catalogues would have described as ‘full’. She came from a very different world, the youngest daughter of a wealthy farmer with a thousand acres in West Sussex, and yet when the two of them had met in London – at a lecture being given at the Wigmore Hall – they had discovered an immediate affinity. They had married without the approval of her parents and they were as close now as they had ever been. Their one regret was that their marriage had not been blessed with any children, but of course that was God’s will and they had come to accept it. They were happy simply being with each other. ‘I thought you’d finished with that,’ she said. She had taken butter and honey out of the pantry. She cut herself a slice of bread. ‘Just adding a few last-minute thoughts.’ ‘Well, I wouldn’t talk too long if I were you, Robin. It is a Saturday, after all, and everyone’s going to want to get on.’ ‘We’re gathering in the Queen’s Arms afterwards. At eleven o’clock.’ ‘That’s nice.’ Henrietta carried a plate with her breakfast over to the table and plumped herself down. ‘Did Sir Magnus ever reply to your letter?’ ‘No. But I’m sure he’ll be there.’ ‘Well, he’s leaving it jolly late.’ She leant over and looked at one of the pages. ‘You can’t say that.’ ‘What?’ ‘“The life and soul of any party”.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘Because she wasn’t. I always found her rather buttoned-up and secretive, if you want the truth. Not easy to talk to at all.’ ‘She was quite entertaining when she came here last Christmas.’ ‘She joined in the carols, if that’s what you mean. But you never really knew what she was thinking. I can’t say I liked her very much.’ ‘You shouldn’t talk about her that way, Hen. Certainly not today.’ ‘I don’t see why not. That’s the thing about funerals. They’re completely hypocritical. Everyone says how wonderful the deceased was, how kind, how generous when, deep down, they know it’s not true. I didn’t ever take to Mary Blakiston and I’m not going to start singing her praises just because she managed to fall down a flight of stairs and break her neck.’ ‘You’re being a little uncharitable.’ ‘I’m being honest, Robby. And I know you think exactly the same – even if you’re trying to convince yourself otherwise. But don’t worry! I promise I won’t disgrace you in front of the mourners.’ She pulled a face. ‘There! Is that sad enough?’ ‘Hadn’t you better get ready?’ ‘I’ve got it all laid out upstairs. Black dress, black hat, black pearls.’ She sighed. ‘When I die, I don’t want to wear black. It’s so cheerless. Promise me. I want to be buried in pink with a big bunch of begonias in my hands.’ ‘You’re not going to die. Not any time soon. Now, go upstairs and get dressed.’ ‘All right. All right. You bully!’ She leant over him and he felt her breasts, soft and warm, pressing against his neck. She kissed him on the cheek, then hurried out, leaving her breakfast on the table. Robin Osborne smiled to himself as he returned to his address. Perhaps she was right. He could cut out a page or two. Once again, he looked down at what he had written. ‘Mary Blakiston did not have an easy life. She knew personal tragedy soon after she came to Saxby-on-Avon and she could so easily have allowed it to overwhelm her. But she fought back. She was the sort of woman who embraced life, who would never let it get the better of her. And as we lay her to rest, beside the son whom she loved so much and whom she lost so tragically, perhaps we can take some solace from the thought that they are, at last, together.’ Robin Osborne read the paragraph twice. Once again, he saw her standing there, in this very room, right next to the table. ‘I heard you were having trouble with wasps.’ Had she seen them? Had she known? The sun must have gone behind a cloud because suddenly there was a shadow across his face. He reached out, tore up the entire page and dropped the pieces into the bin. 3 Dr Emilia Redwing had woken early. She had lain in bed for an hour trying to persuade herself that she might still get back to sleep, then she had got up, put on a dressing gown and made herself a cup of tea. She had been sitting in the kitchen ever since, watching the sun rise over her garden and, beyond it, the ruins of Saxby Castle, a thirteenth-century structure which gave pleasure to the many hundreds of amateur historians who visited it but which cut out the sunlight every afternoon, casting a long shadow over the house. It was a little after half past eight. The newspaper should have been delivered by now. She had a few patient files in front of her and she busied herself going over them, partly to distract herself from the day ahead. The surgery was usually open on Saturday mornings but today, because of the funeral, it would be closed. Oh well, it was a good time to catch up with her paperwork. There was never anything very serious to treat in a village like Saxby-on-Avon. If there was one thing that would carry off the residents, it was old age, and Dr Redwing couldn’t do very much about that. Going through the files, she cast a weary eye over the various ailments that had recently come her way. Miss Dotterel, who helped at the village shop, was getting over the measles after a week spent in bed. Nine-year-old Billy Weaver had had a nasty attack of whooping cough but it was already behind him. His grandfather, Jeff Weaver, had arthritis but then he’d had it for years and it wasn’t getting any better or worse. Johnny Whitehead had cut his hand. Henrietta Osborne, the vicar’s wife, had managed to step on a clump of deadly nightshade – atropa belladonna – and had somehow infected her entire foot. She had prescribed a week’s bed rest and plenty of water. Other than that, the warm summer seemed to have been good for everyone’s health. Not everyone’s. No. There had been a death. Dr Redwing pushed the files to one side and went over to the stove where she busied herself making breakfast for both her and her husband. She had already heard Arthur moving about upstairs and there had been the usual grinding and rattling as he poured himself his bath. The plumbing in the house was at least fifty years old and complained loudly every time it was pressed into service, but at least it did the job. He would be down soon. She cut the bread for toast, filled a saucepan with water and placed it on the hob, took out the milk and the cornflakes, laid the table. Arthur and Emilia Redwing had been married for thirty years; a happy and successful marriage, she thought to herself, even if things hadn’t gone quite as they had hoped. For a start, there was Sebastian, their only child, now twenty-four and living with his deadbeat friends in London. How could he have become such a disappointment? And when exactly was it that he had turned against them? Neither of them had heard from him for months and they couldn’t even be sure if he was alive or dead. And then there was Arthur himself. He had started life as an architect – and a good one. He had been given the Sloane Medallion by the Royal Institute of British Architects for a design he had completed at art school. He had worked on several of the new buildings that had sprung up immediately after the war. But his real love had been painting – mainly portraits in oils – and ten years ago he had given up his career to work as a full-time artist. He had done so with Emilia’s full support. One of his works hung in the kitchen, on the wall beside the Welsh dresser, and she glanced at it now. It was a portrait of herself, painted ten years ago, and she always smiled when she looked at it, remembering the extended silences as she sat for him, surrounded by wild flowers. Her husband never talked when he worked. There had been a dozen sittings during a long, hot summer and Arthur had somehow managed to capture the heat, the haze in the late afternoon, even the scent of the meadow. She was wearing a long dress with a straw hat – like a female Van Gogh, she had joked – and perhaps there was something of that artist’s style in the rich colours, the jabbing brushstrokes. She was not a beautiful woman. She knew it. Her face was too severe, her broad shoulders and dark hair too masculine. There was something of the teacher or perhaps the governess in the way she held herself. People found her too formal. But he had found something beautiful in her. If the picture had hung in a London gallery, nobody would be able to pass it without looking twice. It didn’t. It hung here. No London galleries were interested in Arthur or his work. Emilia couldn’t understand it. The two of them had gone together to the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy and had looked at work by James Gunn and Sir Alfred Munnings. There had been a controversial portrait of the Queen by Simon Elwes. But it all looked very ordinary and timid compared to his work. Why did nobody recognise Arthur Redwing for the genius that he undoubtedly was? She took three eggs and lowered them gently into the pan – two for him, one for her. One of them cracked as it came into contact with the boiling water and at once she thought of Mary Blakiston with her skull split open after her fall. She couldn’t avoid it. Even now she shuddered at the memory of what she had seen – and yet she wondered why that should be. It wasn’t the first dead body she had encountered and working in London during the worst of the Blitz she had treated soldiers with terrible injuries. What had been so different about this? Perhaps it was the fact that the two of them had been close. It was true that the doctor and the housekeeper had very little in common but they had become unlikely friends. It had started when Mrs Blakiston was a patient. She’d suffered an attack of shingles that had lasted for a month and Dr Redwing had been impressed both by her stoicism and good sense. After that, she’d come to rely on her as a sounding board. She had to be careful. She couldn’t breach patient confidentiality. But if there was something that troubled her, she could always rely on Mary to be a good listener and to offer sensible advice. And the end had been so sudden: an ordinary morning, just over a week ago, had been interrupted by Brent – the groundsman who worked at Pye Hall – on the phone. ‘Can you come, Dr Redwing? It’s Mrs Blakiston. She’s at the bottom of the stairs in the big house. She’s lying there. I think she’s had a fall.’ ‘Is she moving?’ ‘I don’t think so.’ ‘Are you with her now?’ ‘I can’t get in. All the doors are locked.’ Brent was in his thirties, a crumpled young man with dirt beneath his fingernails and sullen indifference in his eyes. He tended the lawns and the flower beds and occasionally chased trespassers off the land just as his father had before him. The grounds of Pye Hall backed onto a lake and children liked to swim there in the summer, but not if Brent was around. He was a solitary man, unmarried, living alone in the house that had once belonged to his parents. He was not much liked in the village because he was considered shifty. The truth was that he was uneducated and possibly a little autistic but the rural community had been quick to fill in the blanks. Dr Redwing told him to meet her at the front door, threw together a few medical supplies and, leaving her nurse/receptionist – Joy – to turn away any new arrivals, hurried to her car. Pye Hall was on the other side of Dingle Dell, fifteen minutes on foot and no more than a five-minute drive. It had always been there, as long as the village itself, and although it was a mishmash of architectural styles it was certainly the grandest house in the area. It had started life as a nunnery but had been converted into a private home in the sixteenth century then knocked around in every century since. What remained was a single elongated wing with an octagonal tower – constructed much later – at the far end. Most of the windows were Elizabethan, narrow and mullioned, but there were also Georgian and Victorian additions with ivy spreading all around them as if to apologise for the indiscretion. At the back, there was a courtyard and the remains of what might have been cloisters. A separate stable block was now used as a garage. But its main glory was its setting. A gate with two stone griffins marked the entrance and a gravel drive passed the Lodge House where Mary Blakiston lived, then swept round in a graceful swan’s neck across the lawns to the front door with its Gothic arch. There were flower beds arranged like daubs of paint on an artist’s palette and, enclosed by ornamental hedges, a rose garden with – it was said – over a hundred different varieties. The grass stretched all the way down to the lake with Dingle Dell on the other side: indeed, the whole estate was surrounded by mature woodland, filled with bluebells in the spring, separating it from the modern world. The tyres crunched on the gravel as Dr Redwing came to a halt and saw Brent, waiting nervously for her, turning his cap over in his hands. She got out, took her medicine bag and went over to him. ‘Is there any sign of life?’ she asked. ‘I haven’t looked,’ Brent muttered. Dr Redwing was startled. Hadn’t he even tried to help the poor woman? Seeing the look on her face, he added, ‘I told you. I can’t get in.’ ‘The front door’s locked?’ ‘Yes, ma’am. The kitchen door too.’ ‘Don’t you have any keys?’ ‘No, ma’am. I don’t go in the house.’ Dr Redwing shook her head, exasperated. In the time she had taken to get here, Brent could have done something; perhaps fetched a ladder to try a window upstairs. ‘If you couldn’t get in, how did you telephone me?’ she asked. It didn’t matter, but she just wondered. ‘There’s a phone in the stable.’ ‘Well, you’d better show me where she is.’ ‘You can see through the window . . .’ The window in question was at the edge of the house, one of the newer additions. It gave a side view of the hall with a wide staircase leading up to the first floor. And there, sure enough, was Mary Blakiston, lying sprawled out on a rug, one arm stretched in front of her, partly concealing her head. From the very first sight, Dr Redwing was fairly sure that she was dead. Somehow, she had fallen down the stairs and broken her neck. She wasn’t moving, of course. But it was more than that. The way the body was lying was too unnatural. It had that broken-doll look that Dr Redwing had observed in her medicine books. That was her instinct. But looks could be deceptive. ‘We have to get in,’ she said. ‘The kitchen and the front door are locked but there must be another way.’ ‘We could try the boot room.’ ‘Where is that?’ ‘Just along here . . .’ Brent led her to another door at the back. This one had glass panes and although it was also securely closed, Dr Redwing clearly saw a bunch of keys, still in the lock on the other side. ‘Whose are those?’ she asked. ‘They must be hers.’ She came to a decision. ‘We’re going to have to break the glass.’ ‘I don’t think Sir Magnus would be too happy about that,’ Brent grumbled. ‘Sir Magnus can take that up with me if he wants to. Now, are you going to do it or am I?’ The groundsman wasn’t happy, but he found a stone and used it to knock out one of the panes. He slipped his hand inside and turned the keys. The door opened and they went in. Waiting for the eggs to boil, Dr Redwing remembered the scene exactly as she had seen it. It really was like a photograph printed on her mind. They had gone through the boot room, along a corridor and straight into the main hall, with the staircase leading up to the galleried landing. Dark wood panelling surrounded them. The walls were covered with oil paintings and hunting trophies: birds in glass cases, a deer’s head, a huge fish. A suit of armour, complete with sword and shield, stood beside a door that led into the living room. The hallway was long and narrow with the front door, opposite the staircase, positioned exactly in the middle. On one side there was a stone fireplace, big enough to walk into. On the other, two leather chairs and an antique table with a telephone. The floor was made up of flagstones, partly covered by a Persian rug. The stairs were also stone with a wine-red carpet leading up the centre. If Mary Blakiston had tripped and come tumbling down from the landing, her death would be easily explained. There was very little to cushion a fall. While Brent waited nervously by the door, she examined the body. She was not yet cold but there was no pulse. Dr Redwing brushed some of the dark hair away from the face to reveal brown eyes, staring at the fireplace. Gently, she closed them. Mrs Blakiston had always been in a hurry. It was impossible to escape the thought. She had quite literally flung herself down the stairs, hurrying into her own death. ‘We have to call the police,’ she said. ‘What?’ Brent was surprised. ‘Has someone done something to her?’ ‘No. Of course not. It’s an accident. But we still have to report it.’ It was an accident. You didn’t have to be a detective to work it out. The housekeeper had been hoovering. The Hoover was still there, a bright red thing, almost like a toy, at the top of the stairs stuck in the bannisters. Somehow she had got tangled up in the wire. She had tripped and fallen down the stairs. There was nobody else in the house. The doors were locked. What other explanation could there be? Just over a week later, Emilia Redwing’s thoughts were interrupted by a movement at the door. Her husband had come into the room. She lifted the eggs out of the pan and gently lowered them into two china egg cups. She was relieved to see that he had dressed for the funeral. She was quite sure he would have forgotten. He had put on his dark Sunday suit, though no tie – he never wore ties. There were a few specks of paint on his shirt but that was to be expected. Arthur and paint were inseparable. ‘You got up early,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, dear. Did I wake you?’ ‘No. Not really. But I heard you go downstairs. Couldn’t you sleep?’ ‘I suppose I was thinking about the funeral.’ ‘Looks like a nice day for it. I hope that bloody vicar won’t go on too long. It’s always the same with Bible-bashers. They’re too fond of the sound of their own voice.’ He picked up his teaspoon and brought it crashing down onto his first egg. Crack! She remembered the conversation she’d had with Mary Blakiston just two days before Brent had called her to the house. Dr Redwing had discovered something. It was quite serious, and she’d been about to go and find Arthur to ask his advice when the housekeeper had suddenly appeared as if summoned by a malignant spirit. And so she had told her instead. Somehow, during the course of a busy day, a bottle had gone missing from the surgery. The contents, in the wrong hands, could be highly dangerous and it was clear that somebody must have taken it. What was she to do? Should she report it to the police? She was reluctant because, inevitably, it would make her look foolish and irresponsible. Why had the dispensary been left unattended? Why hadn’t the cupboard been locked? Why hadn’t she noticed it before now? ‘Don’t you worry, Dr Redwing,’ Mary had said. ‘You leave it with me for a day or two. As a matter of fact, I may have one or two ideas . . .’ That was what she had said. At the same time there had been a look on her face which wasn’t exactly sly but which was knowing, as if she had seen something and had been waiting to be consulted on this very matter. And now she was dead. Of course it had been an accident. Mary Blakiston hadn’t had time to talk to anyone about the missing poison and even if she had, there was no way that they could have done anything to her. She had tripped and fallen down the stairs. That was all. But as she watched her husband dipping a finger of toast into his egg, Emilia Redwing had to admit it to herself. She was really quite concerned. 4 ‘Why are we going to the funeral? We hardly even knew the woman.’ Johnny Whitehead was struggling with the top button of his shirt; no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t slot it into the hole. The truth was that the collar simply wouldn’t stretch all the way round his neck. It seemed to him that recently all his clothes had begun to shrink. Jackets that he had worn for years were suddenly tight across the shoulders, and as for trousers! He gave up and plopped himself down at the breakfast table. His wife, Gemma, slid a plate in front of him. She had cooked a complete English breakfast with two eggs, bacon, sausage, tomato and fried slice – just how he liked. ‘Everyone will be there,’ Gemma said. ‘That doesn’t mean we have to be.’ ‘People will talk if we aren’t. And anyway, it’s good for business. Her son, Robert, will probably clear out the house now that she’s gone and you never know what you might find.’ ‘Probably a lot of junk.’ Johnny picked up his knife and fork and began to eat. ‘But you’re right, love. I suppose it can’t hurt to show our faces.’ Saxby-on-Avon had very few shops. Of course, there was the general store, which sold just about everything anyone could possibly need – from mops and buckets to custard powder and six different sorts of jam. It was quite a miracle really how so many different products could fit in such a tiny space. Mr Turnstone still ran the butcher’s shop round the back – it had a separate entrance and plastic strips hanging down to keep away the flies – and the fish van came every Tuesday. But if you wanted anything exotic, olive oil or any of the Mediterranean ingredients that Elizabeth David put in her books, you would have to go into Bath. The so-called General Electrics Store stood on the other side of the village square but very few people went in there unless it was for spare light bulbs or fuses. Most of the products in the window looked dusty and out-of-date. There was a bookshop, a bakery and a tea room that only opened during the summer months. Just off the square and before the fire station stood the garage, which sold a range of motor accessories but not anything that anyone would actually want. That was about it and it had been that way for as long as anyone could remember. And then Johnny and Gemma Whitehead had arrived from London. They had bought the old post office, which had long been empty, and turned it into an antique shop with their names, written in old-fashioned lettering, above the window. There were many in the village who remarked that bric-a-brac rather than antiques might be a more accurate description of the contents but from the very start the shop had proved popular with visitors, who seemed happy to browse amongst the old clocks, Toby jugs, canteens of cutlery, coins, medals, oil paintings, dolls, fountain pens and whatever else happened to be on display. Whether anyone ever actually bought anything was another matter. But the shop had now been there for six years, with the Whiteheads living in the flat above. Johnny was a short, broad-shouldered man, bald-headed and, even if he hadn’t noticed it, running to fat. He liked to dress loudly, in rather shabby three-piece suits, usually with a brightly coloured tie. For the funeral, he had reluctantly pulled out a more sombre jacket and trousers in grey worsted although, like the shirt, they fitted him badly. His wife, so thin and small that there could have been three of her to one of him, was wearing black. She was not eating a cooked breakfast. She had poured herself a cup of tea and was nibbling a triangle of toast. ‘Sir Magnus and Lady Pye won’t be there,’ Johnny muttered as an afterthought. ‘Where?’ ‘At the funeral. They won’t be back until tonight.’ ‘Who told you that?’ ‘I don’t know. They were talking about it in the pub. They’ve gone to the South of France or somewhere. All right for some, isn’t it! Anyway, people have been trying to reach them but so far no luck.’ Johnny paused, holding up a piece of sausage. To listen to him speaking now, it would have been obvious that he had lived most of his life in the East End of London. He had a quite different accent when he was dealing with customers. ‘Sir Magnus isn’t going to be too happy about it,’ he went on. ‘He was very fond of Mrs Blakiston. They were as thick as thieves, them two!’ ‘What do you mean? Are you saying he had a thing with her?’ Gemma wrinkled her nose as she considered the ‘thing’. ‘No. It’s not like that. He wouldn’t dare – not with his missus on the scene – and anyway, Mary Blakiston was nothing to write home about. But she used to worship him. She thought the sun shone out of his you-know-where! And she’d been his housekeeper for years and years. Keeper of the keys! She cooked for him, cleaned for him, gave half her life to him. I’m sure he’d have wanted to be there for the send-off.’ ‘They could have waited for him to get back.’ ‘Her son wanted to get it over with. Can’t blame him, really. The whole thing’s been a bit of a shock.’ The two of them sat in silence while Johnny finished his breakfast. Gemma watched him intently. She often did this. It was as if she were trying to look behind his generally placid exterior, as if she might find something he was trying to conceal. ‘What was she doing here?’ she asked suddenly. ‘Mary Blakiston?’ ‘When?’ ‘The Monday before she died. She was here.’ ‘No, she wasn’t.’ Johnny laid down his knife and fork. He had eaten quickly and wiped the plate clean. ‘Don’t lie to me, Johnny. I saw her coming out of the shop.’ ‘Oh! The shop!’ Johnny smiled uncomfortably. ‘I thought you meant I’d had her up here in the flat. That would have been a right old thing, wouldn’t it.’ He paused, hoping his wife would change the subject but as she showed no sign of doing so, he went on, choosing his words carefully. ‘Yes . . . she did look in the shop. And I suppose that would have been the same week it happened. I can’t really remember what she wanted, if you want the truth, love. I think she may have said something about a present for someone but she didn’t buy nothing. Anyway, she was only in for a minute or two.’ Gemma Whitehead always knew when her husband was lying. She had actually seen Mrs Blakiston emerging from the shop and she had made a note of it, somehow divining that something was wrong. But she hadn’t mentioned it then and decided not to pursue the matter now. She didn’t want to have an argument, certainly not when the two of them were about to set off for a funeral. As for Johnny Whitehead, despite what he had said, he remembered very well his last encounter with Mrs Blakiston. She had indeed come into the shop, making those accusations of hers. And the worst of it was that she had the evidence to back them up. How had she found it? What had put her on to him in the first place? Of course, she hadn’t told him that but she had made herself very clear. The bitch. He would never have said as much to his wife, of course, but he couldn’t be more pleased that Mary Blakiston was dead. 5 Clarissa Pye, dressed in black from head to toe, stood examining herself in the full-length mirror at the end of the hallway. Not for the first time, she wondered if the hat, with its three feathers and crumpled veil, wasn’t a little excessive. De trop, as they said in French. She had bought it on impulse from a second-hand shop in Bath and had regretted it a moment later. She wanted to look her best for the funeral. The whole village would be there and she had been invited to coffee and soft drinks afterwards at the Queen’s Arms. With or without? Carefully, she removed it and laid it on the hall table. Her hair was too dark. She’d had it cut specially and although René had done his usual excellent work, that new colourist of his had definitely let the place down. She looked ridiculous, like something off the cover of Home Chat. Well, that decided it, then. She would just have to wear the hat. She took out a tube of lipstick and carefully applied it to her lips. That looked better already. It was important to make an effort. The funeral wouldn’t begin for another forty minutes and she didn’t want to be the first to arrive. How was she going to fill in the time? She went into the kitchen where the washing-up from breakfast was waiting but she didn’t want to do it while she was wearing her best clothes. A book lay, face down, on the table. She was reading Jane Austen – dear Jane – for the umpteenth time but she didn’t feel like that either right now. She would catch up with Emma Woodhouse and her machinations in the afternoon. The radio perhaps? Or another cup of tea and a quick stab at the Telegraph crossword? Yes. That was what she would do. Clarissa lived in a modern house. So many of the buildings in Saxby-on-Avon were solid Georgian constructions made of Bath stone with handsome porticos and gardens rising up in terraces. You didn’t need to read Jane Austen. If you stepped outside, you would find yourself actually in her world. She would have much rather lived beside the main square or in Rectory Lane, which ran behind the church. There were some lovely cottages there; elegant and well kept. Four Winsley Terrace had been built in a hurry. It was a perfectly ordinary two-up-two-down with a pebble-dash front and a square of garden that was hardly worth the trouble. It was identical to its neighbours apart from a little pond which the previous owners had added and which was home to a pair of elderly goldfish. Upper Saxby-on-Avon and Lower Saxby-on-Avon. The difference could not have been more striking. She was in the wrong half. The house was all she had been able to afford. Briefly, she examined the small, square kitchen with its net curtains, the magenta walls, the aspidistra on the window sill and the little wooden crucifix hanging from the Welsh dresser where she could see it at the start of every day. She glanced at the breakfast things, still laid out on the table: a single plate, one knife, one spoon, one half-empty jar of Golden Shred marmalade. All at once, she felt the onrush of emotions that she had grown used to over the years but which she still had to fight with all her strength. She was lonely. She should never have come here. Her whole life was a travesty. And all because of twelve minutes. Twelve minutes! She picked up the kettle and slammed it down on the hob, turning on the gas with a savage twist of her hand. It really wasn’t fair. How could a person’s whole life be decided for them simply because of the timing of their birth? She had never really understood it when she was a child at Pye Hall. She and Magnus were twins. They were equals, happily protected by all the wealth and privilege which surrounded them and which the two of them would enjoy for the rest of their lives. That was what she had always thought. How could this have happened to her? She knew the answer now. Magnus himself had been the first to tell her, something about an entail which was centuries old and which meant that the house, the entire estate, would go to him simply because he was the firstborn, and the title, of course, because he was male, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. She had thought he was making it up just to spite her. But she had found out soon enough. It had been a process of attrition, starting with the death of her parents in a car accident when she was in her mid-twenties. The house had passed formally to Magnus and from that moment, her status had changed. She had become a guest in her own home and an unwanted one at that. She had been moved to a smaller room. And when Magnus had met and married Frances – this was two years after the war – she had been gently persuaded to move out altogether. She had spent a miserable year in London, renting a tiny flat in Bayswater and watching her savings run out. In the end, she had become a governess. What choice was there for a single woman who spoke passable French, who played the piano and who could recite the works of all the major poets but who had no other discernible skills? In a spirit of adventure she had gone to America; first to Boston, then to Washington. Both the families she had worked for had been quite ghastly and of course they had treated her like dirt even though she was in every respect more experienced and (although she would never have said it herself) more refined. And the children! It was clear to her that American children were the worst in the world with no manners, no breeding and very little intelligence. She had, however, been well paid and had saved every penny – every cent – that she had earned, and when she could stand it no more, after ten long years she had returned home. Home was Saxby-on-Avon. In a way it was the last place she wanted to be but it was where she had been born and where she had been brought up. Where else could she go? Did she want to spend the rest of her life in a bedsit in Bayswater? Fortunately, a job had come up at the local school and with all the money she had saved, she had just about been able to afford a mortgage. Magnus hadn’t helped her, of course. Not that she would have dreamed of asking. At first it had galled her, seeing him driving in and out of the big house where the two of them had once played. She still had a key – her own key – to the front door! She had never returned it and never would. The key was a symbol of everything she had lost but at the same time it reminded her that she had every right to stay. Her presence here was almost certainly a source of embarrassment for her brother. There was some solace in that. Bitterness and anger swept through Clarissa Pye as she stood on her own in her kitchen, the kettle already hissing at her with a rising pitch. She had always been the clever one, her, not Magnus. He had come bottom of the class and received dreadful reports while the teachers had been all over her. He had been lazy because he knew he could be. He had nothing to worry about. She was the one who’d had to go out and find work, any work, to support herself from day to day. He had everything and – worse – she was nothing to him. Why was she even going to this funeral? It suddenly struck her that her brother had been closer to Mary Blakiston than he had ever been to her. A common housekeeper, for heaven’s sake! She turned and gazed at the cross, contemplating the little figure nailed into the wood. The Bible made it perfectly clear: ‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbour’s.’ She tried so hard to apply the words of Exodus, Chapter 20, Verse 17 to her life and, in many ways, she had almost succeeded. Of course she would like to be richer. She would like to have the heating on in the winter and not worry about the bills. That was only human. When she went to church, she often tried to remind herself that what had happened was not Magnus’s fault and even if he was not the kindest or the gentlest of brothers – not, actually by a long way – she must still try to forgive him. ‘For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.’ It wasn’t working. He’d invited her up for dinner now and then. The last time had been just a month ago, and sitting down to dinner in the grand hall with its family portraits and minstrel gallery, one of a dozen guests being served food and wine on fine plates and in crystal glasses, that was when the thought had first wormed itself into her head. It had remained there ever since. It was there now. She had tried to ignore it. She had prayed for it to go away. But in the end she’d had to accept that she was seriously contemplating a sin much more terrible than covetousness and, worse, she had taken the first step towards putting it into action. It was madness. Despite herself, she glanced upwards, thinking about what she had taken and what was hiding in her bathroom cabinet. Thou shalt not kill. She whispered the words but no sound came out. Behind her, the kettle began to scream. She snatched it up, forgetting that the handle would be hot, then slammed it down again with a little cry of pain. Tearfully, she washed her hand under the cold tap. It was nothing more than she deserved. A few minutes later, forgetting her tea, she swept the hat off the table and left for the funeral. 6 The hearse had reached the outskirts of Saxby-on-Avon and, inevitably, its route took it past the entrance to Pye Hall with its stone griffins and now silent Lodge House. There was only one main road from Bath and to have approached the village any other way would have involved too much of a detour. Was there something unfortunate about carrying the dead woman past the very home where she had once lived? Had anyone asked them, the undertakers, Geoffrey Lanner and Martin Crane (both descended from the original founders), would have said quite the opposite. On the contrary, they would have insisted, was there not a certain symbolism in the coincidence, a sense even of closure? It was as if Mary Blakiston had come full circle. Sitting in the back seat, and feeling sick and empty with the coffin lying behind him, Robert Blakiston glanced at his old house as if he had never seen it before. He did not turn his head to keep it in sight as they drove past. He did not even think about it. His mother had lived there. His mother was now dead, stretched out behind him. Robert was twenty-eight years old, pale and slender, with black hair cut short in a straight line that tracked across his forehead and continued in two perfect curves around each ear. He looked uncomfortable in the suit he was wearing, which was hardly surprising as it wasn’t his. It had been lent to him for the funeral. Robert did have a suit but his fiancée, Joy, had insisted that it wasn’t smart enough. She had managed to borrow a new suit from her father, which had been the cause of one argument, and had then persuaded him to wear it, which had led to another. Joy was sitting next to him in the hearse. The two of them had barely spoken since they’d left Bath. Both of them were lost in their thoughts. Both of them were worried. It sometimes seemed to Robert that he had been trying to escape from his mother almost from the day he had been born. He had actually grown up in the Lodge House, just the two of them living on top of each other, each of them dependent on the other but in different ways. He had nothing without her. She was nothing without him. Robert had gone to the local school where he had been considered a bright child, one that would do well if he could only set his mind to his studies a little more. He had few friends. It often worried the teachers to see him standing on his own in the noisy playground, ignored by the other children. At the same time, it was completely understandable. There had been a tragedy when he was very young. His younger brother had died – a terrible accident – and his father had left the family soon afterwards, blaming himself. The sadness of it still clung to him and the other children avoided it as if they were afraid of becoming contaminated. Robert never did very well in class. His teachers tried to make allowances for his poor behaviour and lack of progress, taking account of his circumstances, but even so they were secretly relieved when he reached sixteen and left. This, incidentally, had been in 1943, at the end of a war in which he had been too young to fight but which had taken his father away for long stretches of time. There were many children whose education had suffered and in that sense he was just another casualty. There was no question of his going to university. Even so, the year that followed was a disappointing one. He continued living with his mother, doing occasional odd jobs around the village. Everyone who knew him agreed that he was underselling himself. Despite everything, he was much too intelligent for that sort of life. In the end it was Sir Magnus Pye – who employed Mary Blakiston and who had stood in loco parentis for the last seven years – who had persuaded Robert to get a proper job. On his return from National Service, Sir Magnus had helped him find an apprenticeship as a mechanic in the service department of the main Ford motorcar supplier in Bristol. Perhaps surprisingly, his mother had been far from grateful. It was the only time she ever argued with Sir Magnus. She was worried about Robert. She didn’t want him living alone in a distant city. She felt that Sir Magnus had acted without consulting her, even going behind her back. It didn’t actually matter very much because the apprenticeship did not last long. Robert had been away for just three months when he went out drinking at a public house, the Blue Boar, in Brislington. He became involved in a fight, which turned nasty, and the police were called in. Robert was arrested and although he wasn’t charged, his employers took a dim view and ended the apprenticeship. Reluctantly, Robert came home again. His mother behaved as if she had somehow been vindicated. She had never wanted him to leave and if he had only listened to her, he would have saved them both a lot of trouble. It seemed to everyone who knew them that they never really got on well again from that day. At least he had found his vocation. Robert liked cars and he was good at fixing them. As it happened, there was a vacancy for a full-time mechanic at the local garage and although Robert didn’t have quite enough experience, the owner had decided to give him a chance. The job didn’t pay much but it did offer accommodation in a small flat above the workshop as part of the package. That suited Robert very well. He had made it quite clear that he no longer wanted to live with his mother, that he found the Lodge House oppressive. He had moved into the flat and had been there ever since. Robert Blakiston wasn’t ambitious. Nor was he particularly inquisitive. He might have continued with an existence that was adequate – nothing more, nothing less. But everything had changed when he had mangled his right hand in an accident that could have taken it off altogether. What had happened was quite commonplace and wholly avoidable: a car he’d been working on had come tumbling off the jack stand, missing him by inches. It was the falling jack that had smashed into him and he had staggered into Dr Redwing’s surgery with his hand cradled and blood streaming down his overalls. That was when he’d met Joy Sanderling, who had just started as the new nurse and receptionist. Despite his pain, he had noticed her at once: very pretty, with sand-coloured hair framing her face and freckles. He thought about her in the ambulance, after Dr Redwing had dressed his broken bones and sent him to Royal United Hospital in Bath. His hand had long since healed but he always remembered the accident and he was glad it had happened because it had introduced him to Joy. Joy lived with her parents at their home in Lower Westwood. Her father was a fireman who had once been on active service, based at the station in Saxby-on-Avon, but who now worked in administration. Her mother stayed at home looking after her older son who was in need of full-time care. Like Robert, Joy had left school at sixteen and had seen very little of the world outside the county of Somerset. Unlike him, however, she had always had ambitions to travel. She had read books about France and Italy and had even learned a few words of French from Clarissa Pye, who had given her private lessons. She had been working with Dr Redwing for eighteen months, coming into the village every morning on the bright pink motor scooter that she had bought on the never-never. Robert had proposed to Joy in the churchyard and she had accepted. The two of them were planning to get married at St Botolph’s the following spring. They would use the time until then to save up enough money for a honeymoon in Venice. Robert had promised that, on the first day they were there, he would take her for a ride in a gondola. They would drink champagne as they floated beneath the Bridge of Sighs. They had it all planned. It was so strange to be sitting next to her now – with his mother in the back, still coming between them but in a very different way. He remembered the first time he had taken Joy to the Lodge House, for tea. His mother had been utterly unwelcoming in that way he knew so well, putting a steel lid on all her emotions so that only a cold veneer of politeness showed through. How very nice to meet you. Lower Westwood? Yes, I know it well. And your father a fireman? How interesting. She had behaved like a robot – or perhaps an actor in a very bad play – and although Joy hadn’t complained, hadn’t been anything but her sweet self, Robert had sworn he would never put her through that again. That evening he had argued with his mother and in truth the two of them had never really been civil to each other from that time. But the worst argument had happened just a few days ago, when the vicar and his wife were away on holiday and Mary Blakiston was looking after the church. They had met outside the village pub. The Queen’s Arms was right next to St Botolph’s and Robert had been sitting in the sunshine, enjoying a pint after work. He had seen his mother walking through the cemetery: she’d probably been arranging the flowers ready for the weekend services, which were being conducted by a vicar from a neighbouring parish. She had seen him and come straight over. ‘You said you’d mend the kitchen light.’ Yes. Yes. Yes. The light above the cooker. It was just the bulb but it was difficult to reach. And he’d said he’d do it a week ago. He often looked into the Lodge House when there was a problem. But how could something so trivial have developed into such a stupid row, the two of them not exactly shouting at each other but talking loudly enough for everyone sitting outside the pub to hear. ‘Why don’t you leave me alone? I just wish you’d drop dead and give me a bit of peace.’ ‘Oh yes. You’d like that, wouldn’t you!’ ‘You’re right! I would.’ Had he really spoken those words to her – and in public? Robert twisted round and stared at the blank surface of the wood, the coffin lid with its wreath of white lilies. And just a few days, not even a week later, his mother had been found at the bottom of the stairs at Pye Hall. It was the groundsman, Brent, who had come to the garage and told him the news and even as he’d spoken there had been a strange look in his eyes. Had he been at the pub that evening? Had he heard? ‘We’re here,’ Joy said. Robert turned back. Sure enough, the church was in front of them, the cemetery already full of mourners. There must have been at least fifty of them. Robert was surprised. He had never thought his mother had so many friends. The car slowed down and stopped. Somebody opened the door for him. ‘I don’t want to do this,’ Robert said. He reached out and took hold of her, almost like a child. ‘It’s all right, Rob. I’ll be with you. It’ll be over soon.’ She smiled at him and at once he felt better. What would he do without Joy? She had changed his life. She was everything to him. The two of them got out and began to walk towards the church. 7 The bedroom was on the third floor of the Hotel Genevieve, Cap Ferrat, with views over the gardens and terraces. The sun was already blazing in a clear blue sky. It had been an excellent week: perfect food, superb wine, rubbing shoulders with the usual Mediterranean crowd. Even so, Sir Magnus Pye was in a bad mood as he finished his packing. The letter that had arrived three days ago had quite spoiled his holiday. He wished the bloody vicar had never sent it. Absolutely typical of the church, always meddling, trying to spoil everyone’s fun. His wife watched him languidly from the balcony. She was smoking a cigarette. ‘We’re going to miss the train,’ she said. ‘The train doesn’t leave for three hours. We’ve got plenty of time.’ Frances Pye ground out her cigarette and came into the room. She was a dark, imperious woman, a little taller than her husband and certainly more imposing. He was short and round with florid cheeks and a dark beard that had spread hesitantly across his cheeks, not quite managing to lay claim to his face. Now fifty-three, he liked to wear suits that accentuated his age and his status in life. They were tailor-made for him, expensive, complete with waistcoat. The two of them made an unlikely pair: the country squire and the Hollywood actress, perhaps. Sancho Panza and Dulcinea del Toboso. Although he was the one with the title, it actually rested more easily on her. ‘You should have left at once,’ she said. ‘Absolutely not,’ Magnus grunted, trying to force down the lid of his suitcase. ‘She was only a bloody housekeeper.’ ‘She lived with us.’ ‘She lived in the Lodge House. Not the same thing at all.’ ‘The police want to talk to you.’ ‘The police can talk to me once I get back. Not that I’ve got anything to tell them. The vicar says she tripped over an electric wire. Damn shame, but it’s not my fault. They’re not going to suggest I murdered her or something?’ ‘I wouldn’t put it past you, Magnus.’ ‘Well, I couldn’t have. I was here the whole time with you.’ Frances Pye watched her husband struggling with the suitcase. She didn’t offer to help. ‘I thought you were fond of her,’ she said. ‘She was a good cook and she did a good job cleaning. But if you want the truth, I couldn’t really stand the sight of her – her and that son of hers. I always thought there was something a bit difficult about her, the way she scuttled around the place with that look in her eyes . . . like she knew something you didn’t.’ ‘You should still have gone to the funeral.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because the village will notice you aren’t there. They won’t like you for it.’ ‘They don’t like me anyway. And they’ll like me even less when they hear about Dingle Dell. What do I care? I never set out to win any popularity contests and anyway, that’s the trouble with living in the country. All people do is gossip. Well, they can think what they like of me. In fact, the whole lot of them can go to Hell.’ He clicked the locks shut with his thumbs and sat back, panting slightly from the exertion. Frances looked at him curiously and for a moment there was something in her eyes that hovered between disdain and disgust. There was no longer any love in their marriage. They both knew that. They stayed together because it was convenient. Even in the heat of the Côte d’Azur, the atmosphere in the room was cold. ‘I’ll call down for a porter,’ she said. ‘The taxi should be here by now.’ As she moved to the telephone, she noticed a postcard lying on a table. It was addressed to Frederick Pye at an address in Hastings. ‘For heaven’s sake, Magnus,’ she chided him. ‘You never sent that card to Freddy. You promised you would and it’s been sitting here all week.’ She sighed. ‘He’ll have got back home before it arrives.’ ‘Well, the family he’s staying with can send it on. It’s not the end of the world. It’s not as if we had anything interesting to say.’ ‘Postcards are never interesting. That’s not the point.’ Frances Pye picked up the telephone and called down to the front desk. As she spoke, Magnus was reminded of something. It was the mention of the postcard that had done it, something she had said. What was it? In some way, it was connected with the funeral that he would be missing today. Oh yes! How very strange. Magnus Pye made a mental note for himself, one that he would not forget. There was something he had to do and he would do it as soon as he got home. 8 ‘Mary Blakiston made Saxby-on-Avon a better place for everyone else, whether it was arranging the flowers every Sunday in this very church, looking after the elderly, collecting for the RSPB or greeting visitors to Pye Hall. Her home-made cakes were always the star of the village fête and I can tell you there were many occasions when she would surprise me in the vestry with one of her almond bites or perhaps a slice of Victoria sponge.’ The funeral was proceeding in the way that funerals do: slowly, gently, with a sense of quiet inevitability. Jeffrey Weaver had been to a great many of them, standing on the sidelines, and took a keen interest in the people who came and went and, indeed, those who came and stayed. It never occurred to him that one day, in the not too far-off future, he would be the one being buried. He was only seventy-three and his father had lived to be a hundred. He still had plenty of time. Jeffrey considered himself a good judge of character and cast an almost painterly eye over the crowd gathered around the grave that he had himself dug. He had his opinions about every one of them. And what better place than a funeral for a study in human nature? First there was the vicar himself with his tombstone face and long, slightly unkempt hair. Jeffrey remembered when he had first come to Saxby-on-Avon, replacing the Reverend Montagu, who had become increasingly eccentric in old age, repeating himself in his sermons and falling asleep during evensong. The Osbornes had been more than welcome when they arrived even if they were a slightly odd couple, she so much shorter than him, quite plump and pugnacious. She certainly never held back with her opinions, which Jeffrey rather admired – although it probably wasn’t a good idea for a vicar’s wife. He could see her now, standing behind her husband, nodding when she agreed with what he was saying, scowling when she didn’t. They were definitely close. That was for sure. But they were odd in more ways than one. What, for example, was their interest in Pye Hall? Oh yes, he had seen them a couple of times, slipping into the woodland that reached the bottom of their garden and which separated their property from Sir Magnus Pye. Quite a few people used Dingle Dell as a short cut to the manor house. It saved having to go all the way down to the Bath Road and then coming in through the main entrance. But normally, they didn’t do it in the middle of the night. What, he wondered, were they up to? Jeffrey had no time for Mr and Mrs Whitehead and never really spoke to them. As far as he was concerned, they were Londoners and had no place in Saxby-on-Avon. The village didn’t need an antique shop anyway. It was a waste of space. You could take an old mirror, an old clock or whatever, put a stupid price on it and call it an antique but it was still only junk and more fool those that thought otherwise. The fact was, he didn’t trust either of them. It seemed to him that they were pretending to be something they weren’t – just like the stuff they were selling. And why had they come to the funeral? They’d hardly known Mary Blakiston and certainly she’d never have had anything good to say about them. Dr Redwing and her husband had every right to be here, on the other hand. She was the one who had found the body – along with Brent, the groundsman, who had also turned up and who was standing with his cap in hand, his curly hair tumbling over his forehead. Emilia Redwing had always lived in the village. Her father, Dr Rennard, had worked in the surgery before her. He hadn’t come today but that wasn’t surprising. He was in a residential home in Trowbridge and the word was that he himself wasn’t much longer for this world. Jeffrey had never had any serious illness but he had been treated by both of them. Old Dr Rennard had actually delivered his son – a midwife as well as a doctor back in the days when it was quite common for one man to be both. And what of Arthur Redwing? He was listening to the vicar with a look that teetered on the edge of impatience and boredom. He was a handsome man. There was no doubt of that. An artist, not that he’d made any money out of it. Hadn’t he done a portrait of Lady Pye a while ago, up at the hall? Anyway, the two of them were the sort of people you could rely on. Not like the Whiteheads. It was hard to imagine the village without them. The same was true of Clarissa Pye. She had certainly dolled herself up for the funeral and looked a little ridiculous in that hat with its three feathers. What did she think this was? A cocktail party? Even so, Jeffrey couldn’t help feeling sorry for her. It must be hard enough living here with her brother lording it over her. It was all right for him, swanning around in his Jag while his sister taught at the village school, and she wasn’t a bad teacher by all accounts, even if the children had never much liked her. It was probably because they sensed her unhappiness. Clarissa was all on her own. She had never married. She seemed to spend half her life in the church. He was always seeing her coming in and out. To be fair to her, she often stopped to have a chat with him but then of course she didn’t really have anyone to talk to unless she was on her knees. She looked a bit like her brother, Sir Magnus, although not in a way that did her any favours. At least she’d had the decency to turn up. Somebody sneezed. It was Brent. Jeffrey watched him as he wiped his nose with the back of his sleeve then glanced from side to side. He had no idea how to behave himself in a crowd but that was hardly surprising. Brent spent most of his life in his own company and, unlike Clarissa, he preferred it that way. He worked long hours up at the hall and sometimes, after he finished, he might be found having a drink or supper at the Ferryman, where he had his own table and his own chair, looking out over the main road. But he never socialised. He had no conversation. Sometimes Jeffrey wondered what went on in his head. He ignored the other mourners and settled on the boy who had arrived with the hearse, Robert Blakiston. Jeffrey felt sorry for him too: it was his mother they were burying, even if the two of them had been at it hammer and tongs. It was well known in the village how the pair of them didn’t get on and he’d actually heard with his own ears what Robert had said to her outside the Queen’s Arms, just the evening before the accident had happened. ‘I wish you’d drop dead. Give me a bit of peace!’ Well, he wasn’t to be blamed for that. People often say things they regret and nobody could have known what was going to happen. The boy was certainly looking miserable enough as he stood there, next to the neat, pretty girl who worked at the doctor’s surgery. Everyone in the village knew that they were courting and the two of them were very well suited. She was obviously worried about him. Jeffrey could see it in her face and the way she hung on to his arm. ‘She was part of the village. Although we are here today to mourn her departure, we should remember what she left behind . . .’ The vicar was coming to the end of his address. He was on the last page. Jeffrey looked round and saw Adam entering the cemetery from the footpath at the far end. He was a good boy. You could always rely on him to turn up at exactly the right moment. And here was something rather strange. One of the mourners was already leaving even though the vicar was still speaking. Jeffrey hadn’t noticed him standing at the very back of the crowd, separate from them. He was a middle-aged man dressed in a dark coat with a black hat. A fedora. Jeffrey had only glimpsed his face but thought it familiar. He had sunken cheeks and a beak-like nose. Where had he seen him before? Well, it was too late. He was already out of the main gate, making his way towards the village square. Something made Jeffrey look up. The stranger had passed beneath a large elm tree that grew on the edge of the cemetery and something had moved, sitting on one of the branches. It was a magpie. And it wasn’t alone. Looking a second time, Jeffrey saw that the tree was full of them. How many were there? It was difficult to see with the thick leaves obscuring them but in the end he counted seven and that put him in mind of the old nursery rhyme he had learned as a child. One for sorrow, Two for joy, Three for a girl, Four for a boy, Five for silver, Six for gold, Seven for a secret, Never to be told. Well, wasn’t that the strangest thing? A whole crowd of magpies in one tree, as if they had gathered here for the funeral. But then Adam arrived, the vicar finished his address, the mourners began to leave and the next time Jeffrey looked up, the birds had gone. 
 Two Joy 
 1 The doctor did not need to speak. His face, the silence in the room, the X-rays and test results spread across his desk said it all. The two men sat facing each other in the smartly furnished office at the bottom end of Harley Street and knew that they had reached the final act of a drama that had been played out many times before. Six weeks ago, they hadn’t even known each other. Now they were united in the most intimate way of all. One had given the news. The other had received it. Neither of them allowed very much emotion to show in their face. It was part of the procedure, a gentlemen’s agreement, that they should do their best to conceal it. ‘May I ask, Dr Benson, how long would you say I have remaining?’ Atticus Pünd asked. ‘It’s not easy to be precise,’ the doctor replied. ‘I’m afraid the tumour is very advanced. Had we been able to spot it earlier, there’s a small chance that we might have operated. As it is . . .’ He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry.’ ‘There is no need to be.’ Pünd spoke the perfect, studied English of the cultivated foreigner, enunciating every syllable as if to apologise for his German accent. ‘I am sixty-five years old. I have had a long life and I will say that in many respects it has been a good one. I had expected to die on many occasions before now. You might even say that death has been a companion of mine, always walking two steps behind. Well, now he has caught up.’ He spread his hands and managed to smile. ‘We are old acquaintances, he and I, and he gives me no reason to be afraid. However, it will be necessary for me to arrange my affairs, to put them in order. It would help me to know, therefore, in general terms . . . are we speaking weeks or months?’ ‘Well, there will be a decline, I’m afraid. These headaches of yours will get worse. You may experience seizures. I can send you some literature, which will give you the general picture, and I’ll prescribe some strong painkillers. You might like to consider some sort of residential care. There’s a very good place in Hampstead I can recommend, run by the Marie Curie Memorial Foundation. In the later stages, you will require constant attention.’ The words faded into the distance. Dr Benson examined his patient with a certain amount of puzzlement. The name Atticus Pünd was familiar to him, of course. He was often mentioned in the newspapers – a German refugee who had managed to survive the war after spending a year in one of Hitler’s concentration camps. At the time of his arrest he had been a policeman working in Berlin – or perhaps it was Vienna – and after arriving in England, he had set himself up as a private detective, helping the police on numerous occasions. He did not look like a detective. He was a small man, very neat, his hands folded in front of him. He was wearing a dark suit, a white shirt and a narrow black tie. His shoes were polished. If he had not known otherwise, the doctor might have mistaken him for an accountant, the sort who would work for a family firm and who would be utterly reliable. And yet there was something else. Even before he had heard the news, the first time he had entered the surgery, Pünd had exhibited a strange sense of nervousness. His eyes, behind the round wire-framed glasses, were endlessly watchful and he seemed to hesitate, every time, before he spoke. The strange thing was that he was more relaxed, now, after being told the news. It was as if he had always been expecting it and was merely grateful that, at last, it had been delivered. ‘Two or three months,’ Dr Benson concluded. ‘It could be longer, but after that I’m afraid you will find that your faculties will begin to worsen.’ ‘Thank you very much, Doctor. The treatment I have received from you has been exemplary. May I ask that any further correspondence should be addressed to me personally and marked “Private & Confidential”? I have a personal assistant and would not wish him to know of this quite yet.’ ‘Of course.’ ‘The business between us is concluded?’ ‘I would like to see you again in a couple of weeks. We will have to make arrangements. I really think you should go and look at Hampstead.’ ‘I will do that.’ Pünd got to his feet. Curiously, the action did not add a great deal to his overall height. Standing up, he seemed to be overpowered by the room with its dark wooden panels and high ceiling. ‘Thank you again, Dr Benson.’ He picked up his walking stick, which was made of rosewood with a solid bronze handle, eighteenth century. It came from Salzburg and had been a gift from the German ambassador in London. On more than one occasion, it had proved to be a useful weapon. He walked past the receptionist and the doorman, nodding politely at each of them, and went out into the street. Once there, he stood in the bright sunlight, taking in the scene around him. He was not surprised to discover that his every sense had been heightened. The edges of the buildings seemed almost mathematically precise. He could differentiate the sound of every car as it merged into the general noise of the traffic. He felt the warmth of the sun against his skin. It occurred to him that he might well be in shock. Sixty-five years old and it was unlikely that he was going to be sixty-six. It would take some getting used to. And yet, as he walked up Harley Street towards Regent’s Park, he was already putting it all into context. It was just another throw of the dice and, after all, his entire life had been lived against the odds. He knew well, for example, that he owed his very existence to an accident of history. When Otto I, a Bavarian prince, had become King of Greece in 1832, a number of Greek students had chosen to emigrate to Germany. His great-grandfather had been one of them and fifty-eight years later, Atticus himself had been born to a German mother, a secretary working at the Landespolizei where his father was a uniformed officer. Half Greek, half German? It was a minority if ever there was one. And then, of course, there had been the rise of Nazism. The Pünds were not only Greek. They were Jewish. As the great game had continued, their chances of survival had diminished until only the most reckless gambler would have taken a punt on their coming through. Sure enough he had lost: his mother, his father, his brothers, his friends. Finally he had found himself in Belsen and his own life had been spared only by a very rare administrative error, a chance in a thousand. After the liberation, it had given him another full decade of life so could he really complain that a final throw had now gone against him? Atticus Pünd was nothing if not generous of spirit and by the time he had reached the Euston Road he was at peace with himself. All was as it should be. He would not complain. He took a taxi home. He never used the tube train, disliking the presence of so many people in close proximity; so many dreams, fears, resentments jumbled together in the darkness. He found it overpowering. Black cabs were so much more stolid, cocooning him from the real world. There was little traffic in the middle of the day and he soon found himself in Charterhouse Square in Farringdon. The taxi pulled up outside Tanner Court, the very elegant block of flats where he lived. He paid the driver, added a generous tip, and went in. He had bought the flat with the profits he had made from the Ludendorff Diamond affair1: two bedrooms, a light and spacious living room looking out onto the square and, most importantly, a hallway and an office where he was able to meet clients. As he took the lift to the seventh floor, he reflected that he had no cases to investigate at the moment. All in all, that was just as well. ‘Hello, there!’ The voice came from the office before Pünd had even closed the front door and a moment later, James Fraser came bouncing out of the office, a bundle of letters in his hand. Blond-haired and in his late twenties, this was the assistant and private secretary that Pünd had mentioned to Dr Benson. A graduate out of Oxford University, a would-be actor, broke, and perennially unemployed, he had answered an advertisement in the Spectator thinking that he would stay in the job for a few months. Six years later, he was still there. ‘How did it go?’ he asked. ‘How did what go?’ Pünd asked in turn. Fraser of course had no idea where he’d been. ‘I don’t know. Whatever it was you went for.’ James smiled that school-boyish smile of his. ‘Anyway, Inspector Spence called from Scotland Yard. He wants you to give him a call. Someone from The Times wants you to do an interview. And don’t forget, you’ve got a client arriving here at half past twelve.’ ‘A client?’ ‘Yes.’ Fraser sifted through the letters he was holding. ‘Her name is Joy Sanderling. She rang yesterday.’ ‘I do not recall speaking to a Joy Sanderling.’ ‘You didn’t speak to her. I did. She was calling from Bath or somewhere. She sounded in a bit of a bad way.’ ‘Why did you not ask me?’ ‘Should I have?’ Fraser’s face fell. ‘I’m terribly sorry. We haven’t got anything on at the moment and I thought you’d appreciate a new case.’ Pünd sighed. He always looked a little pained and put upon – it was part of his general demeanour – but on this occasion, the timing could not have been worse. Even so, he did not raise his voice. As always, he was reasonable. ‘I’m sorry, James,’ he said. ‘I cannot see her right now.’ ‘But she’s already on her way.’ ‘Then you’ll have to tell her that she has wasted her time.’ Pünd walked past his secretary and into his private rooms. He closed the door behind him. 2 ‘You said he would see me.’ ‘I know. I’m awfully sorry. But he’s too busy today.’ ‘But I took a day off work. I came on the train all the way from Bath. You can’t treat people this way.’ ‘You’re absolutely right. But it wasn’t Mr Pünd’s fault. I didn’t look at his diary. If you like, I can pay back your train fare out of petty cash.’ ‘It’s not just the train fare. It’s my whole life. I have to see him. I don’t know anyone else who can help.’ Pünd heard the voices from behind the double door that led into his sitting room. He was resting in an armchair, smoking the Sobranie cigarette – black with a gold tip – that he favoured. He had been thinking about his book, the work of a lifetime, already four hundred pages long and nowhere near complete. It had a title: The Landscape of Criminal Investigation. Fraser had typed up the most recent chapter and he drew it towards him. Chapter Twenty-six: Interrogation and Interpretation. He could not read it now. Pünd had thought it would take another year to complete the book. He no longer had that year. The girl had a nice voice. She was young. He could also tell, even on the other side of a wooden barrier, that she was on the edge of tears. Pünd thought briefly about his illness. Intracranial neoplasm. The doctor had given him three months. Was he really going to spend that time sitting on his own like this, thinking about all the things he couldn’t do? Annoyed with himself, he neatly ground out the cigarette, got up and opened the door. Joy Sanderling was standing in the corridor, talking to Fraser. She was a small girl, petite in every sense, with fair hair framing a very pretty face and childlike blue eyes. She had dressed smartly to come and see him. The pale raincoat with the sash tying it at the waist was unnecessary in this weather but it looked good on her and he suspected that she had chosen it because it made her seem businesslike. She looked past Fraser and saw him. ‘Mr Pünd?’ ‘Yes.’ He nodded slowly. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you. I know how busy you are. But – please – if you could just give me five minutes of your time? It would mean so much.’ Five minutes. Although she could not know it, it meant so much to both of them. ‘Very well,’ he said. Behind her, James Fraser looked annoyed, as if he had somehow let the side down. But Pünd had made up his mind the moment he had heard her voice. She had sounded so lost. There had been enough sadness today. He took her into the office, which was comfortable if a little austere. There was a desk and three chairs, an antique mirror, engravings in gold frames, all in the Biedermeier style of nineteenth-century Vienna. Fraser followed them in and took his place at the side of the room, sitting with his legs crossed and a notepad balanced on his knee. He didn’t really have to write anything down. Pünd, who never lost sight of a single detail, would remember every word that was said. ‘Please continue, Miss Sanderling.’ ‘Oh, please, call me Joy,’ the girl replied. ‘Actually, my first name is Josie. But everyone calls me Joy.’ ‘And you have come all this way from the city of Bath.’ ‘I would have come a lot further to see you, Mr Pünd. I’ve read about you in the newspapers. They say you’re the best detective who ever lived, that there’s nothing you can’t do.’ Atticus Pünd blinked. Such flattery always made him a little uncomfortable. With a slightly twitchy movement, he adjusted his glasses and half-smiled. ‘That is very kind of you but perhaps we are getting ahead of ourselves, Miss Sanderling. You must forgive me. We have been very rude. We have not offered you a coffee.’ ‘I don’t want a coffee, thank you very much, and I don’t want to waste too much of your time. But I desperately need your help.’ ‘Then why don’t you begin by telling us what it is that brings you here?’ ‘Yes. Of course.’ She straightened herself in her chair. James Fraser waited with his pen poised. ‘I’ve already told you my name,’ she began. ‘I live in a place called Lower Westwood with my parents and my brother, Paul. Unfortunately, he was born with Down’s syndrome and he can’t look after himself but we’re very close. Actually, I love him to bits.’ She paused. ‘Our house is just outside Bath but I work in a village called Saxby-on-Avon. I have a job in the local surgery, helping Dr Redwing. She’s terribly nice, by the way. I’ve been with her for almost two years now and I’ve been very happy.’ Pünd nodded. He had already taken to this girl. He liked her confidence, the clarity with which she expressed herself. ‘A year ago, I met a boy,’ she went on. ‘He came in because he’d hurt himself quite badly in a car accident. He was mending the car and it almost fell on him. The jack hit his hand and broke a couple of bones. His name is Robert Blakiston. We hit it off pretty much straight away and I started going out with him. I’m very much in love with him. And now the two of us are engaged to be married.’ ‘You have my congratulations.’ ‘I wish it was as easy as that. Now I’m not sure that the wedding is going ahead at all.’ She produced a tissue and used it to dab at her eye but in a way that was more businesslike than overly emotional. ‘Two weeks ago, his mother died. She was buried last weekend. Robert and I went to the funeral together and of course it was horrible. But what made it even worse was the way people looked at him . . . and since then, all the things they have been saying. The thing is, Mr Pünd, they all think he did it!’ ‘You mean . . . that he killed her?’ ‘Yes.’ It took her a few moments to compose herself. Then she continued. ‘Robert never had a very happy relationship with his mother. Her name was Mary and she worked as a housekeeper. There’s this big place – I suppose you’d say it was a manor house – called Pye Hall. It’s owned by a man called Sir Magnus Pye, and it’s been in his family for centuries. Anyway, she did the cooking, the cleaning, the shopping – all that sort of thing – and she lived in the Lodge House down at the gates. That was where Robert grew up.’ ‘You do not mention a father.’ ‘There is no father. He left them, during the war. It’s all very complicated and Robert never talks about it. You see, there was a family tragedy. There’s a big lake at Pye Hall and it’s said to be very deep. Robert had a younger brother called Tom and the two of them were playing near the lake. Robert was fourteen. Tom was twelve. Anyway, Tom got out of his depth and he drowned. Robert tried to save him but he couldn’t.’ ‘Where was the father at this time?’ ‘He was a mechanic at Boscombe Down, working for the RAF. It’s not that far away and he was at home quite a lot but he wasn’t there when it happened. And when he found out – well, you’d have to ask Robert, not that he remembers very much of it, I’m sure. The point is that his parents just tore each other apart. He blamed her for not looking after the boys properly. She blamed him for being away. I can’t tell you very much because Robert never speaks about it and the rest is just village gossip. Anyway, the upshot was that he moved out, leaving the two of them living alone in the Lodge. They got divorced later on and I’ve never even met him. He wasn’t at the funeral – or if he was, I didn’t see him. His name is Matthew Blakiston but that’s about all I know. ‘Robert grew up with his mother but the two of them were never happy together. Really, they should have moved. They should never have stayed near that horrible place. I don’t know how she did it, walking past the lake where her own son had died, seeing it every day. I think it poisoned her . . . It reminded her of the boy she’d lost. And maybe part of her blamed Robert even though he was nowhere near when it happened. People do behave like that, don’t they, Mr Pünd. It’s a sort of madness . . .’ Pünd nodded. ‘It is true that we have many ways of coping with loss,’ he said. ‘And grief is never rational.’ ‘I only met Mary Blakiston a few times, although of course I saw her in the village quite a bit. She often used to come to the surgery. Not because she was ill. She and Dr Redwing were good friends. After Robert and I got engaged, she invited us round to the Lodge for tea – but it was horrible. She wasn’t exactly unfriendly but she was so cold, asking me questions as if I was applying for a job or something. We had tea in the front room and I can still see her with her cup and saucer, sitting in her chair in the corner. She was like a spider in a web. I know I shouldn’t say things like that, but that was what I thought. And poor Robert was completely in her shadow. He was so different when he was with her, quiet and shy. I don’t think he said a word. He just stared at the carpet as if he had done something wrong and was about to be told off. You should have seen how she treated him! She didn’t have a single good word to say about him. She was dead set against our marriage. She made that much clear. And all the time the clock was ticking away. There was this huge grandfather clock in the room and I couldn’t wait for it to strike the hour so we could be on our way.’ ‘Your fiancé no longer lived with his mother? At the time of her death?’ ‘No. He was still in the same village but he’d moved into a flat above the garage where he works. I think it was one of the reasons he took the job, to get away from her.’ Joy folded the tissue and slipped it into her sleeve. ‘Robert and I love each other. Mary Blakiston made it clear that she didn’t think I was good enough for him but even if she hadn’t died, it wouldn’t have made any difference. We’re going to get married. We’re going to be happy together.’ ‘If it does not distress you, Miss Sanderling, I would be interested to know more about her death.’ ‘Well, as I say, it happened on a Friday, two weeks ago. She’d gone up to Pye Hall to do the cleaning – Sir Magnus and Lady Pye were away – and somehow she tripped when she was doing the hoovering and fell down the stairs. Brent, who works in the grounds, saw her lying there and called the doctor but there was nothing anyone could do. She’d broken her neck.’ ‘Were the police informed?’ ‘Yes. A detective inspector came round from the Bath constabulary. I didn’t actually talk to him but apparently he was very thorough. The wire of the Hoover was in a loop at the top of the stairs. There was nobody else in the house. All the doors were locked. It was obviously just an accident.’ ‘And yet you say that Robert Blakiston is accused of her murder.’ ‘That’s just the village talking and it’s why you’ve got to help us, Mr Pünd.’ She drew a breath. ‘Robert argued with his mother. The two of them often argued. I think they had never really escaped from the unhappiness of what had happened all those years before and in a way it was hurting both of them. Well, they had a nasty row outside the pub. Lots of people heard them. It started because she wanted him to mend something in the Lodge. She was always asking him to do odd jobs for her and he never refused. But this time he wasn’t happy about it and there was a lot of name-calling and then he said something which I know he didn’t mean but everyone heard him so it doesn’t matter if he meant it or not. “I wish you’d drop dead”.’ The tissue came out again. ‘That’s what he said. And three days later she was.’ She fell silent. Atticus Pünd sat behind his desk, his hands neatly folded, his face solemn. James Fraser had been taking notes. He came to the end of a sentence and underlined a single word several times. Sunlight was streaming in through the window. Outside, in Charterhouse Square, office workers were beginning to appear, carrying their lunchtime sandwiches into the fresh air. ‘It is possible,’ Pünd muttered, ‘that your fiancé did have good reason to kill his mother. I have not met him and I don’t wish to be unkind but we must at least entertain the possibility. The two of you wished to marry. She stood in the way.’ ‘But she didn’t!’ Joy Sanderling was defiant. ‘We didn’t need her permission to get married and it wasn’t as if she had money or anything like that. Anyway, I know Robert had nothing to do with it.’ ‘How can you be so sure?’ Joy took a deep breath. This was clearly something she hadn’t wanted to explain but she knew she had no choice. ‘The police say that Mrs Blakiston died around nine o’clock in the morning. Brent called Dr Redwing just before ten and when she got to the house, the body was still warm.’ She paused. ‘The garage opens at nine o’clock – the same time as the surgery – and I was with Robert until then. We left his flat together. My parents would die if they found out, Mr Pünd, even though we’re engaged. My father was a fireman and now he works for the union. He’s a very serious sort of person and terribly old-fashioned. And having to look after Paul all the time, it’s made both my parents very protective. I told them I was going to the theatre in Bath and that I was staying overnight with a girlfriend. But the fact is that I was with Robert all night and I left him at nine o’clock in the morning, which means he couldn’t have had anything to do with it.’ ‘How far, may I ask, is the garage from Pye Hall?’ ‘It’s about three or four minutes on my motor scooter. I suppose you could walk there in about a quarter of an hour, if you cut across Dingle Dell. That’s what we call the meadow on the edge of the village.’ She scowled. ‘I know what you’re thinking, Mr Pünd. But I saw Robert that morning. He chatted to me over breakfast. He couldn’t do that, could he, if he was thinking of murdering somebody?’ Atticus Pünd did not reply but he knew from his experience that murderers could, indeed, smile and make pleasant conversation one minute and strike violently the next. His experiences during the war had also taught him much about what he called the institutionalisation of murder; how, if you surrounded murder with enough forms and procedures, if you could convince yourself that it was an absolute necessity, then ultimately it would not be murder at all. ‘What is it you wish me to do?’ he asked. ‘I don’t have a great deal of money. I can’t even really pay you. I know it’s wrong of me and I probably shouldn’t have come here. But it’s not right. It’s just so unfair. I was hoping you could come to Saxby-on-Avon – just for one day. I’m sure that would be enough. If you were to look into it and tell people that it was an accident and that there was nothing sinister going on, I’m sure that would put an end to it. Everyone knows who you are. They’d listen to you.’ There was a brief silence. Pünd took off his glasses and wiped them with a handkerchief. Fraser knew what was coming. He had been with the detective long enough to recognise his mannerisms. He always polished his glasses before he delivered bad news. ‘I am sorry, Miss Sanderling,’ he said. ‘There is nothing I can do.’ He held up a hand, stopping her before she could interrupt. ‘I am a private detective,’ he continued. ‘It is true that the police have often asked me to help them with their enquiries but in this country I have no official status. That is the problem here. It is much more difficult for me to impose myself, particularly in a case like this where, to all intents and purposes, no crime has been committed. I have to ask myself on what pretext I would be able to enter Pye Hall. ‘I also must take issue with your basic proposition. You tell me that Mrs Blakiston was killed as the result of an accident. The police evidently believe so. Let us assume that it was an accident. All I can do then is to confront the gossip of certain villagers in Saxby-on-Avon who have overheard an unfortunate conversation and have made of it what they will. But such gossip cannot be confronted. Rumours and malicious gossip are like bindweed. They cannot be cut back, even with the sword of truth. I can, however, offer you this comfort. Given time, they will wither and die of their own volition. That is my opinion. Why do you and your fiancé even wish to remain in this part of the world if it is so disagreeable to you?’ ‘Why should we have to move?’ ‘I agree. If you would take my advice, it would be to stay where you are, to get married, to enjoy your lives together. Above all, ignore this . . . I believe the word is “tittle-tattle”. To confront it is to feed it. Left alone, it will go away.’ There was nothing more to be said. As if to emphasise the point, Fraser closed his notebook. Joy Sanderling got to her feet. ‘Thank you very much, Mr Pünd,’ she said. ‘Thank you for seeing me.’ ‘I wish you the very best, Miss Sanderling,’ Pünd replied – and he meant it. He wanted this girl to be happy. During the entire time he had been talking to her, he had forgotten his own circumstances, the news he had heard that day. Fraser showed her out. Pünd heard a few brief mutters, then the front door opened and closed. A moment later, he came back into the room. ‘I say, I’m terribly sorry about that,’ he muttered. ‘I was trying to tell her that you didn’t want to be disturbed.’ ‘I am glad I saw her,’ Pünd replied. ‘But tell me, James. What was the word that I saw you underscoring several times as we spoke?’ ‘What?’ Fraser flushed. ‘Oh. Actually, it wasn’t anything important. It wasn’t even relevant. I was just trying to look busy.’ ‘It struck me that might be the case.’ ‘Oh. How?’ ‘Because at that moment, Miss Sanderling was not saying anything of particular interest. The motor scooter, though. Had it been any colour but pink, it might have been significant.’ He smiled. ‘Could you bring me a cup of coffee, James? But after that, I think, I do not want to be disturbed.’ He turned and went back into his room. 3 Joy Sanderling made her way back to Farringdon tube station, her path taking her round the side of Smithfield meat market. There was a lorry parked outside one of the many entrances and as she went past, two men in white coats were bundling out an entire sheep’s carcass, raw and bloody. The sight of it made her shudder. She didn’t like London. She found it oppressive. She couldn’t wait to be on the train home. She had been disappointed by her meeting with Atticus Pünd, even though (she admitted it now) she had never really expected anything from it. Why should the most famous detective in the country be interested in her? It wasn’t even as if she would have been able to pay him. And what he had said had been true. There was no case to solve. Joy knew that Robert hadn’t killed his mother. She had been with him that morning and would certainly have heard him if he had left the flat. Robert could be moody. He often snapped out, saying things that he regretted. But she had been with him long enough to know that he would never hurt anyone. What had happened at Pye Hall had been an accident, nothing more. All the detectives in the world would have been no match for the wagging tongues of Saxby-on-Avon. Still, she had been right to come. The two of them deserved their happiness together, Robert in particular. He had been so lost until he had met her and she wasn’t going to allow anyone to drive them apart. They weren’t going to move. They weren’t going to take any notice of what people thought of them. They were going to fight back. She reached the station and bought a ticket from the man in the kiosk. Already a thought was taking shape in her mind. Joy was a modest girl. She had been brought up in a very close and (despite her father’s politics) conservative family. The step that she was now considering shocked her but she could see no other way. She had to protect Robert. She had to protect their life together. Nothing was more important than that. Before the tube train had arrived she knew exactly what she was going to do. 4 In a restaurant on the other side of London, Frances Pye cast a careless eye over the menu and ordered grilled sardines, a salad, a glass of white wine. Carlotta’s was one of those Italian family restaurants behind Harrods: the manager was married to the chef and the waiters included a son and a nephew. The order was taken, the menus removed. She lit a cigarette and leant back in her chair. ‘You should leave him,’ her lunch companion said. Jack Dartford, five years her junior, was a darkly handsome man with a moustache and an easy smile, dressed in a double-fronted blazer and cravat. He was looking at her with concern. From the moment they had met, he had noticed something strained about her. Even the way she was sitting now seemed nervous, defensive, one hand stroking the other arm. She had not taken off her sunglasses. He wondered if she had a black eye. ‘He’d kill me,’ she replied. She smiled curiously. ‘Actually, he did try to kill me in a way – after our last row.’ ‘You’re not serious!’ ‘Don’t worry, Jack. He didn’t hurt me. It was all bluster. He knows something’s up. All those telephone calls, days off in London, the letters . . . I told you not to write to me.’ ‘Does he read them?’ ‘No. But he’s not stupid. And he talks to the postman. Every time I’ve received a handwritten letter from London, he’s probably heard about it. Anyway, it all came to the fore over dinner last night. He more or less accused me of seeing someone else.’ ‘You didn’t tell him about me!’ ‘Afraid he’ll come after you with a horsewhip? I wouldn’t put it past him. But no, Jack, I didn’t tell him about you.’ ‘Did he hurt you?’ ‘No.’ She took off her sunglasses. She looked tired but there were no bruises around her eyes. ‘It was just unpleasant. It’s always unpleasant where Magnus is concerned.’ ‘Why won’t you leave him?’ ‘Because I have no money. You have to understand that Magnus has a vindictive streak the size of the Panama Canal. If I tried to walk out on him, he’d surround himself with lawyers. He’d make sure that I left Pye Hall with nothing more than the clothes I was wearing.’ ‘I have money.’ ‘I don’t think so, darling. Certainly not enough.’ It was true. Dartford worked in the money market, which in the true sense wasn’t really work at all. He dabbled. He made investments. But recently he’d had an unlucky streak and he very much hoped that Frances Pye had no idea how close he was to rock bottom. He couldn’t afford to marry her. He couldn’t afford to run away with her. The way things were going, he could barely afford lunch. ‘How was the South of France?’ he asked, changing the subject. That was where they had met, playing tennis together. ‘It was boring. I’d have much preferred it if you’d been there.’ ‘I’m sure. Did you get in any tennis?’ ‘Not really. To be honest, I was quite glad to leave. We got a letter in the middle of the week. A woman at Pye Hall had tripped on a wire, fallen down the stairs and broken her neck.’ ‘My God! Was Freddy there?’ ‘No. He was staying with friends down in Hastings. He’s still there, as a matter of fact. He doesn’t seem to want to come home.’ ‘I don’t blame him. So who was she?’ ‘The housekeeper. A woman called Mary Blakiston. She’d been with us for years and she’s going to be almost impossible to replace. And that wasn’t the end of it. When we finally got back last Saturday we discovered we’d been burgled.’ ‘No!’ ‘I’m telling you. It was the groundsman’s fault – at least, that’s what the police think. He’d smashed a pane of glass at the back of the house. He had to do it, to let the doctor in.’ ‘Why did you need a doctor?’ ‘Pay attention, Jack. It was for the dead woman. Brent, the groundsman, had seen her through the window, just lying there. He called the doctor and the two of them broke into the house to see if they could help. Well, obviously there wasn’t anything they could do. But after that, he just left the door with its broken pane. He didn’t even bother to get it boarded up. It was an open invitation to burglars and the burglars accepted it, thank you very much.’ ‘Did you lose very much?’ ‘Not personally, no. Magnus keeps most of his valuables in a safe and they couldn’t open that. But they marauded through the place. Did quite a bit of damage. Pulled open drawers and scattered the contents – that sort of thing. It took all of Sunday and yesterday to clear it up.’ She reached out with the cigarette and Dartford slid an ashtray in front of her. ‘I’d left some jewellery beside the bed and I lost that. It makes you feel uneasy, thinking you’ve had strangers in the bedroom.’ ‘I’ll say.’ ‘And Magnus lost his precious treasure trove. He wasn’t at all happy about that.’ ‘What treasure was that?’ ‘It’s Roman, mainly silver. It’s been in the family for generations, ever since they dug it up on their land. It came from some sort of burial site. There were rings, armlets, some decorative boxes, coins. We had it in a display case in the dining room. Of course, he’d never had it insured even though it was meant to be worth a fortune. Well, it’s a bit late now . . .’ ‘Were the police helpful?’ ‘Of course not. We had some chap come over from Bath. He sniffed around, wasted a lot of fingerprint powder, asked impertinent questions and then disappeared. Completely useless.’ The waiter arrived with the glass of wine. Dartford had been drinking Campari and soda. He ordered another. ‘It’s a shame it wasn’t Magnus,’ he remarked, once the waiter had gone. ‘What do you mean?’ ‘The lady who fell down the stairs. It’s a shame it wasn’t him.’ ‘That’s a dreadful thing to say.’ ‘I’m only saying what you’re thinking, darling. I know you well enough. I assume you’d inherit the whole caboodle if Magnus popped his clogs.’ Frances blew out cigarette smoke and looked curiously at her companion. ‘As a matter of fact, the house and the grounds would all go to Freddy. There’s some sort of entail on the estate. It’s been that way for generations.’ ‘But you’d be all right.’ ‘Oh yes. And of course, I’d get a lifetime interest in Pye Hall. The only thing I couldn’t do is sell the place. But it’s not going to happen. Magnus is in perfect health, certainly for his age.’ ‘Yes, Frances. But a big house like that. A wire stretched out across the stairs. You never know what might happen. Maybe those burglars of yours could return and finish him off.’ ‘You’re not serious!’ ‘It’s just a thought.’ Frances Pye fell silent. This wasn’t the sort of conversation to be having, particularly in a crowded restaurant. But she had to admit that Jack was right. Life without Magnus would be considerably simpler and a great deal more enjoyable. It was just a shame that lightning didn’t have the habit of striking twice. On the other hand, though, why not? 5 Dr Emilia Redwing tried to see her father once a week although it wasn’t always possible. If the surgery was busy, if she had home or hospital calls to make, if there was too much paperwork on her desk, then she would be forced to put it off. Somehow, it was always easy to make an excuse. There was always a good reason not to go. She derived very little pleasure from the visits. Dr Edgar Rennard had been eighty years old when his wife had died and although he had continued living in his home in nearby King’s Abbott, he had never really been the same. Emilia had soon got used to the telephone calls from the neighbours. He had been found wandering in the street. He wasn’t feeding himself properly. He was confused. At first, she had tried to persuade herself that he was simply suffering from chronic grief and loneliness but as the symptoms had presented themselves, she had been forced to make the obvious diagnosis. Her father had senile dementia. He wasn’t going to get any better. In fact the prognosis was a great deal worse. She had briefly considered taking him in with her at Saxby-on-Avon but that wouldn’t have been fair to Arthur and anyway she couldn’t possibly become an old man’s full-time carer. She still remembered the guilt, the sense of failure that she had felt the first time she had taken him to Ashton House, a residential home converted from a hospital in the Bath valley just after the war. Curiously though, it had been easier to persuade her father than it had been to persuade herself. This wasn’t a good day to have made the fifteen-minute drive to Bath. Joy Sanderling was in London, seeing someone on what she had described as a personal matter. Mary Blakiston’s funeral had taken place just five days ago and there was a sense of disquiet in the village that was hard to define but which, she knew from experience, might well lead to further calls on her time. Unhappiness had a way of affecting people in just the same way as the flu and even the burglary at Pye Hall struck her as being part of that general infection. But she couldn’t put off the visit any longer. On Tuesday, Edgar Rennard had taken a tumble. He had been seen by a local doctor and she had been assured that there was no serious damage. Even so, he was asking for her. He was off his food. The matron at Ashton House had telephoned her and asked her to come. She was with him now. They had got him out of bed but only as far as the chair beside the window and he was sitting there in his dressing gown, so thin and crumpled that Emilia almost wanted to cry. He had always been strong, robust. As a little girl, she had thought the entire world rested on his shoulders. Today it had taken him five minutes before he had even recognised her. She had seen this creeping up on them. It wasn’t so much that her father was dying. It was more that he had lost the desire to live. ‘I have to tell her . . .’ he said. His voice was husky. His lips had difficulty shaping the words. He had said this twice before but he still hadn’t made himself understood. ‘Who are you talking about, Papa? What is it you have to tell?’ ‘She has to know what happened . . . what I did.’ ‘What do you mean? What are you talking about? Is this something to do with Mama?’ ‘Where is she? Where is your mother?’ ‘She’s not here.’ Emilia was annoyed with herself. She should never have mentioned her mother. It would only confuse the old man. ‘What do you want to tell me, Daddy?’ she said, more gently. ‘It’s important. I don’t have very long.’ ‘That’s nonsense. You’re going to be fine. You just have to try and eat something. I could ask the matron for a sandwich, if you like. I can stay here with you while you have it.’ ‘Magnus Pye . . .’ How extraordinary that he should have spoken that name. Of course he would have known Sir Magnus when he worked at Saxby-on-Avon. He would have treated the whole family. But why mention him now? Was Sir Magnus in some way connected with what had happened, whatever it was that her father wanted to explain? The trouble with dementia was that, as well as leaving huge gaps in the memory, it also jumbled things together. He might be thinking of something that had happened five years ago or five days ago. To him, they were the same. ‘What about Sir Magnus?’ she asked. ‘Who?’ ‘Sir Magnus Pye. You mentioned him. There was something you wanted to tell me.’ But the vacant stare was back in his eyes. He had retreated into whatever world it was that he inhabited. Dr Emilia Redwing stayed with him for another twenty minutes but he barely noticed she was there. After that, she exchanged a few words with the matron and left. She drove home with a nagging sense of worry but by the time she had parked the car, she had put her father out of her mind. Arthur had said that he would cook the supper that night. The two of them would probably watch Life with the Lyons on television and go to bed early. Dr Redwing had already seen the surgery appointments list for the following day and knew that she was going to be busy. She opened the door and smelled burning. For a moment she was concerned but there was no smoke and the smell was somehow distant, more a memory of a fire than an actual one. She went into the kitchen and found Arthur sitting at the table – slumped there, actually – drinking whisky. He hadn’t even begun to cook the dinner and she knew at once that something was wrong. Arthur did not deal well with disappointment. Without meaning to, he somehow celebrated it. So what had happened? Dr Redwing looked past him and saw a painting leaning against the wall, the wooden frame charred, the canvas largely eaten away. It was a portrait of a woman. He had clearly painted it – she recognised his style immediately – but it took her a moment or two longer to realise who it was. ‘Lady Pye,’ he muttered, answering her question before she had time to ask it. ‘What’s happened? Where did you find it?’ ‘It was on a bonfire near the rose garden . . . at Pye Hall.’ ‘What were you doing there?’ ‘I was just walking. I cut through Dingle Dell and there was no one around so I thought I’d stroll through the gardens down to the main road. I don’t know what drew me to it. Maybe it was meant to be.’ He drank some more. He wasn’t drunk. He was using the whisky as a sort of prop. ‘Brent wasn’t around. There was no sign of anyone. Just the bloody painting thrown out with the rest of the trash.’ ‘Arthur . . .’ ‘Well, it’s their property. They paid for it. I suppose they can do with it as they want.’ Dr Redwing remembered. Sir Magnus had commissioned the portrait for his wife’s fortieth birthday and she had been grateful at the time, even when she discovered how little Sir Magnus intended to pay. It was a commission. It meant so much to Arthur’s self-esteem and he had set about the work with enthusiasm. He had painted Frances Pye over three sittings in the garden – with Dingle Dell in the background. He hadn’t been given nearly enough time and to begin with Lady Pye had been a reluctant sitter. But even she had been impressed by the result; a portrait that brought out everything that was good in her and which showed her relaxed, half-smiling, in command. Arthur had been quietly satisfied with the result and at the time so had Sir Magnus, hanging it prominently in his great hall. ‘It must be a mistake,’ she said. ‘Why would they want to throw it out?’ ‘They were burning it,’ Arthur replied, heavily. He gestured vaguely at the canvas. ‘He seems to have cut it to pieces first.’ ‘Can you save it? Is there anything you can do with it?’ She knew the answer. The woman’s imperious eyes had survived; the dark, sweeping hair, part of one shoulder. But most of the painting was blackened. The canvas had been slashed and burned. She didn’t even want it in the house. ‘I’m sorry,’ Arthur said. ‘I haven’t done the supper.’ He emptied his glass and walked out of the room. 6 ‘Have you seen this?’ Robin Osborne was reading a copy of the Bath Weekly Chronicle and Henrietta had never seen him look so angry. There really was something quite Old Testament about him, she thought, with his black hair falling to the collar, his white face, his bright, angry eyes. Moses would have looked much the same with the golden calf. Or Joshua storming the walls of Jericho. ‘They’re going to cut down Dingle Dell!’ ‘What are you talking about?’ Henrietta had made two cups of tea. She put them down and moved further into the room. ‘Sir Magnus Pye has sold it for development. They’re going to build a new road and eight new houses.’ ‘Where?’ ‘Right here!’ The vicar gestured at the window. ‘Right at the bottom of our garden! That’s going to be our view from now on – a row of modern houses! He won’t see them, of course. He’ll be on the other side of the lake and I’m sure he’ll leave enough trees to form a screen. But you and me . . .’ ‘He can’t do it, can he?’ Henrietta went round so that she could read the headline. NEW HOMES FOR SAXBY-ON-AVON. It seemed to be a remarkably up-beat interpretation of such an act of vandalism. Her husband’s hands were visibly shaking as he held the paper. ‘The land’s protected!’ she went on. ‘It doesn’t matter if it’s protected or not. It seems he’s got permission. The same thing’s been going on all over the country. It says here that work will begin before the end of the summer. That means next month or the month after. And there’s nothing we can do.’ ‘We can write to the bishop.’ ‘The bishop won’t help. Nobody will.’ ‘We can try.’ ‘No, Henrietta. It’s too late.’ Later that evening, as they stood together preparing the supper, he was still upset. ‘This dreadful, dreadful man. He sits there, in that big house of his, looking down at the rest of us – and it wasn’t even as if he did anything to deserve it. He just inherited it from his father and his father before him. This is 1955, for heaven’s sake. Not the Middle Ages! Of course, it doesn’t help having the bloody Tories still in power but you’d have thought we’d have moved away from the days when people were given wealth and power simply because of an accident of birth. ‘When did Sir Magnus do anything to help anyone else? Look at the church! We’ve got the leaking roof, the new heating system that we can’t afford and he’s never put his hand in his pocket to stump up so much as a shilling. He hardly ever comes to services in this, the very church he was christened in. Oh! And he’s got a plot reserved in the cemetery. The sooner he inhabits it, the better – if you ask me.’ ‘I’m sure you don’t mean that, Robin.’ ‘You’re right, Hen. It was a wicked thing to say and it was quite wrong of me.’ Osborne paused and took a breath. ‘I’m not opposed to new housing in Saxby-on-Avon. On the contrary, it’s important if the village is going to keep hold of its young people. But this development has got nothing to do with that. I very much doubt that anyone around here will be able to afford the new houses. And you mark my words. They’ll be nasty modern things, quite out of keeping with the village.’ ‘You can’t stand in the way of progress.’ ‘Is this progress? Wiping out a beautiful meadow and a wood that’s been there for a thousand years? Frankly, I’m surprised he can get away with it. All the time we’ve been living here, we’ve loved Dingle Dell. You know what it means to us. Well, a year from now, if this goes ahead, we’re going to be stuck here next to a suburban street.’ He put down the vegetable peeler and took off the apron he had been wearing. ‘I’m going to the church,’ he announced, suddenly. ‘What about dinner?’ ‘I’m not hungry.’ ‘Would you like me to come with you?’ ‘No. Thank you, my dear. But I need time to reflect.’ He put on his jacket. ‘I need to ask for forgiveness.’ ‘You haven’t done anything.’ ‘I’ve said things that I shouldn’t have said. And I have thoughts in my head, also, that shouldn’t be there. To feel hatred for your fellow man . . . it’s a terrible thing.’ ‘Some men deserve it.’ ‘That is certainly true. But Sir Magnus is a human like the rest of us. I shall pray that he has a change of heart.’ He left the room. Henrietta heard the front door open and close, then set about clearing the kitchen. She was deeply concerned about her husband and knew only too well what the loss of Dingle Dell would mean to the two of them. Was there something she could do about it? Perhaps if she went to see Sir Magnus Pye herself . . . Meanwhile, Robin Osborne was cycling up the High Street, on his way to the church. His bicycle was something of a joke in the village, a terrible old bone-rattler with wheels that wobbled and a metal frame that weighed a ton. There was a basket suspended from the handlebars and it was usually filled with prayer books or fresh vegetables which he had grown himself and which he liked to distribute as gifts to poorer members of his congregation. This evening it was empty. As he pedalled into the village square, he passed Johnny Whitehead and his wife who were walking, arm in arm, heading for the Queen’s Arms. The Whiteheads did not often go to church, certainly not more than they had to. For them, as in so much of their life, it was a question of keeping up appearances and with that in mind they both called out a greeting to the vicar. He ignored them. Leaving his bicycle at the entrance to the cemetery, he hurried on and disappeared through the main door. ‘What’s wrong with him?’ Johnny wondered out loud. ‘He didn’t look at all happy.’ ‘Maybe it was the funeral,’ Gemma Whitehead suggested. ‘It can’t be very nice having to bury someone.’ ‘No. Vicars are used to it. In fact, they enjoy it. Funerals give them a reason to feel important.’ He looked up the road. Next to St Botolph’s, the garage lights had flickered out. Johnny saw Robert Blakiston crossing the forecourt. He was closing for the night. He glanced at his watch. It was six o’clock exactly. ‘Pub’s open,’ he said. ‘Let’s get in there.’ He was in a good mood. Gemma had let him go to London that day – even she couldn’t force him to spend his whole life in Saxby-on-Avon – and it had been nice to return to a few haunts and to see a few old friends. More than that, he’d actually enjoyed being in the city with the traffic all around him and dust and dirt in the air. He liked the noise. He liked people in a hurry. He’d done his best to get used to the countryside but he still felt that he had about as much life here as a stuffed marrow. Catching up with Derek and Colin, having a few beers together, wandering down Brick Lane had been like rediscovering himself and he had come away with fifty pounds in his pocket too. He’d been quite surprised but Colin hadn’t thought twice. ‘Very nice, Johnny. Solid silver and a bit of age to it too. Get it from a museum, did you? You should visit us more often!’ Well, drinks were on him tonight even if the Queen’s Arms was about as cheerful as the cemetery it stood next to. There were a few locals inside. Tony Bennett was on the jukebox. He held the door open for his wife and the two of them went in. 7 Joy Sanderling was on her own in the dispensary that also served as the main office at Dr Redwing’s surgery. She had let herself in with her own keys. She had keys to every part of the building except for the cupboard containing the dangerous medicines and even this she could open, as she knew where Dr Redwing kept her spare. She had decided what she was going to do. The very thought of it made her heart beat faster but she was going ahead anyway. She pulled a sheet of paper out of a drawer and fed it into the typewriter, the Olympia SM2 De Luxe model that she had been supplied with when she began the job. It was a portable. She would have preferred something a little heavier for all the typing she had to do but it wasn’t in her nature to complain. She looked down at the white page as it curved round towards her and for a moment she thought of her arrival at Tanner Court and her meeting with Atticus Pünd. The famous detective had disappointed her but she felt no ill will towards him. It had been kind of him to see her, particularly as he hadn’t been looking at all well. She was used to seeing sick people. Her time at the surgery had given her a sort of premonition. She could sense at once when something was seriously wrong, even before the patient had been in to see the doctor, and she had known at once that Pünd was in need of help. Well, that wasn’t any concern of hers. The fact was that he had been right. Now that she thought about it, she could see that it would have been impossible to stem the tide of vicious gossip within the village. There was nothing he would have been able to do. But there was something she could. Choosing her words carefully, she began to type. It didn’t take her very long. The entire thing could be contained in three or four lines. When she had finished, she examined what she had written and now that it was there, in black and white, in front of her, she wondered if she could really go through with this. She couldn’t see any alternative. There was a movement in front of her. She looked up and saw Robert Blakiston standing on the other side of the counter, in the waiting area. He was wearing his overalls, covered in oil and grime. She had been so focused on what she had been doing that he had entered without her hearing. Guiltily, she pulled the page out of the typewriter and laid it face down on the desk. ‘What are you doing?’ she asked. ‘I came in to see you,’ he said. Of course, he would have only just shut down the garage and he must have come straight here. She hadn’t told him she was going to London. He would assume she had been here all day. ‘What sort of day have you had?’ she asked, brightly. ‘Not too bad.’ He glanced at the face-down letter. ‘What’s that?’ His tone was suspicious and she realised she had turned it over a little too quickly. ‘Just something for Dr Redwing,’ she said. ‘It’s a private letter. Medical stuff.’ She hated lying to him but there was no way she was going to tell him what she had written. ‘Do you want to go for a drink?’ ‘No. I ought to get back to Mum and Dad.’ She saw a look pass across his face and for a moment she was worried. ‘Is something wrong?’ she asked. ‘Not really. I just wanted to be with you.’ ‘When we’re married, we’ll be together all the time and nobody will be able to do anything about it.’ ‘Yeah.’ She considered changing her mind. She could have gone out with him. But her mother had cooked a special dinner and Paul, her brother, became agitated when she was late. She had promised she would read to him tonight, before bed. He always enjoyed that. Taking the letter with her, she got up and went through the door that connected the two areas. She smiled and kissed him on the cheek. ‘We’re going to be Mr and Mrs Robert Blakiston and we’re going to live together and we’re never going to be apart again.’ Suddenly, he took hold of her. Both hands were around her and the grip was so strong that he almost hurt her. He kissed her and she saw that there were tears in his eyes. ‘I couldn’t bear to lose you,’ he said. ‘You’re everything to me. I mean it, Joy. Meeting you was the best thing that ever happened to me and I’m not going to let anyone stop us being together.’ She knew what he meant. The village. The rumours. ‘I don’t care what people say,’ she told him. ‘And anyway, we don’t have to stay in Saxby. We can go anywhere we want.’ She realised that this was exactly what Pünd had said. ‘But we will stay here,’ she went on. ‘You’ll see. Everything will be all right.’ They parted company soon after that. He went back to his little flat to shower and change out of his work overalls. But she did not return to her parents. Not yet. She still had the note she had written. It had to be delivered. 8 At exactly that moment, and a little further up the road, Clarissa Pye heard someone ringing at her front door. She had been preparing her dinner, something quite new that had suddenly turned up in the village shop; frozen fish cut into neat fingers and covered in breadcrumbs. She had poured out some cooking oil but, fortunately, she hadn’t yet popped them into the pan. The doorbell rang a second time. She laid the cardboard packet on the kitchen counter and went to see who it was. A shadowy, distorted figure could be seen on the other side of the granite glass windows set into the front door. Could it be a travelling salesman at this time of the night? The village had recently had a veritable plague of them, as bad as the locusts that had descended on Egypt. Uneasily, she opened the door, glad that the security chain was still in place, and peered through the crack. Her brother, Magnus Pye, stood in front of her. She could see his car, a pale blue Jaguar, parked in Winsley Terrace behind him. ‘Magnus?’ She was so surprised she didn’t quite know what to say. He had only ever visited her here on two occasions, once when she was ill. He hadn’t been at the funeral and she hadn’t seen him since he got back from France. ‘Hello, Clara. Can I come in?’ Clara was the name he had always called her, from the time they were children. The name reminded her of the boy he had once been and the man he had become. Why had he chosen to grow that awful beard? Hadn’t anyone told him that it didn’t suit him? That it made him look like some sort of mad aristocrat out of a cartoon? His eyes were slightly grey and she could see the veins in his cheeks. It was obvious he drank too much. And the way he was dressed! It was as if he had been playing golf. He was wearing baggy trousers tucked into his socks and a bright yellow cardigan. It was almost impossible to imagine that they were brother and sister – and more than that. Twins. Perhaps it was the different paths that life had taken them in their fifty-three years but they were nothing like each other any more, if they ever had been. She closed the door, released the security chain, then opened it again. Magnus smiled – although the twitch of his lips could have signified anything – and stepped into the hallway. Clarissa was going to take him into the kitchen but then she remembered the box of frozen fish lying next to the hob and led him the other way instead. Left turn or right turn. Four Winsley Terrace was not like Pye Hall. In this house there were very few choices. The two of them went into the living room, a clean, comfortable space with a swirly carpet, a three-piece suite and a bay window. There was an electric fire and a television. For a moment, they stood there uncomfortably. ‘How are you?’ Magnus asked. Why did he want to know? What did he care? ‘I’m very well, thank you,’ Clarissa said. ‘How are you? How is Frances?’ ‘Oh. She’s all right. She’s up in London . . . shopping.’ There was another awkward pause. ‘Can I get you something to drink?’ Clarissa asked. Perhaps this was a social visit. She couldn’t think of any other reason for her brother to be here. ‘That would be nice. Yes. What have you got?’ ‘I have some sherry.’ ‘Thank you.’ Magnus sat down. Clarissa went over to the corner cupboard and took out a bottle. It had been there since Christmas. Did sherry go off? She poured two glasses, sniffed them, then carried them over. ‘I was sorry to hear about the burglary,’ she said. Magnus shrugged. ‘Yes. It wasn’t a nice thing to come home to.’ ‘When did you get back from France?’ ‘Saturday evening. We walked in and found the whole place ransacked. It was that damn fool Brent, not fixing up the back door. I’m glad I’ve got rid of him. He’d been getting on my nerves for a while now. Not a bad gardener but I never did like his attitude.’ ‘Have you fired him?’ ‘We’ve parted ways.’ Clarissa sipped her sherry. It clung to her lip as if reluctant to enter her mouth. ‘I heard you lost some of the silver.’ ‘Most of it, actually. To tell you the truth, it’s been a bit of a trying time – what with everything else.’ ‘You mean, Mary Blakiston.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘I was sorry not to see you at the funeral.’ ‘I know. It’s a shame. I didn’t know . . .’ ‘I thought the vicar wrote to you.’ ‘He did – but I didn’t get his note until it was too late. Bloody French post office. Actually, that was what I wanted to talk to you about.’ He hadn’t touched his sherry. He looked around the room as if seeing it for the first time. ‘Do you like it here?’ The question took her by surprise. ‘It’s all right,’ she said, and then more determinedly, ‘Actually, I’m very happy here.’ ‘Are you?’ He made it sound as if he didn’t believe her. ‘Well, yes.’ ‘Because, the thing is, you see, the Lodge House is empty now . . .’ ‘You mean the Lodge House at Pye Hall?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘And you want me to move in?’ ‘I was thinking about it on the plane home. It’s a damn shame about Mary Blakiston. I was very fond of her, you know. She was a good cook, a good housekeeper but above all she was discreet. When I heard about this bloody accident, I knew she was going to be very hard to replace. And then I thought about you . . .’ Clarissa felt a cold shudder run the length of her body. ‘Magnus, are you offering me her job?’ ‘Why not? You’ve hardly worked since you got back from America. I’m sure the school doesn’t pay you very much and you could probably use the cash. If you moved into the Lodge House, you could sell this place and you might enjoy being back in the hall. You remember, you and me chasing around the lake? Croquet on the lawn! Of course, I’d have to talk about it with Frances. I haven’t mentioned it to her yet. I thought I’d sound you out first. What do you say?’ ‘Can I think about it?’ ‘Absolutely. It was just a thought but it might actually work out very well.’ He lifted his glass, had second thoughts and put it down again. ‘Always good to see you, Clara. It would be marvellous if you moved back in.’ Somehow she managed to show him to the door and stood there watching as he climbed into his Jaguar and drove away. Clarissa’s breath was not coming easily. Even speaking to him had taken a gigantic effort. She felt wave after wave of nausea spreading through her. There was no feeling in her hands. She had heard the expression ‘numb with anger’ but she had never realised it could be a reality. He had offered her a job, working as his skivvy. Mopping floors and doing the washing-up – dear God! She was his sister. She had been born in that house. She had lived there until she was in her twenties, eating the same food as him. She had only moved out after the death of their parents and Magnus’s wedding, the two events following, shamefully fast, one upon the other. Ever since that day, she had been nothing to him. And now this! There was a reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Virgin of the Rocks in the hallway. The Virgin Mary might have turned her head from John the Baptist and looked in alarm as Clarissa Pye stomped up to the first floor with vengeance in her eyes. Certainly, she wasn’t going there to pray. 9 By half past eight, darkness had fallen on Saxby-on-Avon. Brent was working late. Quite apart from the lawns and all the weeding, there were fifty varieties of rose to be deadheaded and the yew trees to be trimmed. When he had docked the wheelbarrow and his various tools in the stable, he walked round the lake and out through Dingle Dell, following a path that would take him close to the vicarage and on to the Ferryman, the village’s second pub, which stood at the lower crossroads. It was just as he reached the edge of the wood that something made him turn back. He had heard something. He quickly ran his eyes over the house itself, squinting through the darkness. There were a couple of lights burning on the ground floor but no sign of any movement. As far as he knew, Sir Magnus Pye was in alone. He’d driven back from the village an hour ago but his wife was away for the day, in London. Her car was still out of the garage. He saw a figure, walking up the pathway from the main gate. It was a man, on his own. Brent had good eyesight and the moon was out but he couldn’t be sure if it was anyone from the village. It was hard to tell as the visitor was wearing a hat that concealed most of his face. There was something about the way he was walking that was a little odd. He was half-stooping, keeping to the shadows, almost as if he didn’t want to be seen. It was a late hour to be visiting Sir Magnus. Brent considered turning back. There’d been that burglary, the same day as the funeral, and everyone was on the alert. It wouldn’t take him a minute to go back across the lawn and check that everything was all right. He decided against it. After all, it wasn’t any business of his who visited Pye Hall and considering the recent discussion he’d had with Sir Magnus, after what Sir Magnus had said to him, he certainly felt no loyalty towards his employer, or his wife. It wasn’t as if they’d ever looked after him. They’d taken him for granted. Brent had been working from eight in the morning until the middle of the night for years now with never a word of thanks and at a salary that was frankly laughable. He wouldn’t normally go drinking in the middle of the week but as it happened, he had ten bob in his pocket which he was going to spend on fish and chips and a couple of pints. The Ferryman stood at the bottom end of the village. It was a shabby, ramshackle place, much less genteel than the Queen’s Arms. They knew him there. He always sat at the same seat near the window. Over the next couple of hours he might exchange half a dozen words with the barman but for Brent that amounted to a conversation. He put the visitor out of his mind and continued on his way. He had another strange encounter before he reached the pub twenty-five minutes later. As he emerged from the woods, he came upon a single, slightly dishevelled woman walking towards him and recognised Henrietta Osborne, the vicar’s wife. She must have come from her house, which was just up the road, and she had left in a hurry. She had thrown on a pale blue parka, a man’s, presumably her husband’s. Her hair was untidy. She looked distracted. She saw him. ‘Oh, good evening, Brent,’ she said. ‘You’re out late.’ ‘I’m going to the pub.’ ‘Are you? I was just wondering . . . I was looking for the vicar. I don’t suppose you’ve seen him?’ ‘No.’ Brent shook his head, wondering why the vicar would be out at this time of the night. Had the two of them had a row? Then he remembered. ‘There was someone up at Pye Hall, Mrs Osborne. I suppose it might have been him.’ ‘Pye Hall?’ ‘They were just going in.’ ‘I can’t imagine why he’d want to go up there.’ She sounded nervous. ‘I don’t know who it was.’ Brent shrugged. ‘Well, good night.’ Henrietta turned and went back the way she had come, heading towards her home. An hour later, Brent was sitting with his fish and chips, sipping his second pint. The air was thick with cigarette smoke. Music had been playing loudly on the jukebox but there was a pause between discs and he heard the bicycle as it went past, heading up towards the crossroads. He glanced out and saw it as it went past. The sound it made was unmistakable. So he had been right. The vicar had been down at Pye Hall and now he was on his way home. He had been there for quite a while. Brent thought briefly about his meeting with Henrietta Osborne. She’d been worried about something. What was going on? Well, it was nothing to do with him. He turned away and put it all out of his head. But he would be reminded of it soon enough. 10 Atticus Pünd read the story in The Times the following morning. BARONET MURDERED Police were called to the Somerset village of Saxby-on-Avon following the death of Sir Magnus Pye, a wealthy local landowner. Detective Inspector Raymond Chubb, speaking on behalf of the Bath constabulary, confirmed that the death is being treated as murder. Sir Magnus is survived by his wife, Frances, Lady Pye, and his son, Frederick. He was in the sitting room at Tanner Court, smoking a cigarette. James Fraser had brought him the newspaper and a cup of tea. Now he returned, carrying an ashtray. ‘Have you seen the front page?’ Pünd asked. ‘Absolutely! It’s terrible. Poor Lady Mountbatten . . .’ ‘I’m sorry?’ ‘Her car was stolen! And in the middle of Hyde Park!’ Pünd smiled, a little sadly. ‘That was not the story to which I referred.’ He turned it round to show to his assistant. Fraser read the paragraphs. ‘Pye!’ he exclaimed. ‘Wasn’t that—’ ‘It was indeed. Yes. He was the employer of Mary Blakiston. His name was mentioned in this room just a few days ago.’ ‘Quite a coincidence!’ ‘It is possible, yes. Coincidences do occur. But in this instance, I am not so sure. We are talking here of death, of two unexpected deaths in the same house. Do you not find that intriguing?’ ‘You’re not going to go down, are you?’ Atticus Pünd considered. It had certainly not been in his mind to take on any more work. The time remaining to him simply would not allow it. According to Dr Benson, he had at best three months of reasonable health, which might not even be enough to catch a killer. Anyway, he had already made certain decisions. He intended to use that time to put his affairs in order. There was the question of his will, the disbursement of his home and property. He had left Germany with almost nothing of his own but there was the collection of eighteenth-century Meissen figurines which had belonged to his father and which had, miraculously, survived the war. He would like to see them in a museum and had already written to the Victoria and Albert in Kensington. It would comfort him to know that the musician, the preacher, the soldier, the seamstress and all the other members of his little family would still be together after he had gone. They were, after all, the only family that he had. He would make a bequest for James Fraser, who had been with him during his last five cases and whose loyalty and good humour had never failed him, even if he had never helped very much when it came to the investigation of crime. There were various charities that he wished to benefit, in particular the Metropolitan and City Police Orphans Fund. Above all, there were the papers relating to his masterwork, The Landscape of Criminal Investigation. It would have taken him another year to finish it. There was no possibility of presenting it to a publisher in its present state. But he had thought that he might be able to collate all his notes, along with the newspaper clippings, letters and police reports, so that some student of criminology might be able to assemble the whole thing at a future date. It would be sad to have done so much work for nothing. These had been his plans. But if there was one thing that life had taught him, it was the futility of making plans. Life had its own agenda. Now he turned to Fraser. ‘I told Miss Sanderling that I was unable to help her because I had no official reason to present myself at Pye Hall,’ he said. ‘But now a reason has presented itself and I see that our old friend Detective Inspector Chubb is involved.’ Pünd smiled. The old light had come into his eyes. ‘Pack the bags, James, and bring round the car. We are leaving at once.’ 
 Three A Girl 
 1 Atticus Pünd had never learned to drive. He was not wilfully old-fashioned. He kept himself informed of all the latest scientific developments and would not hesitate to use them – in the treatment of his illness, for example. But there was something about the pace of change that concerned him, the sudden onrush of machines in every shape and size. As televisions, typewriters, fridges and washing machines became more ubiquitous, as even the fields became crowded with electric pylons, he sometimes wondered if there might not be hidden costs for a humanity that had already been sorely tested in his lifetime. Nazism, after all, had been a machine in itself. He was in no rush to join the new technological age. And so, when he had bowed to the inevitable and agreed that he needed a private car, he had left the whole business to James Fraser, who had gone out and returned with a Vauxhall Velox four-door saloon, a good choice Pünd had to admit; sturdy and reliable with plenty of space. Fraser of course was boyishly excited. It had a six-cylinder engine. It would go from zero to sixty in just twenty-two seconds. The heater could be set to de-ice the windscreen in the winter. Pünd was just happy that it would get him where he wanted to go and – a sober, unremarkable grey – it would not scream out that he had arrived. The Vauxhall, with James Fraser at the wheel, pulled in outside Pye Hall after the three-hour drive from London, which they had taken without stopping. There were two police cars parked on the gravel. Pünd got out and stretched his legs, grateful to be released from the confined space. His eyes travelled across the front of the building, taking in its grandeur, its elegance, its very Englishness. He could tell at once that it had belonged to the same family for many generations. It had an unchanging quality, a sense of permanence. ‘Here’s Chubb,’ Fraser muttered. The familiar face of the detective inspector appeared at the front door. Fraser had telephoned him before they left and Chubb had evidently been awaiting their arrival. Plump and cheerful, with his Oliver Hardy moustache, he was dressed in an ill-fitting suit with one of his wife’s latest knitting creations below, this one a particularly unfortunate mauve cardigan. He had put on weight. That was the impression he always gave. Pünd had once remarked that he had the look of a man who had just finished a particularly good meal. He came bounding down the front steps, evidently pleased to see them. ‘Herr Pünd!’ he exclaimed. It was always ‘Herr’ and somehow Chubb implied that there was some failing in Pünd’s character being born in Germany. After all, he might have been saying, let’s not forget who won the war. ‘I was very surprised to hear from you. Don’t tell me you’ve had dealings with the late Sir Magnus.’ ‘Not at all, Detective Inspector,’ Pünd replied. ‘I had never met him and only knew of his death from the newspapers this morning.’ ‘So what brings you here?’ His eyes travelled over to James Fraser and seemed to notice him for the first time. ‘It is a strange coincidence.’ In fact, Fraser had often heard the detective remark that there was no such thing as a coincidence. There was a chapter in The Landscape of Criminal Investigation where he had expressed the belief that everything in life had a pattern and that a coincidence was simply the moment when that pattern became briefly visible. ‘A young lady from this village came to see me yesterday. She told me of a death that had taken place in this very house two weeks ago—’ ‘Would that be the housekeeper, Mary Blakiston?’ ‘Yes. She was concerned that certain people were making false accusations about what had occurred.’ ‘You mean, they thought the old girl had been deliberately killed?’ Chubb took out a packet of Players, the same brand he always smoked, and lit one. The index and third fingers of his right hand were permanently stained – like old piano keys. ‘Well, I can put your mind at rest on that one, Herr Pünd. I looked into it myself and I can tell you it was an accident pure and simple. She was doing the hoovering at the top of the stairs. She got tangled up in the wire and tumbled down the full length. Solid flagstone at the bottom, unlucky for her! Nobody had any reason to kill her and anyway she was locked in the house, on her own.’ ‘And what of the death of Sir Magnus?’ ‘Well, that’s quite a different kettle of fish. You can come in and take a butcher’s if you like – and that’s the right word for it. I’m going to finish this first, if you don’t mind. It’s pretty nasty in there.’ He deliberately screwed the cigarette into his lips and inhaled. ‘At the moment, we’re treating it as a burglary that went wrong. That seems the most obvious conclusion.’ ‘The most obvious conclusions are the ones I try to avoid.’ ‘Well, you have your own methods, Herr Pünd, and I won’t say they haven’t been helpful in the past. What we’ve got here is a local landowner, been in the village all his life. It’s early days but I can’t see that anyone would have a grudge against him. Now, someone came up here around half past eight last night. He was actually spotted by Brent, the groundsman, as he was finishing work. He hasn’t been able to give us a description but his first impression was that it wasn’t anyone from the village.’ ‘How could he know that?’ Fraser asked. He had been ignored up until this moment and felt a need to remind the others he was still there. ‘Well, you know how it is. It’s easier to recognise someone if you’ve seen them before. Even if you can’t see their face, there’s something about the shape of their body or the way they walk. Brent was fairly sure this was a stranger. And anyway, there was something about the way this man went up to the house. It was as if he didn’t want to be seen.’ ‘You believe this man was a burglar,’ Pünd said. ‘The house had already been burgled once just a few days before.’ Chubb sighed as if it irritated him having to explain it all again. ‘After the death of the housekeeper, they had to smash a back window to get in. They should have got it reglazed but they didn’t and a few days after that someone broke in. They got away with a nice little haul of antique coins and jewellery – Roman, would you believe it. Maybe they had a look around while they were there. There’s a safe in Sir Magnus’s study which they might have been unable to open but now they knew it was there, they could come back and have a second crack at it. They thought the house was still empty. Sir Magnus surprised them – and there you have it.’ ‘You say he was killed violently.’ ‘That’s an understatement.’ Chubb needed to fortify himself with another lungful of smoke. ‘There’s a suit of armour in the main hall. You’ll see it in a minute. Complete with sword.’ He swallowed. ‘That’s what they used. They took his head clean off.’ Pünd considered this for a moment. ‘Who found him?’ ‘His wife. She’d been on a shopping trip to London and she got home at around nine thirty.’ ‘The shops closed late.’ Pünd half-smiled. ‘Well, maybe she had dinner too. Anyway, as she arrived, she saw a car driving off. She’s not sure of the make but it was green and she saw a couple of letters off the registration plate. FP. As luck would have it, they’re her own initials. She came in and found him lying at the foot of the stairs almost exactly where the body of his housekeeper had been the week before. But not all of him. His head had rolled across the floor and landed next to the fireplace. I’m not sure you’ll be able to talk to her for a while. She’s in hospital in Bath, still under sedation. She’s the one who called the police and I’ve heard a recording of the conversation. Poor woman, she can hardly get the words out, screaming and sobbing. If this was a murder, you can certainly strike her off the list of suspects unless she’s the world’s greatest actress.’ ‘The body, I take it, has gone.’ ‘Yes. We removed it last night. Needed a strong stomach, I can tell you.’ ‘Was anything removed from the house on this second occasion, Detective Inspector?’ ‘It’s hard to be sure. We’ll need to interview Lady Pye when she’s up to it. But on first appearance, it doesn’t seem so. You can come in, if you like, Herr Pünd. You’re not here in any official capacity, of course, and maybe I should have a quick word with the assistant commissioner, but I’m sure no harm can come of it. And if anything does spring to mind, I can rely on you to let me know.’ ‘Of course, Detective Inspector,’ Pünd said although Fraser knew that he would do no such thing. He had accompanied Pünd on five separate enquiries and knew that the detective had a maddening habit of keeping everything under his hat until it suited him to reveal the truth. They climbed three steps but Pünd stopped before he entered the front door. He crouched down. ‘Now that is strange,’ he said. Chubb gazed at him in disbelief. ‘Are you going to tell me that I’ve missed something?’ he demanded. ‘And we haven’t even gone inside!’ ‘It may have no relevance at all, Detective Inspector,’ he replied, soothingly. ‘But you see the flower bed beside the door . . .’ Fraser glanced down. There were flower beds running all the way along the front of the house, divided by the steps that led up from the driveway. ‘Petunias, if I’m not mistaken,’ Chubb remarked. ‘Of that I am unsure. But do you not see the handprint?’ Both Chubb and Fraser looked more closely. It was true. Somebody had stuck their hand in the soft earth just to the left of the door. From the size of it, Fraser would have said that it belonged to a man. The fingers were outstretched. It was very odd, Fraser thought. A footprint would have been more conventional. ‘It probably belongs to the gardener,’ Chubb said. ‘I can’t think of any other explanation.’ ‘And you are probably right.’ Pünd sprang back to his feet and continued forward. The door led directly into a large rectangular room with a staircase in front of them and two more doors, left and right. Fraser saw at once where the body of Sir Magnus had lain and he felt the usual stirring in the pit of his stomach. There was a Persian rug, gleaming darkly, still soaked with blood. The blood had spread onto the flagstones, stretching towards the fireplace, encircling the legs of one of the leather chairs that stood there. The whole room stank of it. A sword lay diagonally, with its hilt close to the stairs, its blade pointing towards the head of a deer that looked down with glass eyes, perhaps the only witness to what had occurred. The rest of the armour, an empty knight, stood beside one of the doors with a living room beyond. Fraser had been to many crime scenes with his employer. Often he had seen the bodies lying there – stabbed, shot, drowned, whatever. But it struck him that there was something particularly macabre about this one, almost Jacobean with the dark wooden panelling and the minstrel gallery. ‘Sir Magnus knew the person who killed him,’ Pünd muttered. ‘How can you possibly know?’ Fraser asked. ‘The position of the suit of armour and the layout of the room.’ Pünd gestured. ‘See for yourself, James. The entrance is behind us. The armour and the sword are further inside the room. If the killer had come to the front door and wished to attack Sir Magnus, it would have been necessary to go round him to reach the weapon and at that moment, if the door was open, Sir Magnus could have made good his escape. However, it seems more likely that Sir Magnus was showing someone out. They come in from the living room. Sir Magnus is first. His killer is behind him. As he opens the front door, he does not see that his guest has drawn out the sword. He turns, sees the guest moving towards him, perhaps pleads with him. The killer strikes. And all is as we see it.’ ‘It still might have been a stranger.’ ‘You would invite a stranger into the house, late in the evening? I do not think so.’ Pünd looked around him. ‘There is a painting missing,’ he remarked. Fraser followed his eyes and saw that it was true. There was a bare hook on the wall next to the door and a section of the woodwork had faded slightly, a telltale rectangle that clearly delineated the missing work of art. ‘Do you think it could be relevant?’ Fraser asked. ‘Everything is relevant,’ Pünd replied. He took one last look around him. ‘There is nothing more for me to see here. It would be interesting to learn exactly how the housekeeper was discovered when she died two weeks ago but we will come to that in due course. Can we proceed into the living room?’ ‘Of course,’ Chubb said. ‘This door leads into the living room and Sir Magnus had his study on the other side. There’s a letter we found there that may interest you.’ The living room had a much more feminine feel than the entrance hall with an oyster-pink carpet, plush curtains with a floral pattern, comfortable sofas and occasional tables. There were photographs everywhere. Fraser picked one up and examined the three people standing together in front of the house. A round-faced man with a beard, wearing an old-fashioned suit. Next to him, a few inches taller than him, a woman staring into the camera lens with a look of impatience. And a boy, in school uniform, scowling. It was obviously a family photograph if not a particularly happy one: Sir Magnus, Lady Pye and their son. A uniformed policeman stood guarding the door on the far side. They went straight through into a room dominated by an antique desk set square between two bookshelves with windows opposite giving views across the front lawn and down to the lake. The floor was polished, wooden boards partly covered by another rug. Two armchairs faced into the room with an antique globe between them. The far wall was dominated by a fireplace, and it was evident from the ashes and charred wood that someone had recently lit a fire. Everything smelled faintly of cigar smoke. Fraser noticed a humidor and a heavy glass ashtray on a side table. The wooden panelling from the entrance hall was picked up again with several more oil paintings which might have hung here as long as the house itself. Pünd went over to one of them – a picture of a horse in front of a stable, very much in the style of Stubbs. He had noticed it because it was slightly perpendicular to the wall, like a half-open door. ‘It was like that when we came in,’ Chubb remarked. Pünd took a pen out of his pocket and used it to hook the painting, pulling it towards him. It was hinged along one side and concealed a very solid-looking safe set in the wall. ‘We don’t know the combination,’ Chubb continued. ‘I’m sure Lady Pye will tell us when she’s up to it.’ Pünd nodded and transferred his attention to the desk. It was quite likely that Sir Magnus had been sitting here in the hours before he died and that, therefore, the papers strewn across the surface might have something to say about what had actually happened. ‘There’s a gun in the top drawer,’ Chubb said. ‘An old service revolver. It hasn’t been fired – but it’s loaded. According to Lady Pye, he usually kept it in the safe. He might have brought it out because of the burglary.’ ‘Or it could be that Sir Magnus had another reason to be nervous.’ Pünd opened the drawer and glanced at the gun. It was indeed a .38 Webley Revolver. And Chubb was right. It had not been used. He closed the drawer and turned his attention to the surface of the desk, beginning with a series of drawings, architectural blueprints from a company called Larkin Gadwall based in Bath. They showed a cluster of houses, twelve in total, stretching out in two lines of six. A number of letters were piled up next to it, correspondence with the local council, a paper trail that must ultimately lead to the granting of planning permission. And here was the proof of it, a smart brochure with the heading: Dingle Drive, Saxby-on-Avon. All of these occupied one corner of the desk. A telephone stood at the other, with a notepad next to it. Someone, presumably Sir Magnus, had written in pencil – the pencil itself lay nearby – Ashton H Mw A Girl The words were written neatly at the top of the page but after that, Sir Magnus must have become agitated. There were several lines crossing each other, an angry scrawl. Pünd handed the page to Fraser. ‘A girl?’ Fraser asked. ‘These would seem to be notes taken down from a telephone conversation,’ Pünd suggested. ‘Mw may stand for something. Note that the w is in lower case. And the girl? Perhaps it is the subject of which they spoke.’ ‘Well, he doesn’t seem to have been too pleased about it.’ ‘Indeed not.’ Finally, Pünd turned to an empty envelope and next to it the letter that Chubb must have been referring to and which lay at the very centre of the desk. There was no address, just a name – Sir Magnus Pye – handwritten in black ink. It had been roughly torn open. Pünd took out a handkerchief and used it to pick up the envelope. He examined the paper carefully, then replaced it and, with equal care, picked up the letter beside it. This was typewritten and addressed to Sir Magnus Pye with a date – 28 July 1955, the actual day that the murder had taken place. He read: You think you can get away with it? This village was here before you and it will be here after you and if you think you can ruin it with your bilding and your money-making you are so, so wrong. You think again, you bastard, if you want to live here. If you want to live. The letter was not signed. He laid it back on the desk so that Fraser could read it. ‘Whoever wrote this can’t spell “building”,’ Fraser remarked. ‘He may also be a homicidal maniac,’ Pünd added, gently. ‘This letter would seem to have been delivered yesterday. Sir Magnus was killed a matter of hours after it arrived – which is what was promised.’ He turned to the detective inspector. ‘I would imagine this relates in some way to the diagrams,’ he said. ‘That’s right,’ Chubb agreed. ‘I’ve put a call in to these people, Larkin Gadwall. They’re developers in Bath and it seems they had some sort of deal with Sir Magnus. I’ll be heading their way this afternoon and you can join me if you like.’ ‘You’re most generous.’ Pünd nodded. His attention was still focused on the letter. ‘There is something about this that I find a little peculiar,’ he said. ‘I think I’m ahead of you there, Pünd.’ The detective beamed, pleased with himself. ‘The envelope is handwritten even though the letter is typed. You’d have thought that would be a dead giveaway if the sender wanted to hide his or her identity. My guess is they sealed the letter first, then realised they needed to put the name on the front but it wouldn’t fit into the typewriter. I’ve done the same myself often enough.’ ‘You may well be right, Detective Inspector. But that was not the peculiarity that had occurred to me.’ Chubb waited for him to continue but, standing on the other side of the desk, James Fraser knew that he would do no such thing. He was right. Pünd had already turned his attention to the fireplace. He took the pen back out of his jacket pocket and rummaged around in the ashes, found something, carefully separated it from the rest. Fraser went over and looked down at a scrap of paper, barely larger than a cigarette card, blackened at the edges. This was the sort of moment he loved, working with Pünd. It would never have occurred to Chubb to examine the fireplace. The policeman would have taken a cursory look at the room, called for forensics and then been on his way. But here was a clue and one that might crack the case wide open. The fragment might have a name written on it. Even a few letters would provide a handwriting sample which might indicate who had been in the room. Sadly, however, in this case, the paper was blank although Pünd did not seem dispirited. Far from it. ‘You see, Fraser,’ he exclaimed. ‘There is a slight discoloration, a stain. And, I think, it will be possible to discern at least part of a fingerprint.’ ‘A fingerprint?’ Chubb had heard the word and came over. Fraser looked more closely and saw that Pünd was right. The stain was dark brown in colour and his immediate thought was spilled coffee. But at the same time, he could see no obvious relevance. Anyone could have torn up a sheet of paper and thrown it in the fire. Sir Magnus might well have done it himself. ‘I’ll get the lab to have a look at it,’ Chubb said. ‘And they can run their eye over that letter too. It’s just possible I may have jumped to conclusions, thinking about that burglar.’ Pünd nodded. He straightened up. ‘We must find accommodation,’ he announced, suddenly. ‘You’re planning to stay?’ ‘With your permission, Detective Inspector.’ ‘Absolutely. I believe they have rooms at the Queen’s Arms. It’s a pub next to the church but they do B & B too. If you want a hotel, you’d be better off in Bath.’ ‘It will be more convenient to remain in the village,’ Pünd replied. Fraser sighed inwardly, imagining the lumpy beds, ugly furniture and spluttering bath taps that always seemed to accompany local hospitality. He had no money himself apart from what Pünd paid him and that was little enough. But that didn’t prevent him from having expensive tastes. ‘Do you want me to check it out?’ he asked. ‘We can go there together.’ Pünd turned to Chubb. ‘What time will you be travelling to Bath?’ ‘I have an appointment at Larkin Gadwall at two o’clock and we can go straight from there to the hospital and see Lady Pye, if you like.’ ‘That is excellent, Detective Inspector. I must say that it is a great pleasure to be working with you again.’ ‘Likewise. I’m very glad to see you, Herr Pünd. Headless bodies and all that! The moment I got the call, I knew this was right up your street.’ Lighting another cigarette, Chubb made his way back to his car. 2 To Fraser’s chagrin, the Queen’s Arms had two rooms vacant and without even going upstairs to examine them, Pünd took them both. They were as bad as he had imagined, too, with sloping floors and windows too small for the walls in which they were set. He had a view of the village square. Pünd looked out over the cemetery but made no complaint. On the contrary, there was something about the view that seemed to amuse him. Nor did he complain about the lack of comfort. When he had first started working at Tanner Court, Fraser had been surprised to discover that the detective slept in a single bed, more a cot really, with a metal frame, the blankets neatly folded back. Although Pünd had once been married, he never spoke of his wife and showed no further interest in the opposite sex. But even so, such austerity in a smart London flat seemed more than a little eccentric. The two of them had lunch together downstairs, then stepped outside. There was a small crowd of people gathered around the bus shelter in the village square but Fraser got the impression that they were not waiting for a bus. Something had clearly interested them. They were talking in an animated sort of way. He was sure that Pünd would want to go over and see what the fuss was about but at that moment a figure appeared in the cemetery, walking towards them. It was the vicar. That much was obvious from his clerical shirt and dog collar. He was tall and lanky with unkempt black hair. Fraser watched as he picked up a bicycle that had been resting against the gate and guided it out onto the road, the wheels creaking noisily with every turn. ‘The vicar!’ Pünd exclaimed. ‘In an English village, he is the one man who knows everyone.’ ‘Not everyone goes to church,’ Fraser returned. ‘They do not need to. He makes it his business to know even the atheists and the agnostics.’ They went over to him and intercepted him before he could make his getaway. Pünd introduced himself. ‘Oh yes,’ the vicar exclaimed, blinking in the sunlight. He frowned. ‘I know the name, I’m sure. The detective? You’re here, of course, because of Sir Magnus Pye. What a terrible, terrible business. A small community like Saxby-on-Avon cannot be prepared, in any way, for such an event and it is going to be very hard for us to come to terms with it. But forgive me. I haven’t told you my name. Robin Osborne. I’m the vicar here at St Botolph’s. Well, you had probably worked that out for yourself, given your line of work!’ He laughed and it occurred to Pünd – it had even occurred to Fraser – that this was an exceptionally nervous man, that he was almost unable to stop talking and that the words were pouring out of him in an attempt to cover up whatever was actually passing through his mind. ‘I would imagine that you knew Sir Magnus quite well,’ Pünd said. ‘Passably well. Yes. Sadly, I saw him less than I would have liked. Not a very religious man. He came to services all too seldom.’ Osborne drew himself in. ‘Are you here to investigate the crime, Mr Pünd?’ Pünd replied that this was the case. ‘I’m a little surprised that our own police force should need any extra assistance – not, of course, that it is in any way unwelcome. I already spoke to Detective Inspector Chubb this morning. He suggested to me that it may have been an intruder. Burglars. You are aware, I’m sure, that Pye Hall was targeted very recently.’ ‘Pye Hall appears to have had more than its fair share of misfortune.’ ‘The death of Mary Blakiston, you mean?’ Osborne pointed. ‘She is resting just over there. I officiated myself.’ ‘Was Sir Magnus popular in the village?’ The question took the vicar by surprise and he struggled to find the right answer. ‘There may have been those who envied him. He had considerable wealth. And then, of course, there was the matter of Dingle Dell. It would be true to say that it aroused strong feelings.’ ‘Dingle Dell?’ ‘It’s a strip of woodland. He had sold it.’ ‘To Larkin Gadwall,’ Fraser interceded. ‘Yes. Those are the developers, I believe.’ ‘Would you be surprised to learn, Mr Osborne, that Sir Magnus had received a death threat as a direct result of his intentions?’ ‘A death threat?’ The vicar was more flustered than ever. ‘I would be very surprised. I’m sure nobody around here would send such a thing. This is a very peaceful village. The people who live here aren’t like that at all.’ ‘And yet you spoke of strong feelings.’ ‘People were upset. But that’s not the same thing.’ ‘When did you last see Sir Magnus?’ Robin Osborne was keen to be on his way. He was holding his bicycle as if it were an animal, straining at the leash. And this last question offended him. It was clear, in his eyes. Was he being suspected of something? ‘I haven’t seen him for a while,’ he replied. ‘He was unable to attend Mary Blakiston’s burial which was a pity but he was in the South of France. And before that, I was away myself.’ ‘Where?’ ‘On holiday. With my wife.’ Pünd waited for more and Osborne obligingly filled in the silence. ‘We had a week together in Devonshire. Actually, she’ll be waiting for me right now, so if you don’t mind . . .’ With a half-smile, he pushed his way between them, the gears of his bicycle grinding. ‘I’d say that he was nervous about something,’ Fraser muttered. ‘Yes, James. He was certainly a man with something to hide.’ As the detective and his assistant made their way towards their car, Robin Osborne was cycling as quickly as he could down to the vicarage. He knew he had not been entirely honest: not lying but omitting certain aspects of the truth. It was true, however, that Henrietta was waiting for him and would have expected him some time ago. ‘Where have you been?’ she asked as he took his place in the kitchen. She served a home-made quiche with a bean salad and sat down next to him. ‘Oh. I was just in the village.’ Osborne mouthed a silent grace. ‘I met that detective,’ he went on, barely leaving time for the amen. ‘Atticus Pünd.’ ‘Who?’ ‘You must have heard of him. He’s quite famous. A private detective. You remember that school in Marlborough? There was a teacher who was killed during a play. He worked on that.’ ‘But why do we need a private detective? I thought it was a burglar.’ ‘It seems the police may have been wrong.’ Osborne hesitated. ‘He thinks it has something to do with the Dell.’ ‘The Dell!’ ‘That’s what he thinks.’ They ate in silence. Neither of them seemed to be enjoying the food. Then Henrietta spoke, quite suddenly. ‘Where did you go last night, Robin?’ she asked. ‘What?’ ‘You know what I’m talking about. Sir Magnus being killed.’ ‘Why on earth would you ask me such a thing?’ Osborne put down his knife and fork. He took a sip of water. ‘I felt anger,’ he explained. ‘It’s one of the mortal sins. And there were things in my heart that were . . . that should not have been there. I was upset because of the news but that’s no excuse. I needed to spend time alone so I went up to the church.’ ‘But you were gone such a long time.’ ‘It wasn’t easy for me, Henrietta. I needed the time.’ She wasn’t going to speak, then thought again. ‘Robin, I was so worried about you. I came out looking for you. As a matter of fact, I bumped into Brent and he said he’d seen someone going up to the hall—’ ‘What are you suggesting, Hen? Do you think I went up to Pye Hall and killed him? Took his head off with a sword? Is that what you’re saying?’ ‘No. Of course not. It’s just that you were so angry.’ ‘You’re being ridiculous. I didn’t go anywhere near the house. I didn’t see anything.’ There was something else Henrietta wanted to say. The bloodstain on her husband’s sleeve. She had seen it with her own eyes. The following morning she had taken the shirt and washed it in boiling water and bleach. It was on the washing line even now, drying in the sun. She wanted to ask him whose blood it was. She wanted to know how it had got there. But she didn’t dare. She couldn’t accuse him. Such a thing was impossible. The two of them finished their lunch in silence. 3 Sitting in a reproduction captain’s chair with its curved back and swivelling seat, Johnny Whitehead was also thinking about the murder. Indeed, throughout the morning he had thought of little else, blundering around like a bull in his own china shop, rearranging objects for no reason and smoking incessantly. Gemma Whitehead had finally lost her temper with him when he had knocked over and broken a nice little Meissen soap dish, which, though chipped, had still been priced at nine shillings and sixpence. ‘What is the matter with you?’ she demanded. ‘You’re like a bear with a sore head today. And that’s your fourth cigarette. Why don’t you go out and get some fresh air?’ ‘I don’t want to go out,’ Johnny said, moodily. ‘What’s wrong?’ Johnny stubbed out his cigarette in a Royal Doulton ashtray shaped like a cow and priced at six shillings. ‘What do you think?’ he snapped. ‘I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking you.’ ‘Sir Magnus Pye! That’s what’s wrong.’ He stared at the smoke still rising from the twisted cigarette butt. ‘Why did someone have to go and murder him? Now we’ve got the police in the village, knocking on doors, asking questions. They’ll be here soon enough.’ ‘What does it matter? They can ask us anything they want.’ There was a fractional pause, long enough to make itself felt. ‘Can’t they?’ ‘Of course they can.’ She examined him, a sharp look in her eye. ‘You haven’t been up to anything, have you, Johnny?’ ‘What are you talking about?’ There was a wounded tone in his voice. ‘Why do you even ask that? Of course I haven’t been up to anything. What could I possibly get up to, stuck out here in the sticks?’ It was the old argument: city versus countryside, Saxby versus almost anywhere else in the world. They’d had it often enough. But even as he spoke the words, he was remembering how Mary Blakiston had confronted him all too recently in this very building, how much she had known about him. She had died suddenly and so had Sir Magnus, both of them within two weeks of each other. That wasn’t a coincidence and the police certainly wouldn’t think so. Johnny knew how they worked. They would already be drawing up files, looking at everyone who lived in the neighbourhood. It wouldn’t be too long before they came after him. Gemma walked over and sat down next to him, laying a hand on his arm. Although she was so much smaller than him, so much frailer, she was the one with the strength and they both knew it. She had stood by him when they’d had their troubles in London. She had written to him every week, long letters full of optimism and good cheer, when he was ‘away’. And when he had finally come home, it had been her decision that had brought them to Saxby-on-Avon. She had seen the old post office advertised in a magazine and had thought it could be converted into an antique shop, allowing Johnny to maintain some of the practices of his old life whilst providing a stable, honest basis for the new. Leaving London had not been easy, especially for a boy who had lived his whole life within earshot of the Bow Bells, but Johnny had seen the sense of it and had reluctantly gone along with it. But she knew that he had been diminished by it. Loud, cheerful, trusting, irascible Johnny Whitehead could never be completely at home in a community where everyone was being endlessly judged and where disapproval could mean total ostracism. Had it been wrong of her to bring him here? She still allowed him trips back to the city although they always made her nervous. She didn’t ask him what he got up to and he didn’t tell her. But this time it was different. He had been there only a few days earlier. Could that visit possibly be connected with what had happened? ‘What did you do in London?’ she asked. ‘Why do you want to know?’ ‘I was just wondering.’ ‘I saw some of the blokes – Derek and Colin. We had lunch, a few drinks. You should have come.’ ‘You wouldn’t want me there.’ ‘They asked after you. I went past the old house. It’s flats now. It made me think. We had a lot of happy times there, you and me.’ Johnny patted the back of his wife’s hand, noticing how thin it had become. The older she got, the less of her there seemed to be. ‘I’ve had enough of London for one lifetime, Johnny.’ She withdrew her hand. ‘And as for Derek and Colin, they were never your friends. They didn’t stand by you when things went belly-up. I did.’ Johnny scowled. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I’m going out for a walk. Half an hour. That’ll blow away the cobwebs.’ ‘I’ll come with you, if you like.’ ‘No. You’d better mind the shop.’ Nobody had come in since they had opened that morning. That was another thing about murder. It discouraged the tourists. She watched him leave, heard the bell on the door make its familiar jangle. Gemma had thought they would be all right coming here, leaving their former lives behind them. No matter what Johnny had said at the time, it had been the right decision. But two deaths, one following hard upon the other, had changed everything. It was as if those old shadows had somehow stretched out and found them. Mary Blakiston had been here. For the first time in a very, very long time the housekeeper had come to the shop and, when challenged, Johnny had lied about it. He had claimed she was buying someone a present but Gemma knew that wasn’t true. If Mary had wanted a present she would have gone into Bath, to Woolworth or Boots the Chemist. And less than a week later she had died. Was there some link between the two events and, if so, was there a further link that led to the death of Sir Magnus Pye? Gemma Whitehead had come to Saxby-on-Avon because she thought it would be safe. Sitting alone in the dingy shop surrounded by hundreds of unnecessary items, trinkets and knick-knacks which nobody seemed to want and which, today anyway, nobody had come in to buy, she wished with all her heart that she and Johnny could be anywhere else. 4 Everyone in the village thought they knew who had killed Sir Magnus Pye. Unfortunately, no two theories were the same. It was well known that Sir Magnus and Lady Pye were at loggerheads. They were seldom seen together. If they turned up at church, they kept a distance between them. According to Gareth Kite, the landlord of the Ferryman, Sir Magnus had been having an affair with his housekeeper, Mary Blakiston. Lady Pye had killed both of them – although how she had managed the first death when she was on holiday in France, he hadn’t explained. No, no. It was Robert Blakiston who was the killer. Hadn’t he threatened his mother just days before she died? He had killed her because he was angry with her and had gone on to kill Sir Magnus when he had somehow discovered the truth. And then there was Brent. The groundsman lived alone. He was definitely peculiar. There were rumours that Sir Magnus had fired him the very day that he had died. Or what about the stranger who had come to the funeral? Nobody wore a hat like that unless it was to conceal their identity. Even Joy Sanderling, that nice girl who worked for Dr Redwing, was suspected. The strange announcement that had gone up on the notice board next to the bus shelter definitely showed that there was more to her than met the eye. Mary Blakiston had taken against her. So she had died. Sir Magnus Pye had found out. He had died too. And then there was the destruction of Dingle Dell. Although the police had not released details of the threatening message that had been found on Sir Magnus’s desk, it was well known how much anger the proposed development had provoked. The longer you had lived in the village, the more angry you were likely to be and by this logic, old Jeff Weaver, who was seventy-three and who had tended the churchyard for as long as anyone could remember, became the number one suspect. The vicar, too, had plenty to lose. The vicarage backed directly onto the proposed development site and it had often been remarked how he and Mrs Osborne liked to lose themselves in the wood. Curiously, one resident who had every reason to kill Sir Magnus but whose name had been left out of the loop was Clarissa Pye. The impoverished sister had been by turns ignored and humiliated but it had not occurred to any of the villagers that this might make her a murderess. Perhaps it was the fact that she was a single woman – and a religious one at that. Perhaps it was her eccentric appearance. The dyed hair was absurd, visible at fifty yards. She tried too hard with her hats, her imitation jewellery, her wardrobe of once-fashionable cast-offs when really simpler, more modern clothes would have suited her better. Her physique was against her too: not fat, not masculine, not dumpy, but perilously close to all three. In short, she was something of a joke in Saxby-on-Avon and jokes do not commit murder. Sitting in her home in Winsley Terrace, Clarissa was trying not to think about what had happened. For the last hour, she’d been absorbed by the Daily Telegraph crossword – though normally she’d finish it in half that time. One clue in particular had confounded her: 16. Complained endlessly about Bobby The answer was a nine-letter word, the second letter O, the fourth letter I. She knew that it was staring her in the face but for some reason it wouldn’t come to her. Was the solution a synonym of ‘complained’ or was it somebody famous, first name Bobby? It seemed very unlikely. The Telegraph crossword didn’t usually involve celebrities unless they were classical writers or artists. In which case, could ‘Bobby’ have some other meaning that had eluded her? She chewed briefly on the Parker Jotter that was her special crossword pen. And then, quite suddenly it hit her. The answer was so obvious! It had been in front of her all the time. ‘Complained endlessly’. So drop the D at the end of the word. ‘About’ indicating an anagram. And a Bobby? Perhaps the capital B was a little unfair. She entered the missing letters . . . Policeman and of course that made her think of Magnus, of the police cars she had seen driving through the village, the uniformed officers who would be up at Pye Hall even now. What would happen to the house now that her brother was dead? Presumably, Frances would continue living there. She wasn’t allowed to sell it. That was all part of the entail, the complicated document that had defined the ownership of Pye Hall over the centuries. It would now pass to her nephew, Freddy, the next in line. He was only fifteen years old and the last time Clarissa had seen him he had struck her as shallow and arrogant, a little like his father. And now he was a millionaire! Of course, if he and his mother died, if – for example – there was a terrible car accident, then the property, but not the title, would have to move sideways. That was an interesting thought. Unlikely, but interesting. Really, there was no reason why it couldn’t happen. First Mary Blakiston, then Sir Magnus. Finally . . . Clarissa heard a key turning in the front door and quickly folded the newspaper and set it aside. She wouldn’t want anyone to think that she had been wasting time; that she had nothing to do. She was already on her feet and moving towards the kitchen as the door opened and Diana Weaver came in. The wife of Adam Weaver, who did odd jobs around the village and helped out at the church, she was a comfortably middle-aged woman with a no-nonsense attitude and a friendly smile. She worked as a cleaner: two hours a day at the doctor’s surgery and the rest of the week divided between various houses in Saxby-on-Avon with just one afternoon once a week here. Seeing her as she bustled in with the oversized plastic bag she always carried, already unbuttoning the coat which surely wasn’t needed on such a warm day, it occurred to Clarissa that this was a real cleaning lady, which is to say a lady for whom such work was entirely appropriate and indeed necessary. How could Magnus have possibly placed her in the same category? Had he really been serious or had he come here simply to insult her? She wasn’t sorry he was dead. Quite the opposite. ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Weaver,’ she said. ‘Hello there, Miss Pye.’ Clarissa could tell at once that something was wrong. The cleaner was downcast. She seemed nervous. ‘There’s some ironing to do in the spare bedroom. And I’ve bought a new bottle of Ajax.’ Clarissa had got straight to the point. It wasn’t her habit to engage in conversation: it wasn’t just a question of propriety. She could barely afford to pay for the two hours each week and she wasn’t going to eat into them with small talk. But although Mrs Weaver had divested herself of her coat, she hadn’t moved and didn’t seem in any hurry to start work. ‘Is something the matter?’ she asked. ‘Well . . . it’s this business at the big house.’ ‘My brother.’ ‘Yes, Miss Pye.’ The cleaner seemed more upset than she had any right to be. It wasn’t as if she had worked there. She had probably only spoken to Magnus once or twice in her life. ‘It’s a horrible thing to happen,’ she went on. ‘In a village like this. I mean, people have their ups and their downs. But I’ve lived here forty years and I’ve never known anything like it. First poor Mary. And now this.’ ‘I was just thinking about it myself,’ Clarissa agreed. ‘I am mortified. My brother and I weren’t close but even so he was still blood.’ Blood. She shuddered. Had he known he was about to die? ‘And now we’ve got the police here,’ Diana Weaver continued. ‘Asking questions and disturbing everyone.’ Was that what she was worried about? The police? ‘Do you think they have any idea who did it?’ ‘I doubt it. It only happened last night.’ ‘I’m sure they’ll have searched the house. According to my Adam . . .’ She paused, unsure whether to spell it out. ‘. . . someone took his head clean off his shoulders.’ ‘Yes. That’s what I heard.’ ‘That’s horrible.’ ‘It certainly was very shocking. Are you going to be able to work today or would you like to go home?’ ‘No, no. I prefer to keep myself busy.’ The cleaner went into the kitchen. Clarissa glanced at the clock. Mrs Weaver had actually started work two minutes late. She would make sure she made up the time before she left. 5 The meeting at Larkin Gadwall had not been particularly illuminating. Atticus Pünd had been shown the brochure for the new development – everything in watercolour with smiling families, sketched in almost like ghosts, drifting through their new paradise. Planning permission had been approved. Construction was due to start the following spring. Philip Gadwall, the senior partner, insisted that Dingle Dell was an unremarkable piece of woodland and that the new homes would benefit the neighbourhood. ‘It’s very much in the council’s mind that we regenerate our villages. We need new homes for local families if we’re going to keep the villages alive.’ Chubb had listened to all this in silence. It struck him that the families in the brochure, with their smart clothes and brand-new cars, didn’t look local at all. He was quite glad when Pünd announced that he had no further questions and they were able to get back out into the street. It turned out that Frances Pye had already left hospital and had insisted on returning home, so that was where the three men – Pünd, Fraser and Chubb – went next. The police cars had already left Pye Hall by the time they arrived. Driving past the Lodge and up the gravel driveway, Pünd was struck by how normal everything looked with the afternoon sun already dipping behind the trees. ‘That must have been where Mary Blakiston lived,’ Fraser said, pointing to the silent Lodge House as they passed. ‘At one time with her two sons, Robert and Tom,’ Pünd said. ‘Let us not forget that the younger of the two children also died.’ He gazed out of the window, his face suddenly grim. ‘This place has seen a lot of death.’ They pulled in. Chubb had driven ahead of them and was waiting for them at the front door. A square of police tape hung limply around the handprint in the soil and Fraser wondered if it had been linked to the gardener, Brent, or to anyone else. They went straight into the house. Someone had been busy. The Persian rug had been removed, the flagstones washed down. The suit of armour had gone too. The police would have held on to the sword – it was, after all, the murder weapon. But the rest of the armour would have been too grim a reminder of what had occurred. The whole house was silent. There was no sign of Lady Pye. Chubb hesitated, unsure how to proceed. And then a door opened and a man appeared, coming out of the living room. He was in his late thirties, with dark hair and a moustache, wearing a blue blazer with a crest on the front pocket. He had a lazy walk, one hand in his pocket and a cigarette in the other. Fraser had the immediate thought that this was a man whom it would be easy to dislike. He did not just arouse antipathy; he almost seemed to cultivate it. The new arrival was surprised to find three visitors in the hall and he didn’t try to conceal it. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded. ‘I was about to ask you the same,’ Chubb replied, already bristling. ‘I’m with the police.’ ‘Oh.’ The man’s face fell. ‘Well, I’m a friend of Frances’s – Lady Pye. I’ve come down from London to look after her – hour of need and all that. The name’s Dartford, Jack Dartford.’ He held a hand out vaguely, then withdrew it. ‘She’s very upset, you know.’ ‘I’m sure.’ Pünd stepped forward. ‘I would be interested to know how you heard the news, Mr Dartford.’ ‘About Magnus? She rang me.’ ‘Today?’ ‘No. Last night. Immediately after she’d called the police. She was actually quite hysterical. I’d have come down straight away but it was a bit late to hit the road and I had meetings this morning so I said I’d arrive around lunchtime, which is what I did. Picked her up at the hospital and brought her here. Her son, Freddy, is with her, by the way. He’d been staying with friends on the south coast.’ ‘You will forgive me for asking, but I wonder why she selected you out of all of her friends in what you term her hour of need?’ ‘Well, that’s easy enough to explain, Mr . . . ?’ ‘Pünd.’ ‘Pünd? That’s a German name. And you’ve got the accent to go with it. What are you doing here?’ ‘Mr Pünd is helping us,’ Chubb cut in, shortly. ‘Oh – all right. What was the question? Why did she ask me?’ For all his bluster, it was evident that Jack Dartford was casting around for a safe answer. ‘Well, I suppose it was because we’d just had lunch together. I actually went with her to the station and put her on the train back to Bath. I’d have been uppermost in her mind.’ ‘Lady Pye was with you in London on the day of the murder?’ Pünd asked. ‘Yes.’ Dartford half-sighed, as if he had given away more than he had intended. ‘We had a business lunch. I advise her about stocks and shares, investments . . . that sort of thing.’ ‘And what did you do after lunch, Mr Dartford?’ ‘I just told you—’ ‘You told us that you accompanied Lady Pye to the station. But we know that she came to Bath on a late evening train. She reached the house around half past nine. I take it, therefore, that you spent the afternoon together.’ ‘Yes. We did.’ Dartford was looking increasingly uncomfortable. ‘We killed a bit of time.’ He thought for a moment. ‘We went to a gallery. The Royal Academy.’ ‘What did you see?’ ‘Just some paintings. Dreary stuff.’ ‘Lady Pye has said that she went shopping.’ ‘We did a bit of shopping too. She didn’t buy anything though . . . not that I can remember. She wasn’t really in the mood.’ ‘I have one last question for you, if you will forgive me, Mr Dartford. You say that you are a friend of Lady Pye. Would you have described yourself as a friend of the late Sir Magnus, too?’ ‘No. Not really. I mean, I knew him of course. I quite liked him. Decent enough sort of chap. But Frances and I used to play tennis together. That’s how we met. So I saw rather more of her than of him. Not that he minded! But he wasn’t particularly sporty. That’s all.’ ‘Where is Lady Pye?’ Chubb asked. ‘She’s in her room, upstairs. She’s in bed.’ ‘Asleep?’ ‘I don’t think so. She wasn’t when I looked in a few minutes ago.’ ‘Then we would like to see her.’ ‘Now?’ Dartford saw the answer in the detective’s implacable face. ‘All right, I’ll take you up.’ 6 Frances Pye was lying on her bed, wrapped in a dressing gown and half-submerged in a wave of crumpled sheets. She had been drinking champagne. There was a half-empty glass on the table beside her, along with a bottle, slanting out of an ice bucket. Sedative or celebration? To Fraser’s eye it could have been either, and the look on her face as they came in was just as hard to decipher. She was annoyed to be interrupted but at the same time she had been expecting it. She was reluctant to talk but had already geared herself up to answer the questions that must come her way. She was not alone. A teenaged boy, dressed in whites as if for cricket, lounged in a chair, one leg crossed over the other. He was obviously her son. He had the same dark hair, swept back across his forehead, the same haughty eyes. He was eating an apple. Neither mother nor son looked particularly grieved by what had happened. She could have been in bed with a touch of flu. He could have been visiting her. ‘Frances . . .’ Jack Dartford introduced them. ‘This is Detective Inspector Chubb. He’s from the Bath police.’ ‘We saw each other briefly the night it happened,’ Chubb reminded her. ‘I was there when you were taken off in the ambulance.’ ‘Oh yes.’ The voice was husky, uninterested. ‘And this is Mr Pond.’ ‘Pünd.’ Pünd nodded his head. ‘I am assisting the police. My assistant, James Fraser.’ ‘They want to ask you a few questions.’ Dartford was deliberately attempting to insinuate himself into the room. ‘I’ll hang around, if you like.’ ‘That’s all right, thank you, Mr Dartford.’ Chubb answered the question for her. ‘We’ll call you if we need you.’ ‘I really don’t think I ought to leave Frances on her own.’ ‘We won’t keep her very long.’ ‘It’s all right, Jack.’ Frances Pye settled back onto the pile of cushions that had been heaped up behind her. She turned to the three unwanted visitors. ‘I suppose we ought to get this over with.’ There was a brief moment of awkwardness as Dartford tried to work out what to do next and even Fraser could see what was going through his mind. He wanted to tell her what he had said about the London visit. He wanted to make sure that her account tallied with his. But there was no way Pünd was going to allow that to happen. Separate the suspects. Set them against each other. That was how he worked. Dartford left. Chubb closed the door and Fraser drew up three chairs. There was plenty of furniture in the bedroom, which was large, with tumbling curtains, thick carpets, fitted wardrobes and an antique dressing table whose bowed legs seemed barely up to the weight of all the bottles, boxes, bowls and brushes piled up on the surface. Fraser, who liked to read Charles Dickens, thought at once of Miss Havisham in Great Expectations. The whole room was chintzy, slightly Victorian. All that was missing were the cobwebs. Pünd sat down. ‘I’m afraid I have to ask you some questions about your husband,’ he began. ‘I quite understand. It’s a ghastly business. Who would do such a thing? Please go ahead.’ ‘You might prefer to ask your son to leave.’ ‘But I want to stay!’ Freddy protested. There was a certain arrogance in his voice, all the more inappropriate as it hadn’t yet broken. ‘I’ve never met a real detective.’ He stared insolently at Pünd. ‘How come you’ve got a foreign name? Do you work for Scotland Yard?’ ‘Don’t be rude, Freddy,’ his mother said. ‘You can stay – but only if you don’t interrupt.’ Her eyes flickered over to Pünd. ‘Do begin!’ Pünd took off his glasses, polished them, put them on again. Fraser guessed that he would be uncomfortable talking in front of the boy. Pünd was never good with children, particularly English ones who had grown up in the belief that he was still the enemy. ‘Very well. May I ask, first, if you were aware of your husband having received any threats in recent weeks?’ ‘Threats?’ ‘Had he received any letters or telephone calls that might have suggested his life was in danger?’ There was a large white telephone on the bedside table, next to the ice bucket. Frances glanced at it before answering. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Why would he have?’ ‘There was, I believe, a property with which he was involved. The new development . . .’ ‘Oh! You mean Dingle Dell!’ She muttered the name contemptuously. ‘Well, I don’t know about that. There were bound to be a few raised temperatures in the village. People around here are very narrow-minded and Magnus was expecting a few protests. But death threats? I hardly think so.’ ‘We found a note on your husband’s desk,’ Chubb cut in. ‘It was unsigned, typewritten and we have every reason to believe that whoever wrote it was very angry indeed.’ ‘What makes you think that?’ ‘The letter made a very specific threat, Lady Pye. There’s also the weapon that we found, the service revolver in his desk.’ ‘Well, I know nothing about that. The gun was usually in the safe. And Magnus didn’t mention any threatening letter to me.’ ‘May I ask, Lady Pye . . .’ Pünd sounded apologetic. ‘What were your movements in London yesterday? I do not wish to intrude,’ he continued, hurriedly, ‘but it is necessary for us to establish the whereabouts of everyone who is involved.’ ‘Do you think Mummy’s involved?’ Freddy asked, eagerly. ‘Do you think she did it?’ ‘Freddy, be quiet!’ Frances Pye glanced at her son disdainfully, then turned her eyes back to Pünd. ‘It is an intrusion,’ she said. ‘And I’ve already told the detective inspector exactly what I was doing, but if you must know, I had lunch at Carlotta’s with Jack Dartford. It was quite a long lunch. We were talking business. I don’t really understand anything about money and Jack is terribly helpful.’ ‘What time did you leave London?’ ‘I was on the six-forty train.’ She paused, perhaps realising that there was a lengthy interval to be explained. ‘I went shopping after lunch. I didn’t buy anything but I strolled down Bond Street and into Fortnum & Mason.’ ‘It is quite pleasant to kill time in London,’ Pünd agreed. ‘Did you perhaps look into an art gallery?’ ‘No. Not this time. There was something on at the Courtauld, I think, but I wasn’t really in the mood.’ So Dartford had been lying. Even James Fraser picked up on the obvious discrepancy between the two accounts of the afternoon but before either of them could remark upon it, the telephone rang – not in the bedroom but downstairs. Lady Pye glanced briefly at the handset on the table beside her and frowned. ‘Would you go and answer that please, Freddy?’ she asked. ‘Whoever it is, tell them I’m resting and don’t want to be disturbed.’ ‘What if it’s for Daddy?’ ‘Just tell them we’re not taking any calls. There’s a good boy.’ ‘All right.’ Freddy was a little annoyed to be dismissed from the room. He slouched off the chair and out of the door. The three of them listened to the ringing as it echoed up from downstairs. After less than a minute, it stopped. ‘The phone’s broken up here,’ Frances Pye explained. ‘This is an old house and there’s always something going wrong. At the moment it’s the phones. Last month it was the electrics. We also have woodwork and dry rot. People may complain about Dingle Dell but at least the new houses will be modern and efficient. You have no idea what it’s like living in an ancient pile.’ It occurred to Fraser that she had adroitly changed the subject, moving away from what she had – or had not – been doing in London. But Pünd did not seem too concerned. ‘What time did you return to Pye Hall on the night of your husband’s murder?’ he asked. ‘Well, let me see. The train would have got in about half past eight. It was very slow. I’d left my car at Bath station and by the time I’d driven over here, it must have been about nine twenty.’ She paused. ‘A car drove out just as I arrived.’ Chubb nodded. ‘You did mention that to me, Lady Pye. I don’t suppose you managed to see the driver.’ ‘I may have glimpsed him. I don’t know why I say that. I’m not even certain it was a man. It was a green car. I already told you. It had the letters FP in the registration. I’m afraid I can’t tell you the make.’ ‘Just the one person in it?’ ‘Yes. In the driving seat. I saw his shoulders and the back of his head. He was wearing a hat.’ ‘You saw the car leave,’ Pünd said. ‘How would you say it was being driven?’ ‘The driver was in a hurry. He skidded as he turned into the main road.’ ‘He was driving to Bath?’ ‘No. The other way.’ ‘You then proceeded to the front door. The lights were on.’ ‘Yes. I let myself in.’ She shuddered. ‘I saw my husband at once and I called the police.’ There was a long silence. Lady Pye seemed genuinely exhausted. When Pünd spoke again, his voice was gentle. ‘Do you by any chance know the combination of your husband’s safe?’ he asked. ‘Yes, I do. I keep some of my more expensive jewellery there. It hasn’t been opened, has it?’ ‘No, not at all, Lady Pye,’ Pünd assured her. ‘Although it is possible that it had been opened some time recently as the picture behind which it was concealed was not quite flush with the wall.’ ‘That might have been Magnus. He kept money in there. And private papers.’ ‘And the combination?’ Chubb asked. She shrugged. ‘Left to seventeen, right to nine, left to fifty-seven, then turn the dial twice.’ ‘Thank you.’ Pünd smiled sympathetically. ‘I am sure you are tired, Lady Pye, and we will not keep you much longer. There are just two more questions I wish to ask you. The first concerns a note which we also found on your husband’s desk and which seems to have been written in his hand.’ Chubb had brought the notepad, now encased in a plastic evidence bag. He passed it to Lady Pye who quickly scanned the three lines written in pencil: ASHTON H Mw A GIRL ‘This is Magnus’s handwriting,’ she said. ‘And there’s nothing very mysterious about it. He had a habit of making notes when he took a telephone call. He was always forgetting things. I don’t know who or what Ashton H is. MW? I suppose that could be somebody’s initials.’ ‘The M is large but the w is small,’ Pünd pointed out. ‘Then it might be a word. He did that too. If you asked him to buy the newspaper when he went out, he’d jot down Np.’ ‘Could it be that this Mw angered him in some way? He takes no further notes but there are several lines. You can see that he has almost torn the sheet of paper with the pencil.’ ‘I have no idea.’ ‘And what about this girl?’ Chubb cut in. ‘Who might that be?’ ‘I can’t tell you that either. Obviously, we needed a new housekeeper. I suppose someone could have recommended a girl.’ ‘Your former housekeeper, Mary Blakiston—’ Pünd began. ‘Yes. It has been a horrible time – just horrible. We were away when it happened, in the South of France. Mary had been with us for ever. Magnus was very close to her. She worshipped him! From the moment she moved into the Lodge, she was beholden to him, as if he were some sort of monarch and she’d been asked to join the royal guard. Personally, I found her rather tiresome although I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead. What else do you want to know?’ ‘I noticed that there is a painting missing from the wall in the great hall where your husband was discovered. It hung next to the door.’ ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ ‘Every detail is of interest to me, Lady Pye.’ ‘It was a portrait of me.’ Frances Pye seemed reluctant to answer. ‘Magnus didn’t like it so he threw it out.’ ‘Recently?’ ‘Yes. It can’t have been more than a week ago, actually. I don’t remember exactly when.’ Frances Pye sank back into her pillows, signalling that she had spoken enough. Pünd nodded and, following his cue, Fraser and Chubb stood up and the three of them left. ‘What did you make of that?’ Chubb asked as they left the room. ‘She was definitely lying about London,’ Fraser said. ‘If you ask me, she and that Dartford chap spent the afternoon together – and they certainly weren’t shopping!’ ‘It is evident that Lady Pye and her husband no longer shared a bed,’ Pünd agreed. ‘How do you know?’ ‘It was obvious from the décor of the bedroom, the embroidered pillows. It was a room without any trace of a man.’ ‘So there are two people with a good reason to kill him,’ Chubb muttered. ‘The oldest motive in the book. Kill the husband and run off together with the loot.’ ‘You may be right, Detective Inspector. Perhaps we will find a copy of Sir Magnus Pye’s will in his safe. But his family has been in this house for many years and it is likely, I would think, that it will pass directly to his only son and heir.’ ‘And a nasty piece of work he was too,’ Chubb remarked. The safe in fact contained little of interest. There were several pieces of jewellery, about five hundred pounds in different currencies and various documents: some recent, some dating back as much as twenty years. Chubb took them with him. He and Pünd parted company at the door, Chubb returning to his home in Hamswell where his wife, Harriet, would be waiting for him. He would know her mood instantly. As he had once confided in Pünd, she communicated it by the speed of her knitting needles. Pünd and Fraser shook hands with him, then returned to the questionable comforts of the Queen’s Arms. 7 More people had gathered around the bus shelter on the far side of the village square, clearly exercised by something they had seen. Fraser had noticed a crowd of them that morning when they checked into the pub and clearly they had spread the word. Something had happened. The entire village needed to know. ‘What do you think that’s all about?’ he asked as he parked the car. ‘Perhaps we should find out,’ Pünd replied. They got out and walked across the square. Whitehead’s Antiques and the General Electrics Store were already closed and in the still of the evening, with no traffic passing through, it was easy to hear what the small crowd was saying. ‘Got a right nerve!’ ‘She should be ashamed.’ ‘Flaunting herself like that!’ The villagers did not notice Pünd and Fraser until it was too late, then parted to allow the two men access to whatever it was they had been discussing. They saw it at once. There was a glass display case mounted next to the bus shelter with various notices pinned inside: minutes of the last council meeting, church services, forthcoming events. Among these, a single sheet of paper had been added with a typewritten message. TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN There have been many rumours about Robert Blakiston circulating in the village. Some people have suggested that he may have had something to do with the tragic death of his mother, Mary Blakiston, on Friday morning at 9.00 a.m. These stories are hurtful and ill-informed and wrong. I was with Robert at that time in his flat above the garage and had been with him all night. If necessary, I will swear to this in a court of law. Robert and I are engaged to be married. Please show us a little kindness and stop spreading these malicious rumours. Joy Sanderling James Fraser was shocked. There was a side to his nature, something woven in by his years in the English private school system, that was easily offended by any public display of emotion. Even two people holding hands in the street seemed to him to be unnecessary and this declamation – for it seemed to him no less – went far beyond the pale. ‘What was she thinking of?’ he exclaimed as they moved away. ‘Was it the contents of the announcement that most struck you?’ Pünd replied. ‘You did not notice something else?’ ‘What?’ ‘The threat that was sent to Sir Magnus Pye and this confession of Joy Sanderling, they were produced by the same typewriter.’ ‘Good lord!’ Fraser blinked. ‘Are you sure?’ ‘I am certain. The tail of the e has faded and the t slants a little to the left. It is not just the same model. It is the same machine.’ ‘Do you think she wrote the letter to Sir Magnus?’ ‘It is possible.’ They took a few steps in silence, then Pünd began again. ‘Miss Sanderling has been forced to take this action because I would not help her,’ he said. ‘She is willing to sacrifice her good reputation, knowing full well that news of this may well reach her parents who will, as she made clear to us, be upset by her behaviour. This is my responsibility.’ He paused. ‘There is something about the village of Saxby-on-Avon that concerns me,’ he went on. ‘I have spoken to you before of the nature of human wickedness, my friend. How it is the small lies and evasions which nobody sees or detects but which can come together and smother you like the fumes in a house fire.’ He turned and surveyed the surrounding buildings, the shaded square. ‘They are all around us. Already there have been two deaths: three, if you include the child who died in the lake all those years ago. They are all connected. We must move quickly before there is a fourth.’ He crossed the square and went into the hotel. Behind him, the villagers were still muttering quietly, shaking their heads. 
 Four A Boy 
 1 Atticus Pünd awoke with a headache. He became aware of it before he opened his eyes and the moment he did open them, it intensified as if it had been waiting for him, lying in ambush. The force of it quite took his breath away and it was as much as he could do to reach out for the pills that Dr Benson had given him and which he had left, the night before, beside the bed. Somehow his hand found them and swept them up but he was unable to find the glass of water, which he had also prepared. It didn’t matter. He slid the pills into his mouth and swallowed them dry, feeling their harsh passage down his throat. Only a few minutes later, when they were safely lodged in his system, already dissolving and sending their antipyretics through his bloodstream and into his brain, did he find the glass and drink, washing the bitter taste from his mouth. For a long time he lay where he was, his shoulders pressed against the pillows, gazing at the shadows on the walls. Piece by piece, the room came back into focus: the oak wardrobe, slightly too big for the space in which it stood, the mirror with its mottled glass, the framed print – a view of the Royal Crescent in Bath – the sagging curtains which would draw back to reveal a view of the cemetery. Well, that was appropriate. Waiting for the pain to subside, Atticus Pünd reflected on his fast-approaching mortality. There would be no funeral. He had seen too much of death in his lifetime to want to adorn it with ritual, to dignify it as if it was anything more than what it was . . . a passage. Nor did he believe in God. There were those who had come out of the camps with their faith intact and he admired them for it. His own experience had led him to believe in nothing. Man was a complicated animal capable of extraordinary good and great evil – but he was definitely on his own. At the same time, he was not afraid of being proved wrong. If, after a lifetime of considered reason, he found himself being called to judgement in some sort of starry chamber, he was sure he would be forgiven. From what he understood, God was the forgiving sort. It did occur to him though that Dr Benson had been a little too optimistic. There would be more of these attacks and they would incapacitate him more seriously as the thing in his head made its irredeemable progress. How long would it be before he was no longer able to function? That was the most frightening thought – that thought itself might become no longer possible. Lying alone in his room at the Queen’s Arms, Pünd made two promises to himself: the first was that he would solve the murder of Sir Magnus Pye and make good the debt that he owed to Joy Sanderling. The second he refused to articulate. An hour later, when he came down to the dining room dressed as ever in a neatly pressed suit, white shirt and tie, it would have been impossible to tell how his day had begun and certainly James Fraser was quite unaware that anything was wrong, but then the young man was remarkably unobservant. Pünd remembered their first case together when Fraser had failed to notice that his travelling companion, on the three-fifty train from Paddington, was actually dead. There were many who were surprised that he managed to hold down his job as a detective’s assistant. In fact, Pünd found him useful precisely because he was so obtuse. Fraser was a blank page on which he could scribble his theories, a plain sheet of glass in which he might see his own thought processes reflected. And he was efficient. He had already ordered the black coffee and single boiled egg that Pünd liked for his breakfast. They ate in silence. Fraser had ordered the full English for himself, an amount of food that Pünd always found bewildering. Only when they had finished did he lay out the day ahead. ‘We must visit Miss Sanderling once again,’ he announced. ‘Absolutely. I thought you’d want to start with her. I still can’t believe she would put up a notice like that. And writing to Sir Magnus—’ ‘I think it is unlikely that she made the threats herself. But it was the same machine. Of that there is no doubt.’ ‘Maybe someone else had access to it.’ ‘She works at the doctor’s surgery. That is where we will find her. You must find out at what time it opens.’ ‘Of course. Do you want me to let her know we’re coming?’ ‘No. I think it will be better if we turn up by surprise.’ Pünd poured himself another inch of coffee. ‘I am interested, also, to find out more about the death of the housekeeper, Mary Blakiston.’ ‘Do you think it’s connected?’ ‘There can be no doubt of it. Her death, the burglary, the murder of Sir Magnus, these are surely three steps in the same journey.’ ‘I wonder what Chubb will make of that clue you found. The scrap of paper in the fireplace. There was a fingerprint on it. That might tell us something.’ ‘It has already told me a great deal,’ Pünd said. ‘It is not the fingerprint itself that is of interest. It will be of no assistance, unless it belongs to someone with a criminal record, which I doubt. But how it came to be there, and why the paper was burnt. These are indeed questions that might go to the very heart of the matter.’ ‘And knowing you, you already have the answers. In fact, I bet you’ve solved the whole thing, you old stick!’ ‘Not yet, my friend. But we will catch up with Detective Inspector Chubb later and we will see . . .’ Fraser wanted to ask more but he knew that Pünd would refuse to be drawn. Put a question to him and the best you would get would be a response that made little or no sense and which would, in itself, be more annoying than no answer at all. They finished their breakfast and a few minutes later, they left the hotel. Stepping out into the village square, the first thing they noticed was that the display case next to the bus shelter was empty. Joy Sanderling’s confession had been removed. 2 ‘Actually, I took it down myself. I did it this morning. I don’t regret putting it there. I made the decision when I saw you in London. I had to do something. But after what happened here – I mean, with Sir Magnus and the police asking questions and everything – it just didn’t seem appropriate. Anyway, it had done the job. As soon as one person had read it, the whole village would know. That’s how it is around here. People have been giving me a few strange looks, I can tell you, and I don’t think the vicar was too pleased. But I don’t care. Robert and I are going to be married. What we do is our business and I’m not going to put up with people telling lies about him or about me.’ Joy Sanderling was sitting on her own in the modern, single-storey surgery that stood in upper Saxby-on-Avon, surrounded by houses and bungalows that had all gone up at about the same time. It was an unattractive building, cheaply constructed and utilitarian in design. Dr Redwing’s father had compared it to a public toilet at the time it was built, although he, of course, had practised from his own home. Dr Redwing herself thought it no bad thing that she was able to separate her work from her private life. There were many more people living in the village than there had been in Edgar Rennard’s time. Patients entered through a glazed door that opened directly into a waiting area with a few faux-leather sofas, a coffee table and a scattering of magazines: old copies of Punch and Country Life. There were some toys for children, donated by Lady Pye, although that had been a long time ago and they really needed to be replaced. Joy sat in an adjoining office – the dispensary – with a window that slid across so that she could speak to the patients directly. She had an appointments book in front of her, a telephone and a typewriter to one side. Behind her, there were shelves and a cupboard filled with medical supplies, filing cabinets containing patient records and a small refrigerator, which occasionally housed drugs or the various samples that needed to be sent on to the hospital. There were two doors: one on each side. The one on her left led into the reception area, the one on her right to Dr Redwing’s office. A light bulb, next to the telephone, would flash on when the doctor was ready to see her next patient. Jeff Weaver, the gravedigger, was in there now, accompanying his grandson for a final check-up. Nine-year-old Billy Weaver had made a complete recovery from his whooping cough and had come bouncing into the surgery with a determination to be out of there as soon as possible. There were no other patients on the waiting list and Joy had been surprised when the door had opened and Atticus Pünd had walked in with his fair-haired assistant. She had heard they were in the village but had not expected to see them here. ‘Have your parents been made aware of what you wrote?’ Pünd asked. ‘Not yet,’ Joy said. ‘Although I’m sure someone will tell them soon enough.’ She shrugged. ‘If they find out, what does it matter? I’ll move in with Robert. That’s what I want anyway.’ It seemed to Fraser that she had changed in the brief time since they had met in London. He had liked her then and had been quietly disappointed when Pünd had refused to help her. The young woman on the other side of the window was still very appealing, exactly the sort of person you’d want to talk to if you weren’t feeling well. But there was a harder edge to her too. He noticed that she hadn’t come round to greet them, preferring to stay in the other room. ‘I didn’t expect to see you, Mr Pünd,’ she said. ‘What do you want?’ ‘You may feel that I was unfair to you when you came to see me in London, Miss Sanderling, and perhaps I should apologise. I was merely honest with you. At the time, I did not think I could help you with the situation in which you found yourself. However, when I read of the death of Sir Magnus Pye, I felt I had no choice but to investigate the matter.’ ‘You think it has something to do with what I told you?’ ‘That may well be the case.’ ‘Well, I don’t see how I can help you. Unless you think I did it.’ ‘Would you have a reason to wish him dead?’ ‘No. I hardly even knew him. I saw him occasionally but I had nothing to do with him.’ ‘And what of your fiancé, Robert Blakiston?’ ‘You don’t suspect him, do you?’ Something flared in her eyes. ‘Sir Magnus was never anything but kind to him. He helped Robert get his job. They never quarrelled. They hardly ever saw each other. Is that why you’re here? Because you want to turn me against him?’ ‘Nothing could be further from the truth.’ ‘Then what do you want?’ ‘As a matter of fact, I am here to see Dr Redwing.’ ‘She’s with a patient at the moment but I expect she’ll be finished quite soon.’ ‘Thank you.’ Pünd had not been offended by the girl’s hostility but it seemed to Fraser that he was looking at her rather sadly. ‘I must warn you,’ he continued, ‘that it will be necessary for me to speak with Robert.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because Mary Blakiston was his mother. It is always possible that he might hold Sir Magnus to be partly responsible for her death and that alone would provide him with a motive for the murder.’ ‘Revenge? I very much doubt it.’ ‘At any event, he once lived at Pye Hall and there is a relationship between him and Sir Magnus which I need to explore. I tell you this because it occurs to me that you might wish to be present when we speak.’ Joy nodded. ‘Where do you want to see him? And when?’ ‘Perhaps he might come to my hotel when it conveniences him? I am staying at the Queen’s Arms.’ ‘I’ll bring him when he finishes work.’ ‘Thank you.’ The door of Dr Redwing’s office opened and Jeff Weaver came out, holding the hand of a small boy who was wearing short trousers and a school jacket. Joy waited until they had gone, then moved to a door at the side of her office. ‘I’ll tell Dr Redwing you’re here,’ she said. She disappeared from sight. It was exactly the opportunity that Pünd had been waiting for. He signalled to Fraser who quickly drew a sheet of paper out of his jacket pocket, leaned through the window and fed it upside-down into the typewriter. Leaning over the machine, he pressed several of the keys at random then pulled the sheet out and handed it to Pünd who examined the letters and nodded his satisfaction before handing it back. ‘Is it the same?’ Fraser asked. ‘It is.’ Joy Sanderling returned to the reception desk. ‘You can go in,’ she said. ‘Dr Redwing is free until eleven.’ ‘Thank you,’ Pünd said, then added almost as an afterthought, ‘Do you alone have the use of this office, Miss Sanderling?’ ‘Dr Redwing comes in from time to time, but nobody else,’ Joy replied. ‘You are quite sure of that? Nobody else would have access to this machine?’ He gestured at the typewriter. ‘Why do you want to know?’ Pünd said nothing so she continued. ‘Nobody comes in here except for Mrs Weaver. She’s the mother of the little boy who just left and she cleans the surgery twice a week. But I very much doubt that she would use the typewriter and certainly not without asking.’ ‘While I am here, I would also be interested in your opinion of the new homes that Sir Magnus was intending to build. He was planning to cut down the woodland known as Dingle Dell—’ ‘You think that was why he was killed? I’m afraid you don’t have much understanding of English villages, Mr Pünd. It was a stupid idea. Saxby-on-Avon doesn’t need new houses and there are plenty of better places to build them. I hate seeing trees being cut down and almost everyone in the village thinks the same. But nobody would have killed him because of that. The worst they would have done is written to the local newspaper or complained about it in the pub.’ ‘Maybe the development will no longer go ahead now that he is not here to oversee it,’ Pünd suggested. ‘I suppose that’s possible.’ Pünd had proved his point. He smiled and moved towards the office door. Fraser, who had folded the sheet of paper in half and slipped it into his pocket, followed. 3 The office was small and square and so exactly what anyone would expect from a doctor’s surgery that it might almost have inspired a cartoon in one of the old Punch magazines that lay on the reception table. There was an antique desk placed centrally with two chairs facing it, a wooden filing cabinet and a shelf stacked with medical volumes. To one side, a curtain could be drawn to create a separate cubicle with another chair and a raised bed. A white coat hung on a hook. The only unexpected touch in the room was an oil painting, which showed a dark-haired boy leaning against a wall. It was clearly the work of an amateur but Fraser, who had studied art at Oxford, thought it was rather good. Dr Redwing herself was sitting upright, making notes on a case file in front of her, a rather severe woman in her early fifties. Everything about her was angular: the straight line of her shoulders, her cheekbones, her chin. You could have drawn her portrait using a ruler. But she was polite enough as she gestured for her two guests to sit down. She finished what she was writing, screwed the top back on her pen and smiled. ‘Joy tells me you’re with the police.’ ‘We are here in a private capacity,’ Pünd explained. ‘But it is true that we have worked with the police on occasion and are assisting Detective Inspector Chubb now. My name is Atticus Pünd. This is my assistant, James Fraser.’ ‘I’ve heard of you, Mr Pünd. I understand you’re very clever. I hope you can get to the bottom of this. It’s a dreadful thing to happen in a small village and coming so soon after the death of poor Mary . . . I really don’t know what to say.’ ‘I understand that you and Mrs Blakiston were friends.’ ‘I wouldn’t go as far as that – but yes, we did see quite a bit of each other. I think people underestimated her. She was a very intelligent woman. She hadn’t had an easy life, losing one child and bringing the other up on her own. But she coped very well and she was helpful to many people in the village.’ ‘And it was you who found her after her accident.’ ‘It was actually Brent, the groundsman at Pye Hall.’ She stopped herself. ‘But I assumed you wanted to talk to me about Sir Magnus.’ ‘I am interested in both occurrences, Dr Redwing.’ ‘Well, Brent called me from the stable. He had seen her through the window, lying in the hallway, and he feared the worst.’ ‘He hadn’t gone in?’ ‘He didn’t have a key. In the end we had to break down the back door. Mary had left her own keys in the lock on the other side. She was at the bottom of the stairs and it looked as if she had tripped over the cable of her Hoover which was at the top. Her neck was broken. I don’t think she had been dead very long. She was still warm when I found her.’ ‘It must have been very distressing for you, Dr Redwing.’ ‘It was. Of course, I’m used to death. I’ve seen it many times. But it’s always more difficult when it’s someone you know personally.’ She hesitated for a moment, a series of conflicting thoughts passing across her dark, serious eyes. Then she came to a decision. ‘And there was something else.’ ‘Yes?’ ‘I did think about mentioning this to the police at the time and maybe I should have done so. And maybe I’m wrong to be telling you now. The thing is, I’d persuaded myself that it wasn’t relevant. After all, nobody was suggesting that Mary’s death was anything but a tragic accident. However, given what’s happened and since you’re here . . .’ ‘Please, go on.’ ‘Well, just a few days before Mary died, we had an incident here at the surgery. We were quite busy that day – we had three patients in a row – and Joy had to pop out a couple of times. I asked her to buy me some lunch from the village store. She’s a good girl and she doesn’t mind doing that sort of thing. I’d also left some papers at my house and she went out and got them for me. Anyway, at the end of the day, when we were tidying up, we noticed that a bottle had gone missing from the dispensary. As you can imagine, we keep a close eye on all our medicines, especially the more dangerous ones, and I was particularly concerned by its disappearance.’ ‘What was the drug?’ ‘Physostigmine. It’s actually a cure for belladonna poisoning and I’d had to get some in for Henrietta Osborne, the vicar’s wife. She’d managed to step on a clump of deadly nightshade in Dingle Dell and as I’m sure you’ll know, Mr Pünd, atropine is an active ingredient in that particular plant. Physostigmine is effective in small doses but a larger amount can quite easily kill you.’ ‘And you say it was taken.’ ‘I didn’t say that. If I had any reason to believe that, I would have gone straight to the police. No. It could have been misplaced. We have a lot of medicines here and although we’re very careful, it has happened before. Or it could be that Mrs Weaver, who cleans here, had dropped and broken it. She’s not a dishonest woman but it would be just like her to clean up the mess and say nothing about it.’ Dr Redwing frowned. ‘I mentioned it to Mary Blakiston though. If someone in the village had made off with it for some reason, she’d have certainly been able to find out. She was a bit like you, in a way. A detective. She had a way of rooting things out of people. And in fact she did tell me she had one or two ideas.’ ‘And a few days after this incident, she was dead.’ ‘Two days, Mr Pünd. Exactly two days.’ There was a sudden silence as the significance – unspoken – hung in the air. Dr Redwing was looking increasingly uncomfortable. ‘I’m sure her death had nothing to do with it,’ she continued. ‘It was an accident. And it’s not as if Sir Magnus was poisoned. He was struck down with a sword!’ ‘On the day that the physostigmine was removed, can you recall who came to the surgery?’ Pünd asked. ‘Yes. I went back to the appointment book to check. As I just said, three people came in that morning. Mrs Osborne I’ve already mentioned. Johnny Whitehead has an antique shop in the village square. He had quite a nasty cut on his hand, which had gone septic. And Clarissa Pye – she’s Sir Magnus’s sister – looked in with a stomach upset. There was nothing very much the matter with her to be honest with you. She lives on her own and she’s a bit of a hypochondriac. Really she just likes to have a chat. I don’t think this missing bottle had anything to do with what happened but it’s been on my conscience and I suppose it’s best if you’re aware of all the facts.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Is there anything else?’ she asked. ‘I don’t mean to be rude but I have to be on my rounds.’ ‘You have been most helpful, Dr Redwing.’ Pünd got to his feet and seemed to notice the oil painting for the first time. ‘Who is the boy?’ he asked. ‘Actually, it’s my son – Sebastian. That was painted just a few days before his fifteenth birthday. He’s in London now. We don’t see a great deal of him.’ ‘It’s very good,’ Fraser said with real enthusiasm. The doctor was pleased. ‘My husband, Arthur, painted it. I think he’s a quite exceptional artist and it’s one of my greatest regrets that his talent hasn’t been recognised. He’s painted me a couple of times and he did a quite lovely portrait of Lady Pye—’ She broke off. Fraser was surprised how agitated she had suddenly become. ‘You haven’t asked me anything about Sir Magnus Pye,’ she said. ‘Is there something you wish to tell me?’ ‘Yes.’ She paused as if challenging herself to continue. When she spoke again, her voice was cold and controlled. ‘Sir Magnus Pye was a selfish, uncaring and egotistical man. Those new houses of his would have ruined a perfectly attractive corner of the village but that’s not the end of it. He never did anything kind for anyone. Did you notice the toys in the waiting room? Lady Pye gave them to us, but as a result of it she’d expect us to bow and touch our forelock every time she came near. Inherited wealth will be the ruin of this country, Mr Pünd. That’s the truth of it. They were an unpleasant couple and if you ask me, you’re going to have your work cut out.’ She took one last look at the portrait. ‘The fact is that half the village will have been glad to see him dead and if you’re looking for suspects, well, they might as well form a line.’ 4 Everyone knew Brent, the groundsman at Pye Hall, but at the same time no one knew him at all. When he walked through the village or took his usual seat at the Ferryman, people might say ‘There’s old Brent’, but they had no idea how old he was and even his name was something of a mystery. Was it his first name or his last name? There were a few who might remember his father. He had been ‘Brent’ too and had done the same job – in fact the two of them had worked together for a while, old Brent and young Brent, pushing out the wheelbarrow and digging the soil. His parents had died. Nobody was quite sure how or when but it had happened in another part of the country – in Devonshire, some people said. A car accident. So young Brent had become old Brent and now lived in the pocket-sized cottage where he had been born, on Daphne Road. It was part of a terrace but his neighbours had never been invited in. The curtains were always drawn. Somewhere in the church, it might have been possible to find a record of a birth, in May 1917, of one Neville Jay Brent. There must have been a time when he was Neville: at school or as a Local Defence Volunteer (his status as a farm worker had excluded him from fighting in the war). But he was a man without a shadow – or perhaps a shadow without a man. He was both as prominent and as unremarkable as the weather vane on the steeple of St Botolph’s. The only reason anyone would have noticed it would have been if they had woken up one day to find out it wasn’t there. Atticus Pünd and James Fraser had tracked him down in the grounds of Pye Hall where he was carrying on his work, weeding and deadheading, as if nothing unusual had occurred. Pünd had prevailed upon him to stop for half an hour and the three of them were sitting together in the rose garden, surrounded by a thousand blooms. Brent had rolled a cigarette with hands so grubby that the whole thing would surely taste of dirt once he lit it. He came across as a boy-man, sullen and uncomfortable, shifting awkwardly in clothes that were too large for him, his curly hair flopping over his forehead. Fraser felt uncomfortable sitting next to him. Brent had a strange, slightly unsavoury quality; a sense of some secret that he was refusing to share. ‘How well did you know Mary Blakiston?’ Pünd had begun with the first death although it occurred to Fraser that the groundsman had been a principal witness at both events. Indeed, he might have been the last person to see both the housekeeper and her employer alive. ‘I didn’t know her. She didn’t want to know me.’ Brent seemed offended by the question. ‘She used to boss me about. Do this, do that. Even had me up in her place moving the furniture, fixing the damp. Not that she had any right. I worked for Sir Magnus, not her. That’s what I used to tell her. I’m not surprised someone pushed her down those stairs, the way she carried on. Always meddling. I’m sure she got up quite a few people’s noses.’ He sniffed loudly. ‘I won’t speak ill of the dead but she was a right busybody and no mistake.’ ‘You assume she was pushed? The police are of the opinion that it was an accident, that she fell.’ ‘That’s not for me to say, sir. Accident? Someone done her in? I wouldn’t be surprised either way.’ ‘It was you who saw her, lying in the hall.’ Brent nodded. ‘I was doing the borders next to the front door. I looked in the window and there she was, lying at the bottom of the stairs.’ ‘You heard nothing?’ ‘There was nothing to hear. She was dead.’ ‘And there was nobody else in the house.’ ‘I didn’t see anyone. There could have been, I suppose. But I was there a few hours and I didn’t see anyone come out.’ ‘So what did you do?’ ‘I tapped on the window to see if she’d wake up but she wasn’t moving so in the end I went to the stable and used the outside phone to call Dr Redwing. She made me break the glass in the back door. Sir Magnus wasn’t happy about that. In fact, he blamed me for the break-in that happened later on. It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t want to break anything. I just did what I was told.’ ‘You argued with Sir Magnus?’ ‘No, sir. I wouldn’t do that. But he wasn’t pleased and when he wasn’t pleased you’d better keep clear, I can tell you.’ ‘You were here the evening that Sir Magnus died.’ ‘I’m here every evening. At this time of the year, I never get away much before eight o’clock and it was about eight fifteen that night – not that I get paid any extra.’ It was strange but the more Brent spoke, the more eloquent he became. ‘He and Lady Pye weren’t keen to put their hands in their pockets. He was on his own that night. She was up in London. I saw him working late. There was a light on in the study and he must have been expecting someone because there was a visitor who arrived just as I left.’ Brent had already mentioned this to Detective Inspector Chubb. Unfortunately, he had been unable to provide a description of the mysterious arrival. ‘I understand you did not manage to see his face,’ Pünd said. ‘I didn’t see him. I didn’t recognise him. But later on, when I thought about it, I knew who he was.’ The announcement came as a surprise to Pünd, who waited for the groundsman to continue. ‘He was at the funeral. When they buried Mrs Blakiston, he was there. I knew I’d seen him before. I noticed him standing at the back of the crowd – but at the same time I hardly noticed him, if you know what I mean. He kept to himself, like he didn’t want to be noticed, and I never saw his face. But I know it was the same man. I’m sure it was the same man – on account of the hat.’ ‘He was wearing a hat?’ ‘That’s right. It was one of those old-fashioned hats, like they had ten years ago, pulled down low over his face. The man who came to Pye Hall at eight fifteen, he was the same man. I’m sure of it.’ ‘Can you tell me anything more about him? His age? His height?’ ‘He wore a hat. That’s all I can tell you. He was here. He didn’t talk to anyone. And then he left.’ ‘What happened when he came to the house?’ ‘I didn’t wait to see. I went down to the Ferryman for a pie and a pint. I had a bit of money in my pocket, what Mr Whitehead gave me, and I couldn’t wait to be on my way.’ ‘Mr Whitehead. He owns the antique shop—’ ‘What about him?’ Brent’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. ‘He paid you some money.’ ‘I never said that!’ Brent realised he had spoken too freely and searched for a way out. ‘He’d paid me the fiver that he owed me. That’s all. So I went for a pint.’ Pünd let the matter drop. It would be all too easy to offend a man like Brent and, once offended, he wouldn’t utter another word. ‘So you left Pye Hall at around a quarter past eight,’ he said. ‘That might have been only a matter of minutes before Sir Magnus was killed. I wonder if you can explain to us a handprint that we discovered in the flower bed beside the front door?’ ‘That police chap asked me about that and I already told him. It wasn’t my handprint. What would I be doing sticking my hand in the soil?’ He gave a queer sort of smile. Pünd tried another tack. ‘Did you see anyone else?’ ‘As a matter of fact, I did.’ Brent glanced slyly at the detective and his assistant. All this time he had been holding the cigarette he had rolled but now he stuck it between his lips and lit it. ‘I went down the Ferryman like I told you. And I was on my way when I run into Mrs Osborne, the vicar’s wife. God knows what she’s doing out in the middle of the night – and looking like nobody’s business too. Anyway, she asked if I’d seen her husband. She was upset about something. Maybe even afraid. You should have seen the look on her face! Well, I told her it might have been him I’d seen at Pye Hall and the fact is he might have been there and all . . .’ Pünd frowned. ‘The person you saw at the hall, the man in the hat, you said just now that he was at the funeral.’ ‘I know I said that, sir. But they were both there, him and the vicar. You see, I was having my pint and I saw the vicar go past on his bicycle. That was a while later.’ ‘How much later?’ ‘Thirty minutes. Not much more than that. I heard it go past. You can hear that bicycle from one end of the village to the other with its clacking and its grinding and it definitely went past the pub while I was in there. And where could he have come from except from the hall? He certainly hadn’t cycled from Bath.’ Brent eyed the detective over his cigarette, daring him to disagree. ‘You have been very helpful,’ Pünd said. ‘I have just one more question. It relates to the Lodge where Mrs Blakiston lived. You mentioned to me that you occasionally did work for her there and I wonder if you might have a key?’ ‘Why do you want to know?’ ‘Because I would like to go in.’ ‘I’m not sure about that,’ the groundsman muttered. He screwed the cigarette round between his lips. ‘You want to go in, you’d best talk to Lady Pye.’ ‘This is a police investigation,’ Fraser cut in. ‘We can go where we like and it might mean trouble for you if you don’t co-operate.’ Brent looked doubtful but he wasn’t prepared to argue. ‘I can take you up there now.’ He nodded his head at the roses. ‘But then I’ve got to get back to these.’ Pünd and Fraser followed Brent back to the stable from where he retrieved a key attached to a large piece of wood, then walked with him down the drive to the Lodge House that stood at the end, two storeys high with sloping roofs, a massive chimney, Georgian windows and a solid front door. This was where Mary Blakiston had lived while she was working as Sir Magnus Pye’s housekeeper. To begin with there had been a husband and two boys but one by one the family had left her until she was finally alone. Perhaps it was the position of the sun or the oaks and elms that surrounded the place but it seemed to be cast in permanent shadow. It was obviously empty. It looked and felt deserted. Brent opened the front door with the key he had retrieved. ‘Do you want me to come in?’ he asked. ‘It would be helpful if you could remain a little longer,’ Pünd replied. ‘We will not take up too much more of your time.’ The three of them went into a small hallway with two doors, a corridor and a flight of stairs leading up. The wallpaper was old-fashioned, floral. The pictures were images of English birds and owls. There was an antique table, a coat stand and a full-length mirror. Everything looked as if it had been there for a long time. ‘What is it you want to see?’ Brent asked. ‘That, I cannot tell you,’ Pünd replied. ‘Not yet.’ The downstairs rooms had little to offer. The kitchen was basic, the living room dowdy, dominated by an old-fashioned grandfather clock. Fraser remembered how Joy Sanderling had described it, ticking away as she tried to make an impression on Robert’s mother. Everything was very clean, as if Mary’s ghost had just been in. Or perhaps it had never left. Someone had picked up the mail and piled it on the kitchen table but there was very little of it and nothing of interest. They went upstairs. Mary’s bedroom was at the end of the corridor with a bathroom next door. She had slept in the same bed that she must have once shared with her husband: it was so heavy and cumbersome that it was hard to imagine anyone bringing it here after he had left. The bedroom looked out over the road. In fact none of the main rooms had a view back to Pye Hall as if the house had been purposefully designed so that the servant would never glance in the direction of her employers. Pünd passed two doors that opened into further bedrooms. Nobody had slept in them for some time. The beds were stripped, the mattresses already showing signs of mould. A third door, opposite them, had been broken, the lock forced. ‘The police did that,’ Brent explained. He sounded unhappy about it. ‘They wanted to go in but they couldn’t find the key.’ ‘Mrs Blakiston kept it locked?’ ‘She never went in.’ ‘How do you know?’ ‘I already told you. I come here lots of times. I fixed the damp and laid the carpets downstairs and she was always calling me in. But not this room. She wouldn’t open the door. I’m not even sure she had the key. That’s why the police broke it down.’ They went inside. The room was disappointing: like the rest of the house, it was utterly stripped of life with a single bed, an empty wardrobe and a window cut into the eaves with a work table below. Pünd went over to it and looked out. There was a view through the trees and he could just glimpse the edge of the lake with the threatened woodland, Dingle Dell, beyond. He noticed a single drawer in the middle of the table and opened it. Inside, Fraser saw a strip of black leather forming a circle with a small disc attached. It was a dog collar. He reached forward and took it out. ‘Bella,’ he read. The name was in capital letters. ‘Bella was the dog,’ Brent said, unnecessarily. Fraser was a little annoyed. He might have guessed as much. ‘Whose dog?’ Pünd asked. ‘The younger kid. The one who died. He had a dog but it didn’t last long.’ ‘What happened to it?’ ‘It ran off. They lost it.’ Fraser put the collar back. It was so small – it must have belonged to a mere puppy. There was something inexpressibly sad about it, sitting in the empty drawer. ‘So this was Tom’s room,’ Fraser muttered. ‘It would seem possible, yes.’ ‘I suppose it would explain why she locked the door. The poor woman couldn’t bear to come in here. I wonder why she didn’t move.’ ‘She may not have had a choice.’ Both of them were speaking in low voices, as if they were afraid of disturbing ancient memories. Meanwhile, Brent was shuffling around, anxious to be on his way. But Pünd took his time leaving the house. Fraser knew that he was not so much searching for clues as sensing the atmosphere – he had often heard him talk about the memory of crime, the supernatural echoes left behind by sadness and violent death. There was even a chapter in that book of his. ‘Information and Intuition’ or something like that. Only when they were outside did he speak. ‘Chubb will have removed anything of interest. I am keen to know what he found.’ He glanced at Brent, who was already shuffling into the distance, making his way back towards the manor house. ‘And that one, also, he told us a great deal.’ He looked around him, at the trees pressing in. ‘I would not wish to live here,’ he said. ‘There is no view.’ ‘It is rather oppressive,’ Fraser agreed. ‘We must find out from Mr Whitehead how much money he paid to Brent and for what reason. Also, we must speak again with the Reverend Osborne. He must have had a reason to come here on the night of the murder. And then there is the question of his wife . . .’ ‘He said that Mrs Osborne was afraid.’ ‘Yes. Afraid of what, I wonder.’ He took a last look back. ‘There is something about the atmosphere of this house, James. It tells me that there is a great deal to fear.’ 5 Raymond Chubb did not like murder. He had become a policeman because he believed in order and he considered the county of Somerset, with its neat villages, hedgerows and ancient fields to be one of the most ordered and civilised parts of the country – if not the world. Murder changed everything. It broke the gentle rhythm of life. It turned neighbour against neighbour. Suddenly nobody was to be trusted and doors which were usually left open at night were locked. Murder was an act of vandalism, a brick thrown at a picture window, and somehow it was his job to put together the pieces. Sitting in his office in the Orange Grove police station in Bath, he reflected on his current investigation. This business with Sir Magnus Pye had got off to an inauspicious start. It was one thing to be stabbed in your own home – but to be decapitated with a medieval sword the moment darkness fell was quite simply outrageous. Saxby-on-Avon was such a quiet place! Yes, there had been that business with the cleaner, the woman who had tripped up and fallen down the stairs, but this was something else again. Could it really be true that one of the villagers, living in a Georgian house perhaps, going to church and playing for the local cricket team, mowing their lawn on Sunday mornings and selling home-made marmalade at the village fête, was a homicidal maniac? The answer was – yes, quite possibly. And their identity might well be provided by the book sitting on the desk in front of him now. He had found nothing in Sir Magnus’s safe of any interest. And it had looked as if the Lodge House was going to be a waste of time too. And then, an eagle-eyed constable, young Winterbrook, had made his discovery amongst the cookery books in Mary Blakiston’s kitchen. He was going to go far, that boy. He just needed to show a more serious attitude and a bit more ambition and he’d be an inspector in no time. Had she hidden it there deliberately? Had she been afraid of someone coming into the house – her son, perhaps, or Sir Magnus himself? Certainly, it wasn’t something she’d want to leave lying around, containing as it did malicious observations on just about everyone in the village. There was Mr Turnstone (the butcher) who deliberately short-changed his customers, Jeffrey Weaver (the undertaker) who was apparently cruel to his dog, Edgar Rennard (the retired doctor) who took bribes, Miss Dotterel (the village shop) who drank. Nobody seemed to have escaped her attention. It had already taken him two whole days to go through it all and by the end of that time he felt almost sullied. He remembered seeing Mary Blakiston, glassy-eyed at the bottom of the stairs at Pye Hall, already cold and stiff. At the time he had felt pity for her. Now he wondered what had motivated her as she shuffled round the village permanently suspicious, permanently on the lookout for trouble. Couldn’t she, just once, have found something good? Her handwriting managed to be cramped and spidery yet very neat – as if she were some sort of accountant of evil. Yes! Pünd would like that one. It was exactly the sort of thing he might say. Each entry was dated. This volume covered three and a half years and Chubb had already sent Winterbrook back to the house to see if he could find any earlier editions – not that he didn’t have plenty enough to be getting on with. Mrs Blakiston had two or three special favourites who turned up on page after page. Curiously, despite the acrimony between them, her son Robert wasn’t one of them although Josie – or Joy – had become an object of disdain the moment she had been introduced. She really hated the groundsman, Brent. His name kept on appearing. He was rude, he was lazy, he arrived late, he pilfered, he spied on the Boy Scouts when they were camping in Dingle Dell, he drank, he told lies, he never washed. It seemed that she had shared her thoughts with Sir Magnus Pye; at least, that was what she suggested in one of her last entries. 12 July Brent not at all happy. Scowling this morning and tramped through bed of aquilegia. And he knew I was watching too! He did it quite deliberately because he knows it makes no difference now. Very glad that he won’t be at Pye Hall much longer. Dear Sir M told me just a week ago that he’s given Brent his marching orders with a month’s notice – he should have done it years ago in my opinion. How many times did I tell him? Brent was bone idle and shifty with it. Sitting there smoking when he should be working. I saw it time and time again. Glad Sir M finally listened to me and took action. The garden is so beautiful at this time of the year. Should be easy to find a new gardener in The Lady although perhaps an agency will be more discreet. Three days later, she was dead. And two weeks after that, Sir M had died too. A coincidence? Surely the two of them hadn’t been killed because they’d decided to sack the gardener. Chubb had marked seven more entries which, he thought, might somehow relate to the case. All but one of them were recent and so more likely to be relevant to the murder of Sir Magnus. Once again he flicked through them, reading them in the order that seemed to make most sense. 13 July An interesting talk with Dr Redwing. How many thieves can there be in one village? This is very serious. A drug has been stolen from her surgery. She wrote down the name for me. Physostigmine. She says a large dose could quite possibly be fatal. I told her she should go to the police but of course she doesn’t want to because she thinks she’ll be blamed. I like Dr R but I do sometimes question her judgement. Having that girl working there, for example. And she isn’t quite as careful as she thinks. I’ve been into the surgery lots of times and I could have just walked in and helped myself. When did it happen? I think Dr R is wrong. Not the day she says but the day before. I saw someone coming out . . . Miss Pye no less! I knew something was wrong. I saw it in her face. And the way she was holding her handbag. The surgery was empty (absolutely no sign of the girl) when I went in. She’d definitely been there alone and the medicine cupboard was left open so could easily have taken contents. What would she want it for? Pop it in her brother’s tea – maybe revenge. Can’t be happy being number two! But I have to be careful. I can’t make accusations. Something to think about. 9 July Arthur Reeve too upset to talk. His medal collection gone! A horrible thing to happen. The thief broke in through the kitchen window – cut himself on glass. You’d have thought that would be a big enough clue but the police weren’t interested, of course. They said it must have been children – but I don’t think so. The thieves knew exactly what they wanted. The Greek medal alone was worth a tidy sum. Typical how nobody cares any more. I went in and had a cup of tea with him. Did wonder if our friend might be involved but didn’t say anything. I’ll have a look in and see – but careful. Leopards and spots! Terrible to have someone like this living in the village. And dangerous? I really should have told Sir Magnus. Hilda Reeve not even interested. Not helping her husband – says she can’t see what all the fuss is about. Stupid woman. Can’t think why he married her. 11 July Visited Whitehead in his shop while his wife was out and told him what I knew. Of course he denied everything. Well, he would, wouldn’t he? I showed him the piece I’d found in the newspaper and he said that was all behind him, actually accused me of trying to make trouble for him. Oh no, I told him. You’re the one making trouble here. He said he’d never been anywhere near Arthur’s home. But his shop is stuffed with all manner of bits and pieces and you have to wonder where he gets it from. He dared me to go public. He said he’d sue me. We’ll see! Chubb might have ignored both these entries. Arthur Reeve and his wife were an elderly couple and had once run the Queen’s Arms. It would be hard to imagine anyone less likely to be involved in Sir Magnus’s death – and how could the theft of his medals have any possible relevance? The meeting with Whitehead made no sense. But tucked into the back of the diary he had found a newspaper clipping, faded and brittle, and it had forced him to think again. GANGLAND FENCE RELEASED FROM JAIL He achieved brief notoriety as part of the Mansion Gang – a network of professional burglars who targeted mansion blocks in Kensington and Chelsea. Arrested for receiving stolen goods, John Whitehead was released from Pentonville Prison after serving just four years of a seven-year sentence. Mr Whitehead, who is married, is believed to have left London. There was no picture but Chubb had already checked that there was indeed a Johnny Whitehead living with his wife in the village and that it was the same Johnny Whitehead who had once been arrested in London. There had been plenty of organised criminals operating in the city during and after the war and the Mansion Gang had been notorious. Whitehead had been their fence and now he ran an antique store no less! He looked again at the two words in Mary Blakiston’s handwriting. And dangerous? The question mark was certainly apposite. If Whitehead was an ex-criminal and she had tried to expose him, could he have been responsible for her death? If she had talked about him to Sir Magnus, might he have been forced to strike again? Chubb carefully set the newspaper article aside and went back to the diary. 7 July Shocking. I always knew there was something about Rev Osborne and his wife. But this!!!! I wish old Montagu had stayed. Really, really don’t know what to say or do. Nothing, I suppose. Who would believe me? Dreadful. 6 July Lady Pye back from London. Again. All these trips she makes, everyone knows what’s going on. But nobody will say anything. I suppose these are the times we live in. I feel sorry for Sir Magnus. Such a good man. Always so kind to me. Does he know? Should I say something? The last entry that Chubb had selected had been written almost four months earlier. Mary Blakiston had written several entries about Joy Sanderling but this one followed their first meeting. She had written it in black ink, using a much thicker nib. The letters were splattered onto the page and Chubb could almost feel the anger and disgust as her pen travelled across the paper. Mary had always been a fairly impartial observer. Which is to say, she had been equally spiteful and unpleasant about everyone she encountered. But she seemed to have a special reserve for Joy. 15 March Tea with little Miss Sanderling. She says her name is Josie but ‘call me Joy’. I will not call her that. There is no joy in this marriage. Why can’t she understand? I will not let it happen. Fourteen years ago I lost my first son. I will not allow her to take Robert away from me. I gave her tea and biscuits and she just sat there with that stupid smile on her face – so young, so ignorant. She prattled on about her parents and her family. She has a brother with Down’s syndrome! Why did she have to tell me that? Robert just sat there, saying nothing, and all the time I was thinking about this awful sickness infecting her family and how much I wanted her to leave. I should have told her then and there. But she’s obviously the sort of girl who won’t listen to the likes of me. I will talk to Robert later. I won’t have it. I really won’t. Why did this stupid girl have to come to Saxby? For the first time, Chubb felt a real dislike for Mary Blakiston, almost a sense that she had deserved to die. He would never actually say that about anyone but he had to admit that the whole diary was pure poison and this entry was unforgivable. It was the reference to Down’s syndrome that most upset him. Mary described it as an ‘awful sickness’. It wasn’t. It was a condition, not an illness. What sort of woman could see it as a threat to her own bloodline? Had she really pulled up the drawbridge on her son’s marriage simply to protect future grandchildren from some sort of contamination? It beggared belief. Part of him hoped that this would turn out to be the only volume of Mary Blakiston’s memoirs. He dreaded having to wade through any more pages of misery and resentment – didn’t she have anything good to say about anyone? But at the same time, he knew he had stumbled on too valuable a resource to ignore. He would have to show it all to Atticus Pünd. He was glad that the detective had turned up in Somerset. The two of them had worked together on that case in Marlborough, a headmaster who had been killed during the performance of a play. This business had many of the same hallmarks: a tangle of suspects and different motives and not one but two deaths that might or might not be related. In the privacy of his own home, Chubb would admit the truth, which was that he couldn’t make head or tail of it. Pünd had a way of seeing things differently. Maybe it was in his nature. Chubb couldn’t help but smile. All his life he’d been brought up to think of the Germans as his enemy. It was strange having one on his side. It was equally strange that Joy Sanderling had actually brought him here. It had already occurred to Chubb that she and her fiancé, Robert Blakiston, had the most compelling reason for wanting to see Mary Blakiston dead. They were young and in love and she had wanted to stop the wedding for the very worst and most hateful of reasons. For a brief moment he himself had shared their feelings. But if they had planned to kill her, why would they have tried to get Pünd involved? Could it have been an elaborate smokescreen? Turning these thoughts over in his mind, Raymond Chubb lit a cigarette and went through the pages again. 6 In his masterwork, The Landscape of Criminal Investigation, Atticus Pünd had written: ‘One can think of the truth as eine vertiefung – a sort of deep valley which may not be visible from a distance but which will come upon you quite suddenly. There are many ways to arrive there. A line of questioning that turns out to be irrelevant still has the power to bring you nearer to your goal. There are no wasted journeys in the detection of a crime.’ In other words, it did not matter that he had not yet seen Mary Blakiston’s diary and had no idea of its contents. Although he and Detective Inspector Chubb were taking two very different approaches, it was inevitable that eventually they would meet. After they had left the Lodge House, he and Fraser had walked the short distance to the vicarage, following the road rather than using the short cut through Dingle Dell, enjoying the warmth of the afternoon. Fraser had rather taken to Saxby-on-Avon and was a little puzzled that the detective seemed so immune to its charms. Indeed, it struck him that Pünd hadn’t been quite himself since they had left London, lapsing into long silences, lost in his thoughts. The two of them were now sitting in the living room where Henrietta had brought them tea and home-made biscuits. It was a bright, cheerful room with dried flowers in the fireplace and French windows that looked out onto a well-kept garden with woodland beyond. There was an upright piano, several shelves of books, door curtains that would be drawn in the winter. The furniture was comfortable. None of it matched. Robin and Henrietta Osborne were sitting next to each other on a sofa and could not have looked more awkward or, frankly, more guilty. Pünd had barely started his interrogation but they were already defensive, clearly dreading what might come next. Fraser understood what they were going through. He had seen it before. You could be completely blameless and respectable but the moment you talked to the detective you became a suspect and nothing you said could be taken at face value. It was all part of the game and it seemed to him that the Osbornes weren’t playing it too well. ‘On the night that Sir Magnus Pye was murdered, Mrs Osborne, you left your home. This would have been about eight fifteen.’ Pünd waited for her to deny this and when she didn’t, added: ‘Why?’ ‘May I ask who told you that?’ Henrietta countered. Pünd shrugged. ‘Believe me, it is of no importance, Mrs Osborne. It is my task to establish where everyone was at the time of the death, to piece together the jigsaw you might say. I ask questions and I receive answers. That is all.’ ‘It’s just that I don’t like the idea of being spied on. That’s the trouble with living in a village. Everyone is always looking at you.’ The vicar patted her gently on the hand and she continued. ‘Yes. I was out looking for my husband at about that time. The thing is . . .’ She hesitated. ‘We were both rather upset about some news we’d just heard and he’d gone off on his own. When it was getting dark and he hadn’t come home, I began to wonder where he was.’ ‘And where in fact were you, Mr Osborne?’ ‘I went to the church. Whenever I need to sort myself out, that’s where I go. I’m sure you understand.’ ‘Did you walk or did you go on your bicycle?’ ‘The way you ask that question, Mr Pünd, I suspect you already know the answer. I took the bike.’ ‘What time did you return home?’ ‘I suppose it would have been about half past nine.’ Pünd frowned. According to Brent, he had heard the vicar cycle up past the Ferryman about half an hour after he had arrived. That would have been about nine o’clock or nine fifteen. There was a discrepancy, at least fifteen minutes missing. ‘You are sure of that time?’ he asked. ‘I’m absolutely sure,’ Henrietta cut in. ‘I’ve already told you: I was concerned. I certainly had one eye on the clock and it was exactly half past nine when my husband arrived. I had kept his dinner for him and I sat with him while he ate it.’ Pünd did not pursue the matter. There were three possibilities. The first and most obvious was that the Osbornes were lying. Certainly the woman seemed nervous, as if she were trying to protect her husband. The second was that Brent had been mistaken – although he had seemed surprisingly reliable. And the third . . . ? ‘I would imagine that it was the announcement of the new housing development that had upset you,’ he said. ‘Exactly.’ Osborne pointed at the window, at the view beyond. ‘That’s where it’s going to be. Right there at the end of our garden. Well, of course, this house isn’t ours. It belongs to the church and my wife and I won’t be here for ever. But it seems such a destructive thing to do. So unnecessary.’ ‘It may never happen,’ Fraser said. ‘What with Sir Magnus being dead and all that . . .’ ‘Well, I’m not going to celebrate any person’s death. That would be quite wrong. But I will admit to you that when I heard the news I did entertain precisely that thought. It was wrong of me. I shouldn’t allow my personal feelings to poison my judgement.’ ‘You should take a look at Dingle Dell,’ Henrietta cut in. ‘If you haven’t walked there, you won’t understand why it means so much to us. Would you like me to show you?’ ‘I would like that very much,’ Pünd replied. They had finished the tea. Fraser quietly helped himself to another biscuit and they all went out through the French windows. The vicarage garden extended for about twenty yards, sloping downhill with flower beds on each side of a lawn that became wilder and more unkempt the further they went from the house. It had been deliberately landscaped that way. There was no fence or barrier between the Osbornes’ property and the wood beyond, making it impossible to say where one ended and the other began. Quite suddenly they were in Dingle Dell. The trees – oak, ash and Wych Elm – closed in on them without warning, surrounding them and cutting off the world outside. It was a lovely place. The late afternoon sun, slanting through the leaves and branches, had become a soft green and there were butterflies dancing in the beams . . . ‘Purple Hairstreak,’ Henrietta muttered. The ground was soft underfoot: grass and patches of moss with clumps of flowers. There was something curious about the wood. It wasn’t a wood at all. It was a dell, much smaller, and yet now they were in it there seemed to be no edges, no obvious way out. Everything was very hushed. Although a few birds were flitting around the trees, they did so without making any sound. Only the drone of a bumblebee disturbed the silence and it was gone as quickly as it had come. ‘Some of these trees have been here for two or three hundred years,’ Osborne said. He looked around him. ‘You know that Sir Magnus found his treasure trove here? Roman coins and jewellery, probably buried to keep them safe. Every time we walk here, it’s different. Wonderful toadstools later in the year. All sorts of different insects, if you’re into that sort of thing . . .’ They came to a clump of wild garlic, the white flowers bursting out like stars, and then beyond it another plant, this one a tangle of spiky leaves that sprawled across the path. ‘Atropa belladonna,’ Pünd said. ‘Deadly nightshade. I understand, Mrs Osborne, that you unfortunately stepped on a specimen and poisoned yourself.’ ‘Yes. It was very stupid of me. And unlucky too – it somehow cut my foot.’ She laughed nervously. ‘I can’t imagine what possessed me to come out without my shoes. I suppose I like the feeling of the moss on the soles of my feet. Anyway, I certainly learned my lesson. I’ll steer clear of it from now on.’ ‘Do you want to go on?’ Osborne asked. ‘Pye Hall is just on the other side.’ ‘Yes. It would be interesting to see it again,’ Pünd replied. There was no actual path. They continued through the green haze, arriving at the far edge of the wood as unexpectedly as they had entered it. Suddenly the trees parted and there in front of them was the lake, still and black, with the lawn easing its way down towards it from Pye Hall. Freddy Pye was outside, kicking a football around, and Brent was kneeling in front of a flower bed with a pair of secateurs. Neither of them had noticed the little party as they had arrived. From where they were standing, the Lodge House was completely out of sight, hidden by its own woodland screen. ‘Well, here we are,’ Osborne said. He put his arm around his wife, then thought better of it and let it drop. ‘Pye Hall is quite splendid, really. It was a nunnery at one stage. It’s been in the same family for centuries. At least that’s one thing they can’t do – knock it down!’ ‘It is a house that has seen a great deal of death,’ Pünd remarked. ‘Yes. I suppose that’s true of many country houses . . .’ ‘But not quite so recently. You were away when Mary Blakiston died.’ ‘I already told you that, when we met outside the church.’ ‘You said you were in Devonshire.’ ‘That’s right.’ ‘Where exactly?’ The vicar seemed nonplussed. He turned his head away and his wife broke in angrily. ‘Why are you asking us these questions, Mr Pünd? Do you really think that Robin and I made it up about being away? Do you think we sneaked back and pushed poor Mrs Blakiston down the stairs? What possible reason could we have? And I suppose we lopped off Sir Magnus’s head to save Dingle Dell even though it may not make a jot of difference. His beastly son might go ahead with it anyway.’ Atticus Pünd spread his hands and sighed. ‘Mrs Osborne, you do not understand the demands of police and detective work. Of course I do not believe the things that you suggest and it gives me no pleasure to ask you these questions. But everything must be in its place. Every statement must be verified, every movement examined. It may be that you do not wish to tell me where you were. Eventually, you will have to tell the inspector. I am sorry if you consider it an intrusion.’ Robin Osborne glanced at his wife, who replied. ‘Of course we don’t mind telling you. It’s just not very nice being treated as suspects. If you talk to the manager of the Sheplegh Court Hotel, he’ll tell you we were there all week. It’s near Dartmouth.’ ‘Thank you.’ They turned and walked back through Dingle Dell; Pünd and Robin Osborne in front, Henrietta and James Fraser behind. ‘It was of course you who officiated at the funeral of Mrs Blakiston,’ Pünd said. ‘That’s right. It was lucky we were back in time, although I suppose I could always have cut my holiday short.’ ‘I wonder if you remarked upon a person who was unknown to the village. He was standing on his own, I believe, separate from the other mourners. I have been told that he was wearing an old-fashioned hat.’ Robin Osborne considered. ‘There was someone there wearing a fedora, I think,’ he said. ‘They left quite abruptly as I recall. But I’m afraid I can’t tell you very much more than that. As you can imagine, I had my mind on other things. He certainly didn’t come for drinks at the Queen’s Arms.’ ‘Did you happen to notice Robert Blakiston during the service? I would be interested to know your impressions of how he behaved.’ ‘Robert Blakiston?’ They had reached the clump of belladonna and Osborne was careful to avoid it. ‘I wonder why you’re asking about him,’ he went on. ‘If you must know, I feel rather sorry for him. I heard about the argument he had with his mother. The village was full of gossip after she died. I wasn’t having any of it. I think people can be quite cruel – or thoughtless, anyway. Often it’s the same thing. I can’t say I know Robert very well. He hasn’t had an easy life but he’s found himself a young lady now and I couldn’t be more pleased for him. Miss Sanderling works at the doctor’s surgery and I’m sure she’ll help him settle down. The two of them have asked me to marry them at St Botolph’s. I’m very much looking forward to it.’ He paused, then went on. ‘He and his mother quarrelled. That’s common knowledge. But I was observing him throughout the service – he and Josie were standing quite close to me – and I would have said he was genuinely grieving. When I reached the last paragraph of my address he started crying and covered his eyes to hide the tears and Josie had to take his arm. It’s hard for a boy to lose his mother, no matter what the feelings between them, and I’m sure he bitterly regretted what he had said. Speak in haste, repent at leisure, as the old saying goes.’ ‘What was your opinion of Mary Blakiston?’ Osborne didn’t answer at once. He continued walking until they had emerged once again in the vicarage garden. ‘She was very much part of the village. She’ll be missed,’ was all he said. ‘I would be interested to see the funeral address,’ Pünd said. ‘Would you by any chance have a copy?’ ‘Really?’ The vicar’s eyes brightened. He had put a lot of work into the speech. ‘As a matter of fact, I did hang on to it. I’ve got it inside. Are you coming back in? Never mind. I’ll get it for you.’ He hurried in through the French windows. Pünd turned in time to see Fraser emerge from Dingle Dell with the vicar’s wife, the light slanting down behind them. It was true, he thought. The wood was a very special place, somewhere worth protecting. But at what price? 7 That afternoon, there was another death. Dr Redwing had driven back to Ashton House and this time her husband had accompanied her. The call from the matron had come that afternoon and although she had said nothing specific, there could be no mistaking the tone of her voice. ‘It might be best if you were here. I do think you should come.’ Dr Redwing had made similar calls herself. Old Edgar Rennard had not, after all, recovered from the slight fall he had taken the week before. On the contrary, it seemed to have jolted or broken something and since then he had begun a rapid slide. He had barely been awake since his daughter’s last visit. He had eaten nothing, taken only a few sips of water. The life was visibly draining out of him. Arthur and Emilia were sitting on the uncomfortable furniture in the overly bright room, watching the rise and fall of the old man’s chest beneath the blankets. They both knew what the other was thinking but didn’t like to put it into words. How long would they have to sit here? At what time would it be reasonable to call it a day and go back home? Would they blame themselves if they weren’t there at the end? In the end, would it make any difference? ‘You can go if you like,’ Emilia said, eventually. ‘No. I’ll stay with you.’ ‘Are you sure?’ ‘Yes. Of course.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Would you like a coffee?’ ‘That would be nice.’ It was impossible to have any sort of conversation in a room with a dying man. Arthur Redwing got to his feet and shuffled off to the kitchenette at the end of the corridor. Emilia was left on her own. And that was when Edgar Rennard opened his eyes, quite unexpectedly, as if he had merely nodded off in front of the television. He saw her at once and showed not the least surprise. Perhaps, in his mind, she had never gone away, for he returned almost at once to the subject he had raised the last time they were together. ‘Did you tell him?’ he asked. ‘Did I tell who, Papa?’ She wondered whether she ought to call Arthur back. But she was afraid of raising her voice or doing anything that might disturb the dying man. ‘It’s not fair. I have to tell them. They have to know.’ ‘Papa, do you want me to call the nurse?’ ‘No!’ He was suddenly angry, as if he knew that there were only minutes left, that there was no time for delay. At the same moment, a sort of clarity came into his eyes. Later on, Dr Redwing would say that he had been given this one last gift at the end of his life. The dementia had finally retreated, leaving him in control. ‘I was there when the children were born,’ he said. His voice was younger, stronger. ‘I delivered them at Pye Hall. Lady Cynthia Pye. A beautiful woman, daughter of an earl – but she wasn’t strong, not built to give birth to twins. I was afraid I might lose her. In the end it all went well. Two children, born twelve minutes apart, a boy and a girl, both healthy. ‘But afterwards, before anyone knew what had happened, Sir Merrill Pye came to me. Sir Merrill. He wasn’t a good man. Everyone was afraid of him. And he wasn’t happy. Because, you see, the girl had come first. The estate was entailed on the firstborn child . . . it was unusual but that’s how it was. Not the eldest male child. But he wanted it to be the boy. He’d got the house from his father who’d got it from his father before him – it had always been boys. Do you understand? He hated the idea of the whole estate passing to a girl and so he made me . . . he told me . . . the boy came first.’ Emilia looked at her father with his head resting on the pillow, his white hair forming a halo around him, his eyes bright with the effort of explaining. ‘Papa, what did you do?’ she asked. ‘What do you think I did? I told a lie. He was a bit of a bully, Sir Merrill. He could have made my life a misery. And at the time, I told myself, what did it matter? After all, they were just two babies. They didn’t know anything. And they would both grow up in the house together. It wasn’t as if I was hurting anyone. That was what I thought.’ A tear trickled out of the corner of his eye and made its way down the side of his face. ‘So I filled in the form the way he wanted it. 3.48 a.m. – a boy and 4.00 a.m. – a girl. That’s what I wrote.’ ‘Oh Papa!’ ‘It was wrong of me. I see that now. Magnus got everything and Clarissa got nothing and I often thought that I should tell her, tell both of them the truth. But what good would it do? Nobody would believe me. Sir Merrill is long gone. And Lady Cynthia. They’re all forgotten! But it’s haunted me. It’s always haunted me. What I wrote was a lie. A boy! I said it was a boy!’ By the time Arthur Redwing returned with the coffees, Dr Rennard had breathed his last. He found his wife sitting in shock and assumed, obviously, that it was due to the loss. He stayed with her while the matron was called and the necessary arrangements made. Dr Rennard had taken out funeral insurance with the well-known company of Lanner & Crane and they would be informed first thing in the morning – it was too late now. In the meantime, he would be transferred to a small chapel within Ashton House that was reserved for such occasions. He was going to be buried in the cemetery at King’s Abbott, close to the house where he had lived. He had made that decision when he retired. It was only as they were driving home that Emilia Redwing repeated what her father had told her. Arthur, behind the wheel, was shocked. ‘Good God!’ he exclaimed. ‘Are you sure he knew what he was saying?’ ‘It was extraordinary. He was completely lucid – just for the five minutes you were gone.’ ‘I’m sorry, dear. You should have called me.’ ‘It doesn’t matter. I just wish you’d been there to hear it.’ ‘I could have been a witness.’ Dr Redwing hadn’t considered that – but now she nodded. ‘Yes.’ ‘What are you going to do?’ Dr Redwing didn’t answer. She watched the Bath valley slipping by, cows dotted here and there, grazing on the other side of the railway line. The summer sun hadn’t set but the light was soft, the shadows folding themselves into the sides of the hills. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, at length. ‘In a way, I wish he hadn’t told me. It was his guilty secret and now it’s mine.’ She sighed. ‘I suppose I’m going to have to tell someone. I’m not sure it’ll make any difference. Even if you had been there, there isn’t any proof.’ ‘Maybe you should tell that detective.’ ‘Mr Pünd?’ She was annoyed with herself. It had never occurred to her that there might be a connection, but of course she had to pass on what she knew. Sir Magnus Pye, the beneficiary of a huge estate, had been violently murdered and now it turned out that the estate had never been his in the first place. Could that be the reason why he had been killed? ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I suppose I had better let him know.’ They drove on in silence. Then her husband said, ‘And what about Clarissa Pye? Will you tell her?’ ‘Do you think I should?’ ‘I don’t know. I really don’t.’ They reached the village. And as they drove past the fire station and then the Queen’s Arms with the church just behind it, they were unaware that they were both having the same thought. What if Clarissa had already known? 8 At exactly that moment, inside the Queen’s Arms, James Fraser was carrying a tray with five drinks to a quiet table in the far corner. There were three pints of beer – for himself, for Robert Blakiston and for Detective Inspector Chubb – a Dubonnet and bitter lemon for Joy Sanderling and a small sherry for Atticus Pünd. He would have liked to have added a couple of bags of crisps but something told him that they would be inappropriate. As he sat down, he examined the man who had brought them there. Robert Blakiston, who had lost both a mother and a mentor in the space of two weeks, had come straight from work. He had changed out of his overalls and put on a jacket but his hands were still covered with grease and oil. Fraser wondered if it would ever come off. He was a strange-looking young man, not unattractive but almost like a bad drawing of himself with his badly cut hair, his over-pronounced cheekbones, his pale skin. He was sitting next to Joy, quite possibly holding her hand under the table. His eyes were haunted. It was obvious that he would have preferred to be anywhere but here. ‘You don’t need to worry, Rob,’ Joy was saying. ‘Mr Pünd only wants to help.’ ‘Like he helped you when you went to London?’ Robert was having none of it. ‘This village won’t let us alone. First they said it was me who killed my own mother, not that I would ever have laid a finger on her. You know that. And as if that wasn’t enough for them, then they start their whispering about Sir Magnus.’ He turned to Pünd. ‘Is that why you’re here, Mr Pound? Is it because you suspect me?’ ‘Did you have a reason to wish Sir Magnus harm?’ Pünd asked. ‘No. He wasn’t an easy man, I’ll give you that. But he was always very good to me. I wouldn’t have a job if it weren’t for him.’ ‘I must ask you many things about your life, Robert,’ Pünd went on. ‘It is not because you are under suspicion any more than anyone else in this village. But both deaths occurred at Pye Hall and it is true to say that you have a close association with that place.’ ‘I didn’t choose it that way.’ ‘Of course not. But you can perhaps tell us a great deal about its history and about the people who lived there.’ Robert’s one visible hand curled round his beer. He looked up at Pünd defiantly. ‘You’re not a policeman,’ he said. ‘Why should I have to tell you anything?’ ‘I’m a policeman,’ Chubb cut in. He had been about to light a cigarette and stopped with the match inches away from his face. ‘And Mr Pünd is working with me. You should mind your manners, young man. If you don’t want to co-operate, we’ll see what a night behind bars will do to change your mind. It won’t be the first time you’ve seen the inside of a jail, I understand.’ He lit the cigarette and blew out the match. Joy put a hand on her fiancé’s arm. ‘Please, Robert . . .’ He shrugged her off. ‘I’ve got nothing to hide. You can ask me what you want.’ ‘Then let us begin at the very beginning,’ Pünd suggested. ‘If it does not distress you, perhaps you can describe for us your childhood at Pye Hall.’ ‘It doesn’t distress me, although I was never very happy there,’ Robert answered. ‘It’s not very nice when your mother cares more about her employer than your own father – but that’s how it was almost from the day we moved into the Lodge House. Sir Magnus this, Sir Magnus that! She was all over him, even though she was never more than his skivvy. My dad wasn’t happy about it either. It was never easy for him, living in someone else’s house in someone else’s grounds. But they stuck with it for a time. My dad wasn’t getting much work before the war. It was somewhere to live, a regular income. So he put up with it. ‘I was twelve years old when we moved in. We’d been living up at Sheppard’s Farm, which was my granddad’s place. It was pretty rundown but we liked it there, left to our own devices. Me and Tom had been born in Saxby-on-Avon, and we always lived here. As far as I was concerned there was nowhere else in the world. Sir Magnus needed someone to look after the place when the old housekeeper left and my mum was already doing jobs around the village, so it was an obvious choice, really. ‘The first year or so was OK. The Lodge House wasn’t such a bad place and we had plenty of room after Sheppard’s Farm. We all had our own rooms, which was nice – Mum and Dad at the end of the corridor. I used to boast about it at school, having such a grand address, although the other kids just teased me about it.’ ‘How well did you and your brother get on?’ ‘We had fights, like all little boys. But we were also very close. We used to chase each other all over the estate. We were pirates, treasure hunters, soldiers, spies. Tom used to make up all the games. He was younger than me but he was a lot smarter too. He used to tap out this code on the wall to me at night. He’d made it up himself. I didn’t understand a word of it but I’d hear him tapping it out when we were meant to be asleep.’ He half-smiled at the memory and just for a moment some of the tension went out of his face. ‘You had a dog, I believe. Its name was Bella.’ At once the frown was back. Fraser remembered the collar that they had found in the bedroom at the Lodge House but he wondered what relevance it could have. ‘Bella was Tom’s dog,’ Robert said. ‘My dad got it for him around the time we left Sheppard’s Farm.’ He glanced at Joy as if unsure whether to continue. ‘But after we moved it – it didn’t end well.’ ‘What happened?’ ‘We never really found out but I’ll tell you this. Sir Magnus didn’t want her on his land. That much was clear. He said that Bella chased the sheep. He said right away he wanted us to get rid of it but Tom really loved that dog so Dad said no. Anyway, one day it disappeared. We looked everywhere for it but it was just gone. And then, about two weeks later, we found it in Dingle Dell.’ He paused and looked down. ‘Someone had cut its throat. Tom always said it was Brent. But if it was, he was only acting on Sir Magnus’s orders.’ There was a long silence. When Pünd spoke again, his voice was low. ‘I must ask you now about another death,’ he said. ‘I am sure it will be painful to you. But you understand . . .’ ‘You’re talking about Tom.’ ‘Yes.’ Robert nodded. ‘When the war began, my dad went over to Boscombe Down where he worked on the planes and he’d often stay there the whole week so we only saw him now and then. Maybe if he’d been there, maybe if he’d looked out for us more it would never have happened. That’s what my mum always said. She blamed him for not being there.’ ‘Can you tell me what occurred?’ ‘I’ll never forget it, Mr Pound. Not as long as I live. At the time, I thought it was my fault. That was what a lot of people said and maybe it was what my dad believed. He never talked to me about it. He hardly ever spoke to me again and I haven’t see him now in years. Well, maybe he’s got a point. Tom was two years younger than me and I was meant to be looking after him. But I left him on his own and the next thing I know, they’re pulling him out of the lake and he’s drowned. He was only twelve years old.’ ‘It wasn’t your fault, Robert,’ Joy said. She put her arm around him, holding him tightly. ‘It was an accident. You weren’t even there . . .’ ‘I was the one who led him out into the garden. I left him on his own.’ He gazed at Pünd with eyes that were suddenly bright with tears. ‘It was the summer, a day like today. We were on a treasure hunt. We were always looking for bits and pieces – silver and gold – we knew how Sir Magnus had found a whole load of the stuff in Dingle Dell. Buried treasure! It was the sort of thing that every boy dreamed about. We’d read stories in the Magnet and the Hotspur and then we’d try to make them come real. Sir Magnus used to encourage us too. He’d actually set us challenges. So maybe he was partly to blame for what happened. I don’t know. It’s always about blame, isn’t it? These things happen and you have to find some way to make them make sense. ‘Tom drowned in the lake. To this day, we don’t know how it happened. He was fully dressed so it wasn’t as if he’d gone for a swim. Maybe he fell. Maybe he hit his head. Brent was the one who found him and got him out. I heard him shouting and I came running back across the lawn. I helped to get him on dry land and I tried to resuscitate him, the way they showed us at school. But there was nothing I could do. By the time Mum came down and found us, it was too late.’ ‘Neville Brent was already working there?’ Chubb asked. ‘I thought his father was still the groundsman.’ ‘His father was getting on a bit and Neville worked with him. In fact, he took over the job when his dad died.’ ‘It must have been a great shock for you, and very upsetting, to see your brother in this way,’ Pünd said. ‘I threw myself into the water. I grabbed hold of him. I was screaming and I was crying and even now I can’t bring myself to look at that damned place. I never wanted to stay in the Lodge House and if I had my way, I’d get out of Saxby-on-Avon altogether and now, what with everything that’s happened, maybe I will. Anyway, my dad came back that night. He shouted at my mother. He shouted at me. He never gave us any support. All we got from him was anger. And a year later, he left us. He said the marriage was over. We never saw him again.’ ‘How did your mother respond to what had happened?’ ‘She still stayed working for Sir Magnus. That’s the first thing. She would never have thought of leaving him no matter what – that’s how much she looked up to him. She’d walk past that lake every day on her way to work. She told me that she never looked, that she kept her head the other way – but I don’t know how she did it.’ ‘She was still caring for you?’ ‘She was trying to, Mr Pound. I suppose I might as well admit it although I never thanked her for it. Nothing was ever easy after Tom died. Things went wrong at school. The other children could be so bloody cruel. And she was afraid for me. She never let me out of the house! Sometimes I felt like a prisoner. She was always watching me. She was terrified something was going to happen to me and she would be left on her own. I think that was the real reason she didn’t want me to marry Joy, because I would leave her. She was suffocating me and that was how things went wrong between us. I might as well admit it. I ended up hating her.’ He lifted his glass and took a few sips of his beer. ‘You didn’t hate her,’ Joy said, quietly. ‘Things weren’t right between you, that’s all. You were both living in the shadow of what had happened and you didn’t realise how much it was hurting you.’ ‘You threatened her just before she died,’ Detective Inspector Chubb remarked. He had already finished his own beer. ‘I never did that, sir. I never did.’ ‘We will come to that all in good time,’ Pünd said. ‘You did, in the end, leave Pye Hall. Tell us first about your time in Bristol.’ ‘It didn’t last long.’ Now Robert sounded sullen. ‘Sir Magnus had arranged it for me. After my dad left, he sort of took over and tried to help as best he could. He wasn’t a bad man – not all bad, anyways. He got me an apprenticeship with Ford Motorcars but it all went wrong. I’ll admit I made a right mess of it. I wasn’t happy on my own in a strange city. I drank too much and I got into a fight at the local pub, the Blue Boar. It was all about nothing . . .’ He nodded at Chubb. ‘But you’re right. I did spend a night in jail and there might have been worse trouble for me if Sir Magnus hadn’t stepped in once again. He spoke to the police and they agreed to let me off with a caution but that was the end of it for me. I came back to Saxby and he set me up with the job I have now. I’ve always liked tinkering with cars. I suppose I got that from my dad, although it’s all he ever gave me.’ ‘What was it that made you argue with your mother in the week of her death?’ Pünd asked. ‘It was nothing. She wanted me to mend a broken light. That’s all. You really think I killed her because of that, Mr Pound? I swear to you, I didn’t go near her – and I couldn’t have. Joy told you. I was with her that evening! All evening and all night. We left the flat together, so if I’m lying, she’s lying and why would she do that?’ ‘You will forgive me, but that is not necessarily the case.’ Pünd turned to Joy Sanderling who seemed almost to brace herself for what was to come. ‘When you visited me in London, you told me you were together all the time. But are you certain that you were constantly in each other’s sight? Did you not take a shower or a bath? Did you not prepare the breakfast?’ Joy flushed. ‘I did both, Mr Pünd. Maybe there were ten or fifteen minutes when I didn’t see Robert . . .’ ‘And your motor scooter was parked outside the flat, Miss Sanderling. Although it was too far by foot, it would have taken Robert no more than two or three minutes to reach Pye Hall – by your own admission. It is not impossible that he could have driven there, killed the mother who had caused him so much torment and who stood so resolutely opposed to your marriage and returned, all in the time that you were in the kitchen or in the bath.’ He let the proposition hang in the air, then turned again to Robert. ‘And what of Sir Magnus?’ he continued. ‘Can you tell me where you were at half past eight on the evening of his death?’ Robert slumped, defeated. ‘I can’t help you there. I was in my flat, having supper on my own. Where else would I have been? But if you think I killed Sir Magnus, maybe you can tell me why. He never did anything to hurt me.’ ‘Your mother died at Pye Hall. He did not care enough even to attend her funeral!’ ‘How can you be so cruel?’ Joy exclaimed. ‘You’re spinning fantasies out of thin air, just to accuse Robert. He had no reason to kill either of them. As for the motor scooter, I never heard it leave. I’m sure I would have, even if I was in the bath.’ ‘Have you finished?’ Robert asked. He got to his feet, leaving the rest of his beer untouched. ‘I have no further questions,’ Pünd said. ‘Then if you don’t mind, I’m going home.’ ‘I’m coming with you,’ Joy said. Chubb glanced at Pünd as if to be sure that there was nothing more he wanted to ask. Pünd nodded very slightly and the two young people left together. ‘Do you really think he might have killed his mother?’ Fraser asked, as soon as they were gone. ‘I think it is unlikely, James. To hear him speak of his mother just now . . . he spoke with anger, with vexation and even perhaps with fear. But there was no hatred. Nor do I believe that he drove to Pye Hall on the motor scooter of his fiancée, even though it was interesting to suggest the idea. And why? Because of its colour. Do you not remember? It is something that I remarked to you, when Miss Sanderling first visited us. A man wishing to pass quickly through a village to commit a crime might borrow a motor scooter but not, I think, one that was bright pink. It would be too easily noticed. Could he have had a motive to kill Sir Magnus Pye? It is possible but I will admit that at the moment it is not making itself known.’ ‘All a bit of a waste of time then,’ Chubb concluded. He glanced at his empty glass. ‘Still, the Queen’s Arms serves a decent pint. And I have something for you, Herr Pünd.’ He reached down and produced Mary Blakiston’s diary. Briefly, he explained how it had been found. ‘It’s got something about pretty much everyone in the village,’ he said. ‘Talk about dishing out the dirt! She’s been collecting it by the bucket!’ ‘You don’t suppose she was using the information to blackmail people?’ Fraser suggested. ‘After all, that might give someone a very good reason to push her down the stairs.’ ‘You’ve got a good point there,’ Chubb said. ‘Some of the entries are a bit vague. She was careful about what she wrote. But if people found out how much she knew about them, she could have had a lot of enemies. Just like Sir Magnus and Dingle Dell. That’s the trouble with this case. Too many suspects! But the question is, was it the same person who killed them both?’ The detective inspector got to his feet. ‘You’ll let me have that back in due course, Herr Pünd,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to get home. Mrs Chubb is cooking her Fricassee de Poulet à l’Ancienne, God help me. I’ll see you gentlemen tomorrow.’ He left. Fraser and Pünd were alone. ‘The inspector is absolutely correct,’ Pünd said. ‘You mean there are too many suspects?’ ‘He asks whether the same person killed Sir Magnus Pye and his housekeeper. Everything rests on that. Clearly there is a connection between the two deaths but we are no closer to discovering what it is. And until then, we will remain in the dark. But perhaps the answer now lies in my hands.’ He looked at the first page and smiled. ‘Already the handwriting is known to me . . .’ ‘How?’ But Pünd didn’t answer. He had begun to read. 
 Five Silver 
 1 Detective Inspector Chubb very much liked the police station in Orange Grove, Bath. It was a perfect Georgian construction, solid and serious yet at the same time light and elegant enough to feel welcoming . . . at least, if you were on the right side of the law. He couldn’t enter it without a sense that his work mattered and that by the end of the day the world might be a slightly better place. His office was on the first floor, overlooking the main entrance. Sitting at his desk, he could look out of a window that stretched the full height of the room and this too gave him a sense of comfort. He was, after all, the eye of the law. It was only right that he should have a view that was so expansive. He had brought John Whitehead to this room. It was a deliberate move, to winkle the man out of the false shell that Saxby-on-Avon had provided and to remind him who was in charge. There were to be no lies told here. In fact there were four people facing him: Whitehead, his wife, Atticus Pünd and his young assistant, Fraser. He normally had a photograph of Mrs Chubb on the desk but he had slid it into a drawer just before they came in. He wasn’t quite sure why. ‘Your name is John Whitehead?’ he began. ‘That’s right.’ The antique dealer was sullen and downcast. He knew the game was up. He wasn’t trying to disguise it. ‘And you came to Saxby-on-Avon how long ago?’ ‘Three years.’ ‘We’ve done nothing wrong,’ Gemma Whitehead cut in. She was such a small woman, the seat looked much too big for her. She was cradling a handbag in her lap. Her feet barely touched the floor. ‘You know who he is and what he’s done. But he’s left that all behind him. He served his time and he was let out for good behaviour. We moved out of London, just to be together somewhere quiet – and all this business with Sir Magnus, that had nothing to do with us.’ ‘I think you should let me be the judge of that,’ Chubb replied. Mary Blakiston’s diary was lying on the desk in front of him and for a moment he was tempted to open it. But there was no need. He already knew the relevant contents well enough. ‘On 9 July a certain Arthur Reeve had his home broken into. Mr Reeve used to be the landlord at the Queen’s Arms and is now living in retirement with his wife. A window was broken and he was very distressed to find that his medal collection, including a rare George VI Greek medal, had been stolen from his front room. The entire collection was valued at a hundred pounds or more although of course it had great sentimental value too.’ Whitehead drew himself up but next to him, his wife had paled. She was hearing this for the first time. ‘Why are you telling me this?’ he demanded. ‘I don’t know anything about any medal.’ ‘The thief cut himself on the window,’ Chubb said. ‘One day later, on 10 July, you were treated by Dr Redwing,’ Pünd added. ‘You required stitches for an unpleasant cut on your hand.’ He smiled briefly to himself. In the landscape of this particular crime, two minor byways had just reached a crossroads. ‘I cut my hand in the kitchen,’ Johnny said. He glanced at his wife who did not look convinced. ‘I never went anywhere near Mr Reeve or his medals. It’s a pack of lies.’ ‘What can you tell us about the visit Mary Blakiston made to you on 11 July, four days before she died?’ ‘Who told you that? Have you been watching me?’ ‘Do you deny it?’ ‘What’s there to deny? Yes. She came into the shop. Lots of people come into the shop. She never said a thing about any medals.’ ‘Then maybe she talked to you about the money that you had paid to Brent.’ Pünd had spoken softly, reasonably but there was something in his tone that suggested he knew everything, that there was no point arguing. In fact, Fraser knew this wasn’t true. The groundsman had done his best to cover his tracks. He had said the five pounds was owed to him, perhaps for work he had done. Pünd was taking a stab in the dark. However, his words had an immediate effect. ‘All right,’ Whitehead admitted. ‘She did come in, nosing around, asking me questions – just like you. What are you trying to say? That I pushed her down the stairs to shut her up?’ ‘Johnny!’ Gemma Whitehead let out a cry of exasperation. ‘It’s all right, love.’ He reached out to her but she twisted away. ‘I’ve done nothing wrong. Brent came into the shop a couple of days after Mary’s funeral. He had something to sell. It was a silver belt buckle, Roman, a nice little piece. I’d say about fourth century BC. He wanted twenty quid for it. I gave him five.’ ‘When was this?’ ‘I can’t remember. Monday! It was the week after the funeral.’ ‘Did Brent say where he got it from?’ Chubb asked. ‘No.’ ‘Did you ask him?’ ‘Why should I have?’ ‘You must have been aware that there’d been a burglary at Pye Hall only a few days before. A collection of silver jewellery and coins was stolen from Sir Magnus. It was the same day as Mrs Blakiston’s funeral.’ ‘I did hear about that. Yes.’ ‘And you didn’t put two and two together?’ Whitehead drew a breath. ‘A lot of people come into my shop. I buy a lot of things. I bought a set of Worcester coffee mugs off Mrs Reeve and a brass carriage clock off the Finches – and that was just last week. Do you think I asked them where they got them? If I went round treating everyone in Saxby like criminals, I’d be out of business in a week.’ Chubb drew a breath. ‘But you are a criminal, Mr Whitehead. You did three years in prison for receiving stolen goods.’ ‘You promised me!’ Gemma muttered. ‘You promised you weren’t going back to all that.’ ‘Stay out of it, love. They’re just trying to wind me up.’ Whitehead glanced balefully at Chubb. ‘You’ve got it all wrong, Mr Chubb. Yes. I bought a silver belt buckle off Brent. Yes. I knew there’d been a break-in at Pye Hall. But did I put two and two together? No. I didn’t. Call me stupid if you like, but there’s no crime in stupidity – and for all I know he could have had it in his family for twenty years. If you’re saying it was stolen from Sir Magnus, then your argument is with Brent, not with me.’ ‘Where is the belt buckle now?’ ‘I sold it to a friend in London.’ ‘And for rather more than five pounds, I’ll be bound.’ ‘That’s my business, Mr Chubb. That’s what I do.’ Atticus Pünd had been listening to all this in silence. Now he adjusted his glasses and observed, quietly: ‘Mrs Blakiston visited you before the break-in at Pye Hall. It was the theft of the medal that interested her. Did she threaten you?’ ‘She was a nosy cow – asking questions about things that had nothing to do with her.’ ‘Did you purchase any other items from Brent?’ ‘No. That’s all he had. If you want to find the rest of Sir Magnus’s treasure trove, maybe you should be searching his place instead of wasting your time with me.’ Pünd and Chubb exchanged a glance. There was clearly nothing more to be gained from the interview. Even so, the detective inspector was determined to have the last word. ‘There have been a number of petty thefts in Saxby-on-Avon since you arrived,’ he said. ‘Windows broken, antiques and jewellery gone missing. I can promise you we’ll be looking into every one of them. And I’m going to want a record of everything you’ve bought and sold in the past three years too.’ ‘I don’t keep records.’ ‘The tax office may take a dim view of that. I hope you’re not planning on going anywhere in the next few weeks, Mr Whitehead. We’ll be in touch again.’ The antique dealer and his wife got up and left the room, showing themselves out. Ahead of them, there was an upper landing and then a staircase leading down. They continued in silence but the moment they were in the open air, Gemma burst out: ‘Oh Johnny! How could you lie to me?’ ‘I didn’t lie to you,’ Johnny replied, miserably. ‘After everything we talked about. All the plans we had!’ It was as if she hadn’t heard him. ‘Who did you see when you were in London? This silver belt buckle of yours – who did you sell it to?’ ‘I told you.’ ‘You mean Derek and Colin. Had you told them about Mary? That she was on to you?’ ‘What are you talking about?’ ‘You know what I mean. In the old days, when you were part of the gang, if people stepped out of line, things happened. We never mentioned it and I know you weren’t part of it, but we both know what I’m talking about. People disappeared.’ ‘What? You think I took out a contract on Mary Blakiston to get her off my back?’ ‘Well, did you?’ Johnny Whitehead didn’t answer. They walked to their car in silence. 2 A search of Brent’s house had produced nothing that related either to the murder or the stolen treasure trove. Brent lived on his own in a row of terraced houses in Daphne Road, a simple two-up, two-down that shared a porch with its neighbour, the two front doors meeting at an angle. From the outside, the building had a certain chocolate-box charm. The roof was thatched, the wisteria and the flower beds well cared for. The interior told another story. Everything had a sense of neglect, from the unwashed dishes in the sink to the unmade bed and the clothes thrown carelessly on the floor. A certain smell lingered in the air, one that Chubb had come upon many times before and which always made him frown. It was the smell of a man living alone. There was nothing in the house that was new or luxurious and everything had a make-do-and-mend quality, years after those words had gone out of fashion. Plates were chipped, chairs held together by string. Brent’s parents had once lived here and he had done nothing to the place since they had died. He even slept in the same single bed with the same blanket and eiderdown that must have been his as a boy. There were comics on the bedroom floor, too. And Scout magazines. It was as if Brent had never fully grown up, and if he had stolen the entire hoard of Sir Magnus’s Roman silver, he clearly hadn’t sold it yet. He had just a hundred pounds in his bank account. There was nothing hidden in the house: not under the floorboards, in the attic, up the chimney. The police had done a thorough search. ‘I didn’t take it. I didn’t do it. It wasn’t me.’ Brent had been brought home in a police car from Pye Hall and was sitting with a look of shock on his face, surrounded by policemen who had invaded the shabby sanctity of his home. Atticus Pünd and James Fraser were among them. ‘Then how did you come upon the silver belt buckle that you sold to John Whitehead?’ Chubb asked. ‘I found it!’ Brent continued hurriedly as the detective inspector’s eyes glazed in disbelief. ‘It’s the truth. It was the day after the funeral. A Sunday. I don’t work the weekend, not as a rule. But Sir Magnus and Lady Pye, they’d only just got back from their holiday and I thought they might need me. So I went down the hall just to show willing. And I was in the garden when I saw it, shining, on the lawn. I didn’t have any idea what it was but it looked old and there was a picture of a man carved into it, standing there with no clothes.’ He smirked briefly as if sharing a rude joke. ‘I popped it into my pocket and then on the Monday I took it into Mr Whitehead and he gave me a fiver for it. It was twice what I was expecting.’ Yes. And half what it was worth, Chubb thought. ‘There were police called into Pye Hall that day,’ he said. ‘Sir Magnus reported a burglary. What do you have to say about that?’ ‘I left before lunchtime. I didn’t see any police.’ ‘But you must have heard about the break-in.’ ‘I did. But by then it was too late. I’d already sold what I’d found to Mr Whitehead and maybe he’d sold it too. I looked in the shop window and it wasn’t there.’ Brent shrugged. ‘I’d done nothing wrong.’ Everything about Brent’s story was questionable. But even Chubb would have been forced to admit that his crime was a very minor one. If, that is, he was telling the truth. ‘Where did you find the buckle?’ he asked. ‘It was in the grass. In front of the house.’ Chubb glanced at Pünd, as if asking for guidance. ‘It would be interesting, I think, to see the exact spot,’ Pünd said. Chubb agreed and the four of them left together, Brent complaining all the while as he was carried back to Pye Hall. Once again they drove past the Lodge House with its two stone griffins almost seeming to whisper to each other and for a moment Fraser was reminded of the game that the two boys, Robert and Tom Blakiston, had played together at night, the code words that they had rapped out to each other when they were in bed. It suddenly struck him that the game had a significance he had overlooked but before he could mention it to Pünd, they had arrived. Brent called to them to stop and they pulled in about halfway up the drive, opposite the lake. ‘It was over here!’ He led them across the lawn. In front of them the lake stretched out, dank and oily with the woodland behind. Perhaps it was the story that Robert had told them earlier but there was something indisputably evil about it. The brighter the sun, the blacker the water appeared. They stopped about fifteen or twenty feet from the edge, Brent pointing down as if he remembered the exact spot. ‘It was here.’ ‘Just lying here?’ Chubb sounded unconvinced. ‘The sun was glinting off it. That’s how I saw it.’ Chubb considered the possibilities. ‘Well, I suppose if someone had been carrying a whole pile of the stuff, if they were on foot and in a hurry, they might have dropped a piece without noticing it.’ ‘It is possible.’ Pünd was already working out the angles. He looked back at the driveway, the Lodge House, the front door. ‘And yet it is strange, Detective Inspector. Why would the burglar come this way? He broke into the house through the back . . . ?’ ‘That’s right.’ ‘Then to reach the gate, it would have been faster to continue along the other side of the driveway.’ ‘Unless they were heading for Dingle Dell . . .’ The inspector examined the line of trees with the vicarage somewhere on the other side of the lake. ‘No chance of being seen if they go out through the wood.’ ‘That is true,’ Pünd agreed. ‘And yet, you will forgive me, Detective Inspector. You are a thief. You are carrying a great many pieces of silver jewellery and coins. Would you wish to make your way through thick woodland in the middle of the night?’ His eyes settled on the black surface. ‘The lake holds many mysteries,’ he said. ‘I believe it has further stories to tell and wonder if it would be possible for you to arrange an inspection by police divers. I have a suspicion, an idea . . .’ He shook his head as if dismissing the thought. ‘Divers?’ Chubb shook his head. ‘That’s going to cost a pretty penny or two. What is it exactly you’re hoping to find?’ ‘The true reason why Pye Hall was burgled on the same evening as Mary Blakiston’s funeral.’ Chubb nodded. ‘I’ll see to it.’ ‘Do you want anything else?’ Brent asked. ‘I will keep you only for a few moments more, Mr Brent. I would like you to show us the door that was broken when the burglary took place.’ ‘Yes, sir.’ Brent was relieved that the investigation seemed to be moving away from him. ‘We can cut across through the rose garden.’ ‘There is one other question I wish to put to you,’ Pünd said. As they walked, Fraser noticed that the detective was leaning heavily on his stick. ‘I understand that Sir Magnus had made it known to you that he wished to dispense with your employment.’ Brent started as if stung. ‘Who told you that?’ ‘Is it true?’ ‘Yes.’ The groundsman was scowling now. His whole body seemed to have become stooped, his curly hair flopping over his forehead. ‘Why did you not mention this to me when we met?’ ‘You never asked me.’ Pünd nodded. That was fair enough. ‘Why did he ask you to leave?’ ‘I don’t know. But he was always on at me. Mrs Blakiston used to complain about me. Them two! They were like – like Bob and Gladys Grove.’ ‘It’s a television programme,’ Fraser said, overhearing. ‘The Grove Family.’ This was exactly the sort of thing that Fraser would know. And which Pünd wouldn’t. ‘When did he tell you?’ ‘I don’t remember.’ ‘What was the reason?’ ‘There was no reason. No good reason. I’ve been coming here ever since I was a boy. My father was here before me. And he came out here and just said that was the end of it.’ They had come to the rose garden. It was surrounded by a wall with an entrance that was an arbour shaped out of dark green leaves. Beyond, there was crazy paving, a statue of a cherub, all the different roses and a bench. And on the bench, Frances Pye and Jack Dartford were sitting, holding hands, engaged in a passionate kiss. 3 In fact, nobody was really very surprised. It had been obvious to Pünd – and even to Fraser – that Lady Pye and her ex-tennis partner had been conducting an affair. What else could they possibly have been doing in London on the day of the murder? Chubb had known it too and even the guilty parties only seemed mildly put out that they had been discovered in flagrante. It was going to happen sooner or later so why not now? They were still on the bench, sitting slightly apart, facing the three men who stood over them. A smirking Brent had been sent on his way. ‘I think you should explain yourself, Lady Pye,’ Chubb said. ‘There’s nothing really to explain,’ she replied, coolly. ‘Jack and I have been seeing each other for almost two years. That day in London . . . I was with him the whole time. But there was no shopping, no art galleries. After lunch, we had a room at the Dorchester. Jack stayed with me until about half past five. I left at six. You can ask them if you don’t believe me.’ ‘You lied to me, Lady Pye.’ ‘That was wrong of me, Detective Inspector, and I’m sorry. But the fact is, it doesn’t make any real difference, does it? The rest of my story was true. Coming home on the train. Arriving at half past eight. Seeing the green car. Those are the salient points.’ ‘Your husband is dead. You were deceiving him. I’d say those are also salient points, Lady Pye.’ ‘It wasn’t like that,’ Jack Dartford cut in. ‘She wasn’t deceiving him. That’s not how I saw it anyway. You have no idea what Magnus was like. The man was a brute. The way he treated her, his infantile rages, it was disgusting. And she gave up her career for him!’ ‘What career was that?’ Pünd asked. ‘In the theatre! Frances was a brilliant actress. I saw her on the stage long before I met her.’ ‘That’s enough, Jack,’ Frances cut in. ‘Is that where your husband met you? In the theatre?’ Chubb asked. ‘He sent flowers to my dressing room. He’d seen me as Lady Macbeth.’ Even Chubb knew that one: a play in which a powerful woman persuades a man to commit murder. ‘Were you ever happy together?’ he asked. She shook her head. ‘I knew very quickly that I’d made a mistake but I was younger then and I suppose I was too proud to admit it. The trouble with Magnus was that it wasn’t enough for him to marry me. He had to own me. He made that clear very quickly. It was as if I were part of the package – the house, the grounds, the lake, the woods and the wife. He was very old-fashioned, the way he saw the world.’ ‘Was he ever violent to you?’ ‘He never actually struck me, Detective Inspector, but violence can take many forms. He was loud. He could be threatening. And he had a way of throwing himself around that often made me afraid.’ ‘Tell them about the sword!’ Dartford insisted. ‘Oh Jack!’ ‘What happened with the sword, Lady Pye?’ Chubb asked. ‘It was just something that happened a couple of days before I went up to meet Jack. You must understand that, underneath it all, Magnus was a great big child. If you ask me, this whole business with Dingle Dell was more about upsetting people than actually making money. He had temper tantrums. If he didn’t get what he wanted, he could become very nasty indeed.’ She sighed. ‘He had a good idea that I was seeing someone – all those trips to London. And the two of us were sleeping apart, of course. He didn’t want me any more, not in the way a husband wants his wife, but it hurt his pride that I might have actually found somebody else. ‘We had a row that morning. I can’t even remember what started it. But then he started screaming at me – how I was his, how he would never let me go. I’d heard it all before. Only this time, he was crazier than ever. You noticed that there was a painting missing in the great hall. It was a portrait of me, which he’d commissioned as a present for my fortieth birthday. As a matter of fact it was done by Arthur Redwing.’ She turned to Pünd. ‘Have you met him?’ ‘He is married to the doctor?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘I have seen another work of his but we have not yet met.’ ‘Well, I think he’s very talented. And I loved the painting he did of me. He actually managed to capture a moment of real happiness, standing in the garden near the lake – and that was rare enough, I can tell you. It was a gorgeous summer that year. Arthur did the painting over four or five sessions and although Magnus hardly paid him anything for it – that was typical of him to be so mean – I think it was rather wonderful. We talked about putting it in for the summer exhibition, you know, at the Royal Academy. But Magnus wouldn’t put me on show. That would mean sharing me! So it stayed on the wall in the main hall. ‘And then we had that argument. I’ll admit that I can be quite nasty when I want to be and I certainly let him have a few home truths. Magnus went very red, as if he was going to burst. He always did have problems with his blood pressure. He drank too much and he quite easily worked himself up into these rages. I told him I was going up to London. He refused to give me permission. I laughed at him and told him I didn’t need his permission or anyone else’s. Suddenly he went over to that stupid suit of armour and with a great yell pulled out the sword—’ ‘The same sword with which he would later be killed?’ ‘Yes, Mr Pünd. He came over to me, dragging it behind him and for a moment I thought he was going to attack me with it. But instead he suddenly turned it on the painting and stabbed it again and again in front of my eyes. He knew it would hurt me, losing it. At the same time, he was telling me I was his possession and that he could do the same to me at any time.’ ‘What happened next, Lady Pye?’ ‘I just went on laughing. Is that the best you can do? I remember shouting those words at him. I think I was a little hysterical. Then I went up to my room and slammed the door.’ ‘And the painting?’ ‘I was sad about that. It couldn’t be mended. Or maybe it could, but it would have been too expensive. Magnus gave it to Brent to put on the bonfire.’ She fell silent. ‘I’m glad he’s dead,’ Jack Dartford muttered, suddenly. ‘He was a total bastard. He was never kind to anyone and he made life a misery for Frances. I’d have done it myself, if I’d had the nerve. But he’s gone now and we can start again.’ He reached out and took her hand. ‘No more hiding. No more lying. We can finally have the life we deserve.’ Pünd nodded at Chubb and the three of them moved away from the rose garden and back across the lawn. There was no sign of Brent. Jack Dartford and Lady Pye had remained where they were. ‘I wonder where he was on the night of the murder,’ Fraser said. ‘You are referring to Mr Dartford?’ ‘We only have his word for it that he stayed in London. He left the hotel at half past five. That would have given him plenty of time to catch the train ahead of Lady Pye. It’s just a thought . . .’ ‘You think him capable of murder?’ ‘I think he’s a chancer. You can tell just by looking at him. He comes across an attractive woman who’s being badly treated by her husband – and it seems to me that if you’re going to cut somebody’s head off, there has to be a better reason than saving a local wood, and those two had a better reason than anyone.’ ‘There is some truth in what you say,’ Pünd agreed. Their car was parked a short distance away from the front of the house and they moved towards it slowly. Chubb too had noticed that Pünd was resting more heavily on his walking stick. He had once thought that the detective only carried it as a fashion accessory. Today he clearly needed it. ‘There’s something I forgot to tell you, Mr Pünd,’ he muttered. It was the first time the two of them had been alone since the interview with Robert Blakiston, the evening before. ‘I will be interested to hear anything you have to say, Detective Inspector.’ ‘You remember that scrap of paper we found in the fireplace in Sir Magnus’s study? You thought there might be part of a fingerprint on it.’ ‘I remember it very well.’ ‘There was a fingerprint. The bad news is there wasn’t enough of it left to be of any use to us. It’s certainly untraceable and we probably won’t even be able to match it to any of our known suspects.’ ‘That is a pity.’ ‘There is something though. It turns out that the paper itself was stained with blood. The same blood type as Sir Magnus for what it’s worth, although we can’t be 100 per cent certain that it was his.’ ‘That is of great interest.’ ‘That’s a great headache, if you ask me. How does it all add up? We’ve got a handwritten envelope and a typed-up death threat. This scrap of paper clearly didn’t belong to either of them and we have no way of knowing how long it had actually been in the grate. The blood would suggest it was thrown in the fire after the murder.’ ‘But where did it come from in the first place?’ ‘Exactly. Anyway, where do you want to go next?’ ‘I was hoping you might tell me, Detective Inspector.’ ‘As a matter of fact, I was about to make a suggestion. I had a very interesting phone call from Dr Redwing before I left the office last night. Did you know her father’s just died? Natural causes, which makes a pleasant change. Well, apparently he had a bit of a story to tell and I rather think we need to talk to Clarissa Pye.’ 4 Clarissa Pye came into the living room carrying a tray with three cups of tea and some biscuits, neatly arranged on a plate as if somehow the symmetry would make them more desirable. The room seemed terribly small with so many people in it. Atticus Pünd and his assistant were next to each other on the faux-leather sofa, their knees almost touching. The round-faced detective inspector from Bath had taken the armchair opposite. She could feel the walls hemming them in. But ever since Dr Redwing had told her the news, the house had not been the same. It was not her house. This was not her life. It was as if she had been swapped for someone else in one of those Victorian novels she had always enjoyed. ‘I suppose it was understandable that Dr Redwing should tell you what her father said,’ she began. Her voice was a little prim. ‘Although it might have been considerate to inform me that she was going to make the call.’ ‘I’m sure she believed she was acting for the best, Miss Pye,’ Chubb said. ‘Well, I suppose it was only right that the police were informed. After all, whatever you may think of Dr Rennard, he committed a crime.’ She set the tray down. ‘He lied on the birth certificate. He delivered both of us, but I was the first. He should really be prosecuted.’ ‘He’s gone somewhere far beyond the reach of the law.’ ‘The reach of human law, certainly.’ ‘You have had very little time to get used to all this,’ Pünd remarked, gently. ‘Yes. I only heard yesterday.’ ‘I imagine it must have come as quite a shock to you.’ ‘A shock? I’m not quite sure that’s the word I would use, Mr Pünd. It’s more like an earthquake. I remember Edgar Rennard very well. He was very much liked in the village and he often came up to the house when Magnus and I were growing up. He never struck me as an evil man and yet it really is a monstrous thing to have done. His lie took away my entire life. And Magnus! I wonder if he knew about it? He was always lording it over me, as if there was some terrific joke and I was the only one who wasn’t in the know. He threw me out of my own home, you know. I had to support myself in London and then in America. And all the time there was no need for it.’ She sighed. ‘I have been very much cheated.’ ‘What will you do?’ ‘I will claim what is mine. Why not? I have a right to it.’ Detective Inspector Chubb looked uncomfortable. ‘That may not be as easy as you think, Miss Pye,’ he said. ‘From what I understand, Dr Redwing was alone in the room with her father when he told her what he’d done. There were no witnesses to the conversation. I suppose there’s always a chance you may find something in his papers. He may have written something down. But right now it’ll just be your word.’ ‘He may have told someone else.’ ‘He almost certainly told Sir Magnus,’ Pünd cut in. He turned to the detective inspector. ‘You remember the notepad that we found on his desk, the day after he was killed. Ashton H. Mw. A girl. Now it is all clear. The call was received from Ashton House. Edgar Rennard knew that he was dying and, out of a sense of guilt, telephoned Sir Magnus to explain that, when he delivered the twins, the first-born had in fact been a girl. The notepad also contained a number of crossings-out. Sir Magnus was clearly perturbed by what he heard.’ ‘Well, that could explain something,’ Clarissa said, and there was real anger in her voice. ‘He came to this very house, sat where you’re sitting on the very day of his death. And he offered me a job at Pye Hall! He wanted me to move into the Lodge House and take over from Mary Blakiston. Can you imagine it! Maybe he was afraid that the truth was about to come to light. Maybe he actually wanted to contain me. If I’d moved in, I might have been the one with my head lopped off my shoulders.’ ‘I wish you luck, Miss Pye,’ Chubb said. ‘It’s clearly a great injustice that’s been done and if you can find any other witnesses that will certainly help your case. But if it doesn’t offend you, I’d offer you this advice. You might be better off just accepting things as they are. You have a nice enough house here. You’re well known and respected in the village. It’s none of my business, but sometimes you can spend so much time chasing something that you lose everything else while you’re about it.’ Clarissa Pye looked puzzled. ‘Thank you for your advice, Detective Inspector Chubb. However, I had assumed that the reason for this visit was that you had come to assist me. Dr Rennard committed a crime and we only have his daughter’s word that he wasn’t actually paid for his trouble. At any event, I assume it is a matter you would wish to investigate.’ ‘I must be honest. That hadn’t really occurred to me.’ Chubb was suddenly uncomfortable, looking to Pünd for help. ‘You must remember that there have been two unexplained deaths in this village, Miss Pye,’ Pünd said. ‘I can understand your wish that the police should investigate the events that took place at the time of your birth and yet we are here on another matter. I would not wish to distress you any further in what is clearly a difficult time for you but I am afraid that I must ask you a question in connection with the two deaths – of Sir Magnus and of Mary Blakiston. It concerns a vial of liquid that went missing from Dr Redwing’s surgery quite recently. The vial contained a poison, physostigmine. Would you know anything about that?’ Clarissa Pye’s face went through a range of emotions, each one drawn so distinctly that they could have hung together like a series of portraits. First she was shocked. The question had been so unexpected – how could they possibly have known? Then there was fear. Were there to be consequences? Then came indignation, perhaps manufactured. She was outraged that they should suspect her of such a thing! And finally, all within a split second, came acceptance and resignation. Too much had happened already. There was no point denying it. ‘Yes. I took it,’ she said. ‘Why?’ ‘How did you know it was me? If you don’t mind my asking . . .’ ‘Mrs Blakiston saw you leaving the surgery.’ Clarissa nodded. ‘Yes. I saw her watching me. Mary had this extraordinary ability to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I don’t know how she did it.’ She paused. ‘Who else knows?’ ‘She kept a diary which Detective Inspector Chubb has in his possession. As far as we are aware, she told nobody else.’ That made things easier. ‘I took it on an impulse,’ she said. ‘I happened to find myself in the surgery on my own and I saw the physostigmine on the shelf. I knew exactly what it was. I’d done some medical training before I went to America.’ ‘What did you want it for?’ ‘I’m ashamed to tell you, Mr Pünd. I know it was wrong of me and I may have been just a little bit out of my mind. But in the light of what we’ve just been saying, you of all people will understand that very little in my life has worked out the way I wanted. It’s not just Magnus and the house. I never married. I never had any real love, not even when I was young. Oh yes, I have the church and I have the village, but there have been times when I’ve found myself looking in the mirror and I’ve wondered – what’s the point? What am I doing here? Why should I even want to go on? ‘The Bible is very clear about suicide. It’s the moral equivalent of murder. “God is the giver of life. He gives and He takes away.” That’s from the book of Job. We have no right to take matters into our own hands.’ She stopped and suddenly there was a hardness in her eyes. ‘But there have been times when I have been very much in the shadows, when I have looked into the valley of death and wished – and wished I could enter. How do you think it’s been for me, watching Magnus and Frances and Freddy? I used to live in that house! All that wealth and comfort was once mine! Forget the fact that it was actually stolen from me, I should never have come back to Saxby-on-Avon! It was mad of me to humiliate myself by returning to the emperor’s table. So the answer is – yes. I thought about killing myself. I took the physostigmine because I knew it would do the job quickly and painlessly.’ ‘Where is it now?’ ‘Upstairs. In the bathroom.’ ‘I’m afraid I must ask you to give it to me.’ ‘Well, I certainly don’t need it now, Mr Pünd.’ She spoke the words lightly, almost with a glint in her eye. ‘Are you going to prosecute me for theft?’ ‘There won’t be any need for that, Miss Pye,’ Chubb said. ‘We’ll just make sure it gets back to Dr Redwing.’ They left a few minutes later and Clarissa Pye closed the front door, glad to be alone. She stood quite still, her breasts rising and falling, thinking over what had just been said. The business with the poison didn’t matter. That wasn’t important now. But it was strange that such a tiny theft should have brought them here when so much had been stolen from her. Would she be able to prove that Pye Hall was hers? Suppose the detective inspector was right? All she had were the words of a sick and dying man with no witnesses present in the room, no proof that he was actually sane when he spoke them. A legal case resting on twelve minutes that had ticked by more than fifty years ago. Where could she possibly begin? And did she actually want to? It was very strange, but Clarissa suddenly felt as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. The fact that Pünd had taken the poison with him was certainly part of it. The physostigmine had been preying on her conscience for all manner of reasons and she knew that she had regretted taking it from the very start. But it was more than that. She remembered what Chubb had said. You might be better off just accepting things as they are. You have a nice enough house here. You’re well known and respected in the village. She was respected. It was true. She was still a popular teacher at the village school. She always made the most profitable stall at the village fête. Everyone liked her flower displays at Sunday service: in fact, Robin Osborne had often said that he didn’t know how he would manage without her. Could it be, perhaps, that now that she knew the truth, Pye Hall no longer had the power to intimidate her? It was hers. It always had been. And at the end of the day, it hadn’t been Magnus who had stolen it from her. It hadn’t been fate. It had been her own father, a man she had always remembered with fondness but who turned out to be antediluvian – a monster! Did she really want to fight him, to bring him back into her life when he had been so long below the ground? No. She could rise above it. She might visit Frances and Freddy at Pye Hall and this time she would be the one in the know. The joke would be on them. With something close to a smile, she went into the kitchen. There was a tinned salmon rissole and some stewed fruit in the fridge. They would do very nicely for lunch. 5 ‘I thought she took it extremely well,’ Emilia Redwing said. ‘We weren’t even sure at first if we should tell her. But now I’m glad we did.’ Pünd nodded. He and Fraser had come here alone, Detective Inspector Chubb having returned to Pye Hall to meet the two police divers who had been summoned from Bristol, the nearest metropolis to have such a resource. They would be examining the lake that very day although Pünd already had a good idea what they would find. He was sitting in the doctor’s private office. Arthur Redwing was also present. He looked uncomfortable, as if he would rather be anywhere else. ‘Yes. Miss Pye is certainly a formidable person,’ Pünd agreed. ‘So how is your investigation going?’ Arthur Redwing asked. It was the first time Pünd had met Dr Redwing’s husband, the man who had painted the portrait of Frances Pye – as well as the one of his own son. That portrait was hanging on the wall just behind him and Pünd examined it now. The boy was very handsome. He had the dark good looks that his father must once have possessed, the slightly crumpled, very English features. And yet the two of them were at odds. There had been some difficulty between them. Pünd had always been interested in the unique relationship that exists between the portraitist and his subject, how there can never be secrets. It was true here. The way the boy had been painted, his pose, the nonchalance of his shoulders resting against the wall, one knee bent, hands in his pockets . . . all this suggested intimacy, even love. But Arthur Redwing had also captured something dark and suspicious in the boy’s eyes. He wanted to be away. ‘It is your son,’ he said. ‘Yes,’ Arthur replied. ‘Sebastian. He’s in London.’ The three words somehow contained a lifetime of disappointment. ‘Arthur painted that when Sebastian was fifteen,’ Emilia Redwing added. ‘It’s terribly good,’ Fraser said. When it came to art, he was the expert, not Pünd, and he was glad to have his moment in the sun. ‘Do you exhibit?’ ‘I’d like to . . .’ Arthur mumbled. ‘You were about to tell us about your investigation,’ Emilia Redwing cut in. ‘Yes, indeed, Dr Redwing.’ Pünd smiled. ‘It is very nearly complete. I do not expect to spend more than two more nights in Saxby-on-Avon.’ Fraser’s ears pricked up when he heard this. He’d had no idea that Pünd was so close and wondered who had said what, and when, to provide the significant breakthrough. He was keen to hear the solution to the crime – and he wouldn’t be sorry to get back to the comfort of Tanner Court either. ‘Do you know who killed Sir Magnus?’ ‘I have, you might say, a theory. There are just two pieces of the jigsaw that are missing and which, once found, will confirm what I believe.’ ‘And what are those, if you don’t mind us asking?’ Arthur Redwing had suddenly become very animated. ‘I do not mind you asking at all, Mr Redwing. The first is taking place almost as we speak. With the supervision of Detective Inspector Chubb, two police frogmen are searching the lake at Pye Hall.’ ‘What do you expect them to find? Another body?’ ‘I hope nothing as sinister as that.’ It was evident he was not going to expand any further. ‘What about the other piece of the jigsaw?’ Dr Redwing asked. ‘There is a person to whom I wish to speak. He may not know it, but I believe that he holds the key to everything that has taken place here in Saxby-on-Avon.’ ‘And who is that?’ ‘I am referring to Matthew Blakiston. He was the husband of Mary Blakiston and of course the father of the two boys, Robert and Tom.’ ‘Are you looking for him now?’ ‘I have asked Detective Inspector Chubb to make enquiries.’ ‘But you know he was here!’ Dr Redwing seemed almost amused. ‘I saw him myself, in the village. He came to his wife’s funeral.’ ‘Robert Blakiston did not tell me that.’ ‘He may not have seen him. I didn’t recognise him at first. He was wearing a hat that he kept very low over his face. He didn’t talk to anyone and he stayed right at the back. He also left before the end.’ ‘Did you tell anyone this?’ ‘Well, no.’ Dr Redwing seemed surprised by the question. ‘It seemed perfectly natural for him to be there. He and Mary Blakiston had been married for a long time and it wasn’t hatred that drove them apart. It was grief. They lost a child. I was a little sorry that he chose not to speak to Robert. And he could have met Joy while he was there. It’s a great shame, really. Mary’s death could so easily have brought them all together.’ ‘He might have been the one who killed her!’ Arthur Redwing exclaimed. He turned to Pünd. ‘Is that why you want to see him? Is he a suspect?’ ‘That is impossible to say until I have spoken to him,’ Pünd replied, diplomatically. ‘So far Detective Inspector Chubb has been unable to locate him.’ ‘He’s in Cardiff,’ Dr Redwing said. For once, Pünd was taken by surprise. ‘I don’t have his address but I can easily help you find him. I had a letter, a few months ago, from a GP in Cardiff. It was perfectly routine. He wanted some notes about an old injury that one of his patients had incurred. It was Matthew Blakiston. I sent him what he wanted and forgot all about it.’ ‘You remember the GP’s name?’ ‘Of course. It’s on file. I’ll get it for you.’ But before she could move, a woman suddenly appeared, letting herself into the surgery through the main door. The door of Dr Redwing’s office was open and they all saw her; a woman in her forties, plain, round-faced. Her name was Diana Weaver and she had come to the surgery to clean it as she did every day. Pünd had known exactly when she would be arriving. It was she whom he had actually come to see. For her part, she was surprised to find anyone here so late in the day. ‘Oh – I’m sorry, Dr Redwing!’ she called out. ‘Would you like me to come back tomorrow?’ ‘No, please come in, Mrs Weaver.’ The woman came into the private office. Atticus Pünd stood up, offering her his seat, and she sat down, looking around her nervously. ‘Mrs Weaver,’ he began. ‘Allow me to introduce myself—’ ‘I know who you are,’ she cut in. ‘Then you will know why it is I wish to speak to you.’ He paused. He had no wish to upset this woman and yet it had to be done. ‘On the day of his death, Sir Magnus Pye received a letter relating to the new houses that he proposed to build. This would have caused the destruction of Dingle Dell. I wonder if you can tell me – did you write that letter?’ She said nothing, so he went on. ‘I have discovered that the letter was typed on the machine that sits in this surgery and that only three people might have had access to it: Joy Sanderling, Dr Redwing and yourself.’ He smiled. ‘I should add that you have nothing to worry about. It is not a crime to send a letter of protest, even if the language is a little intemperate. Nor do I suspect for a single minute that you followed through with the threats that were made in that letter. I simply need to know how it got there and so I ask you again. Did you write it?’ Mrs Weaver nodded. There were tears beading at her eyes. ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘Thank you. I can understand that you were upset, quite justifiably, about the loss of the woodland.’ ‘We just hated seeing the village being knocked about for no good reason. I was talking about it with my husband and with my father-in-law. They’ve been in Saxby all their lives. We all have. And it’s a very special place. We don’t need new houses here. There’s no call for them. And the Dell! You start there, where does it end? You look at Tawbury and Market Basing. Roads and traffic lights and the new supermarkets – they’ve been hollowed out and now people just drive through them and—’ She stopped herself. ‘I’m sorry, Dr Redwing,’ she said. ‘I should have asked your permission. I acted in the heat of the moment.’ ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Emilia Redwing said. ‘I really don’t mind. In fact, I agree with you.’ ‘When did you deliver the letter?’ Pünd asked. ‘It was Thursday afternoon. I just walked up to the door and popped it through.’ Mrs Weaver lowered her head. ‘The next day, when I heard what had happened . . . Sir Magnus murdered . . . I didn’t know what to think. I wished then that I hadn’t sent it. It wasn’t like me to be so impulsive. I promise you, sir. I really didn’t mean anything ill by it.’ ‘Again, the letter has no relevance to what occurred,’ Pünd assured her. ‘But there is something I must ask you, and you must think very carefully before you answer. It concerns the envelope in which the letter was placed and, in particular, the address . . .’ ‘Yes, sir?’ But Pünd did not speak. Something very strange had happened. He had been standing in the middle of the room, partly resting on his walking stick, but as he had continued the interview with Mrs Weaver, it had been noticeable that he was relying on it more and more. Now, very slowly, he was toppling to one side. Fraser noticed it first and leapt up to catch him before he hit the floor. He was just in time. As he reached him, the detective’s legs buckled and his whole body slid away. Dr Redwing was already out of her seat. Mrs Weaver was staring in alarm. Atticus Pünd’s eyes were closed. His face was white. He didn’t seem to be breathing at all. 6 Dr Redwing was with him when he woke up. Pünd was lying on the raised bed that the doctor used to examine patients. He had been unconscious for less than five minutes. She was standing over him, a stethoscope around her neck. She looked relieved to see that he had awoken. ‘Don’t move,’ she said. ‘You were taken ill . . .’ ‘You have examined me?’ Pünd asked. ‘I checked your heart and your pulse. It may just have been exhaustion.’ ‘It was not exhaustion.’ There was a shooting pain in his temple but he ignored it. ‘You do not need to concern yourself, Dr Redwing. I have a condition that was explained to me by my doctor in London. He also gave me medication. If I might rest here a few more minutes, I would be grateful to you. But there is nothing more you can do for me.’ ‘Of course you can stay here,’ Dr Redwing said. She was still looking into Pünd’s eyes. ‘Is it inoperable?’ she asked. ‘You see what others do not. In the world of medicine, it is you who are the detective.’ Pünd smiled a little sadly. ‘I am told that nothing can be done.’ ‘Have you had a second opinion?’ ‘I do not need one. I know that there is not very much time left to me. I can feel it.’ ‘I am so sorry to hear it, Mr Pünd.’ She thought for a moment. ‘Your colleague did not seem to be aware of the problem.’ ‘I have not informed Fraser and I would prefer it if it remained that way.’ ‘You need have no concern. I asked him to leave. Mrs Weaver and my husband went with him. I told him I would walk over to the Queen’s Arms with you as soon as you were feeling well enough.’ ‘I am feeling a little better already.’ With Dr Redwing’s help, Pünd got himself into a sitting position and fumbled for the pills that he carried in his jacket pocket. Dr Redwing went to get a glass of water. She had noted the name – Dilaudid – on the packet. ‘That’s a hydromorphone,’ she said. ‘It’s a good choice. Very fast-acting. You have to be careful, though. It can make you tired and you may experience mood changes too.’ ‘I am tired,’ Pünd agreed. ‘But I have found my mood to be remarkably unchanged. In fact, I will be honest with you, I am quite cheerful.’ ‘Perhaps it’s your investigation. It’s probably been very helpful to have something to concentrate on. And you were saying to my husband that it’s gone well.’ ‘That is true.’ ‘And when it’s over? What then?’ ‘When it is over, Dr Redwing, I will have nothing left to do.’ Pünd got unsteadily to his feet and reached for his walking stick. ‘I would like to return to my room now, if you would be so kind.’ They left together. 7 On the other side of the village, the police divers were emerging from the lake. Raymond Chubb was standing on the grassy shore, watching as they dumped what they had found in front of him. He was wondering how Pünd had known it would be there. There were three dishes, decorated with sea-nymphs and tritons; a flanged bowl, this one with a centaur pursuing a naked woman; some long-handled spoons; a piperatorium, or pepper-pot, which might actually have been used to store expensive spices; a scattering of coins; a statuette of a tiger or some similar creature; two bracelets. Chubb knew exactly what he was looking at. This was the treasure trove that had been stolen from Sir Magnus Pye. Every item had been described by him when he had called in the police. But why had someone stolen the treasure simply to discard it? He understood now that they must have dropped one piece – the belt buckle that Brent had found – as they made their way across the lawn. They had then reached the edge of the lake and thrown the rest in. Had they been surprised while they were trying to make their getaway? Could they have planned to come back and retrieve the loot another time? It made no sense. ‘I think that’s it,’ one of the divers called out. Chubb looked down at the separate pieces, all of it silver . . . so much silver, glinting in the evening sun. 
 Six Gold 
 1 The house was close to Caedelyn Park in Cardiff, backing onto the railway line that ran from Whitchurch to Rhiwbina. It was in the middle of a short terrace, three identical houses on either side, all of them tired and in need of cheering up: seven gates, seven square gardens full of dusty plants struggling to survive, seven front doors, seven chimney stacks. They were somehow interchangeable but the green Austin A40 with its registration number FPJ 247, parked outside the middle one, told Pünd immediately where to go. A man was waiting for them. From the way he was standing there, he could have been waiting all his life. As they pulled in, he raised a hand not so much in welcome as in acknowledgement that they had arrived. He was in his late fifties but looked much older, worn out by a struggle that he had actually lost a long time ago. He had thinning hair, an untidy moustache and sullen dark-brown eyes. He was wearing clothes that were much too warm for the summer afternoon and which needed a wash. Fraser had never seen anyone who looked more alone. ‘Mr Pünd?’ he asked as they got out of the car. ‘It is a pleasure to meet you, Mr Blakiston.’ ‘Please. Come in.’ He led them into a dark, narrow hallway with a kitchen at the far end. From here, they could look out over a half-neglected garden that sloped up steeply to the railway line at the end. The house was clean but charmless. There was nothing very personal: no family photographs, no letters on the hall table, no sign that anyone else lived here. Very little sunlight made its way in. It had that in common with the Lodge House in Saxby-on-Avon. Everything was hemmed in by shadow. ‘I always knew the police would want to speak to me,’ he said. ‘Will you have some tea?’ He put the kettle on the hob and managed to start a flame with a third click of the switch. ‘We are not, strictly speaking, the police,’ Pünd told him. ‘No. But you’re investigating the deaths.’ ‘Your wife and Sir Magnus Pye. Yes.’ Blakiston nodded, then ran a hand over his chin. He had shaved that morning, but with a razor he had used too many times. Hair was sprouting in the cleft underneath his lip and there was a small cut on his chin. ‘I did think about calling someone,’ he said. ‘I was there, you know, on the night he died. But then I thought – why bother? I didn’t see anything. I don’t know anything. It’s got nothing to do with me.’ ‘That may not be the case at all, Mr Blakiston. I have been looking forward to meeting you.’ ‘Well, I hope you won’t be disappointed.’ He emptied the teapot, which was still full of old leaves, washed it out with boiling water and added new ones. He took a bottle of milk out of a fridge that had little else inside. At the bottom of the garden, a train rumbled past, billowing steam, and for a moment the air was filled with the smell of cinders. He didn’t seem to notice. He finished making the tea and brought it to the table. The three of them sat down. ‘Well?’ ‘You know why we are here, Mr Blakiston,’ Pünd said. ‘Why don’t you tell us your story? Begin from the beginning. Leave nothing out.’ Blakiston nodded. He poured the tea. Then he began to talk. He was fifty-eight years old. He had been living in Cardiff ever since he had left Saxby-on-Avon thirteen years ago. He’d had family here; an uncle who owned an electrical shop, not far away, on the Eastern Road. The uncle was dead now but he had inherited the shop and it provided a living – at least, for the sort of life he led. He was on his own. Fraser had been right about that. ‘I never actually divorced Mary,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why not. After what happened with Tom, there was no way the two of us were going to stay together. But at the same time, neither of us was ever going to get married again, so what was the point? She wasn’t interested in lawyers and all that stuff. I suppose that makes me officially her widower.’ ‘You never saw her again after you left?’ Pünd asked. ‘We stayed in touch. We wrote to each other and I called her now and then – to ask her about Robert and to see if there was anything she needed. But if she’d needed anything, she would never have asked me.’ Pünd took out his Sobranies. It was unusual for him to smoke when he was working on a case but nothing about the detective had been quite the same recently and Fraser had been desperately worried since he had been taken ill in Dr Redwing’s surgery. Pünd had refused to say anything about it. In the car, on the way here, he had barely spoken at all. ‘Let us go back to the time when you and Mary met,’ Pünd suggested. ‘Tell me about your time at Sheppard’s Farm.’ ‘That was my dad’s place,’ Blakiston said. ‘He got it from his dad and it had been in the family for as long as anyone can remember. I come from a long line of farmers but I never really took to it. My dad used to say I was the black sheep, which was funny, because that’s what we had – a couple of hundred acres and lots of sheep. I feel sorry for him, looking back on it. I was his only child and I just wasn’t interested so that was that. I’d always been good at maths and science at school and I had ideas about going to America and becoming a rocket engineer, which is a bit of a laugh because I worked for twenty years as a mechanic and I never got any further than Wales. But that’s how it is when you’re a kid, isn’t it? You have all these dreams and, unless you’re lucky, they never amount to anything. Still, I can’t complain. We all lived there happily enough. Even Mary liked it to begin with.’ ‘In what circumstances did you meet your wife?’ Pünd asked. ‘She lived in Tawbury, which was about five miles away. Her mother and my mother were at school together. She came over for lunch one Sunday with her parents and that’s how we met. Mary was in her twenties then and as pretty as you can imagine. I fell for her the moment I saw her and we were married within a year.’ ‘And what, I wonder, did your parents make of her?’ ‘They liked her well enough. In fact, there was a time when I would say everything was pretty much perfect. We had two sons: Robert first, then Tom. They grew up on the land and I can still see them, racing around, helping my dad when they got back from school. I think we were probably happier there than we ever were anywhere else. But it couldn’t last. My dad was up to his eyes in debt. And I wasn’t helping him. I’d got a job at Whitchurch Airport, which was an hour and a half away, near Bristol. This was the end of the thirties. I was doing routine maintenance on planes for the Civil Air Guard and I met a lot of the young pilots coming in for training. I knew there was a war on the way but in a place like Saxby-on-Avon it was easy to forget it. Mary was doing jobs in and around the village. We were already going our separate ways. That’s why she blamed me for what happened – and maybe she was right.’ ‘Tell me about your children,’ Pünd said. ‘I loved those boys. Believe me, there isn’t a day when I don’t think about what happened.’ He choked on his words and had to pause for a moment to recover. ‘I don’t know how it all went so wrong, Mr Pünd. I really don’t. When we were up at Sheppard’s Farm, I won’t say it was perfect but we used to have fun. They could be right little sods, always fighting, always at each other’s throats. But that’s true of any boys, isn’t it?’ He gazed at Pünd as if needing affirmation and when none came he went on. ‘They could be close too. The best of friends. ‘Robert was the quiet one. You always got the impression that he was thinking about something. Even when he was quite young, he used to take himself off for long walks along the Bath valley and there were times we’d get quite worried about him. Tom was more of a livewire. He saw himself as a bit of an inventor. He was always mixing potions and putting things together from the insides of old machines. I suppose he might have got that from me and I’ll admit he was the one I used to spoil. Robert was closer to his mother. It was a difficult birth. She nearly lost him, and when he was a baby he had all sorts of illnesses. The village doctor, a chap called Rennard, was always in and out of the house. If you ask me, that’s what made her so overprotective. There were times when she wouldn’t let me come near him. Tom was the easier boy. I was closer to him. Always, him and me . . .’ He took out a packet of ten cigarettes, tore off the cellophane and lit one. ‘Everything went wrong when we left the farm,’ he said and suddenly he was bitter. ‘The day that man came into our life, that’s when it began. Sir Magnus bloody Pye. It’s easy enough to see it now and I wonder how I could have been so blind, so stupid. But at the time what he was offering seemed an answer to our prayers. A regular salary for Mary, somewhere to live, nice grounds for the boys to run around in. At least, that’s how Mary saw it and that’s how she sold it to me.’ ‘You argued?’ ‘I tried not to argue with her. All it did was turn her against me. I said I had a couple of misgivings, that’s all. I didn’t like the idea of her being a housekeeper. I thought she was better than that. And I remember warning her that, once we were there, we’d be trapped. It would be like he owned us. But the thing was, you see, we didn’t really have any choice. We didn’t have any savings. It was the best offer we were going to get. ‘And at first it was fine. Pye Hall was nice enough and I got on well enough with Stanley Brent, who was the groundsman there with his son. We weren’t paying any rent and in some ways it was better to be on our own as a family, without my mum and dad around all the time. But there was something about the Lodge House that rubbed us up the wrong way. It was dark all the year round and it never really felt like home. We all started getting on each other’s nerves, even the boys. Mary and I seemed to be sniping at each other all the time. I hated the way she looked up to Sir Magnus, just because he had a title and so much money. He was no better than me. He’d never done a proper day’s work in his life. He only had Pye Hall because he’d inherited it. But she couldn’t see that. She thought it made her special in some way. What she didn’t understand was that when you’re cleaning a toilet, you’re still cleaning a toilet and what difference does it make if some aristocratic bum is going to sit on it? I said that to her once and she was furious. But the way she saw herself she wasn’t a cleaner or a housekeeper. She was the lady of the manor. ‘Magnus had one son of his own – Freddy – but he was only a baby then and he had no interest in him. So his lordship started interesting himself in my boys instead. He used to encourage them to play on his land and spoil them with little gifts – threepence here, sixpence there. And he’d get them to play practical jokes on Neville Brent. His parents were dead by then. They’d been killed in a car accident and Neville had taken over, working on the estate. If you ask me, there was something queer about him. I don’t think he was quite right in the head. But that didn’t stop them spying on him, teasing him, throwing snowballs, that sort of thing. It was cruel. I wish they hadn’t done it.’ ‘You couldn’t stop them?’ ‘I couldn’t do anything, Mr Pünd. How can I make you understand? They never listened to me. I wasn’t their father any more. Almost from the day we moved into that place, I found myself being pushed to one side. Magnus, Magnus . . . that was all anyone ever talked about. When the boys got their school reports, nobody cared what I thought. You know what? Mary would get the boys to take them up to the main house and show them to him. As if his opinion mattered more than mine. ‘It got worse and worse over time, Mr Pünd. I began to loathe that man. He always had a way of making me feel small, reminding me that I was living in his house, on his land . . . as if I’d ever wanted to be there in the first place. And it was his fault, what happened. I swear to you. He killed my son as if he did it with his own hands and at that same moment he ruined me. Tom was the light of my life and when he went there was nothing left for me.’ He fell silent and wiped his eye with the back of his hand. ‘Look at me! Look at this place! I often ask myself what I did to deserve it. I never hurt anyone and I end up here. I sometimes think I’ve been punished for something I didn’t do.’ ‘I am sure you are blameless.’ ‘I am blameless. I did nothing wrong. What happened had nothing to do with me.’ He stopped, fixing his eyes on Pünd and Fraser, daring them to disagree. ‘It was Magnus Pye. Bloody Magnus Pye.’ He took a breath, then went on. ‘The war had started and I’d been sent off to Boscombe Down, working mainly on Hawker Hurricanes. I was away from home and I didn’t really know what was going on and when I came back occasional weekends, it was like I was a stranger. Mary had changed so much. She was never pleased to see me. She was secretive . . . like she was hiding something. It was hard to believe she was the same girl I’d met and married and been with at Sheppard’s Farm. Robert didn’t want to have too much to do with me either. He was his mother’s child. If it hadn’t been for Tom, it would hardly have been worth showing up. ‘Anyway, Sir Magnus was there in my place. I told you about games. There was this game he played with the boys – with my boys. They were obsessed with buried treasure. Well, all boys like that sort of thing but I’m sure you know the Pyes had dug up a whole load of stuff – Roman coins and the rest of it in Dingle Dell. He had them on display in his house. And so it was easy for him to turn the two of them into treasure hunters. He’d take chocolate bars wrapped in foil or, sometimes, sixpenny pieces or half crowns, and he’d hide them all over the estate. Then he’d give them clues and set them off. They might spend the whole day doing that and you couldn’t really complain because it got them out in the open air. It was good for them, wasn’t it? It was fun. ‘But he wasn’t their father. He didn’t know what he was doing and one day he took it too far. He had a piece of gold. Not real gold. Iron pyrite – what they call fool’s gold. He had a big lump of it and he decided to make that the prize. Of course Tom and Robert didn’t know the difference. They thought it was the real thing and they were desperate to get their hands on it. And do you know where he put it, the bloody fool? He hid it in a clump of bulrushes, right on the edge of the lake. He led them to the water’s edge. Fourteen years old and twelve years old. He led them there as surely as if he’d put up a sign. ‘This is what happened. The two boys had separated. Robert was in Dingle Dell, searching in the trees. Tom went down to the water. Maybe he saw the gold glinting in the sun or maybe he’d worked out one of the clues. He didn’t even need to get his feet wet but he was so excited, he decided to wade in. And what then? Maybe he stumbled. There are a lot of weeds and they could have wrapped themselves around his legs. Here’s what I know. Just after three o’clock in the afternoon, Brent comes along with the lawnmower and he sees my boy lying face down in the water.’ Matthew Blakiston’s voice cracked. ‘Tom had drowned. ‘Brent did what he could. Tom was only a few feet out from the shore and Brent dragged him back to dry land. Then Robert came out of the wood and saw what was happening. He plunged into the water. He was screaming. He waded over to them and shouted at Brent to get help. Brent didn’t know what to do but Robert had learned basic first aid at school and tried to save his brother with mouth-to-mouth. It was too late. Tom was dead. I only heard about all this later, from the police. They’d talked to everyone involved: Sir Magnus, Brent, Mary and Robert. Can you imagine how I felt, Mr Pünd? I was their father. But I hadn’t been there.’ Matthew Blakiston bowed his head. His fist, with the cigarette, was clenched against his head and smoke curled upwards as he sat there, silent. At that moment, Fraser was utterly aware of the smallness of the room, the hopelessness of a life broken. It occurred to him that Blakiston was an outcast. He was in exile from himself. ‘Do you want some more tea?’ Blakiston asked suddenly. ‘I’ll do it,’ Fraser said. Nobody wanted tea but they needed time, a pause before he could go on. Fraser went over to the kettle. He was glad to break away. ‘I went back to Boscombe Down,’ Blakiston began again, once the fresh cups had been brought. ‘And the next time I came home, I knew exactly which way the wind was blowing. Mary and Robert had pulled up the drawbridge. She never let go of him after that, not for a minute, and it was like they didn’t want to know me. I would have done my bit for my family, Mr Pünd, I swear I would have. But they never let me. Robert always said that I walked out on them but that isn’t true. I came home but there was nobody there.’ ‘When was the last time you saw your son, Mr Blakiston?’ ‘Saturday, the twenty-third of July. At his mother’s funeral.’ ‘Did he see you?’ ‘No.’ Blakiston took a deep breath. He had finished his cigarette and stubbed it out. ‘They say that when you lose a child, it brings you closer together or tears you apart. What most hurt me about Mary was that after Tom went, she never let me get close to Robert. She was protecting him from me! Can you believe that? It wasn’t enough that I had lost one son. I ended up losing two. ‘And part of me never stopped loving her. That’s the pathetic thing. I told you, I used to write to her on her birthday, at Christmas. I talked to her on the phone sometimes. At least she’d let me do that. But she didn’t want me anywhere near. She made that clear enough.’ ‘Did you speak to her recently?’ ‘The last time I spoke to her was a couple of months ago – but here’s something you won’t believe. I actually called her the day she died. It was the weirdest thing. I was woken up that morning by a bird in a tree and it was making this horrible noise, this cawing. It was a magpie. “One for sorrow.” Do you know that old song? Well, I looked at it on the other side of the bedroom window, black and white, an evil little thing with its glinting eye, and suddenly I felt sick to the stomach. It was like I’d had a premonition. I knew something bad was going to happen. I went to the shop but I couldn’t work and no one came in anyway. I was thinking about Mary. I was convinced something was going to happen to her and, in the end, I couldn’t stop myself. I rang her. I tried her at the Lodge and then at the main house – but she didn’t answer because I was too late. She was already dead.’ He was playing with the cellophane from the cigarette packet, pulling it apart between his fingers. ‘I heard about her death a few days later. There was a piece in the newspaper . . . Would you believe it? Nobody even bothered to ring me. You’d have thought Robert might have got in touch, but he didn’t care. Anyway, I knew I had to go to the funeral. It didn’t matter what had happened. There’d been a time when the two of us were young and we’d been together. I wasn’t going to let her go without saying goodbye. I’ll admit, I was nervous about showing my face. I didn’t want to make a big thing of it with everyone crowding around me so I arrived late and I wore a hat pulled down over my eyes. I’m a lot thinner than I used to be and I’m nearly sixty years old. I thought if I kept well clear of Robert I’d be all right and that was how it turned out. ‘I did see him there. He was standing with a girl and I was glad to see that. It’s just what he needs. He was always very solitary when he was a boy and she looked a pretty little thing. I hear they’re going to get married and maybe if they have children, they’ll let me visit them. People change in time, don’t they? He says I wasn’t there for him but maybe, if you see him, you’ll tell him the truth. ‘It was so strange to be there, back in the village. I’m not even sure I like the place any more. And seeing them all again – Dr Redwing and Clarissa and Brent and all the others. It gave me a shiver, I can tell you. I noticed Sir Magnus and Lady Pye didn’t show up and that made me smile. I’m sure Mary would have been disappointed! I always did tell her he was no good. But perhaps it was just as well that he wasn’t there. I’m not sure what I’d have done if I’d seen him that day. I blame him for what happened, Mr Pünd. Mary fell down the stairs while she was skivvying for him so that makes two of them. Mary and Tom. They’d both be alive if it weren’t for him.’ ‘Is that why you went to his house five days later?’ Blakiston bowed his head. ‘How did you know I was there?’ ‘Your car was seen.’ ‘Well, I’m not going to deny it. Yes. It was stupid of me but at the end of the week I went back. The thing is, I couldn’t get it out of my head. First Tom, then Mary, both of them at Pye Hall. Listening to me now, you probably think I’m owning up to it, that I went back to kill him. But it wasn’t like that. I just wanted to talk to him, to ask him about Mary. Everyone else who’d gone to that funeral, they’d had someone to talk to – but not me. No one even recognised me – at my own wife’s funeral! Was it so unreasonable to want to see him just for five minutes, just to ask him about Mary?’ He thought for a moment, then came to a decision. ‘There was something else. You’ll think the worse of me for it but I was thinking about money. Not for me. For my son. When someone dies in the workplace, it’s your responsibility. Mary had been working for Sir Magnus for more than twenty years and he owed her a duty of care. I thought he might have come to some arrangement with her – you know, a pension. I knew Robert would never accept any financial help from me, even if I could have afforded it, but if he was about to get married, didn’t he deserve some sort of start in life? Sir Magnus had always had a soft spot for him. I had this idea that I could ask him for help on Robert’s behalf.’ He stopped and looked away. ‘Please, go on.’ ‘It took me a couple of hours to drive back to Saxby-on-Avon. I’d been busy at the shop. I remember that it was exactly half past seven when I arrived. I looked at my watch. But the thing is, Mr Pünd, once I’d got there, I had second thoughts. I wasn’t sure I did want to see him after all. I didn’t want to be humiliated. I sat in the car for about an hour before I decided that since I’d come all this way I might as well give it a try. It must have been about half past eight when I drove to the house. I parked in my usual spot behind the Lodge – I suppose that was force of habit. Someone else had had the same idea. There was a bicycle leaning against the door. I remembered that later. Maybe I should have read more into it at the time. ‘Anyway, I walked up the drive. It was all coming back to me, being there again. The lake was on my left and I couldn’t bring myself to look at it. The moon was out that night and everything in the garden was crystal clear, like in a photograph. There didn’t seem to be anyone else around. I didn’t try to hide myself or anything like that. I just walked straight up to the front door and rang the bell. I could see lights on behind the windows on the ground floor so I guessed Sir Magnus must be in and sure enough, a minute or two later, he opened the door. ‘I’ll never forget the sight of him, Mr Pünd. The last time I’d seen him had been over ten years ago, when I moved out of the Lodge. He was bigger than I remembered, fatter certainly. He seemed to fill the doorway. He was wearing a suit and a tie . . . bright colours. He was holding a cigar. ‘It took him a moment or two to recognise me but then he smiled. “You!” That’s all he said. He spat the word at me. He wasn’t exactly hostile. But he was surprised, and there was something else. He still had that strange smile on his face, like he was amused. “What do you want?” ‘“I’d like to talk to you, if I may, Sir Magnus,” I said. “It’s about Mary . . .” ‘He looked back over his shoulder and that was when I realised he wasn’t alone. ‘“I can’t see you now,” he said. ‘“I just need a few minutes of your time.” ‘“It’s out of the question. Not now. You should have called before you came here. What time of the night do you think this is?” ‘“Please—” ‘“No! Come back tomorrow.” ‘He was about to close the door on me. I could see that. But then, at the last minute, he stopped and he asked me one last question. I’ll never forget it. ‘“Do you really think I killed your bloody dog?” he asked.’ ‘The dog?’ Pünd looked puzzled. ‘I should have told you. When we first moved to Pye Hall, we had a dog.’ ‘Its name was Bella.’ ‘Yes. That’s right. It was a cross-breed: half Labrador, half collie. I got her for Tom, for his tenth birthday, and Sir Magnus was against her from the day she arrived. He didn’t want her out of control on his lawn, scaring the chickens. He didn’t want her digging up the flower beds. Actually, I’ll tell you what he didn’t want. He didn’t want me buying a present for my own son. It’s like what I was saying. He wanted to have complete control over me and my family and because the dog was connected to me, the one thing I’d bought that Tom really loved, he had to get rid of it.’ ‘He killed it?’ Fraser asked. He remembered the sad little collar that Pünd had found in the room at the Lodge House. ‘I was never able to prove it was him. Maybe he got Brent to do it for him. I wouldn’t put it past that snivelling little bastard. But one day the dog was there and the next day it had vanished – and it wasn’t until a week later that we found it in Dingle Dell with its throat cut. Tom was devastated. It was the first thing he’d ever had in his life that was really his. Who could do that to a little boy?’ ‘It seems very strange,’ Pünd muttered. ‘Sir Magnus has not seen you for many years. You turn up, unexpectedly, at his house, late in the night. Why do you think he chooses this moment to ask you about the dog?’ ‘I have no idea.’ ‘What did you say to him?’ ‘I didn’t know what to say. But it didn’t matter anyway, because right then he closed the door. He shut it right in my face – a man who’d lost his wife not two weeks before. He wasn’t prepared even to invite me over the threshold. That was the sort of person he was.’ There was a long silence. ‘The conversation that you have described,’ Pünd muttered. ‘How close was it, do you think, to the reality? Were those exactly the words used by Sir Magnus?’ ‘As best as I can remember, Mr Pünd.’ ‘He did not, for example, greet you by name?’ ‘He knew who I was, if that’s what you mean. But no. It was just that single word – “You!” – as if I’d crawled out from under some stone.’ ‘What did you do next?’ ‘What could I do? I went back to my car and drove off.’ ‘The bicycle that you had seen. Was it still there?’ ‘I can’t remember, to be honest. I didn’t look.’ ‘So you left . . .’ ‘I was angry. I’d driven a long way and I hadn’t expected to be dismissed out of hand. I got about ten or fifteen miles down the road and then – you know what? – I changed my mind. I was still thinking of Robert. I was still thinking of what was right. And who was bloody Magnus Pye to slam the door in my face? That man had been pushing me around since the day I’d met him and suddenly I’d had enough. I drove back to Pye Hall and this time I didn’t stop at the Lodge. I drove right up to the front door, got out and rang the bell again.’ ‘You had been away for how long?’ ‘Twenty minutes? Twenty-five? I didn’t look at my watch. I didn’t care about the time. I was just determined to have it out, only this time, Sir Magnus didn’t come to the door. I rang twice more. Nothing. So I opened the letter box and knelt down, meaning to shout at him. I was going to tell him he was a bloody coward and that he should come to the door.’ Blakiston broke off. ‘That was when I saw him. There was so much blood I couldn’t miss him. He was lying in the hallway right in front of my eyes. I didn’t realise then that his head had been lopped off. The body was facing away from me, thank God. But I knew at once that he was dead. There could be no doubt of it. ‘I was shocked. More than that. I was poleaxed. It was like I’d been punched in the face. I felt myself falling and I thought I was going to faint. Somehow, I managed to get back to my feet. I knew that someone had killed Sir Magnus in the last twenty minutes, in the time that I’d left and come back again. Perhaps they’d been with him when I’d knocked the first time. They could actually have been listening to me, inside the hallway. Maybe they waited until I’d gone and killed him then.’ Blakiston lit another cigarette. His hand was shaking. ‘I know what you’re going to ask, Mr Pünd. Why didn’t I go to the police? Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? I was the last person to see him alive and at the same time I had every reason to want him dead. I’d lost my son and I blamed Sir Magnus. I’d lost my wife and she was working for him too. That man has been like the devil at the feast and if the police are looking for a suspect, they won’t need to look any further than me. I didn’t kill him but I knew straight away what they’d think and all I wanted to do was to get the hell out of there. I picked myself up and got back in the car and I drove away as fast as I could. ‘Another car arrived just as I passed through the gate. I didn’t see anything, just a pair of headlights. But I was afraid that whoever was driving would have got my number plate and reported me. Was that what happened?’ ‘It was Lady Pye in the car,’ Pünd told him. ‘She had just returned from London.’ ‘Well, I’m sorry I had to leave her to it. It must have been horrible for her. But all I wanted to do was get away. That was my only thought.’ ‘Mr Blakiston, do you have any idea who may have been in the house with Sir Magnus Pye when you visited?’ ‘How could I possibly know? I didn’t hear anyone. I didn’t see anyone.’ ‘Could it have been a woman?’ ‘Curiously, that was my thought. If he was having a secret assignation, or whatever you want to call it, he might have behaved the same way.’ ‘Are you aware that your son is amongst the suspects who are believed to have killed Sir Magnus?’ ‘Robert? Why? That’s madness. He had no reason to kill him. In fact – I’ve told you – he always looked up to Sir Magnus. The two of them were thick as thieves.’ ‘But he has precisely the same motivation as yourself. He could have held Sir Magnus responsible for the death of both his brother and his mother.’ Pünd raised a hand before Blakiston could answer. ‘I just find it puzzling that you did not come forward with the information that you have given me now. You say that you did not kill him and yet by remaining silent you have allowed the real killer to remain undetected. The matter of the bicycle, for example, is of great importance.’ ‘Maybe I should have come forward,’ Blakiston replied. ‘But I knew it would go badly for me, like it always has. The truth of it is, I wish I’d never gone near the place. Sometimes you read books about houses that have a curse. I’ve always thought that was a lot of nonsense but I’d believe it about Pye Hall. It killed my wife and my child and if you tell the police what I’ve told you, I’ll probably end up being hanged.’ He smiled mirthlessly. ‘And then it will have killed me.’ 2 Pünd barely spoke on the way back and James Fraser knew better than to interrupt his thoughts. He handled the Vauxhall expertly, pushing through the various gear changes and holding the middle of the road as the sun set and the shadows closed in on all sides. It was the only time he ever felt completely in control, when he was behind the wheel. They had taken the Aust Ferry across the River Severn, sitting together in silence as the Welsh coast slipped away behind them. Fraser was hungry. He’d had nothing to eat since the morning. They sold sandwiches on the ferry but they were none too appetising and anyway, Pünd didn’t like food in the car. They reached the other side and drove through the Gloucester countryside, the same route that Blakiston would have taken to see Sir Magnus Pye. Fraser hoped to be in Saxby-on-Avon by seven o’clock, in time for dinner. Eventually, they reached Bath and began to follow the road that would bring them to Pye Hall, with the valley, now quite dark, stretching out on their left. ‘Gold!’ Pünd hadn’t spoken for so long that Fraser started, hearing his voice. ‘I’m sorry?’ he asked. ‘The fool’s gold concealed by Sir Magnus Pye. I am convinced that everything revolves around it.’ ‘But fool’s gold isn’t worth anything.’ ‘Not to you, James. Not to me. That is exactly the point.’ ‘It killed Tom Blakiston. He tried to get it out of the lake.’ ‘Ah yes. The lake, you know, has been a dark presence in this tale, as in the stories of King Arthur. The children played beside the lake. One of them died in the lake. And Sir Magnus’s silver, that too was concealed in the lake.’ ‘You know, Pünd. You’re not making a lot of sense.’ ‘I think of King Arthur and dragons and witches. In this story there was a witch and a dragon and a curse that could not be lifted . . .’ ‘I take it you know who did it.’ ‘I know everything, James. I had only to make the connections and it all became very clear. Sometimes, you know, it is not the physical clues that lead to the solution of the crime. The words spoken by the vicar at a funeral or a scrap of paper burned in a fire – they suggest one thing but then they lead to quite another. The room that is locked at the Lodge House. Why was it locked? We think we have the answer but a moment’s thought will assure us we are wrong. The letter addressed to Sir Magnus. We know who wrote it. We know why. But again, we are misled. We have to think. It is all conjecture but soon we see that there can be no other way.’ ‘Did Matthew Blakiston help you?’ ‘Matthew Blakiston told me everything I need to know. It was he who started all this.’ ‘Really? What did he do?’ ‘He killed his wife.’ 
 CROUCH END, LONDON Annoying, isn’t it? I got to the end of the manuscript on Sunday afternoon and rang Charles Clover immediately. Charles is my boss, the CEO of Cloverleaf Books, publishers of the Atticus Pünd series. My call went straight to voicemail. ‘Charles?’ I said. ‘What happened to the last chapter? What exactly is the point of giving me a whodunnit to read when it doesn’t actually say who did it? Can you call me back?’ I went down to the kitchen. There were two empty bottles of white wine in the bedroom and tortilla crumbs on the duvet. I knew I’d been indoors too long but it was still cold and damp outside and I couldn’t be bothered to go out. There was nothing decent to drink in the house so I opened a bottle of raki that Andreas had brought back from his last trip to Crete, poured myself a glass and threw it back. It tasted like all foreign spirits do after they’ve passed through Heathrow. Wrong. I’d brought the manuscript down with me and I went through it again, trying to work out how much might be missing. The last section would have been called ‘A Secret Never to be Told’, which was certainly appropriate, given the circumstances. Since Pünd had announced that he’d already worked out the solution, it could only have had two or maybe three sections. Presumably, he would gather the suspects, tell them the truth, make an arrest, then go home and die. I knew that Alan Conway had wanted to end the series for a while but it had still come as an unpleasant surprise to find that he had done exactly that. The brain tumour struck me as a slightly unoriginal way to dispatch his main character but it was also unarguable, which I suppose is why he had chosen it. I have to admit that if I shed a tear, it was more for our future sales figures. So who killed Sir Magnus Pye? I had nothing better to do so I drew out a pad of paper and a pen and sat down in the kitchen with the typescript beside me. It even occurred to me that Charles might have done this on purpose, to test me. He’d be in the office when I got there on Monday – he was always the first to arrive – and he’d ask for the solution before he gave me the final pages. Charles does have a strange sense of humour. I’ve often seen him chuckling at jokes that nobody else in the room is aware that he’s made. 1. Neville Brent, the groundsman He’s the most obvious suspect. First of all, he dislikes Mary Blakiston and has just been fired by Sir Magnus Pye. He has a simple, clear-cut reason to do away with both of them. Also, he’s one of the main characters who’s connected to all the deaths. He’s there at the house when Mary dies and he’s virtually the last person to see Sir Magnus alive. Supposedly, he goes straight to the Ferryman when he finishes work on the night of the death but Conway throws in a strange detail on page 75. Brent reaches the pub twenty-five minutes later. Why is he so specific about the time? It may be an extraneous detail and it may even be wrong – let’s not forget, we’re dealing with a first draft here. But I was under the impression that the Ferryman was only ten minutes away from Pye Hall and the extra fifteen minutes might have given Brent time to double back, to slip in through the back door while Sir Magnus was talking to Matthew Blakiston and to kill him immediately afterwards. There’s something else about Brent. It’s almost certain that he’s a paedophile. ‘He was a solitary man, unmarried, definitely peculiar – a certain smell lingered in the air, the smell of a man living alone.’ The police find Boy Scout magazines on his bedroom floor and, quite casually, on page 139, we’re told that he was once caught spying on Scouts who were camping in Dingle Dell. These details leapt out at me because, by and large, there’s so little sex in the Atticus Pünd novels – although it’s worth remembering that the killer in Gin & Cyanide turns out to be gay (she poisons her lesbian partner). Did Brent have an unhealthy interest in the two boys, Tom and Robert Blakiston? It’s surely no coincidence that he is the one who ‘discovers’ Tom Blakiston when he has drowned in the lake. I even wonder about the deaths of his mother and father, supposedly in a motor accident. And finally, he was probably the one who killed the dog. All of which said, it is the first law of whodunnits that the most likely suspect never turns out to be the killer. So I suppose that rules him out. 2. Robert Blakiston, the car mechanic Robert is also linked to all three deaths. In his own way, he’s as weird as Brent. He has pale skin and an awkward haircut. He never got on with the other children at school, he was arrested in Bristol and, most pertinently, he has a difficult relationship with his mother that culminates with a public row in which he more or less threatens to kill her. I’m cheating here but, speaking as an editor, it would also be quite satisfying if Robert were the murderer as Joy Sanderling only goes to Pünd because she’s trying to protect him. I can easily imagine a last chapter in which her own hopes are destroyed when her fiancé is unmasked. That’s the solution I would have chosen. However, there are two major problems with this theory. The first is that unless Joy Sanderling was lying, Robert couldn’t possibly have killed his mother because the two of them were in bed together at the time it occurred. It’s probably true that the pink motor scooter would have been noticed as it whizzed down to Pye Hall at nine o’clock in the morning (although it doesn’t seem to have stopped the killer from using the vicar’s squeaky bicycle at nine o’clock at night). More significantly though, and Pünd mentions this on at least one occasion, Robert doesn’t seem to have any motive for killing Sir Magnus, who has only ever been kind to him. Could he have blamed Sir Magnus for the death of his younger brother when they were playing at the lake? He had, after all, supplied the fool’s gold that had caused the tragedy and Robert was the second person to arrive on the scene, plunging into the water to help drag his brother out. He must have been traumatised. Could he even have blamed him for the death of his mother? Maybe Robert is my number one suspect after all and Brent my second. I don’t know. 3. Robin Osborne, the vicar Alan Conway has a habit of playing a minor card at the end of the game. In No Rest for the Wicked, for example, Agnes Carmichael, who turns out to be the killer, hasn’t spoken a word – hardly surprising, as she’s a deaf mute. I don’t think Osborne kills Sir Magnus because of Dingle Dell. Nor do I think that he kills Mary Blakiston because of whatever it was that she found on his desk. But it’s certainly interesting that his bicycle has been used during the second crime. Could he really have been in the church all that time? And on page 95 Henrietta notices a bloodstain on her husband’s sleeve. This isn’t mentioned again but I’m sure that Conway would have got to it in the missing pages. I’m also interested in the holiday that Osborne took with his wife in Devonshire. Certainly he’s nervous when Pünd questions him (‘the vicar seemed nonplussed’) and he’s reluctant even to name the hotel where he stayed. I may be reading too much into it but Brent’s parents also died in Devonshire. Is this in some way connected? 4. Matthew Blakiston, the father Really, he should be at the top of my list as we are told, quite unequivocally, that he murdered his wife. Pünd says so at the end of part six – ‘He killed his wife’ – and it is inconceivable that he’s lying. In all eight books, even when he makes a mistake (the false arrest in Atticus Pünd’s Christmas which infuriated readers who felt that Conway hadn’t played fair), he has never been less than 100 per cent honest. If he announces that Matthew Blakiston killed his wife, then that is what happened, although annoyingly he doesn’t say why. Nor, for that matter, does he explain how he came to this conclusion. The explanation, of course, will be contained in the missing chapter. Did Matthew also kill Sir Magnus? I don’t think so. I’ve managed to work out at least one detail: the handprint in the flower bed was left by Blakiston when he was looking through the letter box. ‘I felt myself falling and I thought I was going to faint’. These are his own words. He must have stretched out his hand to steady himself and left the print in the soft earth. He kills his wife and for some reason returns to the scene of the crime. If this is the case then, as unlikely as it sounds, there’s a second killer in Saxby-on-Avon who deals with Sir Magnus for a quite different reason. 5. Clarissa Pye, the sister Sometimes, when I read a whodunnit, I get a feeling about someone for no particularly good reason and that’s the case here. Clarissa had every reason to hate her brother and might have intended to kill both Lady Pye and her son, Freddy, in order to inherit Pye Hall. The whole story about stealing the physostigmine to commit suicide could have been a lie – and would also explain the need to do away with Mary Blakiston. And let’s not forget that Clarissa had a key to the front door of Pye Hall. It’s mentioned once – on page 25 – though not again. There’s also the case of Dr Rennard and the twins-exchanged-at-birth. When did Clarissa discover the truth? Was it really when Dr Redwing told her? I only ask this because there’s an odd reference to Ashton House, where Dr Rennard lives – on page 6. In his funeral address, the vicar mentions that Mary Blakiston was a regular visitor there. It could be that Rennard had told her what had happened and she, being the sort of person she was, had then told Clarissa. That would give Clarissa a compelling reason to kill both Mary and Sir Magnus. The physostigmine could have been for Lady Pye and Freddy. It could even be that Dr Rennard’s fall hadn’t actually been an accident . . . although perhaps I’m taking this too far? I dismissed the Whiteheads, Dr Redwing and her artist husband, Frances Pye and the slightly improbable Jack Dartford. They all had motives for the murder of Sir Magnus but I couldn’t see any reason why any of them would have wanted to harm Mary Blakiston. That just left Joy Sanderling, the least likely suspect of them all. Why would she have wanted to kill anyone and, more to the point, why would she have gone to Atticus Pünd in the first place? Anyway, that was how I spent Sunday afternoon, leafing through the manuscript, making notes and really getting nowhere. That evening I met a couple of friends at the BFI for a screening of The Maltese Falcon but I wasn’t able to focus on the labyrinthine plot. I was thinking about Magnus and Mary and bloody scraps of paper, dead dogs and letters in wrong envelopes. I wondered why the manuscript was incomplete and I was annoyed that Charles hadn’t called me back. Later that night I found out why. I’d treated myself to a taxi and the driver had the radio on. It was the fourth item on the evening news. Alan Conway was dead.