Moonflower Murders, Page 2

  ‘So what happened?’ I asked. I was intrigued, despite myself.

  Lawrence took over. ‘Stefan was sentenced to life in prison and he’s still behind bars. Cecily wrote to him a couple of times but he never replied and I thought she’d forgotten him. She seemed perfectly happy running the hotel and also, of course, being with Aiden. She was twenty-six when they got married. Two years older than him. She’ll be thirty-four next month.’

  ‘Do they have any children?’

  ‘Yes. A little girl. Well, she’s seven now . . . Roxana.’

  ‘Our first granddaughter.’ Pauline’s voice faltered. ‘She’s a lovely child, everything we could have ever wanted.’

  ‘Pauline and I are semi-retired,’ Lawrence went on. ‘We have a house near Hyères in the South of France and we spend quite a bit of time down there. Anyway, a few days ago, Cecily rang us. I took the call. This would have been around two o’clock, French time. I could tell at once that Cecily sounded very upset. More than that, I’d say she was nervous. I don’t know where she was calling from, but this was a Tuesday so she was probably at the hotel. We normally have a bit of banter but she got straight to the point. She said she’d been thinking about what happened—’

  ‘The murder.’

  ‘Exactly. She said that she had been right all along and that Stefan Codrescu was not responsible for the crime. I asked her what she was talking about and she said she’d come across something in a book she’d been given. “It was right there – staring me in the face.” Those were her exact words. Anyway, she told me she’d already sent it to me and sure enough, it turned up the very next day.’

  He reached into his jacket pocket and took out a paperback. I recognised it at once – the picture on the cover, the typeface, the title – and at that moment, this entire meeting began to make sense.

  The book was Atticus Pünd Takes the Case, number three in the series written by Alan Conway that I had edited and published. I immediately recalled that it was largely set in a hotel, but in the county of Devon, not in Suffolk, and in 1953, not the present day. I remembered the launch party at the German embassy in London. Alan had had too much to drink and had insulted the ambassador.

  ‘Alan knew about the murder?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh yes. He came to the hotel and stayed a few nights, six weeks after it happened. We both met him. He told us that he had been a friend of the dead man, Frank Parris, and he asked us a lot of questions about the murder. He talked to our staff as well. We had absolutely no idea that he was going to turn the whole thing into an entertainment. If he’d been honest with us, we might have been more circumspect.’

  Which was exactly the reason he wasn’t honest with you, I thought.

  ‘You never read the book?’ I said.

  ‘We forgot all about it,’ Lawrence admitted. ‘And Mr Conway certainly never sent us a copy.’ He paused. ‘But Cecily read it and she found something that cast new light on what had happened at Branlow Hall . . . at least, that’s what she believed.’ He glanced at his wife as if seeking her approbation. ‘Pauline and I have both read the book and we can’t see any connection.’

  ‘There are similarities,’ Pauline said. ‘Firstly, nearly all the characters are recognisable, clearly based on people that Mr Conway met in Woodbridge. They even have the same names . . . or very similar ones. But what I don’t understand is that he seems to have taken pleasure in twisting people so that they come out like horrible caricatures of themselves. The owners of the Moonflower, which is the hotel in the book, are clearly based on Lawrence and myself, for example. But they’re both crooks. Why would he do that? We’ve never done anything dishonest in our lives.’ She seemed more indignant than upset. The way she was looking at me, it was almost as if I was to blame.

  ‘In answer to your question, we had no idea the book had been published,’ she went on. ‘I don’t read murder mysteries myself. Neither of us does. Sajid Khan told us that Mr Conway is no longer alive. Maybe that’s just as well because if he were, we might be very tempted to take legal action.’

  ‘So let me get this straight,’ I said. I had the sense of facts tumbling on top of each other, yet I knew there was something they hadn’t told me. ‘You believe that maybe, despite all the evidence, not to mention the confession, Stefan Codrescu did not kill Frank Parris and that Alan Conway came to the hotel and discovered – in a matter of days – who the real killer was. He then somehow identified that person in Atticus Pünd Takes the Case.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘But that makes no sense at all, Pauline. If he knew the killer and there was an innocent man in prison, surely Alan would have gone straight to the police! Why would he turn it into a work of fiction?’

  ‘That’s precisely why we’re here, Susan. From what Sajid Khan told us, you knew Alan Conway better than anyone. You edited the book. If there is something in there, I can’t think of anyone more likely to find it.’

  ‘Wait a minute.’ Suddenly I knew what was missing. ‘This all started when your daughter spotted something in Atticus Pünd Takes the Case. Was she the only one who read it before she sent it to you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘But what was it she saw? Why didn’t you just call her and ask her what she meant?’

  It was Lawrence Treherne who answered my question. ‘Of course we called her,’ he said. ‘We both read the book and then we rang her several times from France. Finally we got through to Aiden and he told us what had happened.’ He paused. ‘It seems that our daughter has disappeared.’

  Departure

  I lost my temper with Andreas that evening. I really didn’t mean to but the day had brought so many mishaps, one after another, that I was going to scream either at the moon or at him and he just happened to be nearer.

  It had begun with that nice couple Bruce and Brenda from Macclesfield, who turned out not to be that nice after all, demanding a fifty per cent reduction in their bill or they were going to hit TripAdvisor with a list of complaints that they’d stacked up from the day they’d arrived and which, they assured us, would put anyone off ever coming anywhere near us again. And what was their problem? An hour without Wi-Fi. The sound of guitar music at night. The sighting of a solitary cockroach. What annoyed me was they had complained every morning, always with tight little smiles, and I’d known all along that they were going to try something on. I’d developed an antenna for the tourists who arrived with extortion as part of their holiday plans. You’d be amazed how many of them there were.

  Panos didn’t show up. Vangelis was late. Andreas’s computer had a glitch – I’d asked him to get it looked at – and it had managed to send two room requests into spam. By the time we noticed, the clients had booked elsewhere. Before we went to bed, we had a glass of Metaxa, the Greek brandy that only tastes nice in Greece, but I was still in a bad mood and it was when Andreas asked me what the matter was that I finally snapped.

  ‘What do you think is the fucking matter, Andreas? Everything!’

  I don’t usually swear . . . at least, not at people I like. Lying in bed, watching Andreas getting undressed, I was annoyed with myself. Part of me wanted to blame him for everything that had happened since I’d come to Crete, while another part blamed myself for letting him down. But the worst of it was the sense of helplessness – that events had taken over and I was being steered by them rather than the other way round. Had I really chosen a life where complete strangers could humiliate me for a few euros and where my entire well-being could be decided by a lost reservation?

  Right then I knew I had to go back to England and that actually I’d known it for some time, even if I’d tried to pretend otherwise.

  Andreas cleaned his teeth and came out of the bathroom naked, which is how he slept, looking every inch like one of those figures – an ephebe or a satyr perhaps – that you might see on the side of an ancient vase. And it did seem to me that he had become more Greek in the past couple of years. His black hair was a little shaggier, hi
s eyes a little darker and he had a sort of swagger that I’m sure he’d never displayed when he was teaching at Westminster School. He’d put on some weight too – or perhaps it was just that I noticed his stomach more now that he was out of a suit. He was still a handsome man. I was still attracted to him. But suddenly I needed to be away from him.

  I waited until he got into bed. We slept under a single sheet with the windows open. We hardly got any mosquitoes right next to the sea and I preferred the night air to the artificial chill of the air conditioning.

  ‘Andreas . . .’ I said.

  ‘What?’ He would have fallen asleep in seconds if I’d let him. His voice was already drowsy.

  ‘I want to go back to London.’

  ‘What?’ He twisted round, propping himself up on his elbow. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘There’s something I have to do.’

  ‘In London?’

  ‘No. I have to go to Suffolk.’ He was looking at me, his face full of concern. ‘I won’t be long,’ I said. ‘Just a couple of weeks.’

  ‘We need you here, Susan.’

  ‘We need money, Andreas. We’re not going to be able to pay our bills if we don’t get some extra finance. And I’ve been offered a great deal of money to do a job. Ten thousand pounds. Cash!’

  * * *

  It was true.

  After the Trehernes had told me about the murder at their hotel, they had gone on to explain how their daughter had disappeared.

  ‘It’s very unlike her to wander off without telling anyone,’ Lawrence had said. ‘And certainly to leave her daughter behind . . .’

  ‘Who’s looking after the child?’ I asked.

  ‘Aiden’s there. And there’s a nanny.’

  ‘It’s not “unlike” her.’ Pauline gave her husband the most withering of scowls. ‘She’s never done anything like this in her life, and of course she wouldn’t leave Roxana on her own.’ She turned to me. ‘We’re worried sick, if you want the truth, Susan. And Lawrence may not agree, but I’m convinced it’s got something to do with this book.’

  ‘I do agree!’ Lawrence muttered.

  ‘Did anyone else know about her concerns?’ I asked.

  ‘I already told you that she telephoned us from Branlow Hall, so any one of a number of people could have overheard her.’

  ‘I mean, had she talked about her suspicions with anyone else?’

  Pauline Treherne shook her head. ‘We tried several times to phone her from France and when she didn’t answer we called Aiden. He hadn’t rung because he didn’t want to worry us, but it turned out that he had contacted the police the same day she disappeared. Unfortunately, they didn’t take him very seriously . . . at least, not to begin with. They suggested the two of them might be having marriage difficulties.’

  ‘And were they?’

  ‘Not at all,’ Lawrence said. ‘They’ve always been very happy together. The police spoke to Eloise – she’s the nanny – and she said the same. She never heard any arguments.’

  ‘Aiden’s a perfect son-in-law. He’s clever and he’s hard-working. I only wish Lisa could find someone like him. And he’s as worried as we are!’

  All the time Pauline had been speaking to me, I’d thought she was fighting something. Suddenly she pulled out a packet of cigarettes and lit one. She smoked like someone who had just taken up the habit again after a long abstinence. She inhaled, then went on.

  ‘By the time we got back to England, the police had finally decided to take an interest. Not that they were very much help. Cecily had taken the dog for a walk. She has a shaggy golden retriever called Bear – we’ve always kept dogs. She left the hotel at about three o’clock in the afternoon and parked the car at Woodbridge station. She often used to take the river path. That’s the River Deben. There’s a circular walk that takes you along the edge and to begin with it’s well populated. But then it becomes wilder and more remote until you come to a wood and on the other side there’s a road that takes you back through Martlesham.’

  ‘So if someone attacked her—’

  ‘It’s not the sort of thing that ever happens in Suffolk. But yes, there were plenty of places where she would have been on her own, out of sight.’ Pauline took a breath and went on. ‘Aiden got worried when she didn’t come home for dinner and quite rightly called the police. Two uniformed officers came round and asked a few questions, but they didn’t raise the alarm until the next morning, which was much too late of course. By that time Bear had shown up, on his own, back at the station, and after that they took everything more seriously. They had people – and their own dogs – out searching the entire area from Martlesham all the way back to Melton. But it was no good. There are fields, woods, mudflats . . . a lot of ground to cover. They didn’t find anything.’

  ‘How long is it since she went missing?’ I asked.

  ‘The last time anyone saw her was last Wednesday.’

  I felt the silence fall. Five days. That was a long time, an abyss into which Cecily had fallen.

  ‘You’ve come all this way to talk to me,’ I said, finally. ‘What exactly do you want me to do?’

  Pauline glanced at her husband.

  ‘The answer is in this book,’ he explained. ‘Atticus Pünd Takes the Case. You must know it better than anyone.’

  ‘Actually, it’s been quite a few years since I read it,’ I admitted.

  ‘You worked with the author, this man, Alan Conway. You knew how his mind worked. If we were to ask you to reread it, I’m sure there are things that might occur to you that we haven’t noticed. And if you actually came to Branlow Hall and read the book in situ, so to speak, maybe you might see what it was that our daughter spotted and why she felt compelled to ring us. And that in turn might tell us where she is or what’s happened to her.’

  His voice faltered as he spoke those last words. What’s happened to her. There might be a simple reason why she had vanished but it was unlikely. She knew something. She was a danger to someone. The thought was better left unsaid.

  ‘Can I have one of these?’ I asked. I helped myself to one of Pauline Treherne’s cigarettes. My own pack was behind the bar. The whole ritual – pulling out the cigarette, lighting it, taking the first puff – gave me time to think. ‘I can’t come to England,’ I said eventually. ‘I’m afraid I’m too busy here. But I will read the book if you don’t mind leaving me your copy. I can’t promise anything will come to mind. I mean, I remember the story and it doesn’t correspond quite with what you’ve told me. But I can email you—’

  ‘No. That won’t do.’ Pauline had already made up her mind. ‘You need to talk to Aiden and Lisa – and Eloise, for that matter. And you should meet Derek, the night manager. He was on duty the night Frank Parris was killed and spoke to the detective in charge. He’s in Alan Conway’s book too – although he’s called Eric.’ She leaned towards me, imploring. ‘We’re not asking you for a lot of your time.’

  ‘And we’ll pay you,’ Lawrence added. ‘We have plenty of money and we’re not going to hold back if it helps find our daughter.’ He paused. ‘Ten thousand pounds?’

  That drew a sharp look from his wife and it occurred to me that, without thinking, he had greatly increased, perhaps doubled, the amount they had intended to offer me. That was what my reluctance had done. I thought for a moment that she was going to say something, but she relaxed and nodded.

  Ten thousand pounds. I thought about the replastering on the balcony. A new computer for Andreas. The ice-cream display chest that was on the blink. Panos and Vangelis, who had both been muttering about pay raises.

  * * *

  ‘How could I say no?’ This was what I told Andreas now in our bedroom, late at night. ‘We need the money, and anyway, maybe I can help them find their daughter.’

  ‘You think she’s still alive?’

  ‘It’s possible. But if she isn’t, perhaps I can find out who killed her.’

  Andreas sat up. He was wide awake now and he was worried about
me. I felt bad that I had sworn at him. ‘The last time you went looking for a killer, it didn’t end very well,’ he reminded me.

  ‘This is different. This isn’t personal. It’s got nothing to do with me.’

  ‘Which sounds to me like an argument for leaving it alone.’

  ‘You may be right. But . . .’

  I had made up my mind and Andreas knew it.

  ‘I need a break anyway,’ I said. ‘It’s been two years, Andreas, and apart from a weekend in Santorini we haven’t been anywhere. I’m completely worn out, endlessly firefighting, endlessly trying to make things work. I thought you’d understand.’

  ‘A break from the hotel or a break from me?’ he asked.

  I wasn’t sure I had an answer to that.

  ‘Where will you stay?’ he asked.

  ‘With Katie. It’ll be nice.’ I rested a hand on his arm, feeling the warm flesh and the curve of his muscle. ‘You can manage perfectly well without me. I’ll ask Nell to come in and look after things. And we’ll talk to each other every day.’

  ‘I don’t want you to go, Susan.’

  ‘But you’re not going to stop me, Andreas.’

  He paused and in that moment I could see him fighting with himself. My Andreas versus Andreas the Greek. ‘No,’ he said, finally. ‘You must do what you have to.’

  * * *

  Two days later, he drove me to Heraklion airport. There are parts of the road from Agios Nikolaos – as you pass Neapoli and Latsida – that are actually very beautiful. The landscape is wild and empty, with the mountains stretching into the distance and the sense that nothing very much has been touched for a thousand years. Even the new motorway after Malia is surrounded by gorgeous countryside and as you draw nearer you dip down and find yourself close to a wide, white sand beach. Maybe that was what gave me a sense of sadness, an understanding of what I was leaving behind. Suddenly I wasn’t thinking of all the problems and the chores of running the Polydorus. I was thinking of midnight and the waves and pansélinos – the full moon. Wine. Laughter. My peasant life.