It was a good question.
You would have thought it would be the first thing I would do – go through the book from cover to cover. But I hadn’t even brought it with me. Actually, I didn’t have any of Alan’s books in Crete: they had too many unpleasant memories. I’d looked into a bookshop while I was in London, meaning to pick up a copy, and had been surprised to find they were out of stock. I could never decide if that was a good or a bad sign when I was in publishing. Great sales or bad distribution?
The truth was that I didn’t want to read it yet.
I remembered it well enough: the village of Tawleigh-on-the-Water, the death at Clarence Keep, the various clues, the identity of the killer. I still had my notes somewhere, the email ‘discussions’ I had with Alan during the editorial process (I’ve added those inverted commas because he never listened to a word I said). The story held no surprises for me. I knew the plot inside out.
But you have to remember that Alan hid things in the text: not just anagrams, but acrostics, acronyms, words within words. He did it partly to amuse himself but often to indulge the more unpleasant side of his nature. It was already clear to me that he had used many elements of Branlow Hall for Atticus Pünd Takes the Case, but what he hadn’t done was describe what had actually happened in June 2008. There was no advertising executive, no wedding, no hammer. If Alan, during his brief visit to the hotel, had somehow discovered who had really killed Frank Parris, he could have concealed it in a single word or a name or a description of something completely irrelevant. He could have spelled out the name of the killer in the chapter headings. Something had caught Cecily Treherne’s eye when she read the book, but there was very little chance that it would catch mine – not until I knew a great deal more about her and everyone else at the hotel.
‘Not yet,’ I said, answering Lawrence’s question. ‘I thought it might be sensible to meet everyone and look round first. I don’t know what Alan found when he came here. The more I know about the hotel, the more chance I’ll have of making a connection.’
‘Yes. That’s a good thought.’
‘Would it be possible to see the room where Stefan Codrescu was living?’
‘I’ll take you there after supper. It’s being used by one of our other staff members. But I’m sure they won’t mind.’
The waiter came over with the drinks and at the same time Lisa Treherne arrived. At least, I assumed it was her. I had seen photographs of her sister, Cecily, in the newspaper: a pretty woman with a rather babyish face, pursed lips, round cheeks. Apart from her fair hair, cut short in an old-fashioned style, this woman looked nothing like her. She was solid, unsmiling, wearing clothes that were deliberately business-like with cheap spectacles and sensible shoes. She had a scar on the side of her mouth and I found it hard to stop myself staring. It was a dead straight line about half an inch long: it could have been cut with a knife. If it had been me I would have softened it with a little concealer but she had allowed it to define her. She was scowling and it was as if she was unable to smile, as if the scar prevented her.
She approached the table like a boxer climbing into the ring and even before she spoke I knew we weren’t going to get along. ‘So you’re Susan Ryeland,’ she said. She sat down without any ceremony. ‘I’m Lisa Treherne.’
‘It’s nice to meet you,’ I said.
‘Is it?’
‘Do you want a drink, dear?’ Lawrence asked, a little nervously.
‘I already told the waiter.’ She looked me straight in the eye. ‘Was it your idea to send Alan Conway here?’
‘I didn’t know anything about it,’ I told her. ‘I knew he was writing the book but I never saw his work until it was finished and I had no idea he had come to this hotel until your father came to see me in Crete.’
I was trying to work out if Lisa was in the book. There is one character in Atticus Pünd Takes the Case who has a scar: a beautiful Hollywood actress called Melissa James. Yes. That would have amused Alan, to take this unattractive woman and turn her into the opposite of herself.
Lisa didn’t seem to have heard what I’d said. ‘Well, if something has happened to Cess because of what was in that book, I hope you’ll be pleased with yourself.’
‘I really don’t think that’s fair—’ Lawrence began.
But I could stand up for myself. ‘Where do you think your sister is?’ I asked.
I wondered if Lisa was going to accept that she was dead, destroying any hopes that her father might still have. I could see that for a moment she was tempted, but she couldn’t go that far. ‘I don’t know. When she first went missing, I assumed that she and Ade had had a fight.’
Cess and Ade. The pet names weren’t exactly affectionate. They were more a way of saving time.
‘Did they argue often?’
‘Yes—’
‘That’s not true,’ Lawrence cut in.
‘Come on, Dad. I know you like to think of them as the perfect couple. Aiden as the perfect husband, perfect father! But if you ask me, he only ever married Cess because she gave him an easy ride. Golden smile. Blue eyes. But no one ever asks what’s going on behind them.’
‘What exactly are you saying, Lisa?’ I asked. I was surprised she should be so upfront with her feelings.
A second waiter came over with a double whisky on a silver tray. She took it without thanking him.
‘I just get fed up with Ade swanning around the hotel as if he runs it. That’s all. Especially when I’m the one doing all the heavy lifting.’
‘Lisa does the books,’ Lawrence explained.
‘I do the accounts. Contracts. Insurance, HR and stock control.’ She drank half the whisky in one go. ‘He schmoozes with the guests.’
‘Do you think he killed Frank Parris?’ I asked.
Lisa stared at me. I had been deliberately provocative but actually my question was completely logical. If Cecily had been killed, then it was because she knew something about the earlier murder. It followed that whoever killed Frank Parris must have killed her.
‘No,’ she said, finishing the whisky.
‘Why not?’
She looked at me with pity. ‘Because it was Stefan! He admitted it. He’s in jail.’
A few other guests had begun to drift into the room. It was a quarter to seven, still very light outside. Lawrence picked up one of the menus that had been left on the table. ‘Shall we order?’ he asked.
I was hungry but I didn’t want to interrupt Lisa. I waited for her to continue.
‘Hiring Stefan Codrescu was a mistake and we should have fired him right at the start. I said so at the time, although nobody listened to me. He wasn’t just a criminal himself. He’d grown up with criminals. We gave him an opportunity and he just sneered at us. He was only here five months, for heaven’s sake, but he was ripping us off almost from the moment he walked in.’
‘We don’t know that,’ Lawrence said.
‘We do know that, Daddy. I know that.’ She turned to me. ‘He’d only been here for a few weeks before I started noticing anomalies. I wouldn’t imagine you have any idea what it’s like, running a hotel, Susan … ’