‘Cecily believed in him,’ Pauline said.
‘She knew him?’
‘We have two daughters and they both work with us at the hotel. Cecily was the general manager when all this happened. In fact, she was the one who interviewed Stefan and employed him.’
‘She got married at the same hotel where she worked?’
‘Absolutely. It’s a family business. Our staff are part of our family. She wouldn’t think of having it anywhere else,’ Pauline said.
‘And she thought Stefan was innocent.’
‘To begin with, yes. She insisted on it. That’s the trouble with Cecily. She’s always been far too good-natured, too trusting, the sort who believes the best in everyone. But the evidence against Stefan was overwhelming. I don’t know where to begin. There were no fingerprints on the hammer … it had been wiped clean. But there was blood splatter on his clothes and on money – taken from the dead man – under his mattress. He was seen entering Frank Parris’s room. And anyway, he confessed. When that happened, even Cecily had to admit that she was wrong and that was the end of it. She and Aiden went to Antigua. The hotel slowly returned to normal, although it took a long, long time and no one ever stayed in room twelve again. We use it for storage now. As I said, this all happened years ago and we thought it was behind us. But it seems not.’
‘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.