Outside, a black Range Rover drove past the stables and into the drive of Branlow Cottage, the wheels crunching on the gravel. I heard the slam of a car door and looked out of the window in time to see a youngish man wearing a padded waistcoat and a cap get out. There was a dog with him. At the same time, the door of the house opened and a young girl with black hair ran towards him, followed by a dark, slim woman carrying a shopping bag. The man scooped the girl up in his arms. I couldn’t see much of his face but I knew that he must be Aiden MacNeil. The girl was his daughter, Roxana. The woman must be Eloise, the nanny. He spoke briefly to her and then they turned round and went back into the house.
I felt guilty, as if I had been spying on them. I turned away, snatched up my handbag with money, notepad and cigarettes and left the room, heading back through the fire door to the older part of the hotel and room twelve. It seemed the obvious place to begin. Lars had propped open the door with a wastepaper basket but I didn’t want to be disturbed so I removed the basket and the door swung shut behind me.
I found myself in a room that was actually half the size of the one I had been given. There was no bed and no carpet; presumably they had both been taken away, covered in blood. I’ve read in so many crime books that violent acts leave a sort of echo and I’ve never quite believed it, but there was definitely an atmosphere in that place … in the empty spaces where there should have been furniture, the faded paintwork on the walls showing where pictures had once hung, the curtains that would never be drawn. There were two trolleys heaped up with towels and cleaning equipment, a pile of boxes, an array of machines – toasters, coffeemakers – mops and buckets, all the junk you don’t want to see when you check into a smart hotel.
This was where Frank Parris had been killed. I tried to imagine the door opening and someone creeping in. If Frank had been asleep when he was attacked, they would have needed an electronic key card, but then surely Stefan Codrescu would have had one already. I could tell where the bed must have stood from the position of the electric sockets on either side and I imagined Frank lying in the darkness. On an impulse, I opened the door again. The hinges made no sound but there would have been a buzz or a click as the electric lock disengaged. Would that have been enough to wake him? There had been few details in the newspapers and the Trehernes hadn’t been able to add very much more. Somewhere there must be a police report that might tell me whether Frank had been standing up or lying down, what he was wearing, exactly when he had died. The storeroom, shabby and decrepit, told me very little.
Standing there, I was suddenly depressed. Why had I left Andreas? What the hell did I think I was doing? If it had been Atticus Pünd coming into Branlow Hall, he’d have solved the crime by now. Perhaps the position of room twelve or the dog basket might have given him a clue. What about the figeen? That was straight out of Agatha Christie, wasn’t it?
But I wasn’t a detective. I wasn’t even an editor any more. I knew nothing.
Lisa Treherne
Pauline and Lawrence Treherne had invited me to join them for supper on the first evening of my stay but when I entered the hotel dining room, Lawrence was sitting on his own. ‘I’m afraid Pauline has a headache,’ he explained. I noticed that the table was still laid for three. ‘Lisa said she would join us,’ he added. ‘But we’re to start without her.’
He looked older than he had in Crete, dressed in a check shirt that hung off him and red corduroy trousers. There were more lines under his eyes and his cheeks had those dark blotches that I’ve always associated with illness or old age. It was obvious that the disappearance of his daughter was taking its toll and I guessed that the same was true for Pauline, that her ‘headache’ had been caused by exactly the same thing.
I sat down opposite him. I was wearing a long dress and wedges but I wasn’t comfortable. I wanted to kick off my shoes and feel sand beneath my feet.
‘It’s very good of you to have come, Miss Ryeland,’ he began.
‘Please … call me Susan.’ I thought we had been through all that.
A waiter came over and we ordered drinks. He had a gin and tonic. I went for a glass of white wine.
‘How is your room?’ he asked.
‘It’s very nice, thank you. You have a lovely hotel.’
He sighed. ‘It’s not really mine any more. My daughters run it now. And it’s difficult to take very much pleasure from it at the moment. It was a life’s work for Pauline and me, creating the hotel and building it up, but when something like this happens, you have to ask yourself if it was worth it.’
‘When did you put in the extension?’
He looked puzzled, as if I had asked something odd.
‘Was the hotel like this when Frank Parris was killed?’
‘Oh … yes.’ He understood. ‘We did the renovation in 2005. We had two new wings added: Moonflower and Barn Owl.’ He half smiled. ‘The names were Cecily’s idea. The moonflower blooms after the sun has gone down and of course the barn owl comes out at night.’ He smiled. ‘Actually, you may have noticed, we’ve put owls everywhere.’ He picked up the menu and showed me an image stamped in gold on the cover. ‘That was Cecily too. She noticed that “barn owl” is an anagram of Branlow and so she had the bright idea to make it our logo.’
I felt my heart sink. Alan Conway had also had a fondness for anagrams. In one of his books, for example, all the characters were jumbled-up versions of London Tube stations. It was a strange game he played with his readers and one that only undermined the quality of his writing.
Lawrence was still talking. ‘When we were doing the rebuilding, we added a lift for disabled access,’ he explained. ‘And we knocked down a wall to enlarge the dining room.’
That was the room we were sitting in. I had reached it from the circular entrance hall and had noticed the new lift on my way in. The kitchen was at the far end, stretching all the way to the back of the hotel. ‘Can you get upstairs from the kitchen?’ I asked.
‘Yes. There’s a service lift and a staircase. We put those in at the same time. We also converted the stables into staff quarters and added the swimming pool and the spa.’
I took out my notepad and jotted down what he had just said. What it meant was that whoever had killed Frank Parris could have arrived at room twelve by four separate paths: the lift at the front of the hotel, another at the back, the main staircase and a set of service stairs. If they had already been in the hotel, they could have come down from the second floor. There had been someone on the reception desk all night but it would still have been perfectly easy to get past without being noticed.
But in Crete Pauline Treherne had told me that Stefan Codrescu had been seen entering the room. Why had he been so careless?
‘I don’t suppose you’ve had any news,’ I said. ‘About Cecily.’
Lawrence grimaced. ‘The police think she may have been caught on CCTV in Norwich, but that doesn’t make a lot of sense. She doesn’t know anyone there.’
‘Is Detective Superintendent Locke handling the disappearance?’
‘Detective Chief Superintendent, you mean. Yes. I can’t say I have a lot of faith in him. He was slow getting started – which was actually when it mattered most – and he doesn’t seem to be particularly efficient now.’ He glanced down gloomily, then asked: ‘Have you had a chance to reread the book?’