Page 128 of Marble Hall Murders

‘Good morning, Detective Constable. How can I help you? I’d invite you in, but I’m afraid this isn’t my house.’

‘I don’t want to come in, thank you very much. DIBlakeney asked me to give you this.’ She lifted her hand and for the first time I saw that she was carrying a white A4 envelope.

‘Where is DI Blakeney?’ I asked.

‘He’s busy. I was passing so I said I’d do it for him.’

She delivered the package, pushing it towards me as if it were an offensive weapon. With her attitude, she wouldn’t have lasted a week as an Amazon driver.

‘Thank you,’ I said.

That should have been it. She should have just walked away and left me to get on with whatever was in the envelope – but she had taken such a strong dislike to me that she couldn’t help herself. I saw her take two steps and then turn and come back again.

‘You know, we are going to get you, Ms Ryeland,’ she said.

‘I prefer to be called Susan.’

‘You may think you’re very clever and that you’ve got Detective Inspector Blakeney twisted round your little finger, but you don’t know anything. He’s lying to you!’ She couldn’t keep the malice out of her voice as she spoke those last four words. ‘He knows you killed that boy. We all know it. But what he has to do is, he has to make the case watertight – and that’s why he’s getting close to you, pretending to be your friend. When he’s back in the office, mind, you might be surprised what he says about you.’

‘Why are you telling me this?’ I asked.

‘We both have to do it,’ she went on, not answering me. ‘It’s normal procedure. You cosy up to a suspect, gain their trust and wait for them to make a mistake.’

‘I can’t imagine you being cosy with anyone, Detective Constable.’

‘You can laugh all you like now, Ms Ryeland, but your time’s running out and while you’re standing there smiling at me in that snooty way of yours, you might as well know it.’

She had said her piece. She left.

And I’d thought Detective Superintendent Locke was bad!

I closed the door and carried the envelope into the kitchen, but I didn’t open it straight away. I couldn’t stop thinking about what Wardlaw had said – and I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Although it was true that I had antagonised her – deliberately – when we first met, there had to be another reason for her almost psychotic dislike of me. After all, she should never have spoken to me like that. If what she said was true, then she had just revealed the secret methodology of a police operation. I didn’t think Blakeney would be pleased.

Was it true? I didn’t want to believe her. I suddenly realised that after our meal in the Italian restaurant and our walk around Alexandra Palace, I’d begun to take a liking to Ian Blakeney. At the very least, I’d thought we could work together. If it turned out that it had all been a charade, that he’d been playing me from the start, I’d be more than disappointed. I’d be furious – with him and with myself.

I didn’t know if I even wanted to look inside the envelope, but I grabbed a kitchen knife and cut it open, leaving the same serrated edge that Pünd had noticed on the envelope delivered to Lady Chalfont in the book. I pulled out around thirty pages of text, stapled together. There was a handwritten note attached.

Dear Susan,

I thought I might try this out on you.

I mentioned to you that I fancied my hand at being a crime writer and that Fiona – my wife – always encouraged me. So I found myself wondering what the final chapter of Eliot’s book might have looked like and here it is. The writing style may be rubbish, but I’m pretty confident it’s the right ending. I suppose I’ve read enough of these sorts of books to know.

By the way, I didn’t get there on my own. You remember what you said when we were sitting in the kitchen of that house you’re now in? We were talking about Robert Waysmith and your exact words were: ‘If there was anyone he might have wanted to murder, it was his father.’ You were exactly right – so you get half the credit.

Anyway, I’ve enjoyed writing my own version of Atticus Pünd and I hope it will help us both sort out the rest of this strange business.

Sincerely,

Ian Blakeney

PS I’ve also worked out the third anagram. We can talk about that when we next meet.

Intrigued, I unstapled the pages and reached for a pen.

The first thing I noticed was that Blakeney had used the same font as Eliot Crace. I’ve always had a fondness for Garamond, a very neat and classical typeface designed by a Frenchman, Claude Garamond, back in the sixteenth century. Glancing over the first two sentences, I saw at once thatBlakeney could write, but as he’d said in his note, it wasn’t his style that mattered.

It was the last thing I would have expected, but I was about to read the end.