Page 61 of Marble Hall Murders

‘Jonathan’s wife.’

‘She’s Egyptian. She and Jonathan met on a Nile cruise and Grandma was always making jokes about her being a belly dancer or a handmaiden or things like that. She got off more lightly than poor Freddy because she was whiter than him and because her family had money. But if you’re talking about racism, there’s something else you ought to know. It was the real reason why she fell out with Uncle Jonathan and almost sold the entire estate.’

‘Because he married an Egyptian?’

‘No. Because he was the one who persuaded her to add ethnically diverse characters to the Little People. Njinga and Karim in particular. She hated doing it, but he assured her that the books wouldn’t survive in the twenty-first century ifthey didn’t reflect modern times. She went along with it, but she never forgave him. It’s the reason why, at the end of her life, she was thinking of selling the rights.’

I took a breath. ‘Why are you telling me all this?’ I asked.

‘Because if you want to help Eliot, you need to know about my family.’

‘Why have you and Eliot fallen out?’

‘We haven’t.’

‘He told me he hadn’t seen you for a while.’

‘We’ve both been busy.’ Roland sighed. ‘All right. He never really forgave me for joining the estate. He thinks of it as treason. I’ve tried to explain that there was no harm in it, but he won’t listen to me.’

I wasn’t sure Roland was telling the whole story, but I let that go for the moment. ‘Is it true that you wanted to kill your grandmother when you were children?’ I asked.

‘I’ll tell you about that, Susan. But first you need to believe me when I say that there is absolutely no truth in the suggestion that Grandma died an unnatural death. Uncle Jonathan is right about that – and if that’s what you’re hearing from Eliot, it’s rubbish. Yes. We talked about killing her. I’ve already told you – we hated her. But we were children! We were growing up with R. L. Stine and Agatha Christie on TV. It wasn’t some sort of dark conspiracy. It was all in our heads, and for what it’s worth, Eliot was the most imaginative of the three of us.

‘Here’s the thing. I’ve already told you how horrible Grandma was to Fred and to Aunt Leylah. But she was much, much worse to my sister, Julia. You’ve spoken to Dr Lambert. Did he tell you that she had a thyroid problem? She waslarge. For some reason, my grandmother took this as a personal insult – that someone in the family should have a shape that didn’t conform. God knows how she managed to keep all these prejudices out of her books, but maybe that was down to her editors. At any event, she made snide remarks and teased Julia at every opportunity, and Eliot and I both hated her for it. That was why we talked about pushing her under a bus or poisoning her. I was seventeen when Grandma died. Julia was fifteen. Eliot was only twelve. Do you seriously think we had it in us to become murderers?’

‘But Eliot did steal medicine from Dr Lambert’s medicine bag.’

‘Cough medicine, yes – but it wasn’t poison. It was something called Liqufruta!’ Roland gave a sniff of laughter. ‘Eliot thought he could concoct something with it. Toothpaste, shoe polish, chilli sauce and cough medicine … You get the general idea. We were just kids! What did we know?’

Roland glanced at his watch. We had been in the room for ten minutes or more. He had to go back to work.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘You’ve been very helpful. Would it be possible to speak to your sister Julia?’

He reached into his top pocket and took out his business card. ‘She teaches geography at a school in Lincoln. If you text me your number, I’ll ask her to call you. But she’s coming to the party, so you might meet her there.’

‘Is she married?’

‘Sadly not.’

‘What about you?’

He smiled. ‘I’m still available too.’ He stood up. ‘I just want Eliot’s book to be successful,’ he said. ‘If you can helpmake that happen, I’ll be more than grateful. I’m not sure why, but I think he was the most damaged of the three of us by our life at Marble Hall. Maybe it was his arguments with Dad? I don’t know. But if he became a big-shot writer like Grandma, it would be the making of him. I’d love to see that happen.’

‘I’ll do what I can,’ I promised.

We moved to the door, but as we passed into the reception area, something he had told me right at the start of our conversation came to mind. ‘You said that your grandmother left no bequests in her will outside the family, apart from a small sum paid to Frederick Turner.’

‘That’s right.’

‘What about her charities?’

‘She’d already set up trusts for them while she was alive.’

‘So, no-one else?’

‘That’s what I always understood.’

We shook hands and I left the building. But as I stepped into the street, this is what I was thinking. Dr Lambert had boasted to me that his two expensive classic cars had been paid for by money left to him by Miriam Crace. Roland had just told me that wasn’t true.