Page 63 of Marble Hall Murders

‘Well, it suggests that Elmer Waysmith is the killer.’

‘He might not be.’

‘Don’t tell me. I don’t want you to spoil the ending.’

He sipped his coffee and winced. ‘Have you got any sugar?’

I went over to a cupboard and pulled out a bag of granulated, deliberately ignoring the little bowl with the teaspoon and the sugar cubes beside the fridge. ‘So you must have been working very hard,’ I said. ‘When I met you at Causton Books, you said you’d only done another ten thousand words.’

‘I’ve been working non-stop since then.’ He smiled at me and I remembered the wild child I’d met all those years ago and always liked. ‘You must have inspired me.’

‘I’m glad to hear it.’

‘I haven’t made any changes to the first bit. Not yet. I just want to get to the end before I go back to the beginning.’

‘I think that’s sensible. And you’re sure you want me to keep reading?’

‘I’ve put my phone numbers on the envelope. I’ll be interested to know what you think.’

‘I’ll call you.’

I took the envelope. Just from the weight, I knew that Part Two was quite a bit shorter than the section I’d already read … probably around twenty thousand words. There was an editor I once worked with who could tell the length of a manuscript to the nearest five hundred words just by holding it in her hand.

‘By the way, I took your advice and went to Marble Hall,’ I said.

‘Oh.’ He looked alarmed. ‘What did you think?’

‘I found it hard to imagine you living there when you were young. All those things you said at Elaine’s. You obviously had a horrible time. But I thought it was a nice enough house and the grounds were beautiful. It’s sad, really. Lots of children would have loved growing up there.’

‘Not if they had a horrible old crone watching over them.’

‘I bumped into the manager … Frederick Turner. You’ve been very naughty, Eliot. Turning him into a French detective.’

‘You don’t think he’ll be amused?’

‘He might be offended, going on about his injuries.’ Eliot said nothing, so I asked: ‘Is that how your character lost an eye? Careless driving?’

‘Frédéric Voltaire got blown up in the war. You’ll read about that in the new pages. And as for Uncle Fred, it wasn’t careless driving.’

‘So what was it really?’

‘He was drunk or something … I don’t know. I remember when it happened. Fred said he wasn’t concentrating, but the police asked him a lot of questions. Leylah – my aunt – said he was breathalysed.’

‘Did he lose his licence?’

‘No. But he never talks about it. He was different after the accident. He was angry. He wasn’t much fun to have around.’

That was hardly surprising. Frederick Turner had lost an eye and he was still in pain. ‘Why did you put him in the book?’ I asked.

Eliot shrugged. ‘No reason. I was just having a bit of fun.’

In other words, he wasn’t going to tell me. I was tempted to ask him about his father, how Edward Crace had becomeElmer Waysmith, but this wasn’t the right time. I wanted Eliot to finish the book before we had our inevitable set-to. ‘Frederick mentioned that you once set fire to the house,’ I said.

Eliot smiled. ‘That was in Notting Hill. It was no big deal. I fell asleep with a cigarette and it burned a hole in the carpet. It set off the smoke alarms, though. My dad hit the roof, but then everything I did seemed to annoy him.’

‘Are you going to the party?’ He looked blank. ‘Next Tuesday. It’s the twentieth anniversary of your grandmother’s death.’

‘Oh – that!’ He shrugged. ‘I might. What else did Fred tell you about me?’