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Who was I to believe? I had been given two completely different versions of the same story: ‘Hansel and Gretel’ vs ‘Cinderella’, if you like. For Eliot Crace, Miriam Crace had been the wicked witch, desperate to feed the children to the flames. For Frederick Turner, she had been the fairy godmother who had waved the wand so that he would go to the ball. What did that make Marble Hall? A prison or a palace? I had a two-and-a-half-hour journey back to London and I’d already decided that I wasn’t going to start it until I had a clearer idea of what had really been going on all those years ago.

It was always possible that both of them might be right – speaking their own truth, as we’re meant to say these days. Frederick had admitted that he’d been educated separately from the other children and no matter how pleasantly he’d described it, he’d been sent to sleep in the attic. To what extent had he really been part of the family? Miriam Crace had adopted him, but he had never called her ‘Mother’ – and now he was reduced to managing the house where he had once lived, limping around, glad-handing the tourists.

As for Eliot, he’d given me a version of events as seen by a twelve-year-old, and having visited Marble Hall, I understood how easy it would have been to be unhappy there. The dark corridors, the claustrophobia, the isolation, even the taxidermy … I wouldn’t have wished it on any child of mine. It was also true that his parents had abandoned him at the first opportunity. The rapid exodus from Wiltshire, with Kenneth Rivers left behind to die on his own, certainly supported Eliot’s recollections.

What I needed was a third perspective from someone who had witnessed events without being involved in them. An outsider. And luckily, Frederick had given me the name of just the man. had been Miriam Crace’s personal physician. Presumably he knew the family well. Frederick had also let slip that he lived nearby. It shouldn’t be too hard to find him.

I took out my phone and tapped four words into the search engine: LAMBERT, MIRIAM CRACE and DEATH. Nothing has done more damage to modern detective fiction than the invention of the internet. Forget Sherlock Holmes and his ratiocination or Hercule Poirot’s little grey cells. We have all the information in the world at our fingertips and there’s no longer any need for deduction. Sure enough, within seconds I had found what I was looking for in the Wiltshire Times .

WORLD-FAMOUS AUTHOR FOUND DEAD AT HER DEVIZES HOME

Speaking from his surgery in Urchfont, Dr John Lambert described what had happened. ‘I was called to her home at six o’clock in the morning, when she was discovered by the housekeeper. I had known Mrs Crace for many years and was aware of the fact that she had been suffering from heart disease, but still it was a great shock. My own children had been brought up on her books. Sadly, there was nothing I could do for her. She had passed away peacefully in her sleep.’

Urchfont was less than five miles away from Marble Hall. It was a beautiful place, a Wiltshire village bathed in the afternoon sunshine, centred on a handsome church and a duck pond that might have been purposely designed for jigsaw puzzles and chocolate boxes long before they were invented. I cruised along the high street in my MG with the roof down, looking for that more traditional search engine: the village pub. It was called The Lamb Inn and although it was past three o’clock, there were still drinkers sitting outside. I parked and went in.

A young man barely out of his teens stood behind the bar. I went over to him. ‘Can you help me? I’m looking for . John Lambert. It’s stupid of me. My phone has gone down and I’ve lost his address.’

The barman looked at me blankly. ‘Mum!’ he called, never taking his eyes off me.

An older woman bustled in from a back room. ‘Yes?’

‘Do you know a ?’ I asked. ‘I’m trying to find his house.’

She looked me up and down. ‘You don’t look ill.’

‘I’m not. He’s a family friend.’

‘Well, I don’t know where he lives.’

‘He’s at Pynsent House, on the green.’ The voice came from the other side of the room. A man in a flat cap, playing dominoes, had taken pity on me. ‘That’s two minutes from here. He’s not a doctor any more, though.’

‘She says she’s not ill,’ the man playing against him said.

‘I know. I heard her.’ The first man scowled. ‘He doesn’t need to work,’ he went on. ‘Him and his wife. They’re doing all right for themselves.’

Around the pub, a few heads nodded in agreement. I got the sense that and his wife weren’t the most popular members of the community. Even the barman’s mother seemed to have taken against him.

The village green was triangular, with three roads leading off. Pynsent House was a handsome brick building with three chimneys and a thatched roof, partly concealed by shrubbery. There was a classic car parked in the street outside, a Jaguar convertible with dark green panel work and gleaming chrome. It really was a museum piece and although it was an unworthy thought, I wondered how had managed to afford it. Somehow it didn’t quite fit with the image of a retired country doctor. There wasn’t anywhere to park on the green, so I drove round the corner and found a spot nearby. Then I walked back and rang the bell.

The door was opened by a man in his seventies. He was still in good shape, but his thinning hair, drooping moustache and weathered skin gave away his age. If that was his car, he had spent too many hours with the roof down and the wind rushing into his face. He was wearing a cardigan, despite the warmth of the afternoon. He examined me with the sort of look he might have reserved for a door-to-door salesman or a Jehovah’s Witness.

‘Yes?’

‘?’

‘Yes.’

‘My name is Susan Ryeland. I’m a friend of Eliot Crace, Miriam Crace’s grandson. I wonder if I might talk to you for a moment?’

‘What is this about?’

‘It’s a bit difficult to explain, but I’m quite worried about him. He’s writing a book that contains some allegations about his family, and obviously I don’t want anything to come out in print that may be damaging to him or to anyone else. As the family doctor and the man who was there the morning Miriam Crace died, I’m hoping you can help.’

He blinked at me. ‘You’d better come in.’

I’d stretched the truth when I was talking to Frederick, but this time I’d turned it on its head. My meeting in the tea room had taught me a simple lesson. If I introduced myself as Eliot’s editor, I’d be implying that I was on his side. I’m not suggesting that Frederick – or , for that matter – had anything they wanted to conceal, but a great deal of secrecy had always surrounded Miriam Crace and her life at Marble Hall, and anyone asking questions was bound to be seen as an interloper. I’d decided that was more likely to talk to me if he thought I was preventing a book from coming out rather than publishing it, and so far it was a strategy that seemed to be working.

He led me through the hallway and into a living room with a low ceiling, exposed beams and a heavily patterned carpet, all of which made the space feel even more compressed than it actually was. The furniture was comfortable and chintzy. The scent of retirement hung in the air. A woman in a floral dress was sitting in an armchair, reading a newspaper. She was the same age as him, very countrified, with a mauve tint to her hair and glasses on a cord running behind her ears. She seemed put out by my appearance.

‘This is Susan Ryeland, dear,’ said. ‘She’s a friend of Eliot Crace.’

‘We haven’t seen Eliot Crace for a very long time.’ This was her only observation. She returned to the article she had been reading, making no secret of the fact that she was annoyed to have been interrupted.

‘You say you’re working with Eliot?’

‘I was an editor at Cloverleaf Books when he had two books published about ten years ago. Now he’s written another book and he’s asked me to help him with it. But I have some concerns about the content.’

‘What is it he wants to write?’ asked. He was immediately nervous, his eyes blinking and his mouth turning downwards, following the curve of his moustache. ‘What allegations is he making?’

‘He seems to have quite a negative view of his grandmother,’ I began.

‘Miriam? Well, she could be difficult, it’s true. But I suppose it comes with the territory. After all, she was getting on a bit. And there was a lot of pressure on her. She had millions of fans.’

‘According to Eliot, she treated her family very badly.’

‘That’s nonsense. And I think you would be very ill-advised to suggest such a thing in public. Have you spoken to his uncle, Jonathan Crace? I can tell you, Miss Ryeland, Mr Crace won’t be happy at all. I myself have signed a non-disclosure agreement with the estate and there is very little I can tell you about Mrs Crace or anything else. I’m surprised that Eliot didn’t sign an NDA too.’

‘Well, he was only twelve years old when he left Marble Hall.’

‘That’s exactly right, Miss Ryeland. I wouldn’t have thought anyone would have any faith in the recollections of a child.’

‘A very devious child,’ Mrs Lambert remarked. ‘Not pleasant at all.’

‘How well did you know the family?’ I asked , ignoring his wife.

‘Well, they moved to Devizes a long time ago, when I was still at school. My father was the doctor here then. I took over the surgery when he retired. My first patient at Marble Hall was Leylah Crace, when she was pregnant. She had a daughter, a lovely, healthy baby. After that, I got to know most of the family – though not socially. I think I probably treated every one of them for something or other over the years.’

Mrs Lambert peered at her husband over the top of the newspaper. ‘I used to meet the children in the village. Roland and his brother, Eliot. Those two were never apart. And what was the name of the sister? She used to waddle along behind them.’

‘That’s a little unfair, dear.’ had the decency to look embarrassed. ‘I examined Julia Crace on more than one occasion. She had a very low BMR.’ He smiled at me. ‘Basal metabolic rate. Her thyroid levels were abnormal and I recommended a change of diet … green vegetables, fruit, fatty fish. Not easy for a young girl, especially in those days.’

‘Eliot told me that his grandmother was quite cruel to her,’ I said.

‘You only have Eliot’s word for that and I can assure you I saw no evidence of it. I would have been very surprised if Miriam, a much-loved children’s author, had been anything but sympathetic and kind to her granddaughter. She gave money to children’s charities, you know, and she was the patron of an orphanage in Devizes.’

‘Salisbury!’ Mrs Lambert’s disembodied voice corrected him. ‘You should tell her about Eliot and your medicine bag.’

‘What was that?’ I asked.

‘Oh, it was nothing, really. But it doesn’t reflect well on Eliot.’ I waited for him to continue. ‘I was at the house attending to Kenneth Rivers. Now, he was a very nice man. Very quiet. He was a civil servant when he married Miriam, but he no longer had any need to work, not with all the money his wife was making.’

‘He did taxidermy.’

‘Yes. He started out buying specimens, some of them fifty or a hundred years old, and when that ceased to satisfy him, he started creating them himself. It was an unusual hobby – and that was why I was there. He’d come into contact with some quite unpleasant chemicals which had caused health problems. A darkening of the skin, warts, lesions. It could have been quite serious if I hadn’t intervened. I put him on a course of dimercaprol and it cleared up in no time. Anyway, Eliot happened to be in the room while I was treating his grandfather and when I turned round, you won’t believe what I saw! He had his hand in my medicine bag. He was rummaging through the different medicines and before I could stop him, he’d snatched one of my bottles and run out of the room.’

‘Little thief!’ Mrs Lambert exclaimed.

‘That’s true, dear. But I checked what was missing and it was only a bottle of Liqufruta. A cough medicine. It wasn’t poisonous or anything like that. Of course, I had to tell his parents and I must say, I was very disappointed by their response. One of the children had a birthday that week and they didn’t want to make a big thing of it. I insisted that they talk to Eliot, though. You can’t have children rummaging around in medicine bags.’

‘And stealing!’ Mrs Lambert added.

‘In the end, his father gave him a good talking-to. Eliot said he’d done it as a dare and insisted that he’d thrown the bottle away, so no harm had been done. I would have given him a good hiding – but whatever Eliot may be saying about them now, his parents weren’t like that and he got off scot-free.’

‘When was this?’

‘The twenty-fifth of June 2003.’ was pleased that he could remember the date. ‘It was exactly two days later that Mrs Crace died.’ He realised the implications of what he had just said and went on hurriedly. ‘Before you make any false connections, let me assure you that she could have drunk a whole bottle of Liqufruta with no effect whatsoever. It was a herbal remedy. Nothing more.’

‘Miriam Crace was suffering from heart disease,’ I reminded him.

‘Yes. She had mitral stenosis.’

‘A narrowing of the mitral valve controlling the flow of blood to the heart.’

‘That’s correct.’ He was impressed by my medical knowledge, but all I was doing was repeating what Eliot had written about Lady Chalfont. The two women had the same disease.

‘Was that the reason she had to take six months off?’ I asked. This was something I had read in Miriam’s biography. ‘She went to a clinic in Lausanne,’ I added.

‘Oh no. That was a long time ago, before she even bought Marble Hall. It was in the medical notes I inherited from my father – but it was nothing to do with her heart. She was worn out. Stress caused by overwork.’

‘And you’re certain it was the mitral stenosis that killed her.’ It was time to get to the point. I felt myself closing in on the target I had set myself. ‘You see, that’s what worries me, . Eliot is saying something very different.’ I paused, as if afraid to put my thoughts into words. ‘He’s suggesting that his grandmother might not have died from natural causes.’

‘He said that?’ was instantly outraged.

Next to him, the newspaper came down, folded into his wife’s lap. She glared at me from the other side.

‘Is he pretending he poisoned her with cough medicine?’

‘He never mentioned the cough medicine. He hasn’t told me what happened, but that’s why I felt I ought to see you. I have warned Eliot against going into print with this sort of accusation—’

‘If he’s saying that, it’s a downright lie! I was the first person to examine Mrs Crace. Mrs Rodwell – she was the housekeeper – called me up to Marble Hall at six o’clock in the morning. Miriam Crace died minutes before I arrived. I issued the MCCD – the medical certificate of the cause of death – and delivered it to the registrar. I also referred the death to the coroner. If there had been the slightest indication of there being anything suspicious or unnatural about her passing, I would have been obliged to report it under the Registration of Births and Deaths Regulations of 1987. Otherwise I would have been committing a criminal offence. But there was not. Miriam Crace’s heart condition was well known to everyone who was close to her. Mitral stenosis is fatal in eighty per cent of cases, usually within ten years, and especially if there is secondary pulmonary hypertension – which in this instance was most certainly the case. And why would anyone want to harm her, anyway? She was loved all over the world.’

‘You’re positive it had nothing to do with the liquid that Eliot took from your medicine bag?’

‘One hundred per cent. I’m sorry I even mentioned it now.’

‘You didn’t say anything at the time?’

‘I told his uncle what had happened, as I recall, but otherwise there was no need to. No.’

‘And I don’t suppose you noticed, but was there an empty glass beside her bed? You may have known that Miriam drank a glass of lemon and ginger every morning when she woke up.’

‘I did know that, but I can’t say I noticed it at the time. As you can imagine, I had other things on my mind.’ He shook his head. His patience had finally run out. ‘I think you should leave,’ he said.

‘You’ve been very helpful,’ I said. ‘And believe me, all I want to do is to stop Eliot writing things that will cause harm to you or to the family. You’ve made it crystal clear that they don’t make any sense.’

That calmed him down a little. His wife was still glaring at me, but he got up and showed me to the door. When he opened it, I glanced at the car, as if noticing it for the first time. ‘It’s beautiful,’ I said. ‘Is it yours?’

‘Yes.’ His pride got the better of him. ‘It’s a Suffolk Jaguar SS100. A beautiful car – a 4.2-litre twin-cam straight-six engine. It purrs along, and there’s plenty of legroom too. I’ve got a Triumph Spitfire in the garage. I’m proud to have them and it’s all thanks to Miriam Crace. She left me a generous bequest in her will. She was a wonderful woman. I still miss her.’

‘We all do,’ I said.

I turned and walked away, but he stood there, watching me, until I had gone.