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I had to hand it to Eliot, he liked his cliffhangers. It was almost as if he was deliberately teasing me, reaching a point in the manuscript that made absolutely no sense at all and then jumping into his car to deliver it to me. What relevance could there possibly be in a bottle of shoe polish? Once again, it pointed to Elmer Waysmith as the killer. He had been on his way to the gallery and a smart lunch with his son and would have wanted to look his best. But why, then, would Pünd have made such a big deal about it? ‘ It tells us almost everything we need to know. ’ My biggest worry was that Eliot was an unknown quantity and he might not be quite as clever as I’d thought. I mean, the book was well written. I was enjoying it. But what if it turned out that Elmer Waysmith really had killed both Lady Chalfont and Alice Carling and that before leaving the H?tel Lafayette he’d simply polished his shoes?

It’s what makes a murder mystery unique in the world of popular fiction. It may seem brilliant, but an awful lot depends on the last chapter. Only when you get there do you find out if the book was worth reading to begin with.

To give Eliot his due, I thought he’d come a long way since the ill-fated Dr Gee mysteries. I was still unsure about some of the Second World War references. The book was set ten years after VE Day, but Eliot had already referenced millions of deaths and concentration camps, and now we had Voltaire being blown up by a German hand grenade on the Maginot Line and a lengthy subplot about stolen art. I liked both these things – and in particular Voltaire’s growing friendship with Pünd – but I had to ask myself if fans of the first nine books would enjoy these extraneous details. Maybe that’s the difference between the editor and the author. The author lives inside the work. The editor has to keep half an eye outside it.

And then there was the setting. Were the South of France, Cap Ferrat and Saint-Paul-de-Vence helping the plot? I kept on stumbling over irrelevant details. Would you have been able to drink Orangina in Nice in 1955? Would they really have had commercial dustbins sitting on pavements like we see in cities now? The answers to both questions might well be yes, but even asking them somehow made it harder to lose myself in the reality of what was being described. I wondered about La Gaude too. Would it have been quite as populated as Eliot suggested, with a police station and a commercial cinema? Had he visited the place or was he still relying on Google Earth and Wikipedia?

It was early evening by now and I was beginning to think about what I was going to do for the next five hours. This was the part of the day I found hardest, when I was most aware of living on my own. I heard Hugo purring and looked down. He was curled up next to my feet and it bothered me that I was beginning to like him. A gin and tonic? No. Too early. An early-evening quiz on TV? I’d rather shoot myself.

I decided to call Eliot.

It seemed the right thing to do. Eliot had been keen for me to read his work and I’d promised to get back to him quickly; he’d even written his address and phone numbers (two of them) on the envelope. I wouldn’t let him draw me into any further criticism of what he’d done, but I would make the right noises and urge him to finish it. At the same time, I wanted to ask him about Front Row . He’d said he wasn’t going to do it, but what if he’d changed his mind? I could see all sorts of dangers in an appearance on BBC radio, not the least of which was that he might be drunk when he turned up at the studio. I really didn’t want him to do it.

I called the first number, Eliot’s mobile, which went straight to voicemail. Not wanting to leave a message, I tried the second, a landline. It rang four or five times before it was answered, but it wasn’t Eliot whose voice I heard at the other end. It was his wife, Gillian.

‘This is Susan Ryeland,’ I said. ‘I was wondering if Eliot was there.’

‘No. No, he isn’t. I don’t know where he is.’

I could tell at once that something bad had happened. Gillian had been crying. I could hear it in her voice. She sounded desperate. ‘Gillian, are you OK?’ I asked.

‘No. I’m not.’

‘What’s happened?’

‘It’s Eliot. He was so angry with me. I’ve never seen him like that before.’

‘You’ve had an argument …’

‘Yes.’

‘Has he hurt you?’

A pause. Then: ‘He hit me.’

I felt a sickness in my stomach. ‘Is there anyone there with you?’

She started crying again and for a few seconds all I could hear was racking sobs, which sounded all the worse for being transmitted across the ether. ‘I’m on my own,’ she said eventually.

‘I’m coming round.’

‘No. There’s nothing you can do.’

‘I’ll be with you as soon as I can. I’m on my way.’

*

I was weaving in and out of the rush-hour traffic and knew I’d be lucky not to set off every speed camera between Crouch End and Notting Hill Gate. As I drove across London, part of me was screaming that none of this was my business. After all, barely a week ago, Eliot Crace had been little more than a memory and I hadn’t even heard of his wife. But what else could I do? I felt terrible about Gillian, who had seemed so vulnerable when I met her at Elaine’s. Although there was no good reason for it, I felt responsible for what had happened to her. I was supposed to be looking after Eliot and that meant looking after her too.

At the same time, I couldn’t ignore the more cynical voice whispering in my ear. If it got out that Eliot had behaved violently towards his wife, there would be no book. Nobody would want to go near him, and quite right too. I wasn’t sure I wanted to continue working with him myself and as I made my way down towards King’s Cross Station and the turning onto the Euston Road, the thought was growing in me that it could all be over: the book, our relationship – and my career.

By the time I reached Madame Tussauds and the traffic snarled up, as always, around the Baker Street traffic lights, I’d had second thoughts. I couldn’t do this on my own. Elaine Clover had started all this when she had introduced me to Eliot and Gillian. She was much closer to them than me. She should be the one to sort out this mess. Surrounded by cars and buses going nowhere, I eased my mobile out of my bag and speed-dialled her number. I was relieved when she answered at once.

Quickly, I explained what had happened. I had put the phone on speaker and was balancing it on my knee. The traffic still wasn’t moving. ‘I feel terrible for Gillian,’ I told her. ‘My first instinct was to go to the house, but now I’m not so sure.’

‘Where are you?’

‘I’m stuck in traffic at Baker Street.’

‘I’m only five minutes from the house. I can meet you there.’

‘Are you sure, Elaine? It might be better if—’

She interrupted me. ‘It’ll be a lot easier if there are two of us. And I’d like you there if Eliot shows up.’

I couldn’t argue with her. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘But you’ll probably get there ahead of me. I’ll arrive as soon as I can.’

‘Don’t worry. We’ll sort this out.’

That was the Elaine I remembered. No fussing around, just making a decision and getting on with it.

I felt less anxious after that, although it took me another thirty minutes to reach the house. Roland had told me that Eliot was living in his parents’ home in Notting Hill and my first sight of it provided striking evidence of the Crace Estate’s wealth. It was a gorgeous, white-fronted jewel of a house standing on the corner of a street that didn’t feel like London at all. Everything about it was ordered and symmetrical, a complete contrast to Eliot himself. Only the front garden, with its unloved hedges and patchy lawn, along with a rusting bicycle lying on its side, hinted that it wasn’t owned by a banker or a lawyer or, indeed, by anyone who was proud to be living here.

I parked in a residents’ bay and walked up to the front door, which opened as I approached. Elaine had seen me arrive. She was as smartly presented as ever in a cashmere jersey and jeans, but I saw from her face that things were as bad as I’d feared.

She got straight to the point. ‘Gillian’s inside. I should warn you, Susan, she’s not looking pretty. He hit her in the face and she’s badly bruised. And there’s something else you need to know before you go in. She’s pregnant.’

‘Oh my God!’ I thought about what she’d just said. ‘Does Eliot know?’

Elaine looked at me reproachfully. ‘I haven’t asked her and she hasn’t told me. One step at a time!’

The house was beautiful, but the moment I walked in, it told me another sad chapter in the history of the Crace family’s life. It was untidy and unloved. The parents had gone, leaving the children home alone. The first thing I noticed was a large wine stain on the hall carpet. There was a smell of cigarette smoke and cooking oil in the air. A table opposite the entrance had a huge scratch running across the surface and there was clutter everywhere. A bag of rubbish was waiting to be carried out to the bin. This was where Edward and Amy Crace had lived immediately after Miriam Crace’s death and I guessed it was Miriam’s money that had originally purchased it. But now Edward and Amy were in America, Roland presumably had a bachelor pad somewhere in town, and Julia was working at a private school in Lincoln. That just left Eliot and Gillian, not so much living here as squatting. This wasn’t their house or even their life. It was the temporary home of two people who had nowhere else to go.

‘I’m so glad you’ve come,’ Elaine said in a low voice. ‘Gillian’s in the kitchen.’

‘How long have you been here?’ I asked.

‘I got here twenty minutes ago. I was in Kensington when you called me. You did the right thing, Susan. I had no idea how bad things were.’

We went into a kitchen that needed cleaning … or replacing. The surfaces were cluttered with old bottles and glasses, and the white goods had turned a faint yellow. A door was hanging diagonally off one of the cupboards and the oven had been defeated by grease and neglect. The far end of the room had a seating area with doors leading into the garden, and this was where I saw Gillian, sitting on a sofa with her legs curled up, her feet bare, cradling a hot drink that Elaine must have made for her. She was wearing her NHS nursing uniform. At first sight, she seemed unharmed, as pretty as I remembered her, but hearing me arrive, she turned her head and I saw that her cheek was bruised and swollen, her eye half-closed.

‘Hello, Susan,’ she said. ‘Thank you for coming. But you really didn’t have to …’

I turned to Elaine. ‘Have you called a doctor?’ I asked.

‘I don’t want to see anyone,’ Gillian said. ‘It’s not as bad as it looks.’

I went over to her and sat on the arm of the sofa, keeping a distance between us. I was still wondering if I had been right to come. I was Eliot’s editor, not a member of the family, and it was a great relief to have Elaine here with me. ‘When did this happen?’ I asked.

‘An hour before you rang.’ She glanced at Elaine. ‘Have you told her?’

Elaine nodded. It was obvious what she meant.

‘How many weeks?’ I asked.

‘Two months. I’m expecting it in January.’ Perhaps it helped that Gillian worked as a nurse. She had to deal with difficult personal issues every day of the week and it had taught her to keep her emotions in check.

Despite Elaine’s reticence, I had to ask her. ‘Have you told him?’

‘Yes. I told him. That was when he did this.’

That shocked me. He had hit her knowing she was pregnant.

Elaine had taken a seat opposite us. She looked grim.

‘I’m grateful to you for coming over here, Susan. Both of you. But I want you to understand that it’s not Eliot’s fault.’ There was a dull quality to Gillian’s voice, as if she was describing events that had happened to somebody else. ‘I met Eliot when he came into the hospital and of course I knew he was trouble. I mean, he’d just taken a drug overdose. It wasn’t as if he’d been hit by a car while helping an old lady cross the road or something like that. He almost died that first night and it was twenty-four hours before we knew he was going to make it. I think by that time I’d fallen in love with him. It was as if we were made for each other. I mean, I was a nurse and he was in so much pain. He was almost like a child. I could tell he was hurting and I wanted to help him.

‘It’s hard to imagine what it was like for him growing up in Marble Hall. Miriam controlled every inch of his life. She’d started with her own children – Eliot’s father and his uncle – and then it continued with the grandchildren. They all suffered and in the end it killed Jasmine, Eliot’s cousin. She was only twenty-one when she died.’

‘Eliot told me it was an accident,’ I said. ‘She fell under a train.’

‘That’s what they all say. That was the official story when it happened. She fell under a tube train at Sloane Square station. But it’s not true. They all know it, even if they pretend they don’t, but Eliot told me the truth when he was drunk. She didn’t fall. She jumped. She wrote them a long letter, telling them that she wanted to get away from the Little People, that they’d been following her all her life. She’d said the same thing to her therapist, but he couldn’t help her. The next day, she was dead. Maybe that gives you an idea of what Eliot had to live with. Even the suicide of his cousin had to be covered up so that it wouldn’t do any damage to the lovely image and the wonderful stories of Miriam Crace.’

It was another secret hidden in Eliot’s book. He had described the death of his cousin, Jasmine, but he had given it to Marion Waysmith, Elmer’s first wife.

‘If you don’t believe me, you should talk to Julia. I don’t see her very often because she lives so far away and she doesn’t like visiting us. It brings back too many memories. But she knows how it was at Marble Hall. She couldn’t wait for Miriam Crace to die. She and Eliot used to talk about it all the time …’

‘And Roland,’ I said.

She flinched. ‘The way Eliot sees it, Roland betrayed him. When they were young, it was the three of them against the world. It hurt Eliot so much when Roland went to work for Jonathan Crace. Can you believe that man? Uncle Jonathan? He lost his own daughter to those books and he still wants to promote them and keep selling them.’ She sighed. ‘But I suppose we’re just as bad. We wouldn’t have this house if it wasn’t for Miriam Crace. The Little People still support us, like they do the rest of the family. Eliot once said to me that taking her money was like taking drugs. You know it’s going to kill you eventually, but you can’t stop yourself.’

‘But Eliot has stopped taking drugs,’ Elaine said.

Gillian looked up scornfully. ‘He’s never stopped. He drinks too much, he smokes and he still takes whatever he can get his hands on. I’ve given up trying to boss him around. Drugs were the start of all his problems and it didn’t take me long to realise that if I went on at him, I’d only lose him.’

She took a sip of whatever was in the mug, still cupping it in both hands.

‘Eliot and I have been together for six years. I was the one who encouraged him to start writing again because I knew he’d be good at it. I don’t know why he decided on murder stories. I wanted him to write romance or something big like The Lord of the Rings . He’s got such an imagination. There are whole worlds exploding in his head. He was so disappointed when the Dr Gee books didn’t do well.’

‘Charles did everything he could,’ Elaine said.

‘I know, Elaine. I’m not blaming him. You were both so kind to Eliot – and he needed you. He needed someone a little bit older and more sensible in his life.’

‘What about his parents?’ I asked. ‘I know they’re in America, but do you ever speak to them?’

‘Not really. I’ve seen them exactly three times since our wedding. They call us when they come to London and I’ve told them they can stay here. It is their house, after all. But they don’t understand Eliot. The drug thing, when he overdosed, really horrified them. It was so completely outside their experience. And there’s still the shadow of Miriam Crace hanging over them. Edward said it would be better for all of us if we kept apart.

‘I know you both feel sorry for me and you probably think Eliot is horrible to have hit me when I’m pregnant, but I don’t want you saying anything to him because it’s not fair and I’m partly to blame.’

She put the mug down and clasped her hands between her knees.

‘I love Eliot and I’ve done everything I can to make him happy. I knew what I was letting myself in for when I met him and I was just grateful for the good days we had together, when we were the same as any normal couple. But there were lots of bad times too, when he went off on one of his binges and I didn’t see him for a week. Whenever that happened, I’d be worried sick about him and when he finally turned up, or when he was dropped off by one of his cronies or in a police car or an ambulance, I’d be furious with him for putting me through it, because he knew I still cared about him.

‘The trouble was, there were more bad days than good ones. I felt so lonely. It was like he didn’t need me any more and I began to wonder what I was doing, staying with him. Staying in this house. It was almost like he’d turned me into a prisoner, just like he’d been at Marble Hall.’

She sighed. ‘I suppose what happened was inevitable. I was feeling low and I was stressed out at work and Eliot was away from home.’ She took a breath. ‘And I met someone. I had an affair. I knew it was wrong. I knew it would kill Eliot if he found out – but I couldn’t stop myself. I just wanted a little happiness and when it was offered to me, I took it.’

She fell silent. But I’d seen it in her eyes. I knew what she was about to say.

‘The baby isn’t his,’ I volunteered.

‘Eliot has a hormonal imbalance, and the drugs haven’t helped.’ Once again it was the pragmatic nurse who was speaking. ‘He’s infertile. We’ve both had to accept that we can’t have children together.’

There was a long silence as we took this in.

‘Are you going to tell us who the father is?’ Elaine asked and I noticed a certain iciness in her voice. She had been Eliot’s friend when he was just a boy. Perhaps she had come to the conclusion that this was, after all, Gillian’s fault.

‘No!’ For the first time, Gillian looked alarmed, afraid even. ‘Eliot began to suspect that I was seeing someone about three months ago …’

That was about the time he started writing the book, I thought.

‘… and then he saw a text on my phone. How could I have been as stupid as that? He saw a message and he worked it out and he was furious with me. Worse than that. He stormed off and I didn’t see him for three weeks, and when he finally got back, he was different. He was moody, tearful, bitter, silent. I swore to him that it was over, that it had all been a terrible mistake and that it wouldn’t happen again – and I meant it! I thought it might be a sort of warning signal and it would help get us back together.’

‘And then you found you were pregnant,’ Elaine said.

‘I saw the doctor this morning. I told Eliot when I got back from my shift. That was just a few hours ago and he went crazy.’ She pointed to her face. ‘He didn’t know what he was doing. I’ve never seen him so angry, so out of control!’

Eliot had gone home after seeing me. All this drama had been playing out while I was reading his new pages.

‘Do you know where he is?’ Elaine asked. She appeared to be more concerned about Eliot than Gillian.

‘No. He didn’t say. He just stormed out.’

Gillian was beginning to crumple again. We both saw it. The tears returned to her eyes. She looked exhausted.

‘I think you should see a doctor,’ I said. ‘If not for you, then for the baby. It’s not just the physical side. This whole thing has been very traumatic. Do you have a local GP?’

Gillian was too exhausted to argue. ‘I could see someone at St Mary’s.’

‘I’ll go with her,’ Elaine said.

I would have offered, but I was glad Elaine had got there first.

I reached out and held Gillian in a clumsy embrace. It was awkward, the two of us next to each other on the sofa, but I wanted her to know I was on her side. ‘This will all work itself out,’ I told her. ‘You’re going to have a baby. That’s a wonderful thing …’

‘Eliot wants me to get rid of it.’

‘It’s not his choice, Gillian. You know that.’

‘I don’t know anything any more.’

I got up. Suddenly I wanted to be out of here. Why was it that whenever Atticus Pünd came into my life, I inevitably found myself somewhere I didn’t want to be?

‘I’ll call you,’ Elaine said.

‘Thank you. I’ll see myself out.’

I went back into the hallway and as I was leaving, I noticed a table beside the front door with a scattering of letters, all of them too uninteresting to have been opened. One of them was a fashion catalogue or something, addressed to GILLIAN CRACE, and without even thinking about it, I saw it at once. A second anagram. It was extraordinary, really, after everything I had just heard, but maybe that’s the way anagrams work. You either see them or you don’t – but this one I most definitely had.

*

There was a parking ticket attached to my window when I got back to the car, but I ignored it. I knew that I had stumbled onto a clue that might help me unravel the secrets of Eliot’s book or, indeed, his life.

Gillian Crace was Alice Carling.

I might have spotted it earlier. After all, Alice Carling was an unusual name for a young woman living in a small French village. But that said, I had never thought of Gillian as Gillian Crace. For all I knew, she could have kept her maiden name. So half the letters in the anagram had been missing, making it impossible to see.

What exactly did it mean, though? Well, first of all, in the book, Alice Carling was having an affair with the so-called Charles Saint-Pierre and as a result she had been murdered. Could there be a clearer insight into Eliot’s mind? I wondered how much of the book he had written when he found out about the affair. It was always possible that he had changed the name of Monsieur Lambert’s assistant after he’d started writing. It also confirmed what I had feared all along. Pünd’s Last Case – or whatever he was going to call it – wasn’t just a cheerful murder mystery bringing back a much-loved character. It was a bubbling cauldron in which Eliot’s unhappy childhood, the death of his grandmother, the suicide of his cousin, the issues with his father and now his wife’s infidelity had all been stirred together. And they were giving off noxious fumes.

I think that was when I had my first presentiment that this was all going to end very badly, that Eliot might be putting not just himself in danger but quite possibly me as well. I’d been here before, don’t forget. I’d almost died in a burning office. My eyesight had been permanently damaged. I’d lost my job, my reputation and most of my friends. When was I ever going to learn?

It was time to take control of the situation and I suddenly knew where Eliot might be. When he had come to my house, he had mentioned a club he belonged to, a place called Boon’s in the Portobello Road. He’d specifically said that it was his bolt-hole, where he went when he needed to be on his own.

It took me one minute to find it on Google and that was where I went next.