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I was sad that Eliot Crace was dead – and for a lot of reasons. He was young. He was talented. He had hurt his wife, but his whole life had been a series of hurts, starting with his childhood at Marble Hall and continuing with the failure of his first novels, the separation from his parents, his diagnosis of infertility and the betrayal of perhaps the only woman he had ever loved. Now there was going to be a baby that couldn’t have been his, a twist of the knife. I had promised I would look after him. If only he had spoken to me at the party instead of turning his back on me. We might have had a drink together, come to some sort of understanding. Elaine could have helped patch things up between us. Instead, I’d always be haunted by the thought that I could have saved him.

First, I needed to save myself. I knew from my experiences in Suffolk – Alan Conway and Branlow Hall – that in real life, murder investigations move at a frightening speed. I somehow couldn’t imagine Detective Inspector Blakeney sitting in an armchair, mulling things over with a pipe and bedroom slippers, and as for Detective Constable Wardlaw, she’d been drooling so much over the evidence she’d plucked out of the grille of my MG, she’d risked contaminating it. They’d be back, the two of them, and soon. And the next time it wouldn’t be for a cosy decaffeinated coffee in my kitchen.

It was just possible that my MG had been vandalised at the same time I’d been at the party – one of those coincidences that Atticus Pünd so deplored – but I didn’t think so. That little scrap of cloth looked too similar in colour to the jacket Eliot had been wearing and I had to face up to the strong possibility that someone was trying to frame me. They’d kicked in the grille and added the cloth. But who … and why? Could it have been the same person who had killed Eliot? I had no answers to those questions, but sitting at home turning them over in my head wasn’t going to do me any good. I had to do something – whatever that might be.

I decided to start with Michael Flynn at . What had he been doing at the party and why had he never mentioned his connection with the Crace Estate? It might seem the least important part of my worries, but any fly caught by a spider will need to examine every strand of the web, so that was where I was heading now. Thinking back to our meeting when Michael had told me about the new book, I remembered a few things that hadn’t felt right. How had he connected with Eliot in the first place? Why had he smiled so much, as if he knew something I didn’t? And there was something he’d said that had puzzled me at the time. ‘ The book is important to us for a great many reasons .’ What reason could there be apart from the sales success of the book itself?

I took the tube to Victoria (feeling a pang for my missing MG), made my way past a row of featureless office blocks and hurried through the glass doors of as if they might have been programmed to lock when they saw me coming. I had a feeling that I wasn’t going to be welcome and even Jeanette, the kindly receptionist, looked a little startled to see me.

‘Susan! I didn’t know you were coming in!’

‘I just wanted to see Michael Flynn for a few minutes.’

She looked at her computer, then picked up the phone. ‘I’ll tell him you’re here.’

I moved away and pretended to examine the digital book display to allow her a little privacy. She was the guardian of the gate and I hated the thought that she might be asked to keep it closed against me. However, when she put down the phone, she was smiling. ‘He’s sending someone.’

It was still a good ten minutes before a nervous-looking assistant arrived to collect me. I could tell from the silence in the lift that this meeting would not go well. Michael was waiting for me in the same conference room where we’d met before, but this time without the coffee. He was sitting in his shirtsleeves, glasses on his nose, the cord hanging down on either side.

‘I’m afraid I can’t give you a lot of time, Susan,’ he said. He hadn’t stood up as I came in and the smiles he had turned on and off the last time I was here were conspicuously absent. ‘I’ve got a sod of a day. You should have rung first.’

‘I thought it would be more sensible to meet face-to-face.’

‘You’re probably right. It’s devastating news about Eliot Crace. I was shocked to hear it.’

He had got straight to the point and I did the same. ‘What are you going to do about Pünd’s Last Case ?’ I asked. I’d used its original title because that was the only one he knew, but it felt strange saying it. It reminded me of the conversations I’d had with Eliot.

‘We haven’t had time to discuss it yet. How much more had Eliot written?’

‘He’d got up to about fifty thousand words.’

‘Have you read it all?’

‘Yes. My gut feeling is that the book was going to come in at around seventy thousand words – a little shorter than I’d have liked.’

‘You told me you thought it was good.’

‘It is.’ I waited for him to continue, but he was either lost in his own thoughts or unwilling to express them. ‘I don’t think it’ll be too difficult to finish it,’ I went on. ‘Eliot must have left notes. And I’m sure there are plenty of clues in the pages I’ve read so far. It’s just a question of finding them.’

‘Do you know the ending?’

‘No. I’ve never been any use at working these things out. But another writer – someone who works in crime fiction – would be able to do it. The book doesn’t feel too complicated. The characters are all there. And it might be quite fun for someone else to bring all the different strands together.’

Michael considered what I had said, then shook his head. ‘I’m not sure. Alan Conway is already dead. Now Eliot Crace. To have a third writer coming along feels a bit … indecent.’

‘It seems a shame to stop now. I think it’s going to be a good book, Michael. And do you really want to throw away the advance?’

‘Well, the advance wasn’t too much to worry about.’ I’d been in the business for most of my life and I’d never heard a publisher so blasé about losing money. ‘I’m afraid my instinct is to let it drop, Susan.’ He shook his head, as if this wasn’t something he’d decided long before I came into the building. ‘I wish there was something else we could offer you, but right now there isn’t anything.’

‘There’s that other mystery you sent me from Norway.’

‘We’re having second thoughts about that too.’

I saw the way this was going. ‘You’re ending my contract,’ I said.

‘Actually, we don’t have a formal contract.’

‘But you’re still letting me go.’

‘You could put it that way. But let’s think of this as a temporary measure. There’s every possibility something will come up in the future and if it does, we’ll get in touch.’

He was lying to me. We both knew it.

‘You were at the party,’ I said. ‘I saw you.’

‘Yes.’ He looked uncomfortable. ‘I noticed you there too. I wasn’t expecting to see you. They told me you weren’t coming.’

‘I think they forgot to cancel my invitation.’

‘Under the circumstances, you might have done better to stay away.’

‘And what circumstances are those, Michael?’

Finally he lost his temper. He hadn’t wanted to speak to me today. He obviously didn’t care if he never spoke to me again. ‘For God’s sake, Susan. I don’t know what’s got into you. It must be that business with Alan Conway and what happened with the Trehernes. Yes. I heard about that too. You seem to think that the entire world is a conspiracy theory and that it’s your job to sort it all out.’

‘I don’t think that at all,’ I protested.

‘Then why did you go to Marble Hall, asking questions about a murder that never happened? Why did you allow Eliot to go on that blasted radio programme, making absurd accusations about his grandmother and damaging her reputation at the worst possible time? Your job was simply to edit a book, not to make trouble for the Crace Estate.’

‘You’re working with them, aren’t you,’ I said. ‘You and Jonathan Crace. That’s why you were at the party.’

He looked embarrassed. ‘As it happens, yes.’ I waited for him to continue. I wasn’t going anywhere until he had told me the truth. ‘I may not have been completely straight with you, Susan,’ he said at last. ‘When I first proposed the book to you, perhaps I should have mentioned that we were also dealing with the estate. It won’t be announced until the Netflix deal has been fully agreed, but at the start of this year, we won an auction for three more adventures with the Little People. The first one – A Little More – is coming out at Christmas.’

‘Another continuation novel!’ I was amazed. ‘Who’s writing it?’

‘Michael Morpurgo. We’re absolutely thrilled he’s agreed. I mean, he’s one of our greatest children’s authors. His books are classics.’

‘So how did Eliot fit into all this?’

‘He didn’t.’ Michael shuffled in his seat. ‘Someone suggested Eliot for Atticus Pünd because he’d written crime novels. I’ll be completely honest with you and say that I agreed because I thought it would cement our relationship with the family and support our bid in the auction.’

‘You mean, you only gave him the job to score brownie points.’

‘I think that’s putting it a little crudely. There was a tactical element to the decision, though, I’ll admit. And anyway, it backfired. We weren’t to know it, but the family was far from happy that we were working with him. They thought of him as a liability. It was very lucky for us that we’d signed the deal with them before they found out that he was involved.’

‘But they didn’t want him to write it.’

‘He’d already started writing and it would have been very difficult to get rid of him. But I persuaded them that we’d manage the situation.’

‘That’s why you brought me in!’ I stared at him. If there had been a coffee cup or an ink bottle at hand, I might have thrown it at him. ‘You didn’t really want me to edit the book. You wanted me to keep him under control.’

It should have been obvious all along. Even Frederick Turner in far-off Marble Hall had known Eliot was writing a book. Jonathan Crace had admitted it too. ‘ I feared the worst from the start .’ At the end of our meeting, he’d gone on to taunt me: ‘ You really don’t know anything, do you! ’ I’d wondered what he meant at the time, but I could see it now. I’d been brought into all this like some kind of sacrificial lamb.

‘You lied to me,’ I said. ‘Or at least, you didn’t tell me the complete truth. And it’s worse than that. It may be thanks to you that Eliot was killed.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Michael’s eyes widened. ‘It was a drunk driver. A hit and run.’

‘The police are treating it as murder.’ I didn’t mention the fact that right now I was their main suspect. ‘You heard what he said. You were there. He believed that his grandmother was killed deliberately and he was going to name the person who did it in his book.’

‘That was all nonsense. I’ve already spoken to Jonathan Crace—’

‘I’m sure you have. You all think that Miriam Crace died of a heart attack and Eliot was making it all up to promote himself.’

‘You think he wasn’t?’

‘Somebody thought he wasn’t. That’s why he’s dead.’

Michael got to his feet. ‘The trouble with you, Susan, is that you’ve been involved in one real-life murder too many and you’ve lost all sense of proportion. You know, it makes me wonder if Charles Clover really did kill Alan Conway or whether you imagined that too. I knew him for ten years – he was a good friend of mine – and I never thought he had it in him to commit a crime like that. I don’t deny that he attacked you, but maybe he was defending himself against exactly the sort of accusations that I’m hearing now. I really don’t think we’ve got anything more to say to each other.’

I stood up too. ‘Of course, Michael. Charles was a charming man and I’m sure the two of you got on splendidly when he wasn’t pushing people off roofs, something he confessed to, incidentally, and which even his wife has admitted he did. But I agree with you about one thing. When you say we’ve got nothing more to say to each other, you’re absolutely right.’

I walked out of his office, out of a job and – I was beginning to think – fast out of options.

As I made my way towards the station, I thought about what I’d just heard. I’d assumed that it was a secret hidden inside the book that had led to Eliot’s death. That was what I had told Blakeney and Wardlaw and it was what I still believed. But it now occurred to me that the identity of Miriam Crace’s killer might not matter – assuming they even existed. From the very start, Eliot had been an embarrassment. To his uncle Jonathan, to Frederick Turner at Marble Hall, to everyone involved in a deal that was worth hundreds of millions of pounds. In other words, it might not have been what was inside the book that got him killed. Eliot might have been a target before he had even written a word.