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The next twenty-four hours were confused. I was taken to the wonderful Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead and I had to stay in overnight, but the knife wound was less serious than the amount of blood had suggested. Elaine Clover had managed to draw a line about an inch deep across my arm and chest and although I would carry a thin scar for perhaps the rest of my life, at least she hadn’t cut into an artery. The wound hurt much more after it was dressed, but that was a good sign, the nurse said cheerfully. There’s no healing without a little pain.

Detective Inspector Blakeney came to see me the following morning, alone. He sat on a chair some distance from the bed and I felt a strange sense of embarrassment, propped up in my hospital nightie. I didn’t like him seeing me like this. Even so, I was glad he had decided to visit. There were explanations I wanted to hear, starting with how he had come to throw a dustbin through the front window of a house that did not belong to me. Heaven knows what Rob and Steve were going to say. I might have pushed our friendship over the edge.

‘Perhaps I shouldn’t admit this,’ Blakeney said. ‘I was driving up from Finsbury Park and I decided to call by the house …’ he shifted uncomfortably on his seat ‘… to see if you’d looked at the pages.’ He went on hurriedly. ‘You see, I’ve never shown anyone my work before – let alone a professional editor – and I couldn’t get it out of my head. I was up half the night, worrying about what you’d think.’

‘What do you think?’ I asked.

‘Well, I’ve tried to capture Alan Conway’s voice …’

‘You’ve done more than that. I thought it was terrific. The writing was wonderful, and perhaps even more importantly, the ending makes complete sense. Robert Waysmith was the killer! Of course, I shouldn’t have been surprised – it’s what you do – but I’m still annoyed I didn’t see it myself.’

‘That’s very kind of you …’

‘I mean it. And thank God you turned up when you did!’

‘Yes.’ He nodded. ‘I was at the door when I heard screaming coming from the kitchen. I looked through the window and to begin with I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. There was Mrs Clover coming at you with a knife and you had your back to me, so I couldn’t see if you’d been hurt. All I knew was that I had to get in there and stop her. I thought about ringing the bell, but there wasn’t time. Then I saw the dustbin. I picked it up and threw it at the window.’

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I think you may have saved my life.’ There was something about those last three words I really disliked. They were such a cliché. But there was no other way to describe what he had done and they were certainly true. ‘You know that it was Elaine – the piece of cloth, the grille of my MG, the Rolex watch. She was punishing me for what she thought I’d done to her husband. It’s all on my phone. I recorded her. She told me everything.’

‘You’d managed to work that one out then.’

‘Yes. I should have just let her walk out of the room and think she’d won – but I was stupid. I showed her my phone and told her I’d made a recording. It’s exactly the same mistake I made with Charles when he attacked me at Cloverleaf Books. Why couldn’t I keep my big mouth shut?’

‘You’re being unfair on yourself, Susan. It was a natural reaction after everything she’d done to you. You wanted to show her it was over. You just didn’t realise she was going to turn into—’

‘Mrs Bates in Psycho .’ That was what he was probably thinking too, although he’d never have said it, not officially. ‘Well, I hope that means I’m not a suspect any more,’ I said.

‘I think I’d already come to that conclusion,’ Blakeney agreed. ‘I told you from the start I didn’t think it was very likely that you had killed Eliot Crace—’

‘Very likely …?’

‘We had to pursue every line of inquiry, Susan. Anyway, it’s over now. I have your phone. Mrs Clover is in custody.’

I shifted position and felt my injury protest. ‘Can I ask you something which may surprise you?’ I said. ‘Are you going to have to prosecute her? Despite what she did to me, I don’t think Elaine is a bad person. I think she needs help. What happened to her – what I put her through – made her lose any sense of perspective. I feel sorry for her.’

‘First of all, Susan, you did nothing to her. Her husband was a murderer and even if you’d stayed silent, there was no way he was going to walk away from what he’d done – the burnt-out office and all the rest of it – so put that thought out of your head. As for Elaine Clover, I’m afraid it’s out of my hands. She tried to kill you. I saw it with my own eyes. And while she’s been wasting our time with her lies and contrivances, let’s not forget that the real killer of Eliot Crace is still out there, sitting pretty.’

‘Roland Crace.’

‘We’ll come to that …’

‘It was my brother,’ I said. I had to let him know I’d worked it out.

‘Yes.’ He smiled. It was something he didn’t do very often. ‘You really liked what I wrote … the style, I mean?’

‘I’d say you’re a natural-born writer – and it’s put a thought in my mind. Do you think you could write another twenty thousand words connecting what happened after Alice Carling was found dead with the chapter you wrote?’

‘Why?’

‘Because then we’d have a book that we might be able to publish.’

He shook his head. ‘That’s a terrible idea.’

‘Tell me about Roland Crace. Are you going to interview him again?’

‘I already have and I’m afraid I’m going to have to disappoint you. I spoke to him yesterday evening and confronted him with what Charles Clover told you when you visited him in Belmarsh. Roland admitted that he, his brother and his sister did indeed conspire to kill their grandmother – if you can call three kids meeting in an empty cottage a conspiracy. He remembers the three of them making a potion which included the cough medicine that Eliot had stolen from the family doctor and he accepted that it might have contained some quite toxic substances, too, including crushed berries taken from a yew tree. If Miriam Crace had drunk it, there was every chance she could have died, although I’m not sure the lemon and ginger pick-me-up would have been enough to hide the taste. Not with all the other stuff that was in there. She’d have known something was wrong.

‘But that wasn’t what Roland intended anyway. He knew that Julia had taken the bottle of so-called poison into her room and he was just scared that she was going to use it. Her grandmother had humiliated her in front of the entire family – something about her weight and a party dress. Roland had spent half his life protecting both his siblings and that was what he did then. He sneaked into her room and stole it, but he didn’t go anywhere near his grandmother’s room. That’s his story, anyway. He went to the bathroom at the far end of the corridor and poured it down the toilet—’

‘Unaware that Eliot had seen him leaving.’

‘Exactly. He’s adamant that he didn’t kill her, and I think I believe him. As far as I can see, someone else in the house learned what the kids were up to and they snatched the opportunity to feed the old woman with real poison. I have ordered an exhumation, by the way. I’m afraid we have no choice now but to dig her up.’

‘So Eliot got it wrong!’ I said. ‘It’s tragic, really. All his life, he thought his big brother was a murderer, but he kept it secret because of the love between them.’

‘But then Roland had an affair with his wife.’

‘And the book was his way of getting back at him.’

‘I’m afraid so.’ Blakeney paused. ‘When are they letting you out of here?’

‘They want the doctor to have one last look at me but I should be home by midday. And by home, I mean my own place. I’m afraid my friends won’t be too pleased with me – or with you, for that matter. That was their front window you smashed.’

‘Do you want me to apologise?’

‘Not at all. I’ve never been happier to see anyone in my life.’ Except, I thought, for Andreas when he fought his way through the flames to pull me out of the Cloverleaf office after Charles had set it on fire.

Blakeney got to his feet – but before he left, he had one more thing to say. ‘You know who the real killer is, don’t you? You’ve worked out who killed Miriam Crace all those years ago and Eliot Crace now.’

I couldn’t help smiling. ‘How do you know?’

‘Well, don’t take this the wrong way, but it’s the way you’re sitting there. It’s the first time I’ve seen you looking pleased with yourself.’

‘Well, I think I deserve it. And you’re right. I think I have the answer.’

‘Are you going to tell me?’

‘Not right now, if you don’t mind, Detective Inspector. I’ve had a rough twenty-four hours. But if you’ll answer something for me, I might be tempted to give you a clue.’

‘Go ahead.’ He perched by the window.

‘I’m speaking out of turn and I’m not out to cause anyone any trouble, but I’ve got to ask you if your sidekick, Detective Constable Wardlaw, was telling me the truth.’

‘You know she’d hate the word sidekick .’

‘I’m delighted. I’ll use it the next time we meet.’

‘What did she say?’

‘It was when she delivered those pages you sent. Basically, she said you were pretending to be my friend but it was all untrue. Behind my back, you were convinced I had killed Eliot and you were just hanging around in the hope I’d say something that would give me away.’

Blakeney had shown no expression while he listened to this. It was a while before he spoke.

‘She said that?’

‘Yes. I repeat, I don’t want to get her into trouble, but it would be good to know where I am with you. It seems to me that Emma Wardlaw had it in for me from the moment you and I met and I wonder why.’

‘I’m sorry, Susan. Wardlaw’s not such a bad person when you get to know her. She’s smart. She’s honest. We’ve worked together for a long time. But – I’m telling you this in confidence – eighteen months ago, she got divorced. It was unpleasant. There’s a child involved. And it’s done her head in. She hasn’t taken to being a single mum and she doesn’t know where she stands. If she reacted to you that way, and I’m not for a minute excusing her, it’s probably because she was worried about any feelings I might have for you. She’s quick off the mark when it comes to that sort of thing and she was afraid you might get in the way.’

‘Feelings?’

‘Let’s just say, she didn’t want us to be friends.’

There were plenty of other questions I could have asked right then, but I let it go. ‘You want a clue,’ I said.

‘If you’ll be so kind.’

‘Well, you were the one who gave it to me, so I suppose that makes us quits. It was in that notebook you found at Eliot’s house. He wrote down a lot of things that turned up in the solution to who killed Margaret Chalfont. Lola performing as Mata Hari, for example. And there were two notes that set me thinking. Kenneth Rivers being treated for arsenic poisoning was one of them.’

‘I rather suspect that it was arsenic that killed Miriam Crace,’ Blakeney said.

‘I agree. But it was the other clue that gave everything away. Eliot wrote a question. “ Why did Bruno leave? ”’

‘I’m not even sure who Bruno was.’

‘He’s a tiny character in the book. He never even appears, but some of the characters talk about him. He was the gardener at the Chateau Belmar. There was also a Bruno at Marble Hall. He was Miriam Crace’s chauffeur and I only know about him because Leylah mentioned him to me when we had drinks at the Savoy. But here’s the thing. When Eliot was writing his book, there was a sort of schizophrenia going on in his head. He was thinking about his own family and his childhood at Marble Hall – and at the same time he was creating a parallel world with Lady Margaret Chalfont and her family at the Chateau Belmar. And I think, when he wrote that question – Why did Bruno leave? – he had forgotten which one he meant.’

‘Bruno the gardener or Bruno the chauffeur.’

‘The gardener didn’t leave. Cedric talks about him in Chapter Eighteen.’

‘So Eliot must have been thinking about his grandmother’s chauffeur.’

‘There was something he knew, or half knew. That’s why the name crops up twice. And it suddenly struck me, I don’t know how, that it was the key to the whole thing.’ I was suddenly exhausted. I sank back into the pillows. ‘But that’s all you’re getting for now, Detective Inspector. There are still a few things I need to work out.’

He moved to the door and opened it. But before he left, he turned to me. ‘Could you do me a favour, Susan, and call me by my first name?’ he asked.

‘I’m not going to do that until the case is over.’

‘And when that might be?’

‘I’d like to see Jonathan Crace and Roland. And I also need to speak to Julia. She teaches under the name of Julia Wilson at a school in Lincoln – she said it was called St Hugh’s. Do you think you could get hold of her for me?’

‘Yes.’

‘And then let’s all meet at Marble Hall. We have to go back to where it all began.’