Page 140 of Marble Hall Murders

Explanations

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 doyouthink?’ 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 whatshe 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 inPsycho.’ 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 – theburnt-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 thefamily 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.

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