“Sounds like you agree Sally Lambert’s the murderer, then,” Josh points out. “Because that would be a clincher for Sally, but not Corinne. That’s Sally’s memory, not Corinne’s.”
“Very true,” Meredith concedes. “And yet…I’m also keen on the theory that Saul Hollingwood is one of Corinne’s many flunkies—the one who was given the arson assignment.”
“Sally and Corinne working together,” says Josh, nodding. “Writing together, murdering together… Thinking about it, Corinne must have been involved. I doubt Sally would have been able to find out that we’re about to launch a new publishing company.”
Meredith nods. “Corinne’ll have people on tap to look into everything for her. She’ll have contacts who have contacts.”
“Exactly.”
“Josh, I need to tell you something. I went to Cambridgeshire last week. To Swaffham Tilney. I…spoke to people.” This is the other thing Meredith has been scared of: admitting how far she has taken her interest in the Lamberts and the Gaveys.
Josh looks alarmed—excited, maybe—but not annoyed, not worried about her sanity. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Mainly because I felt like a deluded, naive schoolgirl trying to have some kind of stupid adventure. I doubted I’d find out any more than we’d already got from your call to Cambridgeshire Police. But…I think I found out quite a bit. Which maybe matters less now that we know we’re not publishing—”
“Tell me,” says Josh. “Every single detail.”
“Okay, so…we already knew Bill Wendt is real. I spoke to him. Believe me, he couldn’t have cared less, just wanted to get rid ofme as quickly as possible. He’s not a lovable shepherd’s-pie-eating chubster. He’sthin. I don’t know, maybe he lost weight, which he’s allowed to, but I was disappointed. I was looking forward to meeting ‘Large’ and having a jolly chat. No such luck. He’s a jobsworth and an arsehole. He told me what he’d told you and no more: Tess died roughly two hours before Lesley and Alastair did. There was no smoke in her lungs and evidence of an allergic reaction of the kind she’d had before, to fish. The fire was started deliberately, and no one beyond Lesley and Alastair Gavey had ever been considered as a possible suspect. The police were satisfied that it must have been one of the Gavey parents who did it.”
Meredith waits while their main courses are laid out on the table in front of them: more dim sum for her, with delicious steam rising from them. “Once Wendt had washed his hands of me, I asked for Detective Connor Chantree, and guess what? He’s a real cop too, works for Cambridgeshire Police, but he’s not the one who went round to the Lamberts on 17 June to say that Champ had been reported for biting Tess. Guess which cop he is?”
“Um…a different one?” says Josh. “He and Large are the only two police characters in the book.”
“A third one gets a quick mention,” says Meredith. “The one who pulled Sally Lambert over for using her mobile phone while in a traffic jam.Thatwas Connor Chantree. Who does, it has to be said, look a little like the brush from a dustpan-and-brush set and whose wife, Flo, runs a catering company called Scrumplicious.”
“You met Connor Chantree? Spoke to him?”
Meredith nods. “It was one of the dullest experiences of my life. I had to listen to nearly ten minutes of waffle about why it was,actually, very vital to write up all incidents of people looking at their phones while in traffic jams.”
Josh smiles. “Oh, dear.”
“Yeah. Not the most fascinating exchange I’ve ever had.”
“Interesting that the writer or writers ofLambertsdidn’t just use the name of the officer who came round on 17 June, though.”
“So then I went to Shoe Cottage, ‘Shukes,’ and spoke to none other than Sally Lambert herself.”
“Really? Is that…”
“A good idea?” Meredith finishes Josh’s question for him. “It turned out to be, yes. Sally, Ree, and Champ Lambert were the only ones home. Champ is absolutely adorable, by the way. Even the cutest of the pictures on his website don’t quite do him justice. Sally was interesting. She was super-friendly and lovely—offered me tea, homemade scones, a cuddle or a walk with Champ, whichever I preferred—but she was adamant that she wasn’t willing to talk about anything connected to what she called ‘that horrible time.’ I went for a walk with her and Champ, round and round the village green, and every time I tried to sneak in a question, she instantly repeated the same thing: ‘I’m so sorry, and I know how frustrating it must be for everyone, but I won’t be speaking about any of that again. Ever.’”
“Did you ask her aboutLambertsthe book?” says Josh.
“I did, yes, after we’d said our goodbyes on her doorstep. I did that cheesy TV-show thing of turning back and going, ‘Oh, just one more thing…’”
“What did she say?”
“Picture of complete and total innocence! ‘What book? No, Ihaven’t sent you anything.’ I spelled it out: asked her if she’d written a novel about Champ’s…adventures and sent it to you and me in the hope that we’d publish it. She looked sad for a second and said, ‘I’ve always wanted to write a book, but I never have. Maybe I will one day.’ And…I don’t know. She seemed very sincere and genuine, which is probably why my money’s on Corinne as the writer. Anyway, I was getting into my car to head home when Ree appeared, banging on my window—a bonus I was not expecting. She and I ended up going for a drink together at the local pub, the Rebel of the Reeds. That’s real, by the way. So is Cupwardly Mobile, the van café, which Ree said we couldn’t go to because they’d unreasonably fired her for calling her boss a heartless cow who didn’t understand that sometimes you were too busy saving your dog’s life to turn up for your coffee-selling shifts.
“Josh, so much of what’s in the book is real and accurate. And so much isn’t! So much is completely made up. Ree told me which parts were real and which were invented. Oh!” Meredith changes tack. “I told her aboutLambertsthe book, and she confirmed Sally hadn’t written it. They’re all still so busy with Champ’s new fame, apparently—no time to think about doing much else. Ree was desperate to seeLamberts, though. Wants to read it as soon as possible, she said. Come to think of it… She did kind of behave throughout our chat as if us publishing the book was a given.”
“Which bits aren’t true?” asks Josh.
“Well, for a start, there was never a Sarah Sergeant or a Bonnie—can you believe that? That was all made up.”
“What, really?” says Josh. “How weird.”
“And the chronology’s all messed up, from what Ree told me,”Meredith goes on. “In the real-life version, both the strong suspicion that Lesley Gavey must have been the biter and the message from Auntie Vicky about Sally’s WhatsApp message came later—whereas in the manuscript it’s, like, 19 June, just two days after the Lamberts and Corinne first fled Swaffham Tilney. Oh—and there was no five-star hotel either. The Langley Hotel in Buckingham is real, but the Lamberts and Corinne never went there. Ree was annoyed about that—she liked the sound of it. And that’s another reason why I think Corinne’s the author. I’ve looked up the Langley. It’s top of the range. Corinne’s bound to have stayed there and…met all those frogs. Whereas Sally? Less likely.”
