Anne Bishop Murder of Crows Read Online

  MAGPIE

MURDERS

ANTHONY HOROWITZ

Contents

Cover

Title Folio

Crouch Terminate, London

MAGPIE MURDERS

Virtually the author

The Atticus Pünd series

Praise for Atticus Pünd

Function ONE

Chapter ane

Chapter two

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter vi

Chapter seven

Chapter eight

PART TWO

Affiliate i

Affiliate 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Affiliate 7

Chapter 8

Affiliate 9

Chapter 10

Role THREE

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

PART FOUR

Affiliate 1

Chapter 2

Affiliate iii

Chapter 4

Chapter five

Chapter six

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

PART Five

Affiliate i

Chapter 2

Chapter three

Chapter iv

Affiliate 5

Affiliate six

Chapter seven

PART Vi

Chapter one

Chapter 2

Crouch End, London

Cloverleaf Books

Alan Conway

Abbey Grange, Framlingham

Wesley & Khan, Framlingham

Extract from The Slide past Alan Conway

Orford, Suffolk

Woodbridge

The letter

The Lodge at the Ivy

The grandson

The road to Framlingham

The Atticus Adventures

After the funeral

St Michael'southward

Dinner at the Crown

'He used to hide things …'

Starbucks, Ipswich

Crouch Cease

Cloverleaf Books

Detective work

Bradford-on-Avon

Paddington Station

Cloverleaf Books

Endgame

Intensive care

PART SEVEN

Chapter i

Chapter 2

Chapter three

Chapter four

Agios Nikolaos, Crete

Anthony Horowitz interviews Alan Conway

As well by Anthony Horowitz

Copyright

Crouch End, London

A bottle of wine. A family unit-sized packet of Nacho Cheese Flavoured Tortilla Chips and a jar of hot salsa dip. A packet of cigarettes on the side (I know, I know). The pelting hammering against the windows. And a book.

What could take been lovelier?

Magpie Murders was number 9 in the much-loved and globe-bestselling Atticus Pünd serial. When I outset opened it on that wet August evening, information technology existed only equally a typescript and it would be my chore to edit information technology before it was published. First, I intended to enjoy it. I call back going straight into the kitchen when I came in, plucking a few things out of the fridge and putting everything on a tray. I undressed, leaving my dress where they barbarous. The whole apartment was a tip anyhow. I showered, dried and pulled on a giant Maisie Mouse T-shirt that someone had given me at the Bologna Book Fair. It was also early to get into bed but I was going to read the book lying on acme of information technology, the sheets still crumpled and unmade from the nighttime before. I don't always live similar this, just my boyfriend had been away for six weeks and while I was on my ain I'd deliberately allowed standards to slip. There's something quite comforting nigh mess, especially when in that location'south no i else there to complain.

Actually, I hate that give-and-take. Boyfriend. Especially when it's used to describe a l-2-year-old, twice-divorced man. The trouble is, the English language doesn't provide much in the way of an alternative. Andreas was not my partner. We didn't see each other regularly enough for that. My lover? My other half? Both made me wince for different reasons. He was from Crete. He taught Ancient Greek at Westminster School and he rented a apartment in Maida Vale, non and so far from me. We'd talked virtually moving in together simply we were afraid it would kill the relationship, so although I had a total wardrobe of his clothes, there were frequently times when I didn't have him. This was one of them. Andreas had flown home during the school holidays to be with his family unit: his parents, his widowed grandmother, his two teenaged sons and his ex-wife'due south blood brother all lived in the same house in 1 of those complicated sorts of arrangements that the Greeks seem to enjoy. He wouldn't be back until Tuesday, the solar day before school began, and I wouldn't meet him until the following weekend.

So there I was on my own in my Crouch Stop flat, which was spread over the basement and ground flooring of a Victorian House in Clifton Road, about a 15-minute walk from Highgate tube station. It was probably the only sensible thing I ever bought. I liked living there. It was placidity and comfortable and I shared the garden with a choreographer who lived on the outset floor merely who was hardly ever in. I had far as well many books, of form. Every inch of shelf infinite was taken. At that place were books on top of books. The shelves themselves were bending under the weight. I had converted the 2nd bedroom into a study although I tried not to work at home. Andreas used it more I did – when he was around.

I opened the vino. I unscrewed the salsa. I lit a cigarette. I began to read the volume every bit you are well-nigh to. But before y'all do that, I take to warn you.

This volume inverse my life.

Y'all may have read that before. I'thousand embarrassed to say that I splashed it on the cover of the first novel I ever deputed, a very ordinary Second World War thriller. I can't even remember who said it, but the only way that volume was going to change someone'south life was if it fell on them. Is it ever really true? I however retrieve reading the Brontë sisters equally a very young girl and falling in love with their earth: the melodrama, the wild landscapes, the gothic romance of it all. You might say that Jane Eyre steered me towards my career in publishing, which is a touch ironic in view of what happened. There are plenty of books that have touched me very deeply: Ishiguro'due south Never Permit Me Go, McEwan'southward Atonement. I'm told a great many children suddenly institute themselves in boarding school as a result of the Harry Potter phenomenon and throughout history at that place take been books that have had a profound outcome on our attitudes. Lady Chatterley's Lover is one obvious example, 1984 another. But I'grand not sure it really matters what nosotros read. Our lives continue forth the directly lines that accept been set out for u.s.a.. Fiction merely allows u.s. a glimpse of the alternative. Maybe that's ane of the reasons we enjoy it.

But Magpie Murders really did change everything for me. I no longer live in Crouch Cease. I no longer accept my task. I've managed to lose a bully many friends. That evening, as I reached out and turned the outset page of the typescript, I had no idea of the journeying I was almost to begin and, quite frankly, I wish I'd never immune myself to go pulled on board. It was all down to that bastard Alan Conway. I hadn't liked him the twenty-four hour period I'd met him although the strange affair is that I'd always loved his books. Every bit far as I'thou concerned, you can't beat a good whodunnit: the twists and turns, the clues and the reddish herrings and then, finally, the satisfaction of having everything explained to you in a way

that makes yous kick yourself considering yous hadn't seen it from the outset.

That was what I was expecting when I began. Simply Magpie Murders wasn't like that. It wasn't like that at all.

I promise I don't need to spell it out any more. Unlike me, y'all have been warned.

MAGPIE MURDERS

An Atticus Pünd Mystery

Alan Conway

About the author

Alan Conway was born in Ipswich and educated showtime at Woodbridge Schoolhouse and then at the University of Leeds, where he gained a first in English language Literature. He later on enrolled equally a mature pupil at the Academy of East Anglia to study creative writing. He spent the next six years as a teacher before achieving his first success with Atticus Pünd Investigates in 1995. The book spent twenty-eight weeks in the Dominicus Times bestseller list and won the Gold Dagger award given by the Crime Writers' Association for the best crime novel of the year. Since then, the Atticus Pünd series has sold eighteen million books worldwide, translated into xxx-v languages. In 2012, Alan Conway was awarded an MBE for services to literature. He has one kid from a former marriage and lives in Framlingham in Suffolk.

The Atticus Pünd series

Atticus Pünd Investigates

No Residuum for the Wicked

Atticus Pünd Takes the Example

Dark Comes Calling

Atticus Pünd's Christmas

Gin & Cyanide

Red Roses for Atticus

Atticus Pünd Away

Praise for Atticus Pünd

'Everything yous could want from a British whodunnit. Fashionable, clever and unpredictable.' Independent

'Watch out Hercule Poirot! There's a smart picayune foreigner in boondocks – and he'due south stepping into your shoes.' Daily Post

'I'thou a fan of Atticus Pünd. He takes us back to the gilt historic period of offense fiction and reminds us where we all began.' Ian Rankin

'Sherlock Holmes, Lord Peter Wimsey, Father Brown, Philip Marlowe, Poirot … the truly smashing detectives tin probably be numbered on the fingers of one manus. Well, with Atticus Pünd you may need an extra finger!' Irish gaelic Contained

'A slap-up detective story needs a keen detective and Atticus Pünd is a worthy addition to the fold.' Yorkshire Post

'Frg has a new ambassador. And crime has its greatest detective.' Der Tagesspiegel

'Alan Conway is clearly channelling his inner Agatha Christie. And good luck to him! I loved it.' Robert Harris

'Half Greek, half German only e'er 100 per cent right. The name? Information technology's Pünd – Atticus Pünd.' Daily Express

SOON TO Exist A MAJOR BBC1 Boob tube SERIES

One

Sorrow

1

23 July 1955

There was going to exist a funeral.

The 2 gravediggers, old Jeff Weaver and his son, Adam, had been out at commencement light and everything was set up, a grave dug to the exact proportions, the world neatly piled to one side. The church building of St Botolph'due south in Saxby-on-Avon had never looked lovelier, the morning sun glinting off the stained glass windows. The church building dated dorsum to the 12th century although of class it had been rebuilt many times. The new grave was to the e, close to the ruins of the old chancel where the grass was immune to abound wild and daisies and dandelions sprouted around the broken arches.

The village itself was quiet, the streets empty. The milkman had already made his deliveries and disappeared, the bottles rattling on the back of his van. The newspaper boys had washed their rounds. This was a Saturday, so nobody would be going to piece of work and it was still too early for the homeowners to begin their weekend chores. At nine o'clock, the hamlet shop would open. The smell of staff of life, fresh out of the oven, was already seeping out of the bakery'south shop next door. Their beginning customers would be arriving soon. Once breakfast was over, a chorus of lawnmowers would start up. It was July, the busiest time of the yr for Saxby-on-Avon'southward keen ground forces of gardeners and with the Harvest Off-white just a month away roses were already being pruned, marrows carefully measured. At half by one there was to be a cricket match on the village dark-green. In that location would exist an ice-cream van, children playing, visitors having picnics in front end of their cars. The tea shop would exist open for business concern. A perfect English summer's afternoon.

Only not even so. It was as if the village was holding its breath in respectful silence, waiting for the coffin that was nearly to begin its journeying from Bathroom. Even at present it was being loaded into the hearse, surrounded by its sombre attendants – five men and a women, all of them avoiding each other'south centre every bit if they were unsure where to look. Four of the men were professional person undertakers from the highly respected firm of Lanner & Crane. The company had existed since Victorian times when information technology had been principally involved in carpentry and construction. At that fourth dimension, coffins and funerals had been a sideline, almost an afterthought. Merely, perversely, it was this function of the business concern that had survived. Lanner & Crane no longer built homes, merely their proper noun had become a byword for respectful death. Today'southward event was very much the economy package. The hearse was an older model. In that location were to be no blackness horses or improvident wreaths. The coffin itself, though handsomely finished, had been manufactured from what was, without question, inferior wood. A uncomplicated plaque, silver-plated rather than silverish, carried the name of the deceased and the two essential dates:

Mary Elizabeth Blakiston

5 April 1887 – 15 July 1955

Her life had not been as long as it seemed, crossing two centuries as it did, but then it had been cut curt quite unexpectedly. In that location had not even been enough money in Mary's funeral plan to cover the last costs – not that information technology mattered as the insurers would comprehend the deviation – and she would accept been glad to see that everything was proceeding co-ordinate to her wishes.

The hearse left exactly on time, setting out on the viii-mile journeying as the minute paw reached half past nine. Standing at an accordingly sedate pace, it would arrive at the church on the hr. If Lanner & Crane had had a slogan, it might well have been: 'Never late'. And although the two mourners travelling with the coffin might non have noticed it, the countryside had never looked lovelier, the fields on the other side of the low, flintstone walls sloping down towards the River Avon, which would follow them all the way.

In the cemetery at St Botolph's, the two gravediggers examined their handiwork. There are many things to be said about a funeral – profound, reflective, philosophical – but Jeff Weaver got it right as, leaning on his spade and rolling a cigarette in between his grubby fingers, he turned to his son. 'If you're going to dice,' he said, 'you couldn't choose a better day.'

2

Sitting at the kitchen tabular array in the vicarage, the Reverend Robin Osborne was making the final adjustments to his sermon. There were half-dozen pages spread out on the table in forepart of him, typed merely already covered in annotations added in his spidery mitt. Was it too long? At that place had been complaints recently from some of his congregation that his sermons had dragged on a fleck and fifty-fifty the bishop had shown some impatience during his address on Pentecost Sun. But this was dissimilar. Mrs Blakiston had lived her entire life in the village. Everybody knew her. Surely they could spare half an hr – or even forty minutes – of their time to say adieu.

The kitchen was a large, cheerful room with an Aga radiating a gentle warmth the whole year round. Pots and pans hung from hooks and there were jars filled with fresh herbs and dried mushrooms that the Osbornes had picked themselves. Upstairs, there were two bedrooms, both snug and homely with shag carpets, hand-embroidered pillowcases and brand-new skylights that had just been added later on much consultation with the church building. But the main joy of the vicarage was its position, on the border of the village, looking out onto the woodland that everyone knew every bit Dingle Dell. There was a wild meadow, speckled with flowers in the bound and summertime, and then a stretch of woodland whose copse, mainly oaks and elms, curtained the grounds of Pye Hall on the other sid

eastward – the lake, the lawns, then the house itself. Every morning, Robin Osborne awoke to a view that could not fail to delight him. He sometimes thought he was living in a fairy tale.

The vicarage hadn't ever been like this. When they had inherited the business firm – and the diocese – from the elderly Reverend Montagu, information technology had been very much an old human'southward home, damp and unwelcoming. Only Henrietta had worked her magic, throwing out all the furniture that she deemed also ugly or uncomfortable and scouring the second-hand shops of Wiltshire and Avon to find perfect replacements. Her free energy never ceased to amaze him. That she had chosen to be a vicar's wife in the first place was surprising plenty only she had thrown herself into her duties with an enthusiasm that had made her popular from the day they had arrived. The two of them could non be happier than they were in Saxby-on-Avon. Information technology was true that the church needed attention. The heating organisation was permanently on the blink. The roof had started leaking once more. But their congregation was more than big plenty to satisfy the bishop and many of the worshippers they now considered every bit friends. They wouldn't have dreamed of being anywhere else.

'She was part of the village. Although we are here today to mourn her departure, we should remember what she left behind. Mary made Saxby-on-Avon a better identify for anybody else, whether it was arranging the flowers every Dominicus in this very church, visiting the elderly both here and at Ashton House, collecting for the RSPB or greeting visitors to Pye Hall. Her abode-fabricated cakes were always the star of the village fête and I tin can tell you there were many occasions when she would surprise me in the vestry with one of her almond bites or perchance a slice of Victoria sponge.'

Osborne tried to picture the woman who had spent nearly of her life working as the housekeeper at Pye Hall. Small, dark-haired, and determined, she had always been in a blitz, as if on a personal crusade. His memories of her seemed mainly to be in the mid-distance because, in truth, they had never spent that much time in the same room. They had been together at one or two social occasions mayhap, but not that many. The sort of people who lived in Saxby-on-Avon weren't outright snobs, just at the same time they were very well aware of class and although a vicar might be deemed a suitable addition to any social gathering, the same could non be said of someone who was, at the stop of the day, a cleaner. Peradventure she had been aware of this. Even at church she had tended to take a pew at the very back. There was something quite deferential nigh the way she insisted on helping people, as if she somehow owed information technology to them.

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