A Game Most Foul, page 9
“Yes, but are you sure?” Adele insisted, wringing her hands again—something she seemed to have taken up recently.
“Yes,” I said, reaching over to take her hands in mine. “I promise. I’ll message you during breaks and come home right after class lets out.”
Adele freed one of her hands from my grasp to pat my cheek, sighing heavily. “You must think I’m a silly old woman. You’re an adult, Jules, and you can obviously look after yourself, but this whole thing has me unnerved, I won’t lie.”
Well, the adult part was debatable—I still couldn’t legally drink in the US and you could forget about renting a car. We were on the same page about being unnerved though.
“You’re not silly,” I said to Adele. “It’s still scary. I was with Ashley when she disappeared and now she’s . . .”
I couldn’t—maybe didn’t even want to—find the words to finish that sentence. Every time I’d said it aloud it seemed to chip away at the calm, collected demeanor I’d been trying to maintain.
The truth of the matter was that Ashley was missing and I was the last person she’d been with. And all I could muster up to tell the police was: I don’t know what happened.
“Oh, darling girl.” Adele suddenly had her arms around me in a fierce hug. “You mustn’t think this is your fault.”
“I don’t think it’s—”
“Because it isn’t. You did nothing wrong, Jules.”
I hugged Adele back just as tightly, resting my chin on her shoulder. I didn’t bother trying to come up with a response; I didn’t have one anyway.
Adele obviously already knew I very much felt like this was my fault.
She gave me one last squeeze before letting me go, taking a step back. “Best be off then. Don’t want to be late.”
“Right,” I said, clearing my throat. “I’ll let you know when I get to class.”
Adele saw me to the front door of the shop with another line about keeping my chin up. She was still standing in the doorway when I looked back over my shoulder before I turned the corner down the street. I tried to smile as I gave a small wave; it must’ve worked, since Adele waved back.
It felt like I was wandering in a daze as I made the now familiar trek to the Underground. I was following the same routine this morning as I had every other morning since arriving in London, but everything felt off. It didn’t take a genius to figure out why: Ashley was gone.
As much as I might’ve desperately wished otherwise, Ashley was gone, and she was not going to be the first in Room 217 this morning. As quiet and softspoken as she could be, we’d all had the chance to witness her wicked sense of humor and quirky remarks; her absence was going to be painfully noticeable.
I managed to make it to Chatham Hall in one piece with only one minor mishap of tripping over my shoelaces. I stood outside in the middle of the courtyard for a moment, wondering if I might be able to locate the window in Room 217.
I wondered too whether if I looked closely enough I might see Ashley sitting on the windowsill, book in hand, or pencil scribbling away in her notebook.
“Are you too chicken to go inside or what?”
“Probably,” I said as Suruthi came to stand beside me.
Also like me, Suruthi looked as if she hadn’t gotten a lick of sleep last night. Her clothes matched her mood today too; there wasn’t a single scrap of neon on her shorts or T-shirt anywhere.
I was pretty sure we stood there for another few minutes, both lost in our respective thoughts, staring up at Chatham Hall like it somehow had all the answers to our burning questions.
“Good morning. I trust you two had a pleasant weekend.”
It was a mixture of angst and unease that I felt at the sound of that voice somewhere behind us.
Suruthi met my eye and gave a firm nod before we both worked up the courage to turn and face Detective Constable Evans. I may have also imagined the way she mumbled, “He’s come back with a warrant,” but it still seemed to fit the moment.
Behind Evans, toward the courtyard entrance, I could see his partner, Detective Constable Thomas, deep in conversation with a man and woman who I immediately pegged as likely candidates for Willem’s parents.
Willem was standing about a foot away with his arms crossed, gaze fixed firmly on a crack in the cobblestone, and I could clearly see his grimace.
The woman was speaking animatedly with a lot of hand gestures, clearly taking charge of the conversation. DC Thomas kept shaking his head, trying to interject, but the woman wasn’t letting him get a word in edgewise. All in all, it was probably a good thing I couldn’t understand Dutch.
“My weekend was great, thanks,” I said to Evans, forcing some pep into my voice. “What about yours?”
Evans fixed me with his blank, gray stare and I tried and failed not to shiver. Yikes.
“My weekend was perfectly adequate, Miss Montgomery.”
“And my weekend was crap, thank you for asking,” Suruthi said casually, like we were all having a chat about the weather. “So have you found Ashley yet?”
“Regrettably, no,” Evans said shortly. “Hence our visit this morning. We have some follow-up questions we’d like to ask.”
There was a deeper, more rational part of my brain that knew if Ashley had been found, we’d know by now. With Evans and Thomas back for more questioning, that obviously meant Ashley was still missing.
Seeing the tight set of Evans’s mouth and the way he wouldn’t quite meet Suruthi’s gaze as he responded to her question made it difficult to stay positive. It wasn’t a very good look. And yet the hope I still clung to that Ashley would be found, unharmed and reunited with her grandmother, wasn’t keen on being silenced.
Evans gave a polite nod and stepped around us to finish the trek across the courtyard.
“What do you reckon then?”
I jumped when Suruthi gave me a hard nudge with her elbow. “Huh?”
“I said, what do you reckon?” she repeated, now frowning.
“Oh, yeah, I . . .”
Looking back to Evans and then again to Suruthi, I realized I must’ve missed the last minute or two of conversation, too caught up in cataloguing all of Evans’s aloof little mannerisms. The way he was leaning to one side, how his gaze was roaming around the courtyard, almost like he was looking for the best escape route . . . Or maybe it was just my overactive imagination filling in the gaps.
“It kinda seems like Evans would rather be just about anywhere else but here, doesn’t it?” I said, watching as the man in question disappeared into Chatham Hall.
“Bloke really does seem to hate his job,” Suruthi agreed.
“That’s one way to put it,” I said. “Either that, or he thinks this is a major waste of his time.”
It was disconcerting to see the genuine look of apprehension that flitted across Suruthi’s face before she managed to school her expression. “But you do think they’re trying to, you know, find Ashley, right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Of course they’re trying to find her. That’s their job.”
Suruthi nodded, her eyes now downcast. “Of course.”
She linked her arm through mine and gave me a gentle tug to get walking, pulling me inside. I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was just wrong to be going about our day like this, up to Room 217 where we would all sit around on the couches and chairs and talk about writing and how our manuscripts were going, without Ashley there.
Ashley was an aspiring writer just like the rest of us, one of the group. There was a member of our group now missing, and that was becoming more and more difficult to stomach.
Suruthi still hadn’t let go of my arm as we walked side-by-side up the stairs, and I was holding on to her just as tightly by the time we’d reached the second floor.
Percy and Thierry were both standing outside the classroom door, but Percy was the only one who acknowledged that we were approaching. Thierry was leaned casually against the wall, face buried in a book, and seemed determined not to look up.
“Well, you look about as great as I feel,” Suruthi said to Percy. “Rough night too?”
“Massive understatement.” Percy rubbed a hand across his face, and I could practically feel the exhaustion radiating off him. His hair was even messier than usual, the dark circles under his eyes suggesting a serious lack of sleep. “I found it . . . a bit hard to relax last night.”
You don’t say, I thought.
I tried to stop myself, but the words were out before I had the chance to bite them back. It was pointless to ask because Percy would’ve let us know if Ashley had contacted him in the twelve hours since we’d last seen each other, but I was asking anyway.
“But you didn’t—? I mean, Ashley didn’t—?”
Percy gave a small, apologetic smile. “No. Afraid not.”
“Right.” I pursed my lips, willing myself to ignore the sudden feeling that I was about to cry. “Never mind then.”
It looked like Percy was about to fiddle with his glasses again, then thought better of it, and crossed his arms. “The, er, professor’s just gone to have a word with Detective Constable Evans, I believe, and then we’ll be starting today’s lesson.”
It was to be business as usual in the meantime then. The writing seminar would go on with or without Ashley. It made sense and yet the whole thing seemed impossible when I wasn’t sure I’d even be able to get into the right mindset to try and write (not that I’d made much progress on my manuscript to begin with).
The door to Room 217 swung open and Detective Constable Evans stuck his head out, beckoning us inside with a crook of his finger. He pointed us toward the couches and chairs as Professor Watson stood up at his desk and came forward to greet us.
I did a double take at the professor. Suruthi let out a low whistle.
“Oh dear,” Percy muttered.
Professor Watson, to put it delicately, looked terrible. He’d obviously forgotten to shave over the weekend and his hair was the farthest thing from neatly combed. His shirt was wrinkled, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and his waistcoat was missing. It was almost like looking at a different person, and it definitely wasn’t leaving me with any hope that things weren’t actually as bad as they were feeling.
I did my best to shake myself out of my stupor and greeted the professor before quickly taking my seat on the couch between Suruthi and Percy.
We all ended up staring at Ashley’s empty seat—even Thierry who had finally looked up from his book. We were still staring when there was a flurry of noise in the hallway, and then the door swung open with a loud bang.
The man and woman we’d just seen outside arguing with the other detective constable came storming inside, a very embarrassed Willem shuffling along behind them. The woman had barely crossed the threshold before Professor Watson was stepping right into the line of fire, preventing them from getting any farther into the classroom.
“Mr. and Mrs. Maes, I presume?” Despite the rumpled appearance, Professor Watson sounded cool and collected. “What a pleasure it is to meet you. Willem, if you’d like to join your classmates, I daresay your parents and I will be a touch more comfortable in a private study room downstairs to continue this conversation further.”
“Sure,” Willem said, skirting around his parents to join us in the circle of furniture.
Professor Watson managed to usher Mr. and Mrs. Maes out into the hallway, closely followed by both detective constables. The door had only just shut with a quiet little click when Suruthi pounced.
“So what time do you expect to be on a flight back to Brussels?”
“By breakfast tomorrow, if I’m lucky,” Willem griped, dropping into an armchair across from Thierry.
There was a collective grumble from the rest of the group, except—
“Can you really blame them though?” Thierry interjected, snapping his book shut. “We all know Ashley isn’t coming back. Oh, don’t look at me like that,” he added, rolling his eyes in Suruthi’s direction. “You are the true crime expert, right? They say the first forty-eight hours are the most crucial in a missing persons case, and we are well past that now.”
Thierry’s words, spoken so casually, cut like a knife. The resounding silence felt painful.
“Why would you say that?” Percy demanded at the same time Suruthi said, “What is wrong with you?”
I was too stunned to have any intelligible kind of response.
None of that seemed to bother Thierry though. He made himself more comfortable in his chair, flipping his book open again. “Fret all you want, but you know I’m right. And that being the case, I think our time would better be focused on our manuscripts.”
“Oh, yeah, like that’ll be so easy,” Suruthi said sarcastically. “Let’s all just keep writing away while one of our mates is missing. You mean to tell me that you really think something—something happened to Ashley?”
Thierry gave Suruthi a look that very obviously said don’t be stupid. “You don’t? And she is not one of my mates. I barely know the girl.”
I had the immediate thought that that wasn’t quite true. We’d learned quite a bit about each other since the start of the seminar. Ashley adored the historical fiction genre and wrote her first story at the age of fourteen. She talked about her grandmother a lot, her prized possession was the little bronze bumblebee pin her grandmother had given her, she would only drink coffee if it had a bunch of caramel sauce in it, and I’d never seen her do any kind of writing without earbuds in. I’d never gotten the chance to ask her what she was listening to.
“Is that really fair?” Willem said, straightening up in his armchair. “We have spent the last two weeks together.”
“And?” Thierry said, arching a brow. “That still doesn’t change the fact that we are not friends, simply . . . acquaintances.”
None of us were given the chance to respond to Thierry’s rather cold sentiments. Detective Constable Evans reappeared in the classroom then, and that same knife from before cut a little deeper when he took the paisley armchair Ashley had diligently occupied the last two weeks.
Evans crossed his legs, leaning casually into the armrest, and my heart gave a painful lurch.
“Now that we’re all here,” he began, diving right into it, “I’d like to speak with you all individually this morning to ask a few additional questions about Miss James. Your mobile phones will be returned to you as well. Now, one by one, we would like to—”
A shrill voice suddenly drowned out Evans’s, floating into the room from somewhere down the hallway. Willem went scarlet in the face as we all glanced his way because it was pretty darn obvious his mother was currently tearing into Professor Watson loud enough for half of London to hear.
“Forget tomorrow morning,” Percy said quietly, resting his chin in his hand as he leaned into the arm of the couch. “Willem’s going to be out of the country by afternoon tea at this rate.”
Percy’s guesstimate was an overly generous one. It was a mere half hour later, Detective Constable Evans just having excused himself to question Thierry first, when Mr. and Mrs. Maes returned to the classroom. Professor Watson was just a few steps behind, and if it were possible, he seemed to have a few more strands of gray hair.
It only took one look for Willem to figure out this was all a lost cause.
Mr. Maes stood to the side with his arms crossed while Mrs. Maes snatched Willem’s backpack for him and started ushering him toward the door. Whatever she was saying in a string of rapid Dutch had Willem scowling, looking more and more perturbed by the second.
“Will you at least let me say goodbye?” Willem suddenly burst out.
He’d planted his feet firmly in the middle of the classroom and was refusing to budge. Mrs. Maes made a face like she’d sucked on some sour candy and turned back to Mr. Maes. They seemed to have some sort of short, nonverbal conversation before Mrs. Maes said, “Fine, Willem. Be quick about it.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Willem grumbled. “Whatever.”
He turned his back on his mother’s indignant scowl to face the rest of us and I felt myself start to get a little choked up.
Thierry had a point; two weeks really wasn’t a great amount of time to get to know someone. Strangely though, I felt like I had already gotten to know the people in this room pretty well—save for Thierry, maybe. I was going to miss Willem and his quick wit, and his action-packed sci-fi short stories.
Suruthi, Percy, and I got to our feet, and then we were all just sort of standing there awkwardly, unsure of what to say, until Suruthi finally made the first move.
“We’re going to miss you, Willem,” she said with a mournful sigh, pulling him in for a tight squeeze.
Willem patted Suruthi on the back, looking very unsure of what to do with the sudden hug. “Uh. Yes. You as well.”
Next came a firm handshake and a nod from Percy. When it was my turn, I just decided to throw caution to the wind and give Willem a quick hug too.
“Good luck with everything, Willem,” I said when I stepped back. “Be sure to tell us when you have your first book signing.”
Willem mustered up a small smile. “You’ll be the first to know.”
Mrs. Maes cleared her throat loudly and Willem blew out a defeated sigh, shoulders slumping. “Guess this is it then.”
We all waved as Willem grudgingly followed his parents to the door. Professor Watson put out a hand to stop him before they could get too far, speaking directly to Willem when he said, “You have incredible talent, young man. Please do not let your early departure keep you from pursuing your passion for writing.”
Willem shook the professor’s hand, mumbling something that I couldn’t really make out with the way his back was turned. Mrs. Maes got a grip on her son’s shoulder and gave him a hearty shove out the door before Professor Watson had the chance to say anything else.
Just like that, Willem was gone. I spent a moment fixated on the doorway, wondering if the universe was maybe playing a twisted joke, and both Willem and Ashley would suddenly show up in the doorway, pretending like the last few days had been some kind of prank.
That didn’t happen.
“And then there were three,” Suruthi said as Professor Watson quietly shut the classroom door.
