Murder at Mistletoe Manor, page 12
The door is too thick to make out the words, or who the person is – but it’s definitely a woman. Nick feels adrenalin buzzing through his veins. As far as he’s aware, Branson and Penelope arrived alone – but suppose Branson knew someone who was already here? Suppose they committed murder together? He pulls back sharply as footsteps approach the door on the other side, and he dashes to the corner, turning it just as he hears the door open, and Branson saying, ‘I’ll see you later. Try not to worry.’
Nick gallops down the main stairs two at a time, eager to reach the hall before Branson spots him, and strolls casually into the drawing room. Only Alan and David are by the fire, talking quietly.
‘Lorraine’s barely slept,’ Alan says. ‘I sent her up for a nap, but she’s scared to be on her own. I’ll go and check on her in a minute.’
David nods. Emily is on the rug, reading an Enid Blyton book, her ever-present headphones once again clamped over her ears. She looks up and removes them as Nick sits down, leaving them round her neck like a tiny DJ. Nick smiles at her.
‘Did you go to boarding school, Nick?’ she asks. ‘I’m reading about Malory Towers, and I want to go to one when I’m a bit bigger.’
‘I went to a day school,’ he tells her. ‘My dad was the Latin teacher.’
Her eyes widen. ‘Was your mum one too?’
‘No,’ he says. ‘I’m afraid my mum …’ He glances at David. ‘Well, she di … passed away, when I was little.’
‘Mine did too,’ says Emily. ‘I’m a half of an orphan.’
She returns cheerfully to her book, and David smiles sadly at Nick. ‘She doesn’t remember her,’ he tells him. ‘Sometimes I think that’s for the best, but then again …’
‘I’m sorry.’ The journalist in Nick wants to know how she died, but he can’t bring himself to ask. Probably cancer, like his own mother, Gwen. She died when he was nine – only a little older than Emily. The difference is, he does remember her. He had assumed David was divorced, and only had Emily for the holidays. Now, he realises just how close they must be.
‘Getting anywhere with your investigations?’ asks David, and Nick wonders whether to mention Branson. He decides against it, reminding himself that nobody can be trusted.
Branson himself arrives, and raises a hand. ‘Still snowing,’ he observes pointlessly.
‘How are you getting on?’ Alan asks brusquely, evidently hoping that Branson will say, Fine, no need to discuss it any further.
‘Terrible. I’m not sleeping. Every time I close my eyes I see her there. I can’t …’ He sighs and glances at Nick. ‘I just went to see Violet. She said if I needed to talk … I tried, but it doesn’t help. Until we catch the bastard that did it, nothing helps.’
Nick feels both relieved and frustrated. He thought … he doesn’t know what he thought. Violet was just being kind, trying to help a stranger in unfathomable pain. She was also, perhaps, being foolish – because for all she knows, Branson could have killed his wife after all and be acting up a storm of grief. Although Matilda saw him too, coming out of Laburnum – Violet’s room – perhaps Branson simply needs a friend.
‘She’s got a counselling qualification, you know,’ Branson says now.
‘Who?’ Alan asks, irritably nudging Jingle away with his gold snaffle loafer. Nick finds it hard to trust people who dislike cats, and pats the sofa beside him. Jingle leaps up, and crackles an appreciative purr as Nick strokes his head.
‘Violet. She said she could listen without offering advice, and that’s what I thought I needed, but … nothing works.’ His voice breaks on a sob, and Nick puts an awkward hand on his shoulder.
‘I’ll fetch you a brandy …’ mutters Alan, heaving himself upright. ‘It’s five o’clock somewhere.’
Donal. Nick looks at his watch – it’s after two; he’s late for their meeting. He removes his hand from Branson’s heaving shoulder. ‘I’ll be five minutes,’ he says. ‘I just need to … David, could you …?’
David slides on to the sofa beside Branson, and murmurs, ‘It’s terribly hard, mate, I know,’ as Nick apologetically hurries from the drawing room.
There’s nobody in the hall, and no sounds of life elsewhere. The tree drops a cascade of dry needles as he passes – he wonders why it’s already dying, when the hall is so cold. The bottom branches are almost bare – even the tree lights are off, Nick notes.
Nick pushes open the door of the library, hopeful that Donal has waited and will be sitting in a wing-backed chair, ready to tell all. But it’s immediately clear that he’s not here – the room is chilly, empty of life. The snow is now so high at the window that the filtered light is grey and murky, like the bottom of a winter pond.
Cursing himself, Nick turns to go and look for Donal, and sees Matilda making her way slowly downstairs. She lifts a hand in greeting and he hurries to help her down.
‘I’m fine,’ she says. ‘It’s these blasted shoes – shiny soles. We used to run a cheese grater over new shoe soles to roughen them, but all these little tricks have been forgotten now, haven’t they? It’s all instant gratification, throw them away and buy a new pair.’
Nick has been subjected to several similar rants from Harriet on her occasional eco-missions (‘Plastic toys, Nick, really?’) and knows simply to nod.
‘Have you seen Violet?’ Matilda asks as she reaches the hall and orients herself towards the drawing room. ‘I wanted to ask her something.’
Nick explains what Branson has revealed.
‘Oh, I see!’ Matilda’s eyes shine with unexpected tears. ‘What a relief. My goodness. I was awfully worried that something was amiss, with him creeping about in different bedrooms.’
‘Yes, it seems Violet’s just being a Good Samaritan,’ Nick agrees. ‘Mystery solved.’
‘Well, one mystery, anyway,’ says Matilda drily. ‘We still have a murderer to catch.’
She pats his arm and makes her way slowly to the drawing room, pulling her cardigan tight against the chill as Nick heads in the other direction towards the kitchen, to find Donal.
He’s about to push open the door when he hears raised voices.
18
‘I’m not saying that, though, am I?’ A tone of irritation from Donal.
‘It sounds very much like you’re saying exactly that. If you don’t trust me, say so to my face.’
‘What if I don’t? How does saying it to your face help?’
‘At least you could be honest and say you think I murdered a woman in her bed. Say that you think you’ve spent two years working next to a bloody psycho.’
Nick freezes, listening.
‘I don’t!’ Donal slams something down on a surface with a hard smack. ‘But we’ve got a bunch of terrified guests about to turn on each other, we’re stuck here with no phones, and someone’s killing people. All I’m saying is, you know where everything is, you’ve got a dodgy past, you hate posh people …’
‘You think I killed Penelope because she’s posh?’ Colt’s voice spirals in disbelief.
‘I don’t even know! I don’t know you,’ Donal shouts. ‘I work with you every day, and I don’t know anything about you.’
‘And I don’t know anything about you apart from that you’ve got a so-called fiancée nobody’s ever seen, and you’re the most uptight bloke I’ve ever met. Maybe you killed Penelope! Maybe you were having an affair with her! I don’t know, do I?’
There’s the sound of glass smashing and Colt shouting, ‘What the hell …?’
Donal shoulders his way out of the kitchen and storms past Nick. There are pink spots high on his cheeks and his eyes are blazing.
Nick tries to speak, but Donal doesn’t stop to hear whatever he’s about to say. His feet pound up the stairs, and soon, distantly and far above them, Nick hears the sound of a heavy door being violently slammed.
He peers tentatively into the kitchen.
‘Colt,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry, I overheard some of it. I wasn’t eavesdropping, I was coming to talk to Donal.’
‘Good luck with that.’ Colt is breathing heavily. At his feet, the shards of a glass jug shine like scattered ice.
‘Are you OK?’
Colt shrugs and fetches the kitchen broom from the corner. ‘Not really. Is anyone OK right now?’
‘Do you really think he killed her?’
Colt sighs. ‘I think … I don’t know. It could have been Donal; it could have been you. It could have been that bloody French bulldog.’
‘More likely Jingle,’ says Nick, aiming for brief levity. Colt half smiles.
‘Nah, man. He’s a good cat. Listen, I need to clear this up and start on dinner prep. Let me know if you need anything.’
‘I will. Thanks, Colt.’
The younger man nods, and turns back to the shattered glass.
Gradually, the others gather once again around the fire. Violet slips in beside Branson, briefly laying a hand on his knee. ‘Any better?’ she asks him, and he shudders something between a shrug and a head-shake.
David moves up so Destiny can take her usual place. ‘What have you been up to?’ he asks her conversationally.
‘Meditating. Asking for spirit guidance. Walking Gaia up and down the corridors. Trying not to go mad.’
‘I suppose we wouldn’t know if we did,’ David remarks. ‘The thing with madness is, you generally don’t realise you’re mad.’
‘Oh, we’re all mad as a box of toads in my family, and we know it all right,’ says Lorraine happily. ‘Don’t we, Alan?’ She turns to the others. ‘He always says me and my sisters are absolutely berserk when we get together.’
Alan smiles tightly. ‘I don’t say that.’
‘You do! You say you’ve never known anything like it cos your ex-wife was so quiet …’
‘That’s enough, Lorraine.’
Nick sees him shoot her a glare so chilling, Lorraine stops speaking, and swallows. ‘Sorry,’ she whispers.
So Alan has an ex-wife. Nick wonders how he and Lorraine met, what their story is. Beyond Lorraine’s cheerful chatter about Christmas at Jade’s house, he knows very little about them, and he hasn’t yet spoken to Alan alone. He wonders quite how their marriage works – this is the first sign that they aren’t an entirely united front. That Alan might be hiding a cruel streak beneath the golf-club bonhomie.
The afternoon inches by. Nick plays a couple of games of Scrabble with Matilda and Violet, letting Emily help by suggesting small words he could use. As a result, he loses badly.
Branson tells Alan and Lorraine about life in Malibu – ‘You never need to think, What will I wear today? because it’s always sunny,’ he says. ‘Penny loved it so much, I always wondered why she didn’t move somewhere warm years before I met her.’
‘Her son and parents, I suppose,’ says Lorraine. ‘I’d never have dragged our Jade abroad when she was little.’
‘And they still don’t know she’s dead …’ Branson puts a hand over his face again, and Lorraine clutches his elbow in sympathy.
Talk turns again to the note.
‘Who has neat writing?’ wonders Lorraine. She gazes at the paper, which remains on the table before them. ‘It’s kind of disguised, you can tell, but if we had a graphologist …’
‘A what?’ Branson asks.
‘Someone who studies handwriting,’ Destiny puts in. ‘It’s a very interesting method of—’
‘They have a whole page on it in Soul Secrets Magazine,’ says Lorraine. ‘I love it – “Real-life women tell their spooky stories”.’
‘It’s nonsense,’ says Alan impatiently. ‘It’s all made up.’
‘It is not!’ Lorraine bristles. ‘They have actual photographs, Alan.’
Nick wonders whether it would be even vaguely useful to compare everyone’s handwriting, and concludes that it wouldn’t. Almost anyone can write in neat capitals if they need to.
‘What could she have done?’ Lorraine asks again, and Violet shakes her head.
‘An affair? A vengeful ex-husband, maybe?’
Branson glares. ‘That was not why her last marriage ended, Vi.’
Branson, of course, would want to believe that Penelope was blameless. Nick wonders if Violet’s hit on something.
‘Her ex,’ he says. ‘What do you know about him, Branson?’
The American sighs. ‘Not a lot. “Irreconcilable differences”. Still has a good relationship with Peter. Does something woke – social-work type of thing.’
‘So he and Penny didn’t speak at all?’
‘Nope. Not that I know about.’
Nick has a wild thought. ‘Could he be here … one of the group …?’
‘Only if it’s you,’ says Lorraine. ‘Because it’s not Alan, and David’s a GP with a daughter.’
Branson shakes his head. ‘Nah,’ he says. ‘She’d have told me. Why would she keep it secret if someone she knew so well was here?’
He’s right, Nick thinks. It would be madness to pretend. He glances across at Violet, and is surprised by her expression. She has been upset all day, of course – but now she looks despairing.
David and Destiny are holding a murmured conversation, which seems to be about the crossover between natural remedies and what Destiny refers to as ‘big pharma placebos’. David is being remarkably patient, Nick thinks. Or perhaps he agrees with Destiny that the West is slowly poisoning itself thanks to its refusal to wake up and embrace the earth’s true bounty.
More likely, Nick assumes, he’s not fully listening, but admiring her exquisite face and lithe limbs as she sits cross-legged, Gaia snoring in the nest of her lap.
Curious, Nick tunes into their conversation.
‘I used to study medicine,’ Destiny is telling David. ‘I went to Edinburgh, I was going to be a doctor, a paediatrician. And then in my third year, I got ill and I nearly died, and not one doctor knew how to help me.’
‘What was the illness?’ David asks gently.
‘ME,’ says Destiny. ‘I was so burnt out and exhausted, I couldn’t walk – I could barely speak. My mum and dad were beside themselves, my boyfriend left me. One – male – doctor told me I was “malingering”.’
She waits for David’s horror, and he obliges. ‘So what happened?’ he asks.
‘I realised mainstream medicine wasn’t going to help me,’ she tells him. ‘I did my own research. I started doing chair yoga, and I’d be exhausted after ten minutes, but I carried on. I looked up natural cures, and once I could get up, I began foraging in the local woods for berries and fungi, real alternatives to big pharma, which is only interested in perpetuating ill health so it can charge a fortune for its so-called cures. My medicine cabinet is available to all, for nothing. I learned how to cure myself, and I trained as a yoga teacher, naturopath and shaman. That was eight years ago, and I haven’t been ill since.’
David nods slowly. ‘You must think I’m a bit of a nightmare, then!’ he says awkwardly.
She shakes her head solemnly. ‘No. I think you have the potential to do great good. But you must learn to harness nature’s power,’ she says. ‘When we get out of here, I could teach you – show you what I’ve learned, start you on a path that will change your life for good. There are so many wonderful tinctures, life-giving berries you can find, even in the depths of winter.’
David is clearly mesmerised by her beauty, thinks Nick. Normally, he’s pretty sure any doctor would be mounting a passionate defence of Western medicine, but David’s just nodding along, smiling into her huge brown eyes.
The light outside has gone altogether by four o’clock, and Donal comes in to close the shutters and draw the curtains.
‘Can I get a tea, mate?’ calls Alan, and everyone clamours their own drinks orders.
Donal comes across to note them down. He’s no longer flushed. There’s no trace of the rage Nick saw when he whirled from the kitchen earlier, as he smiles and blandly enquires after everyone, whether they’ve had a nap, who won Scrabble, if they need fresh towels.
For a moment, Nick envisages Donal as a spider on the moulded plaster ceiling gazing down on everyone as they go about their business, studying their routes, ticking down the hours as he waits for the moment to trap them in his intricate web. David’s right, he thinks bitterly, you don’t know when you’re going mad.
‘Dinner will be a little later tonight,’ Donal tells the group. ‘David, we can do something earlier for Emily if you’d rather she didn’t have to wait?’
David smiles at him. ‘Very kind of you. I think she’d prefer to eat with everyone else, would you, poppet?’
She nods, attention still on her book.
Donal catches Nick’s eye. ‘Quick word when I’ve served the drinks?’
At last, thinks Nick. Maybe, finally, he can discover what Donal’s found, and how it might in any way be relevant to catching the murderer.
They meet in the small sitting room where he spoke to Matilda. ‘Not to be paranoid,’ says Donal, turning the brass key, ‘but I’m going to lock the door.’
Nick experiences a moment of disquiet. Is it really wise to be in this hidden little enclave, with no way out and a potential murderer standing in front of him? He scans the room quickly – a poker in the fireplace, a heavy Chinese vase on the coffee table, the mounted butterflies in glass frames that could shatter if he brought one down hard enough on the edge of the coffee table—
Donal offers a twisted smile. ‘You’re thinking about how to fend me off, aren’t you?’
‘I’d be fairly stupid if I wasn’t.’
Donal sighs and seats himself in the stuffed armchair nearest to the hearth. He’s lit a small fire, and it smoulders in the grate, fizzling occasionally as snowflakes drift down the chimney.
‘You don’t have to worry, Nick.’ He throws his hands up like a cheerleader. ‘Look, no weapons. I just don’t want anyone barging in and overhearing us.’
