Murder at Mistletoe Manor, page 18
Nick is so deep in thought, he jumps when Violet’s voice rises.
‘I can’t! I just can’t!’
‘Come on, we’re all in the same boat,’ says Branson with some annoyance, and Matilda says:
‘Oh dear, perhaps just try a roll …’
‘What’s wrong?’ Nick asks.
Violet has pushed her bowl away and is eyeing it warily, as though it might be alive.
‘Violet won’t eat the soup,’ says Lorraine, sotto voce. ‘She thinks it might be poisoned.’
‘Why?’ David sounds frightened. Emily, Nick notices, stops eating and sets her spoon down.
‘No reason!’ Branson says, but Violet interrupts.
‘No reason except people are being killed, we don’t know anything about Colt but he’s cooking all our food, and, frankly, I’m not prepared to risk dying for the sake of some soup!’
‘Daddy, will it make me poorly?’ Emily quavers, and David puts his arm around her.
‘I’m quite sure it won’t, darling,’ he says, firmly. ‘But to be on the safe side, why don’t I go and find something for you and Violet to eat that we know is OK?’
Nick wants to ask David if it’s wise to give credence to Emily’s fears, or to fuel Violet’s growing paranoia, but on the other hand, Colt is still a suspect. As David leaves the room, and Emily surreptitiously drops her bread roll on the floor, immediately to be gobbled up by Gaia, Nick finishes his own soup, hoping he’s not being entirely foolish. The others don’t seem worried, there’s talk of a Monopoly championship this afternoon, and hopes remain high that somehow, someone will manage to contact the police today.
‘Has it ever snowed like this before around here?’ asks Nick to distract himself. Violet pours Matilda a glass of wine and refills her own.
‘I just about remember the great freeze of 1947,’ says Matilda, taking a delicate bite from one of the mince pies that Colt has left on the sideboard. ‘I was only two, but my goodness, the bitter cold. The snow lasted for months – all of February and most of March, I believe. The drifts were twenty feet high in places. My mother used to go to the shops on a sledge, with me tucked up on her lap in a blanket.’
‘Really?’ Emily is entranced. ‘I would love to do that!’
Matilda continues to reminisce about sweet rationing and frost patterns on the windowpanes, and everyone listens. It seems so innocent, the roomful of guests rapt at an old woman’s memories, and he’s almost shocked when David returns carrying two plates and sets them before Violet and Emily.
‘Oven chips and fish fingers,’ he says. ‘Best I could do, but they were new packets, so …’
‘Did Colt object?’ Nick asks.
David raises an eyebrow. ‘He wasn’t delighted. But desperate times call for desperate measures.’
Emily is now happily eating her lunch, and Violet manages a watery smile. ‘Thank you so much, David,’ she says. ‘Or should I say Dr … what’s your surname?’
‘Foley,’ he supplies. ‘Of Irish origin, I believe. Though I was born in Harrogate.’
‘Oh, you’re local?’
Nick is surprised. There’s no hint of Yorkshire in David’s polite vowels.
‘Yes, but I was packed off to boarding school at eight, then straight to a medical degree, worked at Bart’s for a decade, then Emily and I have been in South Africa for a few years.’
‘Since my mummy died,’ says Emily through a mouthful of fish finger.
David lowers his voice. ‘I was offered the job at a new clinic, and it was a fresh start for both of us. Where we live is pretty safe, a gated community. Emily had a nanny until she started school, and now she has a lovely childminder, Blessing.’
‘I love Blessing,’ Emily agrees. ‘She plays with me in the garden and she doesn’t mind doing football.’
Nick smiles at her. ‘Good woman.’
Lorraine is earwigging. ‘No family still in the UK? That’s sad.’
David blinks. ‘Not really,’ he says firmly. ‘It’s been just the two of us for a long time.’
‘Well, I bet you’re a super single dad,’ Lorraine says. ‘Whatever made you come here for Christmas? You could have had a lovely, sunny time in South Africa and avoided all this!’
David smiles wearily. ‘I wanted to show Em where I grew up,’ he says. ‘In retrospect, I imagine she could have got by without knowing.’
It’s when lunch is cleared away and they’re beginning to stand up to return to the drawing room that it happens. A glass crashes to the floor and explodes into fragments, and Nick turns to see Matilda half collapsed in her chair. She is breathing heavily, her eyes rolling back.
‘Matilda!’ shrieks Violet, and Branson shoves back his chair and rushes to her side.
There is consternation, exclamations – David is loosening the bow at Matilda’s throat, taking her pulse, and Lorraine sweeps Emily from the room, crying, ‘Let’s find Jingle!’
‘Is she …?’ begins Nick, and David glances up.
‘She’s breathing,’ he says. ‘Help me lift her.’
Between them, they lift Matilda, who murmurs, ‘My room.’
Branson and Alan carry her up, Nick unlocks her door with the key she fishes from her handbag, and they stagger in, gently lowering her to the mattress.
‘What’s happening?’ David asks. ‘Can you describe your symptoms?’
‘Sick. Dizzy.’ Matilda tries to sit up, but falls back against the pillows. ‘My throat, burning … I don’t know what …’ She trails off, her speech slurring, and her eyelids flutter closed.
‘Is it a stroke?’ Nick turns to David, and he shakes his head.
‘I don’t think so.’ He lowers his voice. ‘She’s showing some pretty classic signs of poisoning.’
27
‘Poison? My God!’ Branson shouts. Matilda’s eyes flicker open.
‘Shhh.’ Nick herds him back to the corridor. ‘Let’s try not to upset her further.’
Alan looks stricken. ‘But who would … she’s an old lady!’ he manages, furiously.
Downstairs, Nick can hear Destiny and Lorraine, their voices spiralling in fear, and Destiny’s next words float up as they climb the stairs: ‘… need to cleanse the manor.’
‘Cleanse the manor!’ scoffs Alan. ‘Get rid of that bloody chef, more like, that’s what’s needed! He’s the murderer, it’s plain as day.’
‘Hold on,’ says Nick. ‘We’re all fine, aren’t we? And Matilda ate what we ate – so if it’s poison, it’s been administered some other way.’
‘Her drink?’ Alan suggests. ‘Who poured it?’
None of them can remember.
‘She’s fallen unconscious,’ David calls, worried. ‘Someone needs to sit with her, make sure she doesn’t vomit and choke.’
‘Can’t you do something?’ Branson demands. ‘You’re a doctor, aren’t you? Don’t you have some kind of antidote in your damn kit?’
‘I don’t know what the poison is, and have no way of testing,’ David says patiently. ‘I don’t have my “kit” with me. I can only make a guess that it’s some kind of natural toxin. Her symptoms are similar to nightshade poisoning. I’ve seen it once or twice.’
‘She’ll die!’ exclaims Lorraine, arriving in the doorway. ‘She’ll die, while we all sit and watch!’
David ignores her. ‘We’ll need salt water: it’s an emetic. I’ll give it to her when she comes round. I can’t administer it while she’s unconscious.’
Lorraine and Destiny hurry back downstairs to make some in the kitchen.
What if she doesn’t come round? Nick wonders. Who would target somebody as vulnerable as Matilda, and why? He glances at the painting above Matilda’s bed. Like the dark oil of the hawthorn in his own room, it shows an ivy-covered tree trunk bound with spiny clumps of mistletoe, the white berries shining against the dark leaves.
‘Excuse me a minute.’ Nick hurries from the room, down the stairs and towards the library, where he flicks on the lights and scans the shelves. Soon, he exhausts the modern volumes and moves on to the dusty sets of gold-leaf-trimmed, leather-bound volumes kept behind glass. Finally, he spots what he’s looking for. He removes Plantae Venenatae from the shelf, for once grateful that his father got him through Latin GCSE, and turns to ‘Viscum’.
‘Purging, a burning pain of the throat, visions, fainting, unconsciousness, convulsions, death.’
Nick slams the book shut, pushes it back into place, and runs back upstairs.
Destiny is chanting. Nick can hear her as he reaches the hall.
‘I command any negativity, low vibrational energy and non-benevolent beings within this space to leave and go towards the light,’ she intones loudly. ‘You are not welcome in this house …’ As she walks towards the stairs, she tinkles a small bell ahead of her, waving her arms. ‘Be free, leave us now, begone, low beings of the ether and demonic thoughtforms …’
‘Is that Jingle’s collar bell she’s wafting about?’ Lorraine asks Violet as they stand watching.
Violet’s mouth twitches. ‘Looks like it.’
Emily stands back, making the most of her chance to cuddle Gaia while her owner is occupied.
Destiny has reached the landing. ‘Chant with me!’ she calls down to the watching guests below. ‘Form a circle of light!’
‘I think I should check on Matilda,’ Nick says apologetically, edging past Lorraine.
‘Oh, Alan’s still up there,’ she says, in a low voice. ‘Him and Branson stayed with David. I don’t think Alan trusts him. We don’t even know he’s actually a doctor.’
Nick stops. David’s certainty about times of death, his gentle bedside manner … could it all be lies? His mind races, but he sees Emily, standing with the dog, and he bends towards her.
‘Emily, do you know the name of the hospital your daddy works at?’
‘Yes,’ she says promptly. ‘Blessing wrote it down on the fridge. It’s the Mediclinic something or other, in Durban.’
He feels relief wash over him, but he has to be sure. ‘Have you ever visited him there, while he’s at work?’
She nods proudly. ‘Quite a lot, actually. The nurses all know my name and they give me colouring things while he’s on a shift if Blessing has to go home early. They’re very nice to me.’
Nick turns to Lorraine. ‘Looks like we needn’t worry on that score.’
She shrugs petulantly. ‘Right now, I’m worried about everyone, Nick.’
Destiny is moving slowly down the landing, ringing the tiny bell. ‘I banish all the low energies of the earth and call upon—’
The door of Matilda’s room flies open and Branson emerges.
‘Can you knock it off? There’s a senior lady unconscious in here!’
‘I’m cleansing the building!’
‘Well, go cleanse somewhere else! She’s sick, she needs quiet!’
‘Fine!’ Destiny snaps. ‘Don’t come crying to me when your space is full of negative energy.’
‘My wife being killed in our bed is negative energy,’ he shouts. ‘Take your stupid play-acting and shove it!’
‘How dare—’ begins Destiny, but Branson has slammed the door in her face.
‘I’m going to check he’s OK,’ Violet mutters, and sprints upstairs, almost shoving Destiny aside in her rush to reach him.
The veneer of social politeness is dropping away as fear and paranoia stalk the manor. Soon, Nick thinks, they’ll all be turning on one another like rats in a maze.
He attempts to smile reassuringly at Emily, but she only gazes back at him, her eyes huge, clutching the little dog to herself as if she’ll never let it go.
‘One of us should probably stay with her,’ David is saying as Nick taps on Matilda’s door and is admitted. She’s still unconscious, her frail chest slowly rising and falling. ‘If we only knew what she’s ingested …’
‘I think I do know,’ Nick says. ‘Mistletoe berries. It’s entirely in keeping with the killer’s “festive” theme, however sick. I looked it up in the library – there’s no cure, but she’d need a pretty large dose for it to be fatal.’
‘Good God,’ says Alan, disgusted. ‘Trying to poison an eighty-year-old woman – they’re not right in the head!’
‘Where would they get the berries?’ Branson asks.
Nick thinks of the footsteps in the snow, the oak trees with balls of mistletoe held aloft in their branches like nests.
‘There’s plenty around here, if anyone made it outside.’
‘You did,’ says Alan, a mean twist to his small mouth. ‘You went out earlier, to check the phone signal, or so you claimed.’
And so did you, thinks Nick. The difference is, I’m not lying about it.
David volunteers to sit with Matilda for a while.
‘I’ll come and take over in an hour,’ Nick promises.
Downstairs, Destiny has finished her ceremony, and is brooding in a wing-backed chair with Gaia, looking into the fire. Nature’s cure … Nick remembers Destiny’s enthusiasm for foraging berries. Surely not … Making life harder for herself doesn’t make her a killer.
The group feels incomplete without Matilda, Nick thinks. Perhaps they’re all in need of a mother figure, someone safe to cling to when the lights go out.
Branson is standing at the honesty bar, tremors running through his hand as he pours a large brandy into a crystal balloon glass. The older man looks exhausted, his handsome face almost grey with strain and grief.
But murderers are under strain, too … Nick reminds himself.
‘One for you?’ Branson asks. Nick nods, though it seems in bad taste to toast anything, even one another.
‘Branson, I’ve a couple of things I need to know,’ he says quietly. ‘The note Penelope opened …’
‘“I know what you did”,’ says Branson, heavily.
‘Yes. Do you have any idea at all what it means? It may seem intrusive, but now Matilda’s been poisoned, and I’m very eager that we all get out of here alive. If there’s anything – an affair Penelope had, or something she did … now’s the time to tell me.’
Branson nods. ‘I wish I knew, Nick. I’ve been over it a million times in my mind. We were happy. When I met her, as I told you, she just said she’d had a tough time recently. I never met her ex, Sebastian, but I assumed he’d been a poor husband.’
‘Her son, Peter – has he mentioned anything about his dad?’
Branson shakes his head. ‘I only met him briefly at the wedding. He was pleasant enough, seemed pretty fond of his mom. He didn’t mention his father.’
‘He’s never been to stay with you?’
‘Penny always said he was too busy. She came back a couple of times to visit him. He FaceTimed her sometimes. There never seemed to be any issues there. Jesus, Nick, I can’t believe he still doesn’t know. It’s a bad dream.’
‘Branson, do you think Violet could have killed Penelope?’
He stares incredulously. ‘Well, no. I was with her all night. I … I mean, I fell asleep, but …’
‘So in theory, she could easily have slipped out, hurried down to Penelope’s room, and murdered her.’
‘She wouldn’t – I know it sounds crazy, but she liked Penny. She used to say our relationship had nothing to do with their friendship …’
Nick looks steadily at him. ‘She’s the only one here, apart from you, who had a motive,’ he says, quietly.
‘But if I knew she’d killed my wife, I’d never stay with her – I’d hand her over to the police!’
‘But you don’t know. And you’re defending her.’
‘Why would she write that goddamn note?’ Branson demands. ‘I swear, if I had any idea what it meant, I’d say so right now. It wasn’t her. Violet’s not a killer, I’d stake my life on it.’
You might need to, Nick thinks.
An hour later, David emerges from Matilda’s room. ‘Still unconscious,’ he says. He looks worried. ‘Breathing OK, pulse normal, but she won’t wake.’
‘I’ll sit with her.’
‘Maybe outside the door,’ he suggests. He looks embarrassed. ‘It’s just … Nick, if she doesn’t make it, I’d hate for you to be accused of anything.’
‘I might be anyway. I could easily let myself in. I took Donal’s keys,’ he confesses. ‘I thought I’d better keep them safe.’
‘Give them to me then,’ David says. ‘If she makes a sound, coughs, anything like that, you call me and I run up with them. That way, I’ll know you couldn’t have harmed her.’
‘But if she stops breathing …’
‘If she does and you’re there, you’ll be accused of murder.’
He’s right, Nick realises. The atmosphere is foetid with suspicion. He agrees, fetches a chair from his room and places it outside Matilda’s door. He feels like a medieval guard, watching over the dying queen.
‘Call if you need me,’ says David. He returns downstairs – Nick imagines he’s looking forward to spending some time with Emily.
As the afternoon wears on, Nick gazes down the landing towards the brittle branches of the Christmas tree, mentally sorting through the suspects, racking his brains over why someone would want to harm Matilda. Is she getting too close to guessing the killer? Her mind is sharp, and she’s always at the heart of fireside conversation – has one of them said too much, let something slip? She knows the hotel inside out, too – maybe she’s been poking around, looking for evidence. He thinks about Violet. She’s tall, young and strong – it’s possible she could have committed both murders if she took the victims by surprise. That first night she was sparkling with energy, whisking them all into playing games – was that the result of pumping adrenalin, knowing she was going to commit murder that night? Or was she simply feeling excited, knowing her secret boyfriend was watching her – perhaps wanting her?
And then there’s Alan. He lied about being out there in the darkness, digging while everyone slept. His ex-wife … Nick has assumed Alan simply left her for Lorraine and she’s still happily living her best life without him somewhere. It now occurs to him that she may have died. And if she did – were the circumstances entirely natural? Branson … it makes sense that he might have murdered his wife so he could marry his mistress – even killed Donal, for getting too close to the truth. But Matilda?
