Murder at Mistletoe Manor, page 24
Nick, too, watches her go, holding hands with Matilda as they slowly make their way upstairs.
Drinking his coffee, Nick feels a sick wash of guilt for the suspicions he’s harboured. Was Destiny really a yoga teacher? For God’s sake. He’d almost rather trust everyone here than allow that level of toxic paranoia to overwhelm him again. Unfortunately, he can’t. Because someone here killed Penelope; someone strangled Donal; someone poisoned Matilda; and someone rendered Destiny unconscious and then locked her in a room on fire.
35
The manor is beginning to feel like a European town hall clock, little human-shaped automatons emerging from their slots as the hour chimes, then sliding back in. Nothing ever changes, apart from the number of wooden figures.
Everyone’s now back in the drawing room – ‘the bloody drawing room’ as Nick has begun to think of it. If he makes it out alive, this room will haunt his nightmares. The tired brocade walls, the endless symphony of the fire spitting and cracking, the hushed murmur of grief and the thick, intimate scent of other people’s bedsheets … he almost envies Colt the fresh air and the piercing cold, the chance to move fast under that far white sun.
With his thoughts running on such grim lines, Nick is pleased to see Jingle winding his way round the sofa. The cat jumps on to his lap, stretching luxuriously as Nick strokes his spine. He’ll miss this little animal.
Gaia is watching from her position on Emily’s knee. The little girl seems to have taken over her care, feeding her by the fire. David has already taken the dog to ‘do her business’ by the porch. What will happen to her, he wonders, when David and Emily return to South Africa?
As Jingle plucks threads from his jeans, the room keys in his pocket prod painfully into his hip. He hasn’t used them much, Nick thinks. He’s read enough police reports to know that every contact leaves a trace and most killers aren’t organised enough to hide or destroy every shred of evidence. It was Colt, surely, even if they don’t yet know his motive – though Nick still suspects that Penelope was the target, that she had somehow harmed the young man. The others were simply drifting too close to the truth for comfort.
Colt might come back and finish you off, says a small, cowardly voice in his mind. Shouldn’t you lie low until the police can be alerted?
But Colt would be mad to come back. He said himself that he’d rather die.
No harm checking for evidence, Nick decides. If he does find something in Colt’s room, at least they’ll know for sure that they’re safe now. Perhaps then they can finally begin to trust one another.
Nick is heading back upstairs, his heart heavy, when he hears Emily’s voice behind him. ‘Wait for me,’ she says. ‘I want to see what you’re doing.’ He wonders where David has gone, and whether it’s wise for Emily to accompany him on his spying mission, poking around the smoke-damaged bedrooms and searching for evidence of murderous intentions.
‘Where’s your dad?’
‘Gone to take Gaia for another wee-wee. I said, “Can we keep her?” and he said no but I’m going to keep asking until he gives in.’
Emily smiles winningly. She’s so little, Nick thinks. How will she ever get over all this?
‘Are you looking for murder weapons?’ Emily asks conversationally. ‘I can help – I’m really good at finding stuff.’
Alarm bells jangle in Nick’s head. This is so inappropriate …
‘Look, I think you’d better go back and wait for your daddy,’ he says firmly. As Emily’s face falls, Matilda emerges from the drawing room, her book beneath her arm.
‘Nick!’ She beams at him. ‘I think congratulations are in order.’
‘Are they?’ He’s confused.
‘You found the baddie,’ she says with a glance towards Emily, who is now leaning over the bannister, fiddling with a drooping string of silver bells on the tree. ‘You sent him away, I believe.’
‘Oh!’ Nick tries to smile. ‘Let’s hope he was the right baddie.’
‘Dear, he tried to poison me. If you and David hadn’t sat with me … Now I know I can trust you all, I want to apologise. For my doubts, for not appreciating your kindness … and I’d like to thank you for your determination in uncovering what’s happened.’
Nick feels embarrassed. ‘Thanks, but it’s only because I’m so desperate to get home … and we still can’t know the reasons behind what he did.’
‘Ours not to reason why,’ says Matilda firmly. ‘As long as we know who. Look, Emily, shall we go up to my room and have a biscuit? I’ve some special Christmas shortbread with chocolate on it.’ She turns to Nick. ‘I always bring a big tin for the staff. But as there’s no one left …’
‘Yes, please,’ says Emily politely. ‘Can Nick come too?’
‘I think the least he deserves is a biscuit or two.’ Matilda twinkles at him, and with some relief, he gives in. After this, he’s going to try the police again.
Matilda’s room smells pleasantly of roses, in contrast to the lingering reek of smoke elsewhere. Her photograph albums are neatly stacked on the table, a small pile of paperbacks by the bed. It’s hard to imagine that this bedroom was the scene of a near-fatal poisoning yesterday, or that Matilda was so desperately unwell. She looks more relaxed than she has since that first night when they were all together, Violet cheerfully proposing a game, their only concern how quickly the snowstorm would pass.
Matilda opens the biscuit tin and flicks on the kettle. ‘I’ve found the secret source of teabags,’ she says in a confiding tone. ‘The housekeeper’s cupboard, on the next corridor. Discovered it years ago.’ She winks, and Nick laughs.
Emily is pulling the top photograph album towards her, opening it like a picture book while Matilda makes the tea.
‘I like this one,’ she says. She turns the leather album so that Nick can see. It’s a snapshot of JoJo and Catherine, he assumes, playing on a swing while a much younger Matilda and her husband look on. The girls are wearing old-fashioned smocked dresses and T-bar sandals. Nick remembers being a small child in the late eighties – his playmates were more likely to wear dungarees and Transformers T-shirts than this sort of Ladybird-book get-up.
‘Lovely,’ he says politely. Emily turns the page as Matilda brings over two mugs of tea and a scarlet biscuit tin in the shape of a nutcracker doll.
‘Oh, that was a day at the seaside.’ Matilda smiles. ‘We went to Scarborough for JoJo’s birthday. I remember Catherine made her a card with a bucket and spade drawn on and we all joked that it looked like a plant pot.’ Her voice suddenly wavers and she blinks back tears.
‘Don’t cry, Auntie Mattie!’ Emily looks alarmed, and Matilda manages a weak smile.
‘I’m all right, darling,’ she says. ‘I just miss them being little, that’s all. Make the most of childhood while you can; you’ll be grown up soon enough.’
‘Can I see the Christmas one again?’
‘Of course.’ Matilda leafs through the pages and stops at a larger photograph of the two sisters kneeling by the tree on Christmas Day. They’re a little older here, wearing matching tartan dressing gowns and surrounded by a sea of wrapping paper. Nick thinks suddenly of the gold paper in Lorraine and Alan’s room. Did Colt really rip a section from the roll as it stood in the hall on the day they arrived? It was such a precise and peculiar thing for a young man to do, no matter how angry he was. And why hide the remains in an unused bedroom? He could have burned it, or shredded it at the bottom of the kitchen bin.
‘They were six and eight here,’ says Matilda, her polished fingernail tracing the page. ‘Catherine adored Christmas.’
‘She looks a bit like me,’ says Emily, pointing at the elder of the two. ‘She’s got curly hair like mine, and brown eyes.’
‘So she has.’ Matilda smiles. ‘Perhaps you like drawing, too. Catherine loved art.’
‘I do like drawing.’ Emily nods. ‘I like drawing animals. One day, Daddy’s going to take me on a safari.’
‘How wonderful!’ Matilda claps her hands. ‘A bit dangerous though perhaps – all those lions and tigers!’
‘You don’t see tigers on a safari drive,’ Emily says scornfully. ‘They live in the jungle. And you ride in a jeep with a ranger: it’s completely safe.’
Nick suppresses a smile. Perhaps Emily isn’t so similar to Matilda’s perfect children after all.
After some speculation on how fast the snow will melt, it occurs to Nick to ask where Matilda will go, if they make it out by Christmas Day.
‘Oh, I hadn’t thought.’ She shrugs. ‘I suppose I may stay put.’
‘Here?’ Nick can’t keep the horror from his voice. ‘On your own?’
‘Well, now that I’ve nothing to fear …’ She shrugs. It sounds desperately bleak. Nick almost invites her to London, then imagines Harriet’s face after his long absence if he turns up to their two-bedroom shoebox flat with a lonely widow in tow. He’ll think about it, he decides.
He leaves Matilda and Emily discussing what children used to get for Christmas in the 1940s. ‘An orange,’ Matilda says, ‘and sometimes a little doll or a book.’ Emily pulls an expression of horror that makes them both laugh.
Back in the corridor, he pauses. The keys weigh heavy. Should he have one last look, see if he can find more evidence to link Colt directly to the crimes? There’s something niggling at him. Why would Colt have a key to all the rooms? He’s the chef, not the manager. If he’d taken them into the nearest town to obtain copies, wouldn’t Donal have noticed that they were missing? Perhaps if he took them one at a time … but these are distinctive, old-fashioned keys to the rooms, they’re not bog-standard Yale keys that would pass through the shop unnoticed.
Of course, he could have claimed to be the manager, taken them from Donal’s drawer … but he’d have had to steal the drawer key, too, unless Donal’s great passion compelled him to hand it over. None of it seems likely, or possible. Nick crosses to the landing window and looks out across the long gardens. There’s no sign of Colt. He can see the small channel he’s cut, leading away, but there’s no dark figure crumpled in the snow, no spade … the narrow gully simply ends. He must have doubled back, Nick realises, a sick dread creeping through him. So where is he now?
If Colt does have keys, he could be anywhere in the manor. Nick has to find him.
He begins in the attic rooms. The storeroom remains untouched since the last time he looked, and Donal’s bedroom is a stark, lonely shrine. There are no photos of Aisling, Nick notes – because she doesn’t exist.
The other rooms are empty, the cleaner’s cupboard is locked, and Colt’s own room is exactly as he left it. Nick heads to the guest bedroom corridor, closing the door to the back stairs behind him. Matilda and Emily are safe for now; he doubts Colt will target them anyway. Colt’s motive nags away at his mind like a twinging molar. Could Penelope have once let him down somehow? Promised him something and failed to deliver? Does Colt know her son, Peter? But even if he does, the sinister Christmas connection to the killings suggests a much more labyrinthine motive than any Nick can come up with for the cheerful, straight-talking chef. He has to assume it’s all an act – and Colt has been concealing a past far darker than a few minor tangles with the law.
The unused bedrooms are all empty; the bathrooms and wardrobes conceal nothing but dust. Destiny’s room is a blackened shell, the reek of damp bedding and smoke driving him back to the corridor after a glance into the bathroom and under the bed.
Lorraine and Alan’s room is neater than Nick remembers, but otherwise unremarkable. He takes a cursory look in the drawers, finding nothing but medication and the Gideon Bible left by some long-ago guest, and there’s little beneath the bed but a pair of discarded lacy knickers. Nick feels a tremor of revulsion at his intrusion into these strangers’ intimate lives. He’ll quickly look in Violet’s room, and Branson’s, then let the others know – they can search downstairs together.
Violet’s suitcase is still spilling designer labels and now he knows why. Almost reflexively, he flicks open the bedside drawers to check before leaving. He stops.
Branson’s lighter is in the drawer, with a packet of his cigarettes. Perhaps they haven’t stopped sleeping together after all. On the other side of the bed is Violet’s drawer. It contains a bottle of lavender ‘pillow spray’, and a Louis Vuitton purse holding various credit cards. But something else is sticking out at the back: a black and orange cardboard box. Nick pulls on the corner then swears softly as he realises what he’s holding.
Sick doubt courses through him. Whoever set the fire in Destiny’s room had already drugged her with David’s sedatives. Violet is tall, young and strong. She, of all of them, had most reason to want Penelope out of the picture, and she was here before the snow began to fall in earnest, Nick realises. She’d have had time to collect a few berries and then, when she and Destiny took over cooking duties, it would have been easy to hide them in the fridge. As for Matilda’s poisoning … Violet could easily have slipped a crushed berry into the dark wine.
In his mind’s eye he can see her now, carrying the heavy Yule log upstairs, tapping on Destiny’s door, offering to make her a herbal tea … I can’t sleep either. And as Destiny passes out, she lights the wood, watching until it burns fast and hard, lets herself out, and runs back downstairs. Perhaps it was Violet returning that woke him up. With help, the blaze would have taken just a few moments to go from smouldering firewood to a sheet of flame. Of course the killer used an accelerant. Nick gazes at the half-empty packet of firelighters in his hand.
At the end of the corridor, the door to the fire escape is closed and there are no footprints leading up the steps. Nick opens the door for a moment, scanning the garden and the fields behind the house for signs of Colt. He peers more closely. Leading alongside the walled kitchen garden is a rough channel cut through the drifts, while a dome of snow has been shoved from the top of the seven-foot-high wall. A large planter has been dragged beneath. He can’t see the snow in the kitchen garden, but the boundary wall has a similar gap in its covering of snow, and beyond, in the far distance, Nick sees a minuscule silhouette, bending and straightening, moving slowly towards the line of trees. Colt must have decided the fastest route is at the back. Nick feels his heart lift. Alive. Free. Colt doesn’t know, however, that he’s been exonerated – or that Nick will now carry a lifetime of guilt on his account.
36
‘Christmas Eve tomorrow.’ Lorraine heaves a sigh. ‘Jade’ll be doing her nut. She’ll think we’re dead.’
They’re sitting on the sofa staring at the fire again. Nick braved the outhouse and was rewarded with a stack of firewood. Being in close proximity to the three victims was almost worth it for the warmth now bathing the drawing room. Nick finds he can’t look at the flames, however. What they can do is seared into his mind.
Beside him, Violet and Branson are drinking coffee and doing the crossword in an old newspaper. Whatever the status of their relationship, they have a noticeable ease in each other’s company. David sits opposite, staring at his book, although he doesn’t seem to be reading. Emily and Matilda are in her room again, Nick presumes.
‘Does anyone fancy a cup of tea?’ he asks. He needs a moment to think before he tackles Violet.
Violet and Branson nod towards their steaming coffee cups, though David looks up, smiling. ‘Yes, please. I’ll come and help you.’
As they cross the hall, David glances at the tree and shudders. ‘Thank God he’s gone,’ he murmurs. ‘I can’t tell you what a relief it is to know that Emily’s safe now. That we all are.’
Nick wonders if he’s chosen the right confidant in David, but in truth, he can think of nobody else. Branson is too close to Violet, Lorraine and Alan too volatile, Matilda too trusting.
‘Listen,’ Nick says under the noise of rushing water as he fills the huge kettle. ‘I think we might have been wrong. I’ve found new evidence, and, David … I don’t think Colt is the killer.’
Colour drains from David’s face and he puts a steadying hand on the steel worktop.
‘What do you mean?’ His voice emerges in a whisper.
‘I found something in Violet’s room.’
For a moment, David seems unable to speak. Nick wonders if he’s in shock.
‘But we … Colt’s the murderer. We had to let him go, Nick, he threatened us …’
‘We’d just accused him of killing three people and the attempted murder of another. We were going to lock him up. I can’t blame him, can you?’
Nick sits at the kitchen table, remembering Colt sprawled in the opposite chair. How hopelessly short-sighted they’ve been.
‘What did you find?’ David has recovered himself. He sits opposite, ready to listen, and Nick tells him everything, running through his reasoning as he talks.
‘Oh God.’ David shakes his head. ‘If I’d thought for a second that those sedatives …’
‘I know. It’s not your fault.’
‘I still feel awful though. So Branson and Violet … he’s still sleeping with her? After what she’s done?’
‘I don’t think he knows.’
David nods thoughtfully ‘But why Destiny? I guess she thought Donal knew too much, but Destiny knew nothing more than the rest of us. Some silly card readings …’
Nick shrugs. ‘Maybe she had suspicions and confided in someone she believed was her friend. Violet must have thought she was getting too close to the truth.’
But wasn’t Violet in bed when he woke up? Nick tries to remember: the smell of smoke, the sleeping bodies around him … yes, he heard her cough. Perhaps he’d been asleep longer than he thought. The noise that woke him could, after all, have been Violet hurrying back to bed, her lungs burning, unable to catch her breath …
David stares fixedly at the light overhead, holding back tears. ‘Beneath her alternative wafty stuff, Destiny had a sharp mind. You don’t get into medical school without one,’ he says. ‘I was beginning to like her a great deal.’
