Murder at mistletoe mano.., p.17
Murder at Mistletoe Manor, page 17
The hall clock chimes eight, and he suddenly remembers something she told him. He jogs back down the main staircase, turns right through the small door, and almost runs into the little sitting room with the green armchairs and pinned butterflies. And there on the sofa, neatly wrapped in the chenille throw, is Matilda, fast asleep, her reading glasses set on top of the book beside her.
Nick collapses against the door with relief, and she turns and half sits up under the blanket.
‘Oh, goodness,’ she says. ‘Nick. Has something happened?’
Without her careful make-up, her hair unbrushed, she looks small and vulnerable, and her alarmed expression tugs at his heart.
‘I’m so sorry I scared you.’ He smiles at her. ‘We didn’t know where you’d gone, and we panicked.’
‘Oh!’ A hand flies to her mouth. ‘I didn’t think … I just crept out at about three. I know what David said …’ she adds, seeing his expression. ‘But I couldn’t bear any more of Alan’s snoring, and Emily was thrashing about like an otter … I do need my own space at night. I did try to say so, but I was shouted down,’ she adds rather peevishly.
‘You must have left the door open,’ he says. ‘Jingle wandered in.’
‘I’m sure I closed it.’ She looks puzzled. ‘I distinctly remember hoping the click wouldn’t wake anybody …’
‘Perhaps someone else went out too,’ suggests Nick. Or someone came in.
He leaves Matilda, and heads to the dining room, where Colt is laying out platters for hot food.
‘Morning,’ Colt says. ‘Did you see the snow’s stopped? Thought I’d do sausages and eggs to celebrate our imminent escape.’
Nick is pierced by another arrow of guilt. ‘Great,’ he says warmly. ‘I’ll round up the others.’
All the talk over the sausages is of the weather. The shutters have been thrown open, and weak sunlight pours in. After days of darkness and spinning, relentless blizzards, it feels like the coming of spring – although so far, Nick notes, there’s no sign of any thaw.
Icicles still hang from the gutters, and the drifts pressing against the panes have acquired the prismatic shimmer of thick ice, powder hardening into impenetrable cliffs of frozen crystals. Despite the excited chatter around him, he’s not so sure there’s a way out yet – but perhaps the phone mast might be fixed today? Now the snow has stopped, it might be easier to find out. After breakfast, Nick hurries back down to the kitchen.
‘Colt,’ he says, ‘is there a way to get on the roof?’
The chef turns. ‘There is, actually. But I might not recommend it when it’s covered in ice.’
‘Tell me anyway.’
‘Your funeral,’ says Colt; then pauses. ‘Sorry, man. You go right to the bottom of the corridor Laburnum and Ash are on, open the fire door at the end, and there’s an exit that leads to a fire escape. Climb up that, and you can get on to a flat bit at the back, but you have to lift yourself over the ledge. It’s a great view, but one slip and you’re toast. Why do you want to go up there?’
‘See if I can get a signal, now the snow’s stopped. I might even be able to see the mast, check if anyone’s out there fixing it.’
‘Good luck.’ Colt glances behind him at the door to the outhouse. ‘Get the Feds out here before anyone else drops dead.’
25
Two days till Christmas Eve
The fire-exit door is frozen shut. It takes Nick several minutes of rattling and kicking to dislodge enough ice to shove it open a crack. The snow has banked around it, covering the steps and railings, and he spends a further hour kicking great heaps of ice and snow down to the courtyard beneath. By the time he’s created a way up the steps, he’s roasting in his jacket and hat, and breathing heavily, but he doesn’t care. Being outdoors, breathing fresh air after days of stifling, old-fashioned rooms and choking woodsmoke, is like a drug coursing through his sluggish blood, lifting his dour mood. He fills his lungs with freezing, azure air and watches the steam curl from his mouth as he lets the long breath go. They should move to the countryside, he thinks euphorically. He, Harriet and Cara, a cottage with acres of space for her to play in as she grows up … Nick swears as his foot slips on a patch of ice and he grabs the frozen railing. Focus.
He swings himself up the icy steps, looking only upwards, kicking mounds of snow through the gaps as he climbs. When he reaches the ledge at the perimeter of the vast, snow-blanketed roof, his heart sinks. It’s impossible to tell whether he’s climbing on to a flat area; the snow is too deep. He’ll fall into a drift, and if there’s ice beneath, he could simply slide over the lip of the roof and meet his death fifty feet below.
He uses his arms to knock a thick cap of snow from the ledge, and pulls himself on to it. From the angle of the roof, he guesses the walled edge is around two feet high. There’s nothing else to hold on to. Slowly, Nick reaches one foot down into the snow, battling the fear that he’ll get stuck up here – only Colt knows where he’s gone.
He feels a solid, flat surface beneath his boot, and experiences a wave of relief that there’s a narrow walkway to stand on before the roof slopes upwards. Nick lowers himself, holding on to the ledge; then, finally, when he knows he’s stable enough, he reaches into his pocket and extracts his phone, hardly daring to hope that the screen will show 4G access.
But as he opens the lock screen, and Cara’s tiny face disappears, his mood plummets. No bars, no signal … it was all for nothing, and he still has to get back down to spend yet another day with the inmates of this murderous, luxury prison.
He looks over the edge. The whiteness is blinding. The formal garden directly beneath lies under several feet of snow, the back gate a tight row of iron rails poking out behind a walled kitchen garden. Beyond lie fields and woods, and further away the hint of a road. Telegraph wires hang like hammocks under their burden of snow, and on a hill in the far distance, rising above the white treetops, Nick can make out something resembling a telephone mast, but there’s no human life visible, no waiting trucks, no men working, ant-like, in boots and hard hats.
Sighing, he prepares to climb back down from his fruitless attempt. Nick holds on to the ledge and peers over to where he can see the roof of a small shed against the hedge, about thirty feet from the back porch. There’s something beside it, a black stick … He narrows his eyes. It’s a spade, he realises. As his vision adjusts to the blinding snow, he focuses on its handle, and tracking his gaze further, he sees the displaced snow, shoved aside in chaotic mounds. Finally, he makes out the footprints, large and heavy. They’re leading directly to the house.
After a lengthy hot shower that fails to heat his frozen core, Nick dresses once again and returns downstairs. Lorraine is hovering in the hallway, despite its unpleasant chill.
‘There you are!’ Clearly, she’s been waiting for him for some time. ‘I’ve been wondering where you’d got to.’
Nick feels a flash of annoyance. He wanted to go straight to the back porch, study the footprints, find out who’s been creeping around out there.
‘What’s up?’
‘Apart from two dead bodies and being trapped with a killer?’ Lorraine snaps. ‘I need a word, Nick. I do know it might be you, I understand that you might stab me, but I have to talk to somebody.’
Nick’s irritation drains away and is instantly replaced by curiosity. ‘I assure you, I will not stab you, Lorraine. Library again?’
‘No, all those old books creep me out. There’s a little room I found when we were all looking for Emily the other day – we’ll go there.’
He follows her down the corridor Matilda showed him, and Lorraine glances theatrically around herself before opening a door on to a small room bathed in winter sunlight. It has old-fashioned, floral wallpaper and cushioned white wicker furniture. A pretty Georgian desk stands in the window; there’s a scatter of dog-eared paperback thrillers on a shelf and a cat basket for Jingle beside the sofa.
‘It must have been Donal’s sitting room,’ Nick says, surprised. ‘It’s so much nicer than the other rooms.’
‘More homely,’ agrees Lorraine. ‘Still no telly, mind you.’
She sits opposite him, plucking nervously at the fabric of her black trousers.
‘What’s going on?’ Nick asks. ‘Are you suspicious of someone?’
She nods, and looks away. ‘It’s hard …’ she begins, and swallows. ‘I don’t like to point the finger.’
‘It doesn’t mean they’re guilty,’ he says gently. ‘But anything odd – well, I’d really like to know.’
‘That’s why I wanted to talk to you,’ she says. ‘The thing is, the person I’m suspicious of … Oh, bloody hell.’ She takes a long breath. ‘It’s Alan.’
Nick stares. ‘Why?’
‘I woke up about four,’ she says. ‘I couldn’t hear Alan snoring, and I panicked for a second, thinking he was dead. I turned over, and he wasn’t next to me – I thought he’d gone to the loo, you know middle-aged men and their wonky prostates …’
Nick nods encouragingly, though the thought makes him wince.
‘But I lay there for a good fifteen minutes, and he didn’t come back. I was about to get up and go and look for him, though I don’t mind telling you, I was terrified I’d find him hanging from a piece of tinsel or heaven knows what, and then I heard him coming back in. He got in next to me, and – oh my God, Nick – he was freezing. Like a block of ice. It wasn’t just “been to the loo” cold, it was like he’d been outside for hours.’
‘Did you ask him …’
‘Of course I did!’ Lorraine shakes her head. ‘I asked him first thing this morning and he said he’d just been for a pee. That’s the problem – I don’t believe him. So what was he doing?’
She stares at Nick, challenge in her eyes.
‘Are you generally close? Would he tell you if he was in trouble, or upset?’
Lorraine sighs and looks at her long, lacquered nails. ‘Yes and no. I mean, we get on, mostly, but … it’s never been completely equal. I was the company receptionist when we met and he was the boss,’ she says. ‘It was twenty-five years ago, but I reckon on some level he always thinks of me as “sexy little Lorraine” with my head full of fluff. He always thought I should be grateful that he took on our Jade when she was four. It pees me off, actually.’
‘Did Alan have any children when you met?’
Lorraine nods. ‘Him and his wife, Liz, had two boys. Anyway …’
So it had begun as an affair. Nick doesn’t press her. ‘Might he have wanted something from the car?’
‘Well, if he did, why didn’t he tell me? That’s not suspicious!’
Lorraine’s right. He thinks of the footsteps, the spade in the snow. What was Alan doing, attempting to dig his way out in the freezing dark of the early hours? And why wouldn’t he tell his own wife? Suddenly, boring, tetchy Alan is looking like his number-one suspect.
26
He finds Alan on his way downstairs, toothpaste flecks on his shirt. He’s whistling between his teeth, a tune Nick recognises as Fleetwood Mac’s ‘You Can Go Your Own Way’.
Alan looks uneasy as Nick raises a hand to halt his progress. ‘I’m heading back to the drawing room. Matilda and I were about to teach Emily to play Monopoly.’
‘That’s kind of you both. It won’t take a sec—’
‘I see the Great Detective is on the warpath,’ says Alan sourly. ‘What is it now? Poison in the Christmas pudding?’
‘No, but two people are dead,’ Nick points out. ‘It’s helpful if we can all try to support each other in finding out who killed them.’
Oh my God, Nick, you’re so pompous sometimes, says Harriet in his head. He knows he is. Right now, he doesn’t care.
Alan stands by the sparse Christmas tree, half hidden by its branches. His stiffened, military posture reminds Nick of a nutcracker doll.
‘Fire away.’
‘You went outside last night,’ Nick says. It’s a statement, not a question. ‘You left by the back porch, and used a spade to dig your way out in the moonlight, and then you realised it was too hard to escape, and you came back, freezing cold, in the early hours. Then you told your wife you’d just been to the loo. I’m wondering why.’
Alan is shaking his head, a performatively amused smile on his face. ‘My goodness,’ he says. ‘I’ve always heard you journalists are good at making things up. You’ve surpassed yourself, Nick.’
‘In what way?’ He lets the pop at journalism go; he’s used to it.
‘I didn’t “leave by the back porch”, or “use a spade” to do anything,’ he says, huffing a patronising little laugh. ‘If you must know, I have prostate trouble, and I’d forgotten my pills – I went to our room to get them but I didn’t want Lorraine to know, because she’s beside herself with fear that I’ll be killed if I leave her side. So I said I’d just been to the loo by the stairs. It’s icy in this hall, and I was only wearing cotton pyjamas. It’s hardly surprising I was chilly when I went back to bed.’
‘So who was digging themselves out, then thought better of it?’
Alan shrugs. ‘I have no idea. But I can assure you, it wasn’t me. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve a hotel to build on Park Lane. And we can only hope it’s better appointed than this one.’
He turns and strides past the tree towards the drawing room, where Nick can hear Emily’s high voice excitably asking questions, and Matilda’s gentle replies. There’s nobody in the hall now, and Nick glances at the empty upstairs landing and makes a decision.
Outside Oak, Alan and Lorraine’s room, he hesitates. If he’s caught, he suspects the atmosphere will degenerate swiftly from suspicious tension to civil war. He hasn’t asked Alan about the wrapping paper yet, because first, he needs to know how good a liar he is. Nick tries each key until one slides the lock back, and lets himself in.
It looks just as it did last night, although some of the clothing mountain has been tidied away. The shutters are open and light is falling on the desk, where the roll of gold paper is still propped alongside. He looks more closely. The rip is neat enough, he realises – but the edges aren’t cut, they’re torn, as though someone was in a hurry and couldn’t find scissors. Nick has often done it himself rather than rummage through the kitchen drawer: folded a crease and then carefully ripped along it. Harriet laughs at his amateurish Christmas-wrapping attempts, next to her exquisite little origami parcels, decorated with pine cones and ribbons. Homesickness squeezes his heart.
He checks the drawers, but there’s only a hairdryer and a regulation sewing kit alongside a Gideon Bible, rather than the thick envelopes and writing paper he hoped to find. The pen on the desk has a bright pink flamingo topper and writes in gold ink.
The bedside drawers yield nothing more than a couple of pill blister packs. The label of one suggests Alan is at least telling the truth about his prostate issues; the other is Lorraine’s and, as far as Nick can remember, carries the name of pills that treat high blood pressure.
He looks in the wardrobe, trying not to rattle the hangers, avoiding his own glance in the long mirror. He isn’t enjoying creeping around, spying on his fellow guests and staff, no matter what Alan believes about journalists. Lorraine’s silver high heels are thrown in, straps tangled around a pair of Alan’s slippers in a cartoonish old-man tartan, which Nick reflects were almost certainly a gift. Nobody would choose to relax wearing those. He bends and rummages behind the shoes at the front, and that’s when he finds what he’s looking for.
Outside, the sky is clouding over again, and the pale sun has been snuffed out. The icy gardens no longer sparkle; they lie bleak and cheerless under their heavy blanket of snow, and it takes Nick a moment to orient himself towards where he saw the footprints. As he steps from the back porch, he sees there’s a narrow path leading between high banks of snow, one that wavers, and is in places blocked with small avalanches. It ends with the abandoned spade.
Nick fumbles his phone from his pocket and studies the photograph he took of the sole of Alan’s still-damp boot. He bends, steadying himself, and holds it beside the nearest footprint. Neat ridges, a small rectangle where the brand name is stamped, concentric circles on the heel. A perfect match.
Alan lied. And Nick is determined to find out why, before anyone else is murdered.
Violet reappears at lunchtime. She’s wan, subdued, as though the light has drained from her. Huddled in a black cashmere polo neck and baggy trousers, she seats herself at the far end of the dining table, away from the others. Branson studiously ignores her presence. He still looks wretched – grief has turned his handsome, ageing face to a rigid mask.
Lorraine moves to sit beside Violet. ‘Come on, love,’ Nick hears her murmur. ‘You’re not the first to fall for a married man. Nobody’s judging.’
Violet swallows. ‘Everyone’s judging,’ she says. ‘The worst thing is, they all think I had a motive. But I’d never – I couldn’t ever—’
She seems to be on the verge of tears, and Nick looks away as Lorraine pats Violet’s thin wrist.
Colt has left out tureens of vegetable soup and a pile of bread rolls.
‘Something I can eat at last,’ says Destiny, ladling out a large bowl for herself. David smiles at her.
‘That’s a relief. It must be very difficult when you’re away from home.’
‘It is,’ she agrees. ‘I cannot wait to get back there and process this trauma through bodywork.’
‘Give yourself a respray while you’re at it,’ chortles Alan, and she shoots him a contemptuous glance. Nick looks at him, his weathered pink face and tidy salt-and-pepper moustache. He looks like a bank manager waiting to collect his pension. If he’s the killer, could it be driven by financial need? Branson and Penelope are very rich – what if Alan and Lorraine somehow know Penelope’s son, and hatched a plot around life insurance? Was Alan trying to get to the shed to hide the evidence that Donal had found – and, as he evidently failed, where is it now?
