Kill Joy

by Holly Jackson

  But her spiel was cut short by a loud, tinny noise that screamed through the house.

  Another scream joined it.

  Four

  ‘It’s just the doorbell,’ Jamie said, eyeing a shrieking Lauren. She stopped immediately, trying – and failing – to disguise it as a cough. ‘Pizza’s here!’ Jamie hurried off to answer the front door, remembering only at the very last second to remove his plastic police helmet. At least he wasn’t covered in blood any more.

  ‘Texas BBQ, anyone?’ Connor said a few minutes later, passing a pizza box to Zach across the dining table.

  ‘I’m a frickin’ great chef,’ Cara said, a line of stringy cheese clinging to her chin.

  There were three slices on Pip’s plate, but she hadn’t touched them yet. She was hunched over her small notebook, writing down everyone’s alibis and her initial theories. So far, things weren’t looking great for Bobby, she thought with a secret glance across at Ant. But is that just what the game wanted her to think? Or was it simply because Ant was annoying even at the best of times? She needed to think objectively, remove herself and her feelings from the equation.

  ‘OK,’ Jamie said, taking a break from his pizza, the helmet now sitting at a jaunty angle on his head. ‘I’m glad to see that none of your appetites have been affected by this ghastly murder. But while you’ve been eating I have completed my second inspection of the crime scene and have uncovered something very interesting indeed.’

  ‘What is it?’ Pip demanded, her pen hovering above the page. Maybe she’d been wrong before. Maybe solving murders wasn’t too different from homework, after all. She could feel herself falling head first into it, the rest of the world fading out, like when she got lost in one of her essays or listening to an entire true crime podcast series in one night, or anything really. Teachers called it ‘excellent focus’, but Pip’s mum worried that it fell much closer to obsession.

  ‘Oh boy, the demon has awoken,’ Cara said with a playful prod between Pip’s ribs. She’d been doing that since they were six years old, whenever Pip was too serious. ‘This is for fun, remember, Celia.’

  ‘I don’t think the staff should touch members of the family,’ Lauren said, looking down her nose.

  ‘Suck my dick, Lauren,’ Cara replied with a big gulp of wine.

  ‘It’s Lizzie.’

  ‘Oh, my apologies. Suck my dick then, Lizzie.’

  ‘Right,’ Jamie laughed, raising his voice slightly. ‘On my second inspection I discovered that the safe hidden behind the family portrait in Reginald’s study was left open. And … it’s empty.’

  Cara performed another gasp and Jamie gave her a grateful nod.

  ‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘Someone has broken into the safe and removed the contents. Ralph informed me that his father kept important documents and papers in there.’

  ‘Did I?’ Zach asked.

  ‘Yes, you did,’ Jamie said. ‘This might have happened before or after the murder, but it certainly points to a possible motive.’ He cast his eyes back down to his master booklet. ‘But what secrets was Reginald keeping in there? Whatever was taken, by one of you, it’s possible that the evidence is still somewhere in the house. Perhaps we should go and look for –’

  Pip needed no further encouragement; she was the first up and out of the room this time, the others laughing at her. Where to? They’d been in the kitchen not long ago; the evidence was probably somewhere else. The library? That had come up in the story a few times already.

  She headed towards the living room, the Library sign flapping against the door, straining against its Sellotape. The wind must have found its way inside through some small, unknown crack. Behind her Pip heard Cara and Lauren bounding up the stairs. Were they heading to Reginald’s study? It wouldn’t be in there, whatever it was they were looking for; that’s where it had been stolen from.

  She stood at the threshold and surveyed the room. Large corner sofa and an armchair where they normally lived. The dark screen of the TV against the far wall, and she a faceless ghost reflected back in it, hanging strangely in the doorway. There was one shelf above the fireplace with two plants and eight books on it. Bit of a stretch to call it a library, but hey.

  She stepped forward. On the arms of one of the sofas was a newspaper. She checked but it wasn’t a clue; it was their town paper, the Kilton Mail, open to an article about traffic-calming measures in the high street, written by a Stanley Forbes. Riveting stuff.

  Resting on top of the paper was a roll of Sellotape. Jamie must have finished labelling the rooms in here.

  Another ghost appeared in the TV and a floorboard creaked behind her, making her flinch. She whipped her head round, but it was only Zach.

  ‘Found anything?’ he asked, fiddling with his straw hat.

  ‘Not yet,’ she said.

  ‘Might be inside something, like a book.’ Zach crossed the room to the bookshelf above the fireplace. He pulled one out and flipped through it, shook his head and replaced it.

  Pip joined him, starting at the other end of the shelf. She pulled out a paperback copy of Stephen King’s It and flicked through with her thumb. Something jumped out at her, gliding down to the floor.

  ‘What is it?’ Zach asked.

  ‘Oh crap.’ Pip bent to her knees to pick it up, realizing what it was. ‘It’s nothing. It’s a bookmark. Oops.’ She gritted her teeth and slotted the bookmark back in around page 400. It must have come from somewhere around there. Hopefully no one would notice, especially not Connor’s dad, who was scary at the best of times.

  She leaned one hand into the floor to push herself up and reshelve the book, but she stopped, eye to eye with the fireplace. There was something here. Scattered in among the dark coals. Ripped-up pieces of white paper. And on that one there at the very top was the word Clue.

  ‘Zach, I mean, Ralph, it’s here,’ she said, gathering up the bits of paper, laying them out on the floor. ‘Someone tried to destroy it.’

  ‘What is it?’ He got to his knees, helping her pull the last of the shreds from the fireplace. Eighteen in all.

  ‘I’m not sure yet, but there’s writing on every piece. It looks typed. We need to stick it back together somehow … Oh, hey, Zach, can you grab that Sellotape from the sofa?’

  He brought it back and, with his teeth, ripped off little squares of tape, sticking one edge to the floor. Lining them up, ready and waiting for her.

  Pip went through the papers, catching fragments of words and reshuffling them into phrases and sentences. Arranging them until they fit, like a puzzle. Her eyes stalled on the repetition of the word bequeath. ‘It looks like it’s Reginald’s will or something,’ she said, adding another piece to complete the row of text, as Zach gently applied tape along the cracks to stick them back together.

  They heard a disturbance out in the hall. Scuffling and giggling. And then Ant’s voice:

  ‘Inspector, I need to report a very serious crime: the butler has stolen my moustache!’

  ‘Done,’ Pip said, holding up the ripped-up document, shiny from the tape and slightly deformed in its resurrection. On one side it said Clue #2 and on the other was printed the Last Will and Testament of Reginald Remy.

  ‘We should go show the others,’ Zach said, straightening up.

  Pip almost tripped on their way back to the dining room, unable to tear her eyes away from the page. Had the old bastard left anything to her?

  ‘Found it?’ Jamie asked them, finishing off his last pizza crust, and Pip held up the will in answer. The inspector called for the others to return to the dining room and take their seats. Ant was the last to file in, having managed to wrestle his moustache back from Connor, though it now sat wonkily on his face.

  ‘Celia and Ralph have found something that must have been stolen from the safe,’ Jamie said. ‘Celia, if you could do us the honour and read it aloud.’

  Jamie had appeared behind Pip, looking at the document over her shoulder.

  ‘It looks like this wi
ll was drawn up recently, just last week,’ he pointed out.

  But there was another glaring thing too. Pip had known even as she was trying to concentrate on reading it out, her eyes flicking away from her, searching out the gaps like they too couldn’t believe it.

  She looked up and studied their faces. Had any of them noticed? Ant hadn’t; he was too busy fiddling with his moustache.

  ‘Have you realized?’ she asked the group, eyes circling them and coming to land on Ant.

  ‘Realized what?’ he asked.

  ‘Robert “Bobby” Remy,’ Pip said, offering Ant the document, ‘you’ve been written out of your father’s will.’

  Five

  ‘Bullshit. Let me see that.’ Ant snatched the will out of Pip’s outstretched hand. He ran his eyes down the page. ‘That fucker,’ he said, ‘he really left me nothing? I’m his eldest son. Even the staff get something.’

  ‘We found it in the fireplace,’ Pip explained to the others. ‘Someone tried to destroy it. It was ripped to shreds.’

  ‘Are you implying that that was me?’ Ant said defensively, dropping the page on to his empty plate.

  ‘Doesn’t look great for you,’ said Zach.

  ‘Why?’ Ant replied.

  The Remy brothers glared at each other, though Pip could see they were both close to smiling and breaking character, the situation not helped by Ant’s skewwhiff moustache.

  ‘Because,’ Pip said, ‘your father drew up a new will last week, removing you from it. And then today someone broke into the safe in your father’s study and tried to destroy that document, so that his old will would stand. Oh, and then your father was murdered. Desperate for some cash, are you?’

  ‘It wasn’t me,’ Ant said. ‘I didn’t break into that safe and I didn’t destroy that will.’

  ‘Mm-hmm,’ Cara added. ‘Sounds exactly like what a murderer would say.’

  ‘And didn’t you say you had a fraught conversation this morning?’ Pip said, reading back through her scribbled notes. ‘Was it fraught because he told you he’d written you out of his will?’

  ‘No.’ Ant fiddled with his collar. ‘We just always had fraught conversations.’

  ‘Well, this is all very interesting,’ Jamie said, glancing down at his master booklet. ‘And, on the topic of fraught conversations, I wonder if anyone else has overheard anything this weekend? Anything that now, in light of the murder, seems suspicious or out of place. Please turn to page two in your booklets but no further.’

  Pip bounded back to her chair, disentangling herself from her feather boa, and flipped to the next page.

  Pip finished reading and looked up. In the corner of her eye she could see Cara was watching her closely, a small smile creeping across her face. Pip clutched her open booklet against her dress so Cara couldn’t see it, holding her secrets close to her chest. What did Cara know? Or was Pip just being paranoid, reading too much into it?

  Make them believe it. That must mean it wasn’t true. Why was Celia lying? What did she have to hide? Now Pip would have to lie and hide it too.

  ‘Well –’ Ant cleared his throat – ‘I did overhear a conversation between my father and the butler yesterday.’ Connor straightened up in his chair. ‘Oh, nothing too bad.’ Ant smiled. ‘I just remember my father remarking to you that he was dreading his birthday. Of course, we all know why that is, considering what happened on this day last year.’

  The table was silent.

  ‘I don’t know what happened last year,’ Jamie said. ‘Someone care to enlighten me?’

  ‘Well, Inspector,’ Ant turned to him, ‘there was a tragic accident.’

  A sudden movement drew Pip’s eyes away from Ant. Zach had just flinched in his chair, brushing one hand up his arm. Must have been a fly or something.

  ‘The family were all staying at Remy Manor for my father’s birthday,’ Ant continued. ‘In the afternoon I took a walk of the grounds with my mother, Rose Remy. It was just a normal pleasant walk, a sunny day, perhaps a little windy. I don’t really know how it happened – just a terrible, terrible accident.’

  Zach winced again, inadvertently kicking a table leg.

  Pip narrowed her eyes and studied him across the table. Twice within thirty seconds, that was weird. She replayed Ant’s words in her head. Wait, there was a pattern here. Both times Zach had flinched right after Ant said the word accident. Was he doing it intentionally or was she just too hyper-aware – reading a something out of a nothing?

  ‘I must have been walking ahead of her because I didn’t see it happen,’ Ant said. ‘But I heard her scream and turned back just as she fell off the cliff. We were so high up; the doctors said she died instantly on impact.’ He looked down and sighed. ‘I don’t know if she stumbled or tripped or something. Just a terrible freak accident.’

  Pip was ready for it this time – her eyes peeled and fixed on Zach. He flinched, running his fingers awkwardly up his neck, catching her eye for less than a second. Yes, he was doing it on purpose; it had happened too many times now to be a coincidence. It must have been something his booklet told him to do, to physically react whenever his brother said the word accident. And what did that mean? Well, clearly, it seemed Ralph Remy didn’t believe his mother’s death was an accident at all. Maybe he secretly thought Bobby had pushed her, that he had murdered her.

  Pip grabbed her notebook, scribbling this all down in hasty bullet points.

  ‘Father was never the same after her death,’ Ant said quietly.

  ‘No.’ Zach patted him on the back. ‘The whole thing was so strange; she used to walk those cliffs every single day. She was always so careful, would never go near the edge.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Ant agreed, though Pip was sure now that Zach’s words meant something very, very different. He thought his own brother killed her. And now his father had been murdered too. Talk about a dysfunctional family. Maybe it was good they’d never welcomed her in.

  ‘Tragic,’ Jamie nodded solemnly. ‘Tragedy striking twice on Reginald’s birthday. Did anyone else hear anything strange or suspicious this weekend?’

  Zach raised his hand. Here it comes; he was about to turn on her. Game face on, Pip.

  ‘Yes, I did,’ he said tentatively, reading from his booklet. ‘Last night, it was quite late, I heard a voice downstairs in the hall on the way to my bedroom. It was a woman’s voice, and I think they were talking on the telephone. I listened for a little while. She was saying a whole stream of numbers, like five, thirty-one, twelve, seven, on and on in some nonsensical stream. Very bizarre.’ He paused. ‘And then she was talking low, whispering, and I couldn’t really pick anything up, other than I heard her repeat the word terminate.’ He glanced nervously at Pip. ‘It wasn’t Lizzie’s voice, and I doubt it was the cook …’

  ‘If you’re going to accuse me of something, you might as well say it with some conviction,’ Pip said with her sweetest, sharpest smile.

  ‘OK, it was you, Celia,’ he said. ‘What were you doing? Who were you on the phone to?’

  ‘You’re going to feel very foolish,’ Pip said. ‘There was nothing suspicious going on at all. I was simply talking to my employer. You’ve never shown much interest, cousin, but as I stated earlier I work as a governess, teaching the children of a well-to-do family. As is evident, I had to take some time off to be here for my uncle’s birthday. So I was on the phone going through my employment contract and telling him when he could expect me back, you know, as I don’t want him to terminate my contract. And as for those numbers, he simply wanted to know the upcoming dates for his eldest child’s mathematics tests.’

  ‘Quite late to be having a phone call with your boss,’ Lauren commented, coming to her husband’s aid.

  ‘Well, being a governess is a twenty-four/seven job, Lizzie,’ Pip said. ‘Not that you’d understand, living on cosy handouts from the family you married into.’

  ‘Oooooh, burn,’ Cara laughed, offering up a high five.

  ‘But I’m glad you brought
up the topic of suspicious conversation, Ralph,’ Pip said, resting her elbows on the table, her chin in the bed of her knuckles. ‘Because I actually overheard one of yours on my way to making said phone call.’

  ‘Aha, the plot thickens,’ Connor said, clumsily picking up his pen, though he didn’t actually start writing.

  ‘You were with your father in his study – the scene of his murder – having a very heated conversation.’

  ‘Is that right?’ Zach said, crossing his arms.

  ‘Oh yes. And I picked up a few specific phrases from the cross words you were exchanging with your father.’ She glanced down at her booklet for accuracy. ‘At one time you told him: “I refuse to do that, Father.” Then you said, “This scheme of yours is ridiculous and will never work.” And then the last thing I heard you say before I walked away was: “won’t get away with this”. Care to elaborate on your argument with a man who was murdered less than twenty-four hours later?’

  ‘Yes, I do care to elaborate,’ Zach said, attempting the sneer Ralph might have worn, but it kept turning up at the corners into a smile. ‘We were talking business, OK? We still worked closely together on matters relating to his hotel and casino empire, making decisions. The truth is that the business hasn’t been doing so well of late, and we are under pressure from our main competitors in the luxury hotel and casino business, the Garza family.’

  Cara sniffed to Pip’s left, distracting her. Or maybe it was another sound she’d heard. Like a thud or a muffled bang coming from outside. It was probably nothing, and Zach was speaking again …

  ‘As you know, the Garza family have long been our rivals, and it has got a lot less friendly and a lot more ugly since dear Mother died.’ Zach turned to the inspector to offer an explanation. ‘Our mother used to be friends – well, at least friendly – with the wife of Mr Garza. But of late they have been very much stepping on our turf, so to speak, because we bring in more money than them … just. Father and I were having a disagreement about a business strategy to ensure people were still coming into our casino, not the Garzas’, that’s all. We often had disagreements about the business, but it always works out.’