Pip slid her plate forward, an uneaten pizza slice discarded on it that she knew Connor had his eye on. And there, hidden underneath this entire time, was a small envelope with her name on it: Celia Bourne.
She glanced at the others, already tearing into their envelopes, and reached for her own.
She stalled. Withdrew her fingers, balling them up into a fist.
What if she was the murderer? She had a cold, sinking feeling in her gut. Celia was at the murder scene only fifteen minutes before the time-of-death window. What if she’d seen the cheque stub to Harris Pick – evidence of Reginald’s treason – and, under orders from her handler, had returned to the study to terminate her uncle? A knife through the heart. She’d never felt welcomed into the Remy family, not really. Maybe her rage took over, or maybe it was her training. Either way, a man was dead, and it might have been her. The answer was right here.
Pip picked up the envelope, lifted the flap and pulled out the folded piece of paper. She held it close as she opened it, heart in her throat as she read the words printed there.
She read it again, just to be sure, the voice in her head over-enunciating every syllable. She wasn’t the killer, thank god. Celia didn’t do it. She was innocent.
Pip watched as the others rearranged their faces to hide their secrets. Connor was waggling his eyebrows in an unnatural formation of one-up, two-up, one-down, two-down. Lauren was giggling, glancing side to side. Ant studied the ceiling. Cara’s eyes were so comically wide as she stared everyone down that – alongside the face paint wrinkles – it looked a little like her eye sockets had cracked open. Zach was silent, straining to keep his face neutral.
If it wasn’t her, then someone at this table was the murderer. One of her five friends. And who could it be? Every single one of them had opportunity and means. And now Pip had seven pages of notes about all of them, why they might have killed Reginald Remy. They all looked guilty in her eyes, but it could only be one.
‘Fantastic acting,’ Jamie commented, surveying all of them. ‘OK, so now that the murderer knows who they are, it’s time for the final clue-ooo,’ he sang to the tune of ‘The Final Countdown’. Connor howled the instrumental parts in scratchy do-do-do-doooos.
‘During the course of the evening it seems as though one of you has tried to get one over on old Inspector Howard Whey,’ Jamie said, jabbing his thumb into his chest. ‘Someone has tried to throw out an incriminating piece of evidence in a place none of us would think to look. Trying to disguise it among the waste from this very dinner.’
‘Huh?’ Connor said, one eyebrow climbing his forehead again as he stared at his brother, confused.
Pip followed Jamie’s eyes to the centre of the table. The three red candles flickered away, and there was their growing pile of clues, a few empty bottles of red wine and the beers Connor had been drinking. Their plates were empty, all apart from Pip’s because there’d been too much thinking to do to concentrate on eating. What did Jamie mean? What had changed here?
And then it clicked. What had been in the middle of the table before and was now missing.
‘The pizza boxes!’ Pip stood up.
Jamie shrugged, but there was a playful smile tugging on the corners of his mouth.
‘Where are they? By the bins?’ Connor asked, but Jamie was giving nothing more away.
‘Come on,’ Connor said to them all, rushing out of the dining room towards the kitchen, Pip right on his heels, notebook in hand.
The Domino’s Pizza boxes had been piled up in the corner, tucked beside the bin. Connor got to his knees – miming discomfort because of Humphrey Todd’s advanced age – and started pulling them out, opening their cardboard lids as the rest of the group sidled in behind.
‘Aha,’ he said, holding up a piece of paper, which now had a little bit of garlic dip and pizza grease smeared across it. On the back Pip saw the words Final Clue.
‘See, nothing passes under the nose of Inspector Howard Whey,’ Jamie said triumphantly. ‘Please share the note round the group, Humphrey.’
‘Ooh, juicy,’ Connor said. ‘Literally,’ as he wiped the pizza juice off his fingers.
‘RR,’ Lauren said. ‘Well, it must be from one of you two.’ She turned to the Remy brothers.
‘And Bobby already left a note today signed off as RR, Robert Remy,’ Pip said, but there was something in her head, some under-formed thought she couldn’t yet grasp. What was it? What was bugging her about this note?
‘Sounds like the kind of note someone might send to their brother’s wife that they’re screwing behind his back,’ Cara said. ‘Did you two plan to have more relations this evening?’ she asked Lauren and Ant.
Pip considered that for a moment. She supposed it worked; but something didn’t feel right in her gut.
‘Or does it sound like two people were planning the murder together? Two killers!’ Connor said excitedly.
Pip considered that too. That could also fit, in the context of the note. Her mind whirred.
‘As the genius inspector I am,’ Jamie said, ‘I can confirm that only one of the six of you is our murderer. And now –’ he clapped his hands loudly – ‘it is finally time to unmask the killer. To reveal the whole truth and nothing but the truth. If you would all like to retake your seats in the dining room.’ He gestured them back across the corridor.
They stumbled out of the kitchen, the others discussing the murder in quick, excitable sound bites, exchanging theories. But Pip was silent, alone in her thoughts. Running the case through her head from the start to the very end, like Celia Bourne might have done. Dissecting every clue, looking at it from a different angle.
The six of them took their seats at the table once more. Pip turned straight to her notebook, frantically flipping through the pages and her increasingly erratic handwriting. So many suspects, so many reasons to have wanted Reginald Remy dead. But who did it? Who among them was the killer? All the signs seemed to be pointing one way, to Robert ‘Bobby’ Remy. Since the very beginning so many of the clues had cast deep shadows over him. Almost too many, and something about it didn’t feel right. She was missing something.
Pip had just started writing out a list of their character names to cross them out one by one. And then the world went black, stolen from her eyes.
Everything swallowed by darkness as all the lights blinked out. The music died, leaving an unnerving, buzzing silence in its wake.
It shattered a second later as someone screamed.
Ten
‘Lauren, stop screaming,’ came Connor’s panicked voice somewhere off to the right.
Pip’s eyes readjusted, making themselves at home in the darkness. She wasn’t entirely sightless; the three candles in front gave off a weak pool of flickering orange light and Pip could just about separate the rough outlines of her friends from the other shadows.
A new faceless silhouette joined them, hanging in the doorway, its head overgrown and distorted.
‘What did you guys do?’ the shadow asked in Jamie’s voice.
‘We didn’t do anything,’ Connor replied.
‘Ah, fuck, must be a power cut,’ he said, shifting on his feet, a ripple in the dark.
‘Not a power cut,’ Pip said, her own voice feeling strange to her, cutting through the unnatural silence. ‘Look, out there.’ She pointed to the window, forgetting she was just an indistinct shape in the darkness. ‘You can see the lights from your neighbour’s windows; they still have power. Must be a tripped fuse.’
‘Ah,’ Jamie said. ‘Did you plug anything in?’
‘No.’ Connor’s voice again. ‘We were just sitting here. Alexa was on.’
‘It’s fine – we just need to reset the fuse box.’ Pip fumbled, getting to her feet. ‘Do you know where it is? Is it outside?’
‘No, it’s in the cellar, I think,’ Jamie said. ‘I don’t know. Never go down there.’
‘Because it’s creepy AF,’ Connor added unhelpfully.
‘Have you ever rese
t a fuse box before?’ she asked. The silence from the Reynolds brothers was answer enough. No one else stepped up either. ‘Fine,’ she sighed. ‘I’ll do it.’
If Pip’s dad were here, he’d be vigorously shaking his head right now; fuse boxes were one of his very first Life Lessons. Granted, Pip probably didn’t need to be taught that at age nine, but a ‘life lesson was for life’ as he always said. Don’t even get him started about checking the oil in the car.
‘Won’t you need a torch or something?’ Connor asked.
‘Oh, Connor,’ Lauren said, almost invisible across the table, ‘you should unlock our phones so we can use the torches on them.’
‘Yeah, fine,’ Connor said over the rasping sound of him getting up from his chair. ‘It’s not very 1924, but fine.’ Muffled footsteps and then a new sound: his hands scrabbling around the radiator, the metal clanging much louder than it should. ‘Crap,’ he hissed. ‘I can’t find the key. I know I left it here somewhere.’
‘For fuck’s sake, Connor!’ Lauren again. ‘I need my phone.’
‘It’s fine, it’s fine,’ Pip said, diffusing the situation. She leaned across the table and picked up one of the candlesticks, the flame dancing in her breath. ‘This is fine; I can see enough. You can find the key once the lights are back on.’ She used the shaky firelight to navigate round Jamie in the doorway.
‘Do you need help?’ he asked her.
‘No, no, that’s OK.’ She knew he was anxious about finishing the game before they all had to go, but this was really a job for one person. Pip found that – most of the time – other people only slowed you down. That’s why she despised group projects. ‘I’ll just be a second. No worries.’
She’d never been down to the Reynoldses’ cellar before, but there was only one door it could be. One that was unlabelled and played no part in the make-believe Remy Manor. The door under the stairs. She lowered the candle to find the handle and grabbed it, the metal cold, stinging her skin.
‘I think it’s in the back left-hand corner,’ the Jamie outline told her.
‘Got it,’ she said, pulling the door open.
It creaked. Of course it bloody creaked, the sound echoing in the dark hall, riding along her nerves. Get it together, Pip. It’s just an old, hardly used door.
Before her was an opening, so impossibly dark that her eyes brought it to life and the shadows breached the threshold, creeping out to take her, make her one of them. Kept at bay only by the small flame she held up. There must be a staircase here, she knew that, feeling the top stair out with her shoe before she stepped down it. Losing her feet to the darkness.
The air was colder and staler down here, and it only seemed to grow darker with every step, her candle losing the battle.
The fourth step down creaked. Of course.
Pip’s heart spiked at the sound, though her head told her she was being ridiculous. All the murder talk must have put her on edge.
On the sixth step something brushed against her bare arm. Something delicate that prickled at her skin, like the gentle brush of fingers. She swiped at it. A cobweb. It clung on, holding on to her hand, catching her. Pip wiped it on her dress and moved on.
She shifted her foot, ready for another step, but it wasn’t there. Just more ground. She’d reached the bottom, in the cellar now, a shiver passing up the back of her neck. She turned to check that the way back still existed: the lighter shape of the hall door was still up there. She swore to god if someone thought it would be funny to lock her down here, there might actually be a murder tonight.
A rustle behind her.
Pip turned, the flame overstretching to keep up with her.
She couldn’t see anything, except … Yes, she could. Over there in the corner, it was the fuse box, just a few feet away. She traced her steps over to it, lifting the candle to light it up. All the switches had flipped down, including the main red one on the end.
Her fingers stalled in the air. There was a whisper in the darkness. To her right. Had she really heard something? She couldn’t be sure, the sound of her heart too loud in her ears.
Pip held the candle up high to light as much of the underground room as she could.
That’s when she saw the man.
Standing in the other corner, the dark shape of his head tilted like he was watching her, curiously.
‘Wh-who’s there?’ Pip said, her voice shaking.
He didn’t answer. The wind did instead, whistling in through hidden cracks somewhere above her.
Pip’s fingers shook, the fire juddering with them, and the man moved. Coming towards her.
‘No!’
She spun back to the fuse box. She needed the lights, needed them now. She had only a few seconds before …
She focused, grip tight on the candle, her breath quickening, in and out and … Oh no. The darkness was complete, caving in on her, wrapping her up. She’d blown out the candle. Oh shit, oh fuck, oh no.
Blindly, she fumbled at the fuse box, flicking unseen switches with her thumb. Up, up, up, up. Her fingers found the wider shape of the main switch and she pushed it.
The lights came on and the shadow man was gone.
Gone, because he was actually just a haphazard pile of cardboard boxes with a sheet thrown over them. It was only Pip down here, although it took a few seconds for her heart to trust her.
She heard cheering and whooping upstairs from the others.
‘Well done, Pip!’ Jamie’s voice called. ‘Come on back up!’
She might just take a few deep breaths first, wait for the fear to drain from her face. What had got into her? It was just a cellar, disorganized and dusty. But, hold on, why could she see it at all? Why had the light been on down here anyway? That was weird.
Back to the staircase, all of its shadows filled in now. Spent candle in one hand, the other on the banister, she walked up, avoiding the rest of the cobwebs. And then something she didn’t expect to see, staring her in the face. An envelope tucked between two of the staircase posts at the creaky fourth step. An envelope with A SECRET CLUE, JUST FOR YOU written on it.
Wait a second – what?
Pip picked it up, checking it was real.
It was. The words Kill Joy GamesTM formed a faint border round its edge.
She exhaled and it changed in her throat, became a shaky laugh.
Bloody Jamie Reynolds.
None of this had been real. None of the last few minutes.
It was all part of the game: the blackout, Jamie pretending he didn’t know what to do with a tripped fuse. A fuse probably hadn’t even tripped; Jamie must have been down here, flipping the switches off himself while they were all waiting, unknowing, in the dining room. The whole thing was made up to get someone down here on their own. And that person had earned themselves their own bonus clue.
It was hers.
Pip grinned, tearing into it, running her eyes across the page.
The world halted around Pip, dust hanging motionless in the air around her head, the secret crumpling in her hands. Reginald Remy had been dying anyway, and he knew it. But he hadn’t wanted anyone else to know. This changed everything. The whole case. This was it, the new angle she’d needed. The story that had been hiding there all along, stirring that feeling in her gut. It all came together, the suspects reshuffling before her eyes and –
Jamie called for her again.
‘Coming,’ she said, reaching the top of the stairs, sliding the paper under the shoulder of her dress, tucking it into her bra strap.
She walked into the dining room, the others waiting for her. As she took her seat, releasing the candlestick, she caught Jamie’s eye and the small secret smile in his pursed lips. She returned a discreet nod.
‘OK,’ Jamie said, stepping back into the role of Inspector Howard Whey. ‘Now it really is time for the truth. And time for you to all make your final guesses. Who is the murderer? Please turn to the last page in your booklets.’
Eleven
Pip knew.
She knew who the killer was.
Every piece slotted into place in her head, all those near forgotten details right from the start that had come through the blackout into a new light. The clues, and not just what they said but how they said it. Not the words, but the shape of them. The font. She looked at everyone in the room, playing it out in her head as her eyes flitted from suspect to suspect. The killer in this room, in this manor, on this secluded island where the boat came only once a day.
The truth had been hiding there all along, riding on the underbelly of all those obvious clues and secrets. God, she’d been naive to fall for them at the time. Of course it would never be that obvious, that easy; this was a murder, after all. But she had it all now, the entire writhing thing: every twist and every turn. And she needed far more than four piddly lines to capture it all.
‘Right –’ Jamie leaned into his elbows – ‘let’s go round the table and everyone share their theories before I reveal the truth. Lauren? Want to start us off?’
‘OK,’ she said, fidgeting with her beaded necklace, pulling it tighter round her neck. ‘So, I think the murderer is … Cara. Dora, the cook, I mean.’ She paused as Cara supplied her signature gasp, looking offended. ‘I think she’s got something to do with our business rivals, the Garzas, and she’s here under false pretences and was sent to steal business secrets and then to kill my father-in-law.’
She was correct on some of that, Pip conceded. But not the most important part.
‘Ant, your guess?’ Jamie said.
‘Well, the only murderer round here is … Sal Singh,’ he said with a grin. ‘Must be his ghost. Andie Bell and now poor Reginald Remy.’
‘Ant!’ Cara slid forward, attempting to kick him under the table.
‘Ouch, OK, OK.’ He held up his hands in defeat. ‘Um, I’m going to go for … Pip. What’s your name again?’
Kill Joy Page 6