Eight Detectives

by Alex Pavesi

  ‘Blackmail us? Over what happened in Oxford?’ Henry waved away the idea. ‘It was Bunny that was driving the car.’

  ‘We weren’t exactly innocent though, were we?’

  ‘That’s nonsense. I came because he told me that you’d be here and he said that you wanted to see me. There was nothing about blackmail.’

  ‘Do you have his letter with you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then we only have your word for it?’

  He stared vacantly at the floor. ‘I still love you, Megan; that’s why I came. Bunny knew exactly what to say to get me here. I can’t believe you’d think I could do something like this.’

  She was unmoved. ‘I wish I could live in your world, Henry. You’re probably picturing us breaking into song any second now.’

  ‘I’m just telling you how I feel.’

  ‘And like I said, I’m just joining the dots.’

  ‘Except.’

  ‘What?’ She looked at him suspiciously. The knife twitched in her hand. ‘Except what, Henry?’

  He stood up again, one hand on his head and the other pressed against the solid white wall. Then he began to pace back and forth. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll keep my distance.’ She tensed; the tip of the knife followed his movements. ‘What if, when you went outside for a few minutes of fresh air, I left too? I could have done. You wouldn’t have known about it if I had. And then the killer could have struck.’

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, sitting back down. ‘I went to get a book from my bedroom. That’s when the killer must have got by me.’

  ‘You’re lying.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Yes, you are. You’d have mentioned this sooner if it was true.’

  ‘I forgot about it, that’s all.’

  ‘Henry, stop it.’ She took a step towards him. ‘I’m not interested in being lied to.’

  He held out his hand; it wasn’t shaking. ‘Well, look at that. I’m telling the truth.’

  She kicked the leg of his chair and his hand became a claw as he steadied himself against the armrest. ‘This conversation has gone on long enough. I just want to know what you plan to do next.’

  ‘Well, there’s no telephone here, so I was going to run down to the village and fetch the police and a doctor. But if you’re planning to tell them I’m guilty, that makes it rather difficult for me, doesn’t it?’

  ‘We can worry about the police later. Right now I just want to make sure that if I put this knife down I don’t end up lying on the bed next to Bunny. Why did you kill him?’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘Then who did?’

  ‘A stranger must have broken in and killed him.’

  ‘For what reason?’

  ‘How would I know?’

  She sat down. ‘Look, I’ll help you out here, Henry. It’s not inconceivable to me that you had some justification for doing this. Bunny could be cruel, we both know that. And reckless. I might even be able to forgive you for it, in time. But if you want me to lie for you then you should stop testing my patience. Why now? And why like this?’

  ‘Megan, this is madness.’ Henry closed his eyes. The heat was unbearable, with all the doors and windows closed. He felt that they were two specimens suspended in oil, being studied by someone.

  ‘Then you’re still protesting your innocence? Christ, we’ve been through this Henry. You’ve been tried and convicted by the jury of twelve potted plants lining the hallway. You were here the whole time. What else is there to say?’

  He buried his head in his hands. ‘Just give me a moment to think.’ His lips moved silently as he went back over her accusations. ‘You’ve given me a damn headache.’ Absurdly, he reached down and took the guitar from the floor beside him. He began to pluck at its five remaining strings. ‘Could they have been hiding upstairs when we came back from lunch?’ His forehead was dripping with sweat. ‘There’s no way they could have left. Unless it was right when we got back. In fact. In fact, I think I’ve got it.’

  He was on his feet again. ‘I think I now know what happened, Megan.’

  She tilted her head up towards him, an inverted nod of encouragement.

  ‘Megan, you little spider,’ he said. ‘You little conniving snake. It was you that killed him.’

  Megan looked distinctly unimpressed. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘I can see you put some thought into it. Here we are, two suspects with the same opportunity and a motive broad enough to cover both of us, so that all you have to do is deny everything and it all gets blamed on me. That way it comes down to which of us is the better actor and we both know the answer to that.’

  ‘As I pointed out, Henry, you’ve been sitting here all afternoon guarding your kill. So how could I have done it?’

  ‘There’s no need to frame me, to fake evidence. Not when you can just deny everything, until your throat dries up. That was your plan the whole time, wasn’t it? When the police arrive they’ll find two foreigners here and a dead body. One of them will be me, flustered and incoherent, trying to argue that someone might have crawled upside down along the ceiling to get up that staircase without being seen, and the other one will be you, perfectly in control, denying everything. The English rose against the brutish male. We both know who they’ll believe, and how can I convince them otherwise? I can’t even order a coffee in this damn country.’

  ‘That’s your theory, is it? Then how did I sneak past you, Henry? Did I crawl along the ceiling, like you suggest? Or have you come up with something more convincing in the last twenty seconds?’

  ‘I don’t need to. It’s the wrong question.’ He stood up and walked over to the window, no longer afraid of her. ‘It’s true that the top floor of this house is locked up tight. And that staircase is the only entrance to it. And it’s true that I’ve been sitting here all afternoon, since lunch, since Bunny went up to his bedroom. I haven’t even used the toilet. But it’s also true that when we first got back and I was hot and dirty from the road, I went to wash. And I left you sitting here all alone, right here. And when I returned you hadn’t moved. It took me about nine or ten minutes to wash my face, neck and hands; it was so brief I’d almost forgotten about it. But then how long can it take to plunge a knife into someone’s back?’

  ‘That was hours ago.’

  ‘Three hours ago. And how long do you think he’s been dead? There’s blood all along the corridor.’

  ‘We’d just come inside; he’d only just gone upstairs. He wouldn’t even have been asleep by then.’

  ‘No, but he was drunk enough that it wouldn’t have mattered. Once he was face down on the mattress he was totally defenceless.’

  ‘So that’s it, is it? You’re accusing me of killing him?’

  Henry smiled, proud of his logic. ‘That’s right, I am.’

  ‘You pathetic, gloating fool. He’s dead and you want to play games about it? I know it was you. Why are you doing this?’

  ‘I could ask you the same thing.’

  Megan paused and thought the matter through. The hand holding the knife relaxed. Henry was looking out of the window now, a halo of red hills visible through the smeared glass. He was taunting her with his lack of fear; it was a way of asserting his authority.

  ‘I see what you’re doing,’ she said. ‘I see it quite clearly now. It’s a matter of reputation, isn’t it? I’m an actor. A scandal like this would ruin me. As long as there’s the slightest fragment of doubt, my reputation will be shot. You think I have more to lose than you, so I’ll have to cooperate?’

  He swung around, suntanned by the bright daylight at his back. ‘You think this is about your professional reputation? Not everything is about your career, Megan.’

  She bit her lower lip. ‘No, I don’t suppose you would admit it, would you? First you’ll show me just how stubborn you’re willing to be. And then what? When you’ve convinced me that I can’t win, that my career will be ruined if I don’t cooperate, you’l
l make your proposal. You’ll come up with some kind of story and ask me to corroborate it. If that’s really what this is about, you’d be better off just telling me the truth.’

  He sighed and shook his head. ‘I don’t know why you keep saying all these things. I’ve explained the circumstances of the crime. But even the best detective can’t do anything in the face of outright denial. I could pull my hair out, that’s all. But I don’t think baldness would suit me.’

  She stared at him. Neither of them said anything for about a minute. Eventually she placed the knife on the table beside her and spun the tip of it away from him.

  ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Pick up your guitar and keep playing. I’m accusing you and you’re accusing me, that’s obviously the situation we’re in. But if you think that I’m the kind of woman that will crack and be convinced the sky is green just because a man says so, then you’ve underestimated me.’

  ‘And if you think you can just put your foot down and flutter your eyelashes and I’ll sing like a bird, then you’ve overestimated your powers.’

  ‘Oh,’ Megan blinked, ‘but I thought you still loved me?’

  Henry sat down in the chair opposite hers. ‘I do, that’s what makes this so maddening. I’ll forgive you for everything, if you’ll just admit that you killed him.’

  ‘Then let’s talk about something we’ve never talked about before.’ She picked up the knife again; real fear showed in his eyes for a moment. ‘You have a violent side, Henry. I’ve seen you drunk, I’ve seen you starting fights with strangers because you didn’t like the way they were looking at me. I’ve seen you shouting and screaming and smashing glasses. Are you going to deny all of that, too?’

  He stared at the floor. ‘No, but that was a long time ago.’

  ‘And did you ever see me behaving like that?’

  ‘Maybe not, but you can be cruel.’

  ‘A sharp tongue never killed anybody.’

  He shrugged. ‘So I have a short temper. Is that why you wouldn’t marry me?’

  ‘Not entirely. But it didn’t help.’

  ‘I was drinking a lot in those days.’

  ‘You were drinking a lot at lunch.’

  ‘Not a lot. Not like back then.’

  ‘It was enough, clearly.’

  Henry sighed. ‘If I’d wanted to kill Bunny I’d have done it in a better way than this.’

  ‘Henry, I know it was you. We both know it was you. What are you trying to convince me of, exactly? That I’m going mad?’

  ‘I could say the same thing, couldn’t I?’

  ‘No, you couldn’t.’ She picked up the small knife and stabbed it into the arm of her chair; it went straight through the upholstery and stuck in the wood. ‘Bunny is upstairs dripping like a tap, and we’re just sitting here arguing. What are the police going to think when they find out how we’ve spent the afternoon?’

  ‘This is like a bad dream.’

  Megan rolled her eyes. ‘Another cheap metaphor.’

  ‘Well, if this is the way we’re spending the afternoon, I’d like to have a drink in my hand. Would you care to join me?’

  ‘You’re sick,’ she said. And he poured himself a whiskey.

  Half an hour later nothing had changed; they’d gone over the situation several times and come to no conclusion.

  Henry had finished his drink; he was holding the empty glass up in front of his eyes, looking through it at the squashed and hollow room, moving his hand from side to side. Megan watched him, wondering how he could be so easily distracted.

  Henry looked over at her. ‘I’ll have one more and then I’m done. Would you care to join me?’

  The doors and windows were still shut and the room was stifling. It was as if they’d agreed to inflict it on themselves as a punishment.

  She nodded. ‘I’ll have a drink with you.’

  He grunted and walked over to the cabinet. He filled two large glasses from the tall decanter of whiskey. It was warm, of course. He took one in his hand, swirled it rhythmically, and passed the other to her. Her eyes widened at the size of it, two thirds full. ‘One last drink,’ he said.

  ‘We need to discuss what to do next,’ said Megan, ‘assuming neither of us is going to confess. Do we need to involve the police at all? Nobody knows we’re here. Maybe we can just leave in the night?’

  Henry sipped his drink in silence. They sat like that for several minutes, Megan shielding her glass with her hand. When she finally lifted it to her mouth, she paused before putting it to her lips. ‘How do I know this isn’t poisoned?’

  ‘We can swap glasses,’ he said.

  She shrugged. The conversation didn’t seem worth the exertion. She took a tiny sip. ‘Tastes fine,’ she said. He was staring at her in silence, in a way that made her uncomfortable. ‘On the other hand, for the avoidance of doubt.’ He sighed and handed her his glass; she took it and gave him hers.

  He sat back in his chair, exhausted, and raised his glass. ‘To Bunny.’

  ‘To Bunny, then.’

  The whiskey was as orange and fiery as the impending sunset. Henry lifted the guitar again and picked out the same clumsy tune as before. ‘We’re back where we started,’ he sighed.

  ‘Like I said, we need to discuss what happens next.’

  ‘You want me to say we can just run away together and pretend we were never here? Like last time. That was your plan all along, was it?’

  ‘Why are you doing this to me?’ Megan put down her glass and shook her head. ‘Is it because I called off our engagement? But that was so long ago.’

  Sipping from his drink had become Henry’s primary means of punctuating the conversation. But in response to this he put the time in and lit a cigarette. ‘I’ll say it again, Megan. I do still love you.’

  ‘That’s nice to know.’ She looked at him expectantly. ‘Are you feeling dizzy yet, Henry?’

  At first he was puzzled, then he glanced at his glass. He’d drained it all the way to the bottom, except for the final half-inch. He reached for it and found that his left arm was almost asleep. His shapeless, clumsy hand knocked the glass to the floor where it smashed, a brown circle on the white tiles. He looked back at her. ‘What did you do?’

  The cigarette fell from his mouth and into the body of the guitar, leaving a spiral of smoke creeping up between the strings. Her face showed no emotion, just a hint of concern.

  ‘Megan.’

  He tumbled forward off the chair, half of his body frozen. The guitar bounced to one side. He lay face down on the white floor, shaking without rhythm. Saliva pooled on the tile in front of his chin.

  ‘That’s the thing about lying, Henry.’ She stood up and towered over him. ‘Once you start, you can’t stop. You have to follow it where it takes you.’

  2. The First Conversation

  Julia Hart had been reading aloud for almost an hour and her throat felt like it was full of stones. ‘That’s the thing about lying, Henry. She stood up and towered over him. Once you start, you can’t stop. You have to follow it where it takes you.’

  Grant McAllister was sitting beside her, listening intently. He was the author of the story she’d just read out; he’d written it more than twenty-five years earlier. ‘Well,’ he said, when he realized she had finished, ‘what do you think of that one?’

  She lowered the manuscript, angling her notes away from him. ‘I like it. I was firmly on Megan’s side, until that last paragraph.’

  He caught the dryness in her voice and got to his feet. ‘Would you like another glass of water?’ She nodded gratefully. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘you’re the first guest I’ve had in a very long time.’

  His cottage was at the top of a short, sandy slope that led up from the beach. They’d been sitting on wooden chairs under its wide porch for the last hour or so, while she’d read the story out loud to him. He left her there now and disappeared inside.

  A cool breeze was coming from the sea, but the heat of the sun was overwhelming. She’d had to wa
lk from her hotel to his cottage that morning – fifteen minutes in the metallic Mediterranean heat – and she could feel that her forehead was already slightly burnt.

  ‘Here.’ Grant came back with a rough earthenware jug and placed it on the table between them. She filled her glass and drank.

  ‘Thank you, I needed that.’

  He sat down again. ‘You were saying, I think, that you expected Megan to be innocent?’

  ‘Not quite.’ She swallowed another mouthful of water and shook her head. ‘Just that I felt sympathetic towards her. I’ve met enough men like Henry, fragile and full of self-pity.’

  Grant nodded and tapped a few times on the arm of his chair. ‘Megan has her own failings, don’t you think?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ Julia smiled. ‘She killed him, didn’t she?’

  ‘She strikes me as,’ he chose his words carefully, ‘untrustworthy in nature. She was suspicious from the start.’

  Julia shrugged. ‘We don’t know what happened to them both in Oxford.’ She took out her notebook and placed it on her knee, holding a pen in her other hand. ‘When did you last read that story?’

  ‘Before I lived here. As you know, I no longer have a copy of the book.’ Grant shook his head slowly. ‘Twenty years ago, probably. That makes me feel very old.’

  He poured himself a small glass of water. It was the first thing she’d seen him drink all morning. There was a pale wooden dinghy lying upside down on the beach below them; it looked like the abandoned cocoon of a giant insect. Maybe he crawled out of that, she thought, smiling to herself. An alien creature, immune to the heat and the need to eat and drink.

  ‘So what happens next?’ he asked. ‘I’m afraid I’ve never edited a book before. Will we go through it line by line?’

  ‘That would take a long time.’ She flicked through the manuscript. ‘There’s not much I want to change. A few places where the phrasing could be more economical, perhaps.’

  ‘Of course.’ He pushed his hat back and wiped his forehead with a handkerchief.