by Syd Moore
I nodded. Even if he’d just made it up, I’d buy it.
But the statement seemed to upset Margot further. ‘It was an accident! The police think so too.’ Her face dropped further and she let out a half sob. ‘I don’t know why you’ve come here, asking all these rude questions. You shouldn’t be upsetting people like this.’ The tissue popped up against her cheek again.
‘No, that’s fine,’ said Sam. ‘Thank you, Margot. Sorry, you can understand why we are having to ask these questions.’
She got herself under control again. ‘I suppose so. Yes. Well, look – it’s perfectly simple – I had the whisky and then retired.’ Then she cackled. ‘You see I am retired! And not as young as I used to be. I can’t drink like I used to either. Oh you should have seen me in my heyday. I could have given you the runaround.’ She winked at Sam.
Two red dots flushed on his cheeks.
I smiled at her. ‘I quite believe it. But, last night, you didn’t hear anything after bedtime?’
‘No. Nothing. I was out for the count.’ She sat back and smoothed her skirt down again. ‘I did have a count once. Oh he was adorable. Quite a demon between the sheets.’ She winked at Sam again, who was still burning from her previous innuendo. ‘Strong, dark, allegedly Russian, though could have made the whole thing up. But we do so like our strong dark men, don’t we?’ she said to me.
I, for one, was not going to blush. I refused to look at Sam and asked Margot, ‘Oh yes? Was Graham strong and dark?’
‘Oh my goodness no. He was well into middle-age and clearly not as sturdy as he thought.’
Good point.
‘But you are quite the strong man, aren’t you Mr Stone?’ Margot’s eyes glinted lasciviously. ‘I can see your arms. Do you work out?’
‘Well, that’s great,’ Sam said and snapped the notebook shut. ‘I think we’ve got enough information now. Thank you, Margot. We’ll let you know if we have more questions.’
She made a pouty face. ‘Oh, I don’t mind you probing me,’ she said and batted her lashes.
Sam was trying hard not to squirm. I had to put the poor bloke out of his misery so got up and opened the door. ‘You’ve been a great help, thank you. We do have other people we need to speak to though.’
‘Fine.’ She sighed, swivelled her feet to the floor and then limped out of the room, trying to conceal a very un-sexy grimace as her weight transferred onto her right leg.
When the door closed, Sam pushed his chair back. It was on wheels and glided quickly till he hit a filing cabinet behind him, which halted his trajectory. ‘Good lord!’ he said. ‘She’s a character.’ Then he laughed.
‘I thought you enjoyed a bit of a flirt with the oldies. I remember what you were like with Auntie Babs.’
He chuckled again and stretched in the chair then lifted his feet onto the desk. Rather naughtily in my opinion. You should treat other people’s furniture as you expected them to treat yours after all. I told him to take his feet off, which annoyed him, but he did oblige. It was unusual for him to do such a thing in the first place.
‘Still,’ I said, ‘I know she’s disabled, frail and old. But she could be as likely as any of the others to have given Graham the scare of his life. If she wanted to.’
‘Oh,’ said Sam. ‘Come on. She just doesn’t look like a murderer, does she?’
I folded my arms and said, ‘Hah! And what exactly does a murderer look like then?’ At which point the door flew open and Cullen lumbered in.
With remarkable synchronicity we released exclamations of surprise. To my dismay I felt a blush heating the tips of my ears. For out of all of the residents, Cullen was the one who really did actually quite seriously look like a serial killer.
Sam might have thought so too because he began faffing around with his notebook and coughing. His hand fisted and covered his mouth like he was stifling a huge guffaw.
I stood up, greeted the newcomer, aware of a line of sweat bobbling my top lip, and invited him to sit down. Which he did, though he didn’t go for the chaise that Margot had vacated but the small tub chair, further back, which he immediately dwarfed. I had a mental image of him standing up and taking the seat with him and tried not to laugh. It made the whole murderer thing a bit lighter.
I couldn’t quite pinpoint why Cullen fitted the ‘deranged killer’ type so much. He just had that vibe. And a mono-brow. My nan, on my mum’s side, always told me never to trust a man with eyebrows that met. Though she also had a lot of other weird sayings, a large quantity of which were racist, sexist, homophobic, respectful of the ‘ruling class’, linguistically incomprehensible or sing-songingly extracted from lost music hall performances with no discernible context. Or sense.
Even so, parking my dear nan’s warning for a moment, it still had to be said, there was something about Cullen that really did set your teeth on edge. He had these incredibly large but stony eyes that jerked around the place and gave the impression of constant misdirected anger. Like, if he looked at you, you were meant to feel guilty or, er, frightened. And he was well fit, as in gym-fit, hard-muscled and pumped. He could definitely snap a neck with those hands.
All of this was topped off by a sizzling intensity, which meant he came across like the ripped love child of Charles Manson and Henry Rollins.
‘You want to know how I can get inside the mind of a killer?’ was his opening line.
‘No,’ I squeaked, swallowed, then forced myself to speak at a lower pitch. ‘That’s not necessary thanks.’ I couldn’t help myself – I pushed my chair an inch away from him. Though it was minute, a barely noticeable movement. What I really wanted to do was kick it over, grab my jacket and run out of Ratchette Hall screaming ‘Get me away from that psycho.’
It’s a good job I have such pronounced impulse control.
Cullen shifted his buttocks around in the tub chair. ‘I’ve always known I was special,’ he said, eyes glittering. There was a slight North Eastern twang to his voice. Newcastle maybe. ‘Ever since I was young,’ he went on.
Oh god, I thought, confessions? Already? Okay, well, it might wrap things up quickly. Take it away, Igor.
‘You see,’ he went on leaning forwards, those eyes shiny and darting about the place in short sharp moves. ‘You have to be clever to be a killer. If you want to get away with it. And I’m clever.’ He raised his forefinger to his cropped bonce and tapped it. ‘Mind’s always working, always thinking things through. Always looking at people and thinking, “Oh yeah, it could be you.”’
I nodded uncertainly. This bloke was wired. If it wasn’t for the fact that I had a very clear view of his eyes, which were undilated, I might have wondered about Class A consumption. Though some people just rolled like that. Overactive thyroid gland possibly. Not enough to exempt you from work. Mostly.
Sam sat forwards and put his notepad on the desktop with a thud. ‘Right, sorry Cullen, do you mind if we wind back? What’s your full name?’
‘Sutcliffe,’ he said and cast his eyes at me.
‘You’re joking.’ My voice broke on the consonants.
‘Do I look like I’m joking?’ He leant forwards and shone his eyes on me.
Was that indignation in his words?
My face stiffened but I refused to blush again and girded my loins so I could hold his gaze. ‘Not really,’ I said.
The eyes widened. A wicked smile flashed across his face. Bloody hell, he had been playing with me.
Or did he just enjoy the reaction he got? Which made him what – possibly an attention-seeker? With an impish sense of mischief? But nothing more. Not really.
And a name doth not a murderer make.
If a murderer was indeed what we were looking for. At the moment I still wasn’t sure that last night’s shenanigans were anything more than a pile-up of coincidences. Albeit with a seriously tragic ending.
Sam pulled Cullen’s attention off me, by thanking him and repeating the unfortunate surname.
‘I can see what you are doing here.
’ Cullen began nodding. ‘Establishing the facts. I’ve already got them though, you know. Oh yes. Fact one: there are eight of us here with two staff. Originally. Prior to the murder. Fact Two: one of them, Graham, is dead. Killed.’ He was speaking quickly, bits of spit dropping out of his mouth as he emphasised particular words, namely: murder, dead, killed. ‘Fact Three: he’s replaced in the plot by Sophia. Fact Four: that brings the number back to ten. That’s a magic number in crime. Not too many, not too few. The reader can cope with that. The reader has coped. Agatha Christie – And Then There Were None. Great book. I like to think of it as an early slasher format. You two have swung things out of kilter a bit, but we shall see, shan’t we? There’s a precedent: Courteney Cox and David Arquette in Scream, for instance.’
‘Uh huh,’ I said.
Cullen exercised his fingers in a jerky mechanical fashion as he spoke. It was rather disconcerting, so I focused on his face. But that was also rather disconcerting so I reached for the notepad.
‘Of course, there was meant to be one other.’
‘Was there?’ said Sam. ‘Who?’
Cullen leant forwards. ‘The other tutor: Chris Devlin.’ He sat back and waited for a reaction to the name.
‘Who’s he?’ Sam asked, predictably.
The name was vaguely familiar.
‘Chris Devlin?’ he said with disbelief. ‘He’s only one of the best-selling writers in the world! Action, crime, military, terrorism, thrillers, that sort of thing. Epic.’
‘Yes, that’s right,’ I said, my inner eye settling on an image of a middle-aged man in a leather jacket, with aviator shades posing on a bottle-green vintage jag. Yes, he’d been in a magazine I’d glanced at lately while sitting in my Auntie Bab’s hair salon. If my memory served me right he wrote about blokes with guns, running around chasing blokes with guns and getting shot by other blokes with guns or trying to shoot them. Or blow them up. Or something like that.
Cullen was nodding furiously. ‘Bloody great writer. Astonishing. He’s the reason why I signed up. Was meant to be delivering the course with Laura, but he had a problem – sickness. Couldn’t make his flight. Can’t remember.’
‘Where’s he coming from?’ Sam asked.
‘The States,’ Cullen said. ‘I think he lives in California now. I was really looking forward to hearing what he had to say. Don’t know if he’ll make it. We haven’t been told. But I have a character that I think he would go wild for. A soldier with sociopathic tendencies.’ He smiled at me. Slowly. ‘He beheads bad guys.’
A shiver coursed down my spine. ‘Nice,’ I spluttered.
‘So there would have been eleven people here?’ Sam went on. ‘But without Chris Devlin it meant there were ten.’
‘Yes.’ Cullen nodded again. ‘And then there were nine.’
I wondered if there was anything in it, and said, ‘Thanks Cullen. I’ll minute this info,’ and let my hair fall over my face so I didn’t have to look at him for a moment.
Presumably bolstered by my approval/recording of his relevance, Cullen raised his voice. ‘Then also minute this, Miss Strange––’
‘Rosie,’ I told him, still looking at the notepad on my knees.
‘Yes, minute this, Rosie: ten strangers are summoned to Ratchette Hall, where they are forced to read a dark tale of––’
‘Summoned?’ I asked and looked up.
He leant forwards. My body felt a jab of adrenaline as those shark-grey eyes fixed on me. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Actually no. Not specifically. Okay. Minute this then: ten strangers converge on Ratchette Hall, a dark gothic mansion in the wilds of the countryside––’
‘Edwardian,’ I corrected. ‘Not gothic.’
‘Yes,’ he said, his forehead raked with irritation. ‘Minute this – ten writers in the wilds of the desolate––’
‘We’re less than five miles from Chelmsford.’ I nodded, to reassure him. ‘And that’s a city now, so you’re not far from civilisation, Cullen, don’t panic.’
His head popped up, the mouth turned down. ‘I am not panicking. I’m trying to set the scene. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Once assembled, those gathered in the, er, mansion, are then forced to read a tale of––’
I opened my mouth to interject but he got in before me, ‘All right, all right. We read a short story that was on the syllabus.’ He rolled his eyes and settled them on Sam and shook his head. ‘No imagination over there, is there?’ he said.
‘Oh, you’d be surprised,’ my colleague replied. His mouth kinked to the side.
‘Point is, the short story,’ Cullen darted me a glance, ‘and there is no getting away from this, point is that story strangely foreshadows the events of the evening that were to unfold. Almost as if it had been predestined.’ He put his hands together. ‘That means premeditated,’ and having successfully made his point, he sat back into the tub chair.
His last word hung in the air between the three of us. It was key here, after all. Was it a series of coincidences or had this death somehow been organised with the intention to kill? Presumably this is what Monty wanted us to think about too.
I could see Sam nodding. ‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘Who was responsible for planning the lessons, Cullen? Is it a set course?’
The young man licked his lips. ‘It’s Laura,’ he said. ‘And no, the course was bespoke. She planned it all herself.’
‘I see,’ I said, remembering the tutor’s words in the sitting room where she had expressed her guilt. ‘Yes, we should speak to her.’
‘Most definitely,’ Sam agreed.
Cullen seemed very satisfied with this and began to detach himself from the tub chair.
‘Hang on,’ I said to him. ‘What happened last night? Where were you?’
He eased himself back into the leather and didn’t seem at all put out by this line of questioning. ‘We were together. All of us. For most of the night. Well, the evening. Had dinner, retired to the sitting room. There had been quite a bit of trick-or-treating activity earlier, around five o’clock and until dinner, but it seemed to peter out by the time we started talking around the fire.’
‘Was Graham there, when that was going on?’
‘In the sitting room?’ He thought about the question. ‘No. He excused himself and went into the study, here, to do paperwork. At least that’s what he told us, if I remember rightly. But then he must have been telling the truth because Jocelyn fetched him later – the oldies had dozed off. Myself, Jocelyn and Graham helped them upstairs to their rooms. Then, I’m not sure. I was getting tired and went to bed. I think the rest of them cleared out too after that. Wanted an early night. A lot of alcohol was consumed.’
‘By you?’
‘By everyone,’ he said. ‘I didn’t have as much as some. Though I did have a nightcap. Like I said we all conked out after that.’
I nodded. ‘And went to bed? Separately?’
He frowned. ‘Yes.’
‘So you didn’t hear anything?’ Sam added. ‘No knocking? No sounds?’
He shook his head. ‘My room is on the second floor. The place is old but well insulated. I didn’t hear anything last night.’ He finished with a nod. ‘I woke up at about six and went to get some mineral water from the kitchen. I don’t trust the tap water round here. And that’s when I found Mr Peacock.’
‘Where was he?’
‘At the bottom of the stairs. I thought he’d fallen first of all. But when I reached him I could see his face. It was …’ he took a breath and made his squeaky voice deeper, ‘a mask of fear. He looked frozen: he’d been terrified when he died. And he was gripping something in his hand. I saw it when I checked his pulse – it was a finger made of stone.’
‘It is odd,’ I conceded.
‘And what did you do?’ Sam asked.
‘I went straight to the phone and called the police. Then I woke up Laura and told her what had happened. It wasn’t long after that the police turned up.’
I glanced at Sam, who shrugged as if he’d got
nothing else to ask.
‘Well, thank you,’ I said to Cullen. ‘Most informative.’
‘Can I go?’ he said.
Sam nodded.
The young man unplugged himself from the tub chair and stood up. ‘Well, good luck,’ he said as he opened the door. ‘My money’s on Miss Scarlet with the lead piping in the drawing room.’ Then he started cackling maniacally.
Sam and I looked at each other, as Cullen’s cackle became a hollow guffaw. He drew breath, clutched hold of the door and spluttered out a spindly wheeze. At which point Sophia arrived to slap him on the back.
‘Dear god,’ she said, ‘are you choking?’
‘No,’ he said, trying to catch his breath. ‘Sometimes I surprise myself with my wit.’ Then he straightened up and abruptly stopped laughing.
‘Well,’ said Sophia backing away from him ever so slightly; the move was as minute as mine had been earlier and very subtle, but I knew where she was coming from. ‘If you’d like to go into the kitchen,’ she said and gestured to the left. ‘Dinner will be ready soon.’
Off lumbered Cullen. Sophia’s shoulders dropped and she entered the study.
‘Well, goodness me. What an interesting chap,’ she said bringing her hands together and wringing them very hard. ‘Will you be wanting to see anyone else just now?’
I nodded. ‘We should really do everyone, but I’m not sure there will be enough time tonight.’
‘Yes, yes,’ she said. ‘Of course you are welcome to stay for dinner?’
I thought about Starla’s globular quinoa and mentally beamed the word ‘no’ into Sam’s brain.
‘Shall we?’ he asked.
‘I’ve got something in the slow cooker at home,’ I told Sophia, and stepped in front of his nodding form. ‘Sorry. But I think we’ll have to come back tomorrow. After breakfast. Depending on how we go, I guess we might have to stay for lunch?’
She nodded, relieved, I think. ‘Did you come to any conclusions?’
‘No,’ said Sam. ‘But we’ve only just got going.’
‘Yes.’ Leaning against the wall, she bit her lip. ‘I suppose so.’