A Game for All the Family

by Sophie Hannah

  ‘I will, once I’ve had my say. Anne has been ringing me, calling me Sandie, telling me to go back to London or else she’ll kill me, my husband and our daughter – that’s Ellen, who’s George’s best friend. Except Anne took him out of Beaconwood, having first made the head pretend to expel him – apparently for his own good – so now he never sees his best friend any more. What would Anne have to do before you’d think, “Enough is enough”? Are you waiting for her to kill someone before you take action? If so, I’d like to suggest an alternative plan. As the person she’s likely to kill first, I think it’s my right to do so.’

  ‘Justine …’ He raises his injured hands to try to stop me.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I can’t talk to you. I wouldn’t have agreed to meet you. You know that.’

  ‘Then I’ll leave. But first I want to hear you say that you know your wife is a pathological liar and that she’s harming your children. Tell me what you’re going to do about that and I’ll go. Tell me how you’re going to stop her from causing me any more grief.’

  Stephen Donbavand gets up and walks over to the window. Eventually he says quietly, ‘I mean you no harm, Justine. There’s nothing I can say that you’d want to hear.’

  ‘Expect a visit from the police,’ I tell him.

  His face contorts at the word: a cartoon mask of horror. ‘No. Please, you don’t know … Anne wouldn’t hurt anyone. She’s not violent.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘You have no evidence!’

  ‘I’ve seen your hands. And I haven’t heard you deny what I’m accusing you of.’

  ‘Get out. Please.’

  I wonder if he’s as desperate as he sounds. Desperate people will agree to anything. In my most reasonable voice, I say, ‘If you don’t want me to tell the police, stop your wife from doing what she’s doing. Can you do that?’

  No answer.

  ‘And tell me the truth. Where does the Perrine killing Malachy Dodd story come from, and all that stuff about the Ingreys? Is it based on something true? Or did Anne make it up?’

  ‘Please leave. You’ve no right to …’ He comes storming towards me, then stops suddenly, as if he’s realised that he can’t. He is a person who always can’t.

  He walks over to his desk and picks up his phone. ‘I’ve never done this before, but I think I can have you forcibly removed from university grounds. This is your last chance to leave of your own accord.’

  ‘All right,’ I say, standing up. ‘I’ll give you a last chance too: to stop Anne coming anywhere near me and my family. That includes phone calls, and it includes my dog – I don’t know if she told you what she did to our puppy?’

  Stephen squeezes his eyes shut. I hope he’s imagining something worse than what happened, and all the bad things that are going to happen if he doesn’t do as I ask.

  ‘I know you hate this as much as I do, Stephen. So stop her. If you don’t want to end up in jail and your children in care, you can’t let Anne carry on the way she’s going. It’s not too late yet, but you haven’t got long.’

  I slam the door on my way out.

  ‘You’re not asleep, so … I’m doing this.’ Alex turns on the bedroom light. It’s not what’s supposed to happen. He’s supposed to watch the rest of the film I couldn’t focus on, whose title I’ve already forgotten, and give me time to lie in the dark wondering what to do. Worrying, analysing, trying to reconcile my disbelief – my strong urge to laugh at the absurdity of it all – with my fear, and the knowledge that, however impossible and ridiculous it might seem, it’s real. It’s happening.

  I wish Alex had turned on a lamp instead of the overhead light.

  ‘You’re nowhere near asleep,’ he says. ‘I thought you were tired.’

  ‘I’m shattered.’ But I can’t sleep. ‘Where’s Figgy?’

  ‘Snoring on Ellen’s bedroom floor. I checked on him a minute ago. He’s fine. They’re both fine. Darling?’

  ‘Mm?’

  Alex sits down on the bed. ‘Where did you go today? Not Totnes – I mean afterwards.’

  I haul myself into a sitting position and tell him about Stephen Donbavand. He listens without interrupting. When I’ve finished, he says, ‘I don’t get it. He admitted to messing up our garden?’

  ‘Digging a grave in our garden.’ It’s important to me to keep stressing this. No one else seems to want to focus on it. Yes, it’s a hole; yes, it’s a mess, but mainly it’s an empty grave, waiting to be filled with the dead body of Lisette Ingrey’s hated sister, Allisande.

  ‘He didn’t exactly admit it,’ I tell Alex. ‘Didn’t say, “Yes, it was me, I did it,” but he didn’t deny it either. And the way he looked and acted was as good as an admission.’

  ‘So why didn’t you go straight to DC Luce?’

  ‘What’s the point? There’s no proof. Stephen Donbavand would deny it and Luce would believe him.’

  ‘We should still tell him. What can we do without police help?’

  Excellent question. To which I don’t know the answer. ‘That’s what I was lying in the dark trying to figure out,’ I say. ‘It was easier when I believed I wasn’t Allisande Ingrey. More straightforward.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Nothing. Forget it.’

  ‘Justine, explain. You’re scaring me.’

  How? What’s your worst fear? That I’m possessed?

  ‘I thought it was a mistake,’ I say. ‘The anonymous caller was calling me Sandie, but I knew that wasn’t me. I’m Justine. I can’t be Justine and Sandie, so whoever it was must have mixed me up with someone else, I assumed – someone who’d been intimidating in the past, someone who was at war with the caller. Whether her name was Allisande Ingrey or an anagram of Allisande Ingrey, or something different altogether, I thought she was, at the very least, an actual person.

  ‘Then I made progress, or so I thought: several clues pointed to her being Anne Donbavand’s sister, and to both of them being characters in Ellen’s story. When Ops told me Anne only had one sister – Sarah – and no connection with any murders, I wasn’t completely convinced. I still thought the Perrine Ingrey stuff might be real, and very well hidden. And then when Ellen as good as told me that the story she was writing was true, and about George’s mother, I knew I had to be right! That was until I met Sarah Parsons, and she told me about the lies Anne told as a child. That’s when I realised that invention, if you’re ruthless and deranged enough, makes anything possible.’

  ‘I’m not sure I know what you mean,’ says Alex.

  ‘You can fabricate a past that includes someone who’s out to get you – a fictional sister. You can use it as an excuse to exert unhealthy control over your husband and children: “Everyone must do as I say – my children must never leave the house – because this person I’ve made up is trying to kill us all, and only I understand the danger.”’

  ‘Hold on. If Allisande Ingrey is an invention, then you’re not her. I mean, we know you’re not anyway, but …’

  ‘Do we?’ I say. He doesn’t get it. Maybe no one ever will except me. ‘If Allisande can be proved to be somebody else, then I’m not her. But if she’s nothing more than a figment of Anne Donbavand’s imagination, then she can be anyone Anne wants her to be. See what I mean?’

  ‘No. This makes zero sense to me.’

  ‘She can be me. She is me, because Anne says so, and the only sphere in which Sandie exists at all is one over which Anne has complete control. I have to face facts, Alex. I’ve been trying to find another candidate to be Anne’s fake persona’s fake sister. I even hired a detective! And I’ve found no one. Neither has Ops. There is no one.’

  ‘But … so the facts you want to face are Anne’s lies?’ Alex says. ‘Lies aren’t facts.’

  ‘But they can create facts. So can fictions. That’s what’s happened here. There was no mix-up, no mistaken identity, no wrongly targeted anonymous calls. I’m the target – I have been from the start. Anne knew who she was rin
ging. She was ringing Lisette’s sister.’

  ‘But you’re not …’

  ‘Yes, Alex, I am! I don’t like it any more than you do, but I can’t bury my head in the sand. In some fucked-up, invented world that I never agreed to be part of, I’m the middle sister: older than Perrine and younger than Lisette. I’m Allisande Ingrey.’

  Chapter 12

  The Legend of Evil Perrine

  Bascom Ingrey was able to say no more, and collapsed in a shrieking heap on the Persian rug (the same one that the young Allisande had once squirted conditioner all over for fun. No fun was being had anywhere near that rug any more, that was for certain).

  The policeman ran to the telephone.

  No one else moved. Everyone was watching Sorrel, expecting her to fall to the floor in a sobbing heap too. ‘What?’ she said, noticing them all watching her for signs of distress. ‘I will wait for confirmation before I get upset. I hate suffering, and I won’t do it any sooner than I have to.’

  A few minutes later, the policeman entered the drawing room again. ‘I’m afraid it’s true,’ he said. ‘Perrine’s dead body has been found.’

  Sorrel covered her face and moaned.

  ‘Good!’ said Mrs Dodd.

  ‘Where?’ asked Mrs Kirbyshire.

  ‘This is the extraordinary thing,’ said the policeman. ‘She was found by Lionel the boatman – you know, the one who has The Kingswear Treasure—’

  ‘He’s got far too many tattoos,’ said Mrs Sennitt-Sasse in a warning tone.

  ‘Yes, well, be that as it may,’ said the policeman, who was annoyed to have been interrupted, ‘even those with tattoos can find dead bodies, and Lionel found one round about ten minutes ago. He found Perrine. Said she looked like she’d been strangled – blue in the face, she was – but the really odd thing is this: she was in her bed, all neatly tucked in. And guess where the bed was? You never will, so I’ll tell you: her bed was on the wooden jetty down by where The Kingswear Treasure leaves from to go over to Dartmouth. That’s how come it was Lionel who found her.’ The policeman looked at his watch. ‘I must get down to the jetty right away,’ he said.

  ‘Wait!’ cried Sorrel Ingrey. ‘Please, before you go, take all these intruders out of my home, so that I can lock my family in safely again. Don’t leave these strangers here. I believe they might kill us all. Their thirst for revenge knows no bounds.’

  ‘Intruders? But you invited me,’ said Mrs Sennitt-Sasse.

  ‘Don’t be silly, Sorrel,’ said Bascom. ‘Nobody here could have got all the way to Lionel’s jetty and back this morning without us noticing.’

  ‘Then they had someone waiting just outside the gates of Speedwell House, ready to take Perrine and the bed,’ said Sorrel.

  ‘Don’t worry, Mrs Ingrey. We will get to the bottom of it, I assure you,’ said the policeman.

  ‘I expect you to keep your word on that,’ said Sorrel, looking him sharply in the eye. ‘Remember this: I was ready and willing to hand Perrine over so that justice could be done. Now that Perrine is the one who has been murdered, I expect you to be dedicated and tireless in your search for justice for Perrine. Murdering a murderer is not acceptable. That is why civilised countries do not have the death penalty.’

  The policeman looked as if he disagreed, but he nodded anyway.

  Fifteen minutes later, all the guest-intruders were gone, and Speedwell House was once again locked up so that the outside world couldn’t get in.

  Bascom and Sorrel Ingrey sat in the drawing room for hour upon hour. Bascom wept and Sorrel stared numbly into space. They didn’t seem to notice that their two less troublesome daughters were still alive and in need of attention.

  Ignored by their parents, Lisette and Allisande found it remarkably easy to sneak away. ‘Let’s go to the library,’ Lisette whispered.

  ‘But … it hasn’t been cleaned yet,’ said Allisande. ‘David Butcher’s body might not still be there, but there will be loads of blood. It’ll be horrid.’

  ‘I know,’ said Lisette. ‘I need to look at it, though. Things are horrid at the moment. There’s no way round that.’

  ‘I still don’t see why I have to sit in a room full of blood,’ said Allisande sulkily.

  Lisette felt it was important that she and Allisande should talk in the library. She had something momentous to say to her only living sister. She needed to confront her, and make her admit the truth. It stood to reason that the best place to do all this was in the library where they would be forced to face the horror that had taken over their lives – where the herringbone parquet floor would be wet and red with the blood of an innocent music teacher. It would be symbolically right, thought Lisette, for them to have this vital conversation in the library, in the presence of this haunting visual spectacle, but she couldn’t explain this to Allisande because you ruin a symbol if you explain it.

  In the end, she enticed her sister into the room by saying, ‘I’ve got an exciting secret, and I won’t tell you it unless you come in here with me.’

  There was not quite as much blood in the library as Lisette had expected. She had pictured almost enough to swim in, as if the library were a pool but with no deep end, just shallow all over the room. Like those children’s pools that you sometimes see next to the main pool at hotels. Instead, there were drops and smears and a couple of large-ish patches, but nothing up to knee height as Lisette had imagined. Mostly the library looked the same as it always had. ‘Why isn’t there more blood?’ she asked.

  Allisande (who had, remember, always been allowed to watch whatever she wanted on TV, while Lisette was busy doing only worthwhile, mind-improving activities that Bascom chose for her) said, ‘It’s because Perrine killed him ages before Mum slashed at him with a knife. I saw a TV movie where that happened: someone was stabbed to death, or looked as if they had been, and the police worked out that they hadn’t, and that they must have been already dead for ages, because of the lack of blood around the body. Apparently if you stab someone who’s already dead, nowhere near as much seeps out.’

  ‘Allisande,’ Lisette said gravely. ‘Who do you think murdered Perrine?’

  Allisande snorted to show that she didn’t think much of the question. ‘I’ve no idea!’ she said. ‘I suppose the obvious answer is Mrs Dodd, who is angry enough to turn into a raving homicidal maniac … but it can’t be her.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Too obvious.’

  ‘This is real life, not a story!’ Lisette exploded impatiently. ‘You’re trying to be flippant, as if someone’s made all this up for titillation, because you know the truth! You know it as well as I do, and you won’t admit it!’

  ‘I do not!’ Allisande protested. Her face had turned red.

  ‘Yes, you do. We know more than anyone else, don’t we, you and I? One by one, the guests went to get their breakfast from Mum and Dad in the kitchen, but we didn’t. Dad brought our plates in to us in the drawing room, remember, while Mum was busy in the kitchen?’

  ‘Oh – yes, you’re right,’ said Allisande grudgingly. ‘But I don’t see why that means—’

  ‘You do see,’ Lisette spoke over her. ‘Stop lying! I know it’s difficult to face the truth, and nothing in your life experience has trained you to persevere when something is difficult—’

  ‘I hate difficult!’ Allisande flounced off to the other side of the room, making sure not to step in David Butcher’s blood as she went. ‘Let’s not have this conversation, Lissy. Please? Let’s go to the gazebo and make lists of names we’re going to call our future children. I quite like Ptolemy for a boy and Arbella for a girl – what do you think? Not Ara bella – that has “arab” in it, which sounds like “scarab”, and isn’t that a beetle? – but Ar bella. Do you like it?’

  ‘We have to talk about this, Sandie,’ said Lisette. ‘You and I were sitting, the whole time, in chairs in the drawing room that faced the window. We were still there when everyone else came in and settled down for the big group meeting, and we kn
ow that Perrine can’t have been murdered after that point because there was no one available to murder her – all the suspects were in the drawing room.’

  ‘Oh, shut up, shut up!’ moaned Allisande.

  ‘Whoever took Perrine out of the house, with all the pieces of her bed in tow, they must have gone out through the front door and along the drive. There’s no other way. The back door was never unlocked, and it’s only reachable if you go down the other flight of stairs, the one on the side of the house where Perrine’s bedroom isn’t.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ said Allisande. ‘Someone could have come down the stairs near the drawing room, straight from Perrine’s bedroom, and then gone round to the back door instead of going to the front door. If they stole the key to the back door—’

  ‘But they couldn’t have done!’ said Lisette in an impassioned voice. ‘The only key to the back door is kept in the drawing room in the glass-fronted cabinet, and we were in the drawing room the whole time! We’d have seen if any of the guests had gone to the cabinet and taken the key. No one went anywhere near it!’

  ‘Intruders,’ muttered Allisande.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You called them guests. I call them intruders.’

  Lisette’s heart sank.

  ‘One of them murdered our sister,’ said Allisande.

  ‘Sandie, you have to tell the truth – to me and to yourself! From where we were sitting, we would have seen if anyone went out of the front door. Who did we see? Who did you see?’

  ‘Two policemen, taking David Butcher’s body out on a sort of stretcher thing.’ Suddenly, Allisande’s eyes lit up. ‘What if it wasn’t only his body? What if Perrine was in there too? You know how the legend of evil Perrine has spread across the whole of the local area, and even as far as Paignton and Torquay – what if the police decided to take care of a murderer in a forbidden way, without any trial or anything?’

  ‘I thought of that,’ said Lisette. ‘But it’s impossible. David Butcher’s body was in a bag, wasn’t it? A zipped-up bag, exactly the shape of a person – one person, an adult male. Perrine wouldn’t have fitted in the bag, no way – and even if she had, what about the big wooden headboard of her bed, and all the other bed pieces. None of the policemen were carrying any bits of bed at all.’