I nodded. ‘That library door was open in the middle of the night. Wide open. Every door can be controlled electronically, remember?’ I scanned the room again. Something was different. I just couldn’t figure out what.
Then Alison screamed. ‘Ugh, I stood on something sticky.’ She lifted her feet, and I squinted to see what it was. ‘A flashlight, please.’
‘Oh my God,’ said Emily as she shone the light on the floor.
‘Come away from there.’ My heart thumped insistently. Alison had been standing next to the iron maiden. And that was what was different. The iron maiden, the sarcophagus with spikes, had been open, upright and on display the last time I had seen it, like a crocodile displaying its teeth. Even at midnight, I distinctly remembered seeing it open at a ninety-degree angle. Now it was shut. And from the bottom of the rectangular-shaped coffin oozed a pool of viscous gleaming liquid. Alison had stood in this patch of what looked like oil or glue. She left footprints as she walked away.
Linda screamed. ‘It’s blood.’
I shone the flashlight on the sealed iron maiden casket. The maiden engraved on its lid screamed in silent terror, her naked, steel-black torso gleaming in the reflected light.
‘Don’t,’ said Reverend James as I reached for the coffin handle to open it. ‘Everyone back.’
Linda and Alison hid behind Reverend James. He shielded them with his arms as if I was going to unleash some terrible attack on them. Suzanne stepped backwards out into the doorway.
We all knew what we were going to find. I yanked on the two metal clasps on the lid and pulled the iron maiden open, slowly. My feet stuck to the floor. I wanted to retch. I could smell death.
It was jammed. I pulled with two hands at the lid. ‘Someone give me a hand!’
Emily wrapped her dressing gown tight around her and stood on one side. Her slippers stuck to the floor as she positioned herself to pull on the handle. ‘Slowly now, on the count of three.’
It gave reluctantly, as if it had been glued shut. It made a ghastly sucking noise as the two sides parted. I had steeled myself for what was inside, but even so, I stepped back in shock. Emily gasped and let go of the handle.
The iron maiden was occupied. What had been a polished casket of gleaming spikes was now a mess of bloodied flesh impaled front and back. The lid which we had just pulled open tore away the flesh on its five spikes.
Danny’s dead eyes stared out at us in sullen terror. One spike had pierced his throat, another had gone straight through his heart. The third spike had impaled his back. Of the remaining two, one had pierced his left thigh and one his right arm. Blood had drained out of the bottom of the casket onto the floor and had congealed around the casket.
Reverend James shielded his eyes and prayed. ‘Please, God. No.’
Alison doubled over, clutching her stomach and dry retching. Linda embraced her, trembling violently. Emily stared, wide-eyed, silent. ‘We have got to get out of here – and get hold of the police,’ said Suzanne.
‘I’m not staying here a second longer,’ said Alison to Reverend James. She wiped her slippers on the floor, as though wiping off mud. ‘You have to get us out of here. Now.’
I stared at the body, and then at the sarcophagus that had enshrined Danny. The spikes had been strategically placed to penetrate his body from both sides. There was no way anyone could live once trapped inside this coffin.
‘Close it,’ called Reverend James.
I ignored him. Instead, I reached into the casket and touched Danny’s face, felt for the pulse in his neck. His skin was cold. He had been dead a while. His eyes gazed out at the room. Danny, Danny, what were you doing here at midnight? Why didn’t I see you? Why couldn’t I save you? Who did this to you?
On Danny’s neck, I found the same little red dot I had seen on Stephen. I stepped away, my feet sticky on the blood. Emily peered over and saw the red dot too. Alison and Linda hid behind Reverend James, and Suzanne stood by the door with arms folded, hugging herself tightly. She fixed her eyes on me.
‘Didn’t you sleep in the same room?’ Emily whispered. ‘I mean, how did he… get separated?’
Reverend James answered. ‘He was gone when we woke in the morning.’
‘He got up in the middle of the night,’ I said. ‘I saw him.’
‘No!’ said Suzanne from the doorway. Her reaction was so unexpected, I stared at her. She reddened. Her lips quivered. ‘No! No! No!’
‘Rafe, you should have stopped him,’ said Reverend James. ‘At least you should have woken me up.’ He stared hard at me.
‘I thought he was going to the loo. I followed him.’
All eyes were on me. Prime suspect. ‘Wait a minute. Listen to me.’
‘You followed him where?’ said Suzanne.
‘To the library.’
‘Oh God,’ said Suzanne, looking so pale I thought she might faint. Alison and Linda held her. I stared at her, suspicion and nausea mounting inside me to breaking point. The note. Of course. She had lured him there with her note.
‘And,’ said Reverend James. ‘You saw him in the library.’
I shook my head. ‘I saw him go through the open door between the library and this room. Last night this door was open. But when I followed him, I couldn’t see him anywhere.’
Alison stepped out from behind Reverend James to face me, her eyes full of hatred and accusation. ‘You were here in the middle of the night?’
‘I was. The iron maiden was open and empty when I searched this room. I’m sure of that. I went back to the men’s bedroom, and there he was, or so I thought. So I went to sleep. But in the morning, I realised he hadn’t returned. It was just his bedclothes, arranged to look as if he was still there.’
I said nothing about the note. An instinct, a hunch. Suzanne’s terrified eyes fixed on me. She had just moved into number one spot for prime suspect. Or maybe tied with Reverend James.
But for the others, the air was frigid with judgement against me.
A murderer, I wanted to say, would not confess to following the victim out to his death.
Alison’s face was cold and judgemental.
Reverend James frowned. ‘Come.’ He ushered the women out of the room and into the corridor. ‘It’s freezing. Close the door.’
‘Poor Danny,’ said Alison.
‘And Stephen…’ said Linda.
‘And Glen,’ said Emily.
‘And Mike,’ I said.
Reverend James closed the door. We stood in the corridor, suspicion our closest companion.
Emily wrapped her dressing gown tightly across her chest. ‘This is beyond terrible. We can’t just passively…’
I turned to leave but felt the Reverend clutch at my arm. ‘Where are you going, Rafe?’
I shook free of his grasp. ‘I’ll meet you in the living room.’
He grabbed at me, but I ducked past him. ‘You’re not going anywhere on your own!’
I marched past him and bolted along the corridor to the men’s bedroom, ignoring the footsteps I could hear behind me. I rushed to Danny’s bedside table to get the note, but it was gone. I searched the floor in case it had blown off, flapped the blanket and pillows in case it was in Danny’s bed. But it had vanished.
‘Rafe?’
Suzanne stood, out of breath, at the doorway. ‘I have to talk to you urgently.’ She closed the door behind her and locked it. She had a mad look about her, as if she might do anything, and for a second I felt a sudden sharp fear that here was the killer and she was coming after me. To silence me. To get her incriminating note.
But no.
‘I can’t believe I did it again,’ she said, bursting into tears and throwing herself against me. Her pink dressing gown was soft. Her hair smelt of green apple shampoo. Her perfume revolted me now.
I tried to hold her away from me. ‘Tell me…’
Sniffing, she pulled out a piece of paper from her pocket and passed it to me. ‘Danny gave me this last night.’
I
stared at the childish block letters, unevenly spaced and aligned.
Meet me at midnight. Library. Urgent. Life or death. Please, Suzanne, I need to speak with you, or I will die. Don’t fail me this time.
Suzanne gripped my shirt. ‘I didn’t go. I got this note and I thought, It’s a set-up. He’s trying to lure me away.’
I held her hand tight. ‘So this is what you have been trying to tell me.’
She held me tighter. Spoke into my chest. ‘I locked the door and made sure no one could get in. I was waiting all night for Danny to come and get me.’
Now I was confused. I had steeled myself off from her, suspected terrible things of her, but with her in my arms, all I could feel was compassion. ‘You thought he was the killer?’
She nodded. ‘And then when he died, I first thought he killed himself. Like Glen. Like Stephen. Like Mike. Because of me. The note says he will die if he doesn’t speak with me, and so I killed him.’
I tried to pry her from me, not trusting her, not wanting to feel what I was feeling, but she held on. ‘Suzanne, get a grip, calm down. They didn’t kill themselves. None of them.’
‘I’m scared, Rafe.’ She grabbed my shirt and pulled.
I steadied her hand. ‘Danny had the five golden rings card. Not you.’ I took a breath. ‘Suzanne, I have to ask you something–’
But she pulled away and cocked her head towards the door. ‘Shh!’
Outside I heard the troop coming along the corridor to find us, calling our names.
‘It’s okay,’ I shouted out. ‘We’ll be right there.’
I held her shoulder and stared into her eyes. I wanted to see how she reacted. ‘Danny had a note. In your handwriting. I read it. It was by his bed and now it’s gone.’ I gestured to the table. ‘I came back to get it.’
Her eyes widely innocent, her lip quivering, like a scene from one of her movies, she asked, ‘What did it say?’
‘The same as yours. Meet me at midnight.’ I hesitated. ‘A secret tryst.’
She gripped my collar tighter, until our faces were inches from each other. ‘I never wrote a note to him. Never.’
Her eyes were teary, beseeching. My heart was racing. How could I not believe her? ‘You sure?’
‘Why would I write him a note?’
The door shook as someone hammered on it. Reverend James. ‘Rafe?’
She tensed up against me.
‘Just give us a minute,’ I called.
‘So you never wrote him a note?’
She detached herself from me and walked up and down the room, as if she was performing a soliloquy. I could see she was distressed. Or was playing the part of someone distressed. And overacting. She grabbed her hair; she wrung her hands.
I pointed to the chest of drawers where I had found the note.
‘I never wrote to him. Ever.’
I stared into her eyes again. She looked sincere, but then again, if she could cry on demand, she was capable of faking any emotion. More hammering at the door. Linda’s voice. ‘You okay, Suzanne?’
‘She’s fine,’ I called back. ‘Give us a minute, please.’ I pushed Suzanne towards the window, away from the door. ‘So if you are right, someone set you up. Or set him up.’
‘You don’t believe me?’
I stared at her pouting lips but did not say what I really thought. If I was going to play to win, I knew enough to keep some cards to myself. ‘But if the note I saw was fake, then the letter from Glen might be fake too. Maybe someone is using you as bait to lure them to their deaths.’
She looked afraid. Stood back from me.
‘Cat and mouse. Fisherman and fish.’
The hammering on the door continued. Reverend James yelled, ‘Open this door. Now.’
I crumpled her note and stuffed it in my pocket. ‘Not a word about the notes. I want to get to the bottom of this. Find whoever wrote them.’
In response, she touched my lips with her fingers. I unlocked the door. Reverend James stood in the entrance, red-faced. ‘How dare you–’
Linda and Alison pushed past me and embraced Suzanne, escorted her out into the corridor as if rescuing her from my evil clutches. ‘You okay?’ Alison said to her, shooting me an accusing look.
I glared back. ‘She’s fine. Everything’s fine,’ I said.
Reverend James narrowed his eyes. ‘It’s not fine, Rafe. It is definitely not fine.’
Emily stood, arms folded, shaking her head at me.
No one felt like eating, but that is what we did. Anything to feign a sense of normalcy after seeing Danny impaled like a chicken kebab. Linda poured trembling mugs of strong coffee for each of us, and Alison brought in a plate of pancakes. Thank goodness. I could not stomach more bacon and sausages. I dripped maple syrup on my pancakes and wolfed down three to quell my queasy stomach, then burnt the disgust down my throat with black coffee. I stared at Danny’s placemat, at the five plastic rings, at the torn books of the Bible piled up on the floor.
I expected that Emily, being a nurse, was the only one of us who had seen a dead body before. I had never seen heads decapitated or bodies drowned, or splattered on rocks, or pierced through with thirty-centimetre-long swords in an enclosed space. And never had I been so helpless as to have to leave them in that state and to sit in the same house, eating pancakes and staring at their possible murderers. This had a surreal quality about it, thinking of Stephen and Danny as if they were exhibits in the museum, their blood pooled around their bodies in halos of stickiness.
I should move them, for dignity’s sake.
No, we should get the police.
No, just get the hell out of here. Escape this madhouse.
But we were snowed in, buried in an icy morgue.
And now the notes. I didn’t know if I could trust Suzanne’s account of things. I sifted through the new evidence in my mind. It seemed… childish. Exchanging notes as if we were teenagers. Someone was playing games here, dabbing Suzanne’s perfume everywhere. And, if she was to be believed, someone was forging her handwriting, playing a silly – but very deadly – game.
1)Suzanne receives a love note from Glen. Glen dies that night.
2)Danny receives a note from Suzanne. Suzanne receives a love note from Danny. Danny dies that night.
3)Glen warns me to lock my door. He dies before explaining why.
4)Stephen tells me he has evidence. He dies before he can explain.
5)Suzanne’s perfume is found at the scene of every murder (except maybe Mike’s).
Suzanne. Suzanne. Suzanne. I stared at her in critical fascination. Tried to separate the facts from the feel of her embrace, her pleading eyes.
‘More coffee for you all,’ said Linda. ‘It will help.’
Reverend James’ face was ashen as he held out his cup. ‘I knew this would happen,’ he said.
I looked up at him sharply.
‘Satan was ready to pounce. He saw it as a challenge. The Twelve getting together again. I thought we were strong, but we were divided.’
He is mad, I thought, or else presenting a cunning smokescreen. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘I should never have invited you all here. Face our sins, confess our iniquities. He’s mocking me.’
Now was the time to confront him, with all the others present so he could not squirm away. ‘Reverend James, you planned all this. We need to talk about what was supposed to happen.’
He looked frightened. Cornered. ‘I planned for each of us to consider our sins on the day chosen for us… but only to purify ourselves. Not murder. I didn’t foresee this cruel mockery of my intentions.’
I stared into those eyes. Saw delusion, saw fundamentalist truth, pain, heartache, righteous stubbornness. But did I see a murderer? ‘Well, let’s hear it then, Reverend.’ He looked like a cornered rabbit. ‘The sermon. You said you had one prepared for each day of Christmas. A lesson for each of us. So, let’s hear it.’
‘Don’t mock the Lord,’ said Alison, staring at me w
ith such hatred I could feel it as a physical force.
‘He’s not the Lord,’ I said. I sipped my coffee slowly. ‘We have a killer playing cat and mouse with us. They may be one of us.’ I stared at Alison until she dropped her gaze.
‘Or,’ she said, her voice full of ice, ‘he may have followed Danny out into the corridor last night and killed him.’
‘Or,’ I said, looking directly at the Reverend, ‘he may have planned this to coincide with his Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. Each death suspiciously follows the pattern laid out by Reverend James’ sermons.’
Reverend James clapped his hands as if to kill an annoying mosquito. ‘Enough!’
Linda placed her hand on her husband’s shoulders, hid behind him, stared at me.
‘Okay, okay,’ said Emily, clattering her cup on the table. ‘Let’s all take it easy. For all we know, it has nothing to do with any of us. It may be someone hiding in the castle, such as the concierge or the owner. That’s what we need to consider. Be alert, stick together – for now.’ She stabbed a look at me. ‘Every time someone wanders off on their own, they get killed. Never, ever go off on your own, anyone.’
‘You can talk,’ said Alison, pointing her nose contemptuously at Emily. ‘You and Rafe are going off all the time.’
Linda added her protest. ‘And Rafe ran off with Suzanne to his room.’
Suzanne turned on Linda, angry. ‘He didn’t run off with me.’
Reverend James raised his hands. ‘Please, please, girls.’
Alison pressed her hand to her head. ‘We have to get out of here. Today. We’re rats in a cage.’
I did not want my request side-tracked. ‘Go ahead, Reverend James,’ I said. ‘I’m not being facetious. I really want to hear today’s sermon.’
Reverend James opened his Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and looked at each member of the group in turn. He licked his lips and began: ‘Who was martyred on the 29th December, the fifth day of Christmas?’
Blank stares. He found the dog-eared page and pointed to an underlined passage. ‘St Thomas à Becket.’
‘The Archbishop of Canterbury?’ said Alison, her curiosity piqued in spite of her terror.
He nodded to her. ‘In 1170, on the fifth day of Christmas, four of King Henry II’s knights burst into Canterbury Cathedral after the Archbishop had given his Christmas sermon on the true meaning of Christmas. They stabbed him with their swords. Five times. Five wounds.’
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