‘It could have been the caboose hitting the door – it shook the whole room,’ I said.
‘Or it could mean she’s dead already.’
‘Come. I know where to look.’
Our weapons were gone, but we still had our flashlights. Even so, we were blinded in the dark passage after the brightness of the candlelit room. I stumbled against the train carriage and banged my shin. An ambush was likely. We squeezed past and I led Emily by her hand to the trapdoor that I remembered led to the torture museum. I pulled off the trapdoor covering and peered in.
I did not know what to expect. Maybe our eleventh day of Christmas victim.
I played the flashlight on Linda’s corpse below. The cold air blew strong across the room. The room lay in darkness; the windows were wide open. ‘It’s the middle of the night,’ I said. ‘We must have been out for hours.’
‘Don’t make me go down there,’ said Emily as she saw me lower myself down the trapdoor.
‘Better than up there.’ I aimed for a clear patch of floor and jumped. Rolled over. ‘Jump. I’ll catch you.’
Emily manoeuvred herself over the opening and leaped towards me.
‘Gotcha.’
We shone our lights across the room: the guillotine, the open window where the curtains danced like graceful ghosts, the iron maiden, the draped head, corpses.
I was expecting more. Anticipating some other diabolical torture instrument used on her. A corpse impaled on the Judas Cradle. But the room was empty of new victims.
My stomach was in a knot. I raided the cabinet for weapons. ‘Here, Emily.’ I passed her a tongue-extractor and took a knuckle-duster for myself, and the breast-ripper for good measure. ‘Careful, someone might be waiting for us.’
I froze at the sounds of laboured breathing, the groaning of wood. A flickering light casting shadows of demons on the back walls came from under the closed door to the library.
‘In there,’ whispered Emily.
I nodded.
‘It’s a trap,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t–’
But I did not hesitate. I pushed the door open, weapon out in front of me.
Burning candles dotted the floor.
The Catherine wheel had been placed in the centre of the library. I should have noticed it missing from the torture museum. Suzanne was bent backwards over the wheel, strapped by her ankles and wrists. She opened her eyes, first in terror then in relief. ‘Thank God. Rafe! Emily!’
Around her a hundred candles glimmered, dripping wax onto the floor. ‘Where is he?’ she moaned.
‘Who?’ said Emily.
‘I don’t know. I never saw him. I woke up tied to this monstrosity. I’ve been here for hours. But I knew he would be coming for me at dawn.’ She cocked her head to the wall behind us where a message had been pinned up:
‘Dawn. Twelfth day of Christmas my true love sent to me, twelve drummers drumming.’
She shuddered. ‘I guess I am to be the final sacrifice, the climax of his killings. After seeing that room with all the pictures of me, I know–’
‘Not anymore.’ I untied her hands, Emily her feet, and together we helped her off the wheel.
I held out her left hand. ‘Look.’
Suzanne jerked her hand back in surprise at seeing the ring on her finger – the ring Glen had worn, the ring the killer had removed from his body and placed in the computer room.
I stared at her. Such conflicting feelings. And suspicions. But she had to be innocent now, I was sure of it.
Yet she had been left here to live, not die. As a trap. I scanned the room, checked the entrances. And then I heard a booming noise above us. A thudding. It echoed the beating of my heart.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
‘What the hell?’ I said.
‘Twelve drummers drumming?’ said Suzanne. ‘Oh God, no, he’s coming for me.’
I listened to the thudding. Then I knew what it was. ‘Time to get outside. The courtyard. Quickly!’
12
Twelve drummers drumming
Darkness still shrouded the castle, but as we burst out of the library and ran down to the living room to stare out of the window, we saw streaks of grey on the horizon – the dawn of the twelfth day of Christmas.
A searchlight from the sky scoured the courtyard, and we looked up to see a helicopter thudding over the castle walls. We shone our flashlights up in the sky through the window, and moments later the chopper began to descend over the courtyard.
My heart lifted. ‘Well done, Emily, they took your SOS call seriously.’
As the whirlybird lowered, the snow blasted the windows and obscured our view. The blades whipped up a new mini-storm and the throbbing of its engine and blades rattled the panes. But we welcomed the battering of the air, the pelting snow, the thudding of the blades as the chopper manoeuvred its skis onto the frozen drifts and the blasts of air under the chopper splattered snow against the walls of the castle.
The air cleared. I saw the chopper now in all its detail: a twin-engine Kawasaki BK117. I could see it was fitted with searchlights, cameras and winches for search and rescue operations. As soon as it touched down, three uniformed paratroopers, with assault weapons, leaped out and ran towards the front door. I ran to the entrance, opened the door and raised my hands. ‘Thank you for coming!’
The lead man lowered his weapon. ‘Qualcuno ferito?’
‘There are seven dead bodies,’ I shouted. ‘We believe the killer is in the castle.’
It was impossible to be heard while the rotors were spinning. I stepped aside to allow the paratroopers to run through the front entrance. ‘How many?’ one of them called out.
‘Three survivors,’ I shouted, holding up three fingers. Emily and Suzanne huddled around me.
Two medics with packs jumped out into the snow and followed the paratroopers inside, followed by a man dressed in an electric blue ski jacket, as if he had a day on the slopes in mind. ‘Energia?’
I shook my head.
In the living room, the medics quickly checked over Emily and Suzanne. One placed a large electric lamp on the mantelpiece.
The civilian man introduced himself as Ispettore Tivoli. ‘Cos’è successo?’
‘Where do I begin?’ I said. ‘Maybe the torture museum. There are four dead bodies in there; but there is also a body in a bedroom, one in the pond and one in the snowdrift under the tower. I can show you the exact location.’
‘Madre mia.’
‘But first, the killer is still in the castle. You will need to secure that. There are secret corridors above the rooms and a secret control room. I’ll show you.’
The inspector translated this all to the waiting paratroopers, who held their weapons at port when they heard the last piece of information.
‘Rafe!’ called Emily. She pointed to the dining room table. ‘He’s not finished. He’s–’
The head of the table was decked out with twelve little drummer boy figurines and a scroll on which was printed the Apostles’ Creed. I finished her sentence. ‘–still playing games.’
I walked over to the table, picked up the scroll and read the familiar twelve articles of faith that were the foundation of the Christian Church.
And underneath, scrawled in what looked very much like Suzanne’s handwriting:
And thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.
I’ll be revenged on the whole pack of you!
‘Another Bible verse,’ said Emily.
‘No,’ Suzanne gasped, ‘that’s not from the Bible, it’s Shakespeare. From Twelfth Night. The last line of Feste’s speech and then Malvolio’s line.’
I stared at the mirror, trying to work it out. Stared at the reflection of myself in the mirror. Reflected on mirrors. You could look at the mirror or you could look through the mirror at what was being reflected. Or you could look behind the mirror, as Dorothy looked behind a curtain in The Wizard of Oz.
Twelfth Night? Some memory echoed uncomfortably in my mind, out of my c
onscious grasp. Until Suzanne said, ‘Remember the school play we acted in? Twelfth Night. Maybe that has something to do with this.’
Twelfth Night was about reflections, doubles, characters disguising themselves as other characters. About appearances and deceit and… revenge.
‘Yes, everything,’ I said, suddenly realising the truth. ‘Everything. It was all about mirrors. Reflections.’
I was busy all morning walking through the castle with the paratroopers and the inspector. He demarcated the crime scenes, and I explained the sequence of events, how the murders were discovered.
Then we braved the morning air and I pointed out the whereabouts of Mike’s frozen corpse in a now completely snow-buried pond. Same with Glen. I indicated the place he had fallen, and the markers I used to identify the exact spot. ‘He is the important one,’ I said. ‘The key to this whole mystery. Please tell me when you have located and recovered his body.’
I told them about the concierge and his car in the garage, and the inspector nodded. He knew Signor Antonio Alfieri from the village.
By midday, the castle and its surrounds, according to the inspector, were ‘secure’, he said in his very formal English. No trace of the killer had been found, though they had combed the secret corridors and searched the control room and the cellar. Forensics would arrive later, once the survivors had been airlifted, and he promised they would take this place apart. The bodies of the deceased would be treated with respect, removed to the nearest morgue, and next of kin informed. But this was for now a crime scene, and we had been right not to attempt to move or tamper with evidence.
‘But they haven’t found the killer,’ said Emily. ‘They’ve searched every room, the corridors, the secret passages.’
I shook my head. ‘They’re looking in the wrong places. I know exactly where he is.’
‘You do?’ said Emily. ‘Then pray share.’
‘I have just worked it out. Or rather, Suzanne worked it out for me.’
‘I did?’ said Suzanne.
Emily and Suzanne were standing around the fire, still wrapped in blankets. I paced up and down. The pieces were finally in place. I just had to prove it.
At that moment, the inspector and his crew joined us in the living room. The irony, and I did not believe in synchronicity, was that I counted twelve people present at this gathering, this epiphany when all would be revealed: three of us, four paratroopers, the two medics, the inspector, the chopper pilot… and the murderer, still somewhere in the castle, I guessed.
No. I knew. I knew exactly where he was.
Lunchtime: our rescuers had brought food. We were not going to touch the concierge’s delights for fear of poison, so we contented ourselves with a few paninis and some brodo.
After lunch, we sat in a circle in the living room, sipping coffee. I stood in front of the mirror and called everyone’s attention. ‘As we all know, the twelfth day of Christmas is the day of the Epiphany, when Christ revealed the truth about himself to the world.’
The inspector nodded, looking puzzled. He hadn’t come here to listen to a sermon.
‘Don’t worry, ispettore, I am not claiming to be Christ. Or Christ-like. As a philosopher, I do not believe in the paranormal, or God’s predestined plan for mankind, or the cosmic significance of numerological signs. Or coincidence. First introduced by psychologist Carl Jung, the notion of synchronicity maintains that simultaneous occurrence of events with no causal relationship can be “meaningful coincidences” and thus the events are related.’
Emily furrowed her brows. ‘Get to the point.’
‘These twelve days are my point. Maybe even Reverend James believed that God arranges events this way, or Satan maybe. But what happened here was a mockery, an imitation of a plan. The killer exploited Reverend James’ naïve and medieval superstitions in a meaningful pattern whereby the universe is numerically consistent. And this is what I am going to reveal. Why this killer did it this way, how he did it, and most importantly who he is.’
I was still not sure I was up to the task. I had been piecing it together all along the way, and the clues now made sense. But maybe this was self-deception, making a meaningful pattern out of random insignificances. Maybe I was also guilty of ‘a causal parallelism’?
I addressed the inspector. ‘We are the remnants of the disciples of a cult called The Twelve led by Reverend James, who organised this retreat to isolate us and make us repent of our sins. But one person wanted revenge, judgement, wanted us all dead. And if you give me a few minutes, I will try to explain.’
The inspector crossed his legs, sat back. ‘Go ahead.’
‘Exhibit number one is the recording played on the fourth night of Christmas. This was planned. And this one who wanted us dead claimed that he was one of us. A Judas, a betrayer of The Twelve. That threw us all into turmoil, because we began to accuse one another. But he made one mistake. This is not an Agatha Christie closed-room mystery. One of us could not have carried out all these murders. The murders we have witnessed required great engineering skill, planning, collaboration. As you all now know, there is an elaborate network of passageways and surveillance equipment in this castle, of unwieldy torture instruments, which would make it impossible for one sole murderer to carry out all these crimes.’
‘So if it was not one of us,’ interrupted Emily, ‘then who? The owner of the castle? Only he would know about those passageways. Or the concierge.’
I nodded. ‘One person wanted us all dead. One of us. But I suspected collusion. He or she had to have had an accomplice. A hitman. The concierge, perhaps?’
‘Are you saying that we are still suspects?’ said Emily.
I nodded. ‘A murderer who wants the satisfaction of seeing his victims die horrible deaths would want to be there to the very end to see the results of his handiwork… or her handiwork.’
She looked at Suzanne and I returned their gaze. Then they both looked at me. Maybe they expected me to confess that I was the murderer.
‘The twelve days of Christmas did not yield twelve deaths,’ I said. ‘Only seven. Maybe we three were supposed to survive? Maybe he was just playing with us. He could have killed us but didn’t. He wanted us alive at the end. For what?’
‘I’m confused,’ said the inspector.
‘Let’s go back to the first murder. Or accident. Or hoax gone horribly wrong. Or deceit.’
The officer listened. Occasionally, the others whispered to one another, translating into Italian.
‘We all came here with secrets, and many of us had the intention of exposing those secrets, or making others accountable for past actions. We know, for example, that Glen, the first man murdered, was having an affair with the Reverend’s wife, Linda. We also know that Suzanne had broken his heart, that he was still not over it and was planning to confront her at this retreat. He wore her ring to his death.’
Suzanne nodded.
‘Because Glen called me aside, showed me your ring. He wanted in these twelve days to sort things out with you. He told me. You showed me a letter that said as much. And he was not the only one. Most of the men here had crushes on you and were hoping to talk about it with you. You received notes and whispered conversation from Danny. And even I, I need to confess, had something to resolve.’
Suzanne opened her mouth to object. ‘Those were fake notes. I didn’t write them.’
‘Further, Glen knew something. He told Emily and me to lock our doors. He knew something would happen. He knew there was a plan to murder us all. Maybe he knew the murderer. But he died before he could tell me.’
‘He was murdered to stop him spilling the beans,’ said Emily.
‘Spilling the beans?’ said the inspector.
‘La fuoriuscita di fagioli,’ whispered the man by his side.
I continued. ‘It was no accident. The balcony had been tampered with.’
‘So who killed Glen?’ said Emily. ‘Do you know?’
‘Obviously, Reverend James would be a suspect. He
wanted revenge for being cuckolded by his wife and Glen. But he was horrified when you found out that Glen was really murdered. Or maybe Linda did it. I saw someone with Glen just before he was murdered.’
‘La trama densa,’ said the inspector.
‘I suspected Linda. Ali. Even you, Emily. But on his body there was a trace of perfume. Your perfume, Suzanne.’
Suzanne shook her head. ‘I was being framed.’
‘Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe you and the killer had made a plan, and created this red herring, a clue so obvious it could not be believed.’
‘Che?’ said the inspector.
‘Murder number two. Stephen came to me, terrified. He knew something too, but was murdered before he could talk. A pattern here. He knew of Reverend James’ plans, and so when he saw Glen murdered, he thought the Reverend was out to kill us all.’
Emily nodded. ‘That was my guess.’
‘Yes, we realised then that this was a pattern, and it followed Reverend James’ sermons. Glen was stoned to death for adultery, Stephen was beheaded, just as it happened on the first and second day of Christmas to early Christian martyrs. We began to suspect some scheme at work.’
Suzanne shifted uneasily in her seat.
‘But Stephen was behind all the arrangements, Reverend James told us. He allocated which day we were, he worked with James on the sermons, he came here in advance to set things up. So maybe he was the organiser of all this, but then got a guilty conscience and so had to be eliminated.’
Emily shook her head. ‘I thought so too. But–’
‘Then the series of murders, as planned. One per day. And they each had one thing in common.’
‘The twelve days,’ said Suzanne.
‘Your perfume, Suzanne. Every one of those crime scenes smelt of your perfume.’
‘I told you, he was trying to implicate me.’
‘I thought so at first, but then I realised – each murder was because of you. He wanted to implicate not you but the victims. Each one had dealings with you. Each murder was a message to you. And this is how I solved the mystery.’
Twelve Days Page 25