by Josh Lanyon
John absently stroked my back. “Let me see if I have this right. You think Tours to Die For is secretly hosting a make-believe whodunit?”
“Yes! Well...yes. I think so.” Hearing John put into words, the idea sounded farfetched. But the notion that Rose Lane had been murdered in her sleep and Sally...what? Thrown down a well? Was equally—or maybe even more—farfetched.
“What would be the point of hosting such an event if no one knew it was going on?” John asked, reasonably.
I thought it over. “Nearly everyone on this tour is a rabid mystery buff. The possibility of being caught up in a real-life mystery is guaranteed to entertain most of us, even if we don’t take it seriously.”
John’s mouth twitched like something funny had occurred to him.
“What?”
“Some of you would be bound to take it more seriously than others.”
I knew just as surely as if he had a thought bubble over his head that he was remembering me sneaking out of Rose’s hotel room the night before. I cleared my throat.
“Er, yeah. Probably.”
He grinned.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “You don’t have to say it.”
“Your expression when you saw me standing there—”
“You can shut up now.”
“No, but really, you make a very cute burglar. You can come burgle me any time.”
He bumped encouragingly against me, clearly not intending his words to act like an ice bucket, but they had that effect. My excitement faded. “Damn. You’re right.”
“I...am?”
“Our room being searched doesn’t fit. Shoving me down the stairs couldn’t be part of any planned murder-mystery weekend because I could have broken my neck.”
The good humor faded from John’s face. In fact, he looked unexpectedly bleak. “Yes. I know.”
I sighed. “It was a nice theory, and I’d prefer to think there’s nothing potentially dangerous going on, but the break-in messes up my whole thesis. No insurance company in the world would cover an enterprise that included shoving people down stairs.”
“True.” John said neutrally, “But maybe our room being searched wasn’t part of the rest of it.”
His eyes met mine apologetically.
“No?”
“I don’t think so,” John said. “In fact, I’d bet money on it.”
I started to answer but was cut off by a second loud and resounding reverberation of the dinner gong. We were about to miss having drinks in the drawing room with Vanessa.
“Maybe we could skip dinner, Sherlock,” John murmured, running a suggestive hand over my ass cheek. “We could continue to discuss the case. What do you say?”
“Regretfully, I say no way. If I’m right about this, the next couple of days are going to be so much fun.”
He sighed and gave me a light swat. “Okay. I’ll see you down there. Don’t fall through any trapdoors.”
“It’s the secret panels you have to watch out for,” I said. “Those are the ones that get you in the end.”
He cocked an eyebrow, opened his mouth, and I laughed. “Hold that thought, Watson.”
Chapter Nineteen
By the time I finished my shower, shaved, dressed and hurried downstairs I had completely convinced myself we were at the start of a Mystery Weekend to end all Mystery Weekends, so it was frankly a little disappointing when I walked into the drawing room and the first person I spotted was Rose.
She wore a yellow sequined dress and stood at the center of a circle of my fellow tour members, beaming and preening. Holding up her drink, she chortled, “As if I’d be so stupid as to let anyone see I suspected them of murder!”
John came up on my left and pushed a glass into my unresisting hand. “Surprise,” he said softly.
“Damn. It’s over?” I can’t pretend I didn’t feel deflated. Not only was the game finished, I’d missed the grand reveal.
“They always fall for it,” Hamish said sardonically, reaching for one of the hot morsels on the circulating trays of hors d’oeuvres. He had removed his alarming corrective glasses—and his hair piece and, it turned out, an impressive set of prosthodontics. He was probably twenty years younger than I’d ever suspected. So much for my sleuthing skills. So much for all our sleuthing skills. Hamish had sat under our noses for three days in that ridiculous get-up and we’d never suspected a thing.
Chagrined, I looked at John. He laughed. “It’s even worse in my case.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant, but didn’t get a chance to question him because Sally, in a brown silk dress decorated with smiling Cheshire cats, reached us and threw her arms around me. “Surprise!” She was laughing. “Or is it? I thought you were going to ruin everything this afternoon.”
“So, it was you down by the beach?” Not that there was much doubt now.
“I thought you guys would never go away! Of course, I didn’t know at the time the mystery weekend was going to be wound up tonight.” She made a face. “That was a letdown. I was really looking forward to my appearance at the séance.”
“Séance?”
“Yes. It would have been so much fun. It’s all cancelled now.”
I glanced around the room. Everyone was in their best party duds. Trevor and Vance were wearing kilts. Not just kilts. Vance was done up in full Highland regalia, from his ghillie brogues to the brown-and-white—suspiciously eagle-like—feather in his balmoral. What the—?
I took a harder look at Trevor’s muted blue-and-green kilt. The tartan was Matheson Hunting.
“How come you don’t have a kilt?” John asked.
“Uh, I used to.”
“Can you believe it?” Laurel joined us. “I feel like I should turn in my magnifying glass. I missed every single clue. I honestly believed Rose had died in her sleep and Sally had returned home. Jim didn’t notice anything either.”
“Alison said she never had so much trouble getting a group buzzing before,” Sally said. “There was supposed to be one other plant, but I’m not sure who. Apparently, she bailed on fulfilling her part at the last moment.”
“Daya.” I remembered the argument between Alison and Daya I’d stumbled on the day before. I glanced around the room, but Daya was nowhere to be seen. Roddy was there though. Flushed with alcohol and excitement, he was babbling enthusiastically to the Poe girls, who both wore hunted expressions.
A little ways off stood Ben and Yvonne. They were not speaking. Not to each other and not to anyone else in the room. As though feeling my gaze, Ben’s eyes met mine. He stared coldly at me and then looked away.
I sighed inwardly. Would trying to speak to him make it better or worse? What would I say? Can’t we still be friends? Vance already provided about all the drama I could take.
Sally was saying, “Was it? I don’t know. I only know the third person was supposed to have the missing journal. She was scheduled to disappear from the tour during the boat crossing, at which point you were all supposed to totally freak out. Well, those of you paying attention.” She grinned at me.
“We’ve been phoning your family,” I told her severely.
“I know!” She giggled, seemingly delighted by the idea.
As Sally was drawn away by Nedda, John clicked his glass against mine.
“Congratulations. You were right. It felt like a Host Your Own Murder, or whatever you called it, because it was.”
“How to Host a Murder. Yes. I guess so.” I sipped my drink. Single malt. He knew what I liked.
He seemed both amused and sympathetic. “Disappointed?”
“Er, that would probably make me a sociopath. I’m relieved. Mostly. And feeling like a total and complete dumbass for being quite so suggestible.”
“No, but you were perfect.” Sally rejoined us. “We were dropping clues like mad, and nobody was picki
ng up on them.”
“How did it work? Was it all arranged before the tour began?”
“Oh, no. Alison selected Rose the first night, and then Rose suggested me as the next victim because I totally bought into her story. I even warned her about making notes in her journal in front of Alison and Hamish.” Sally made a face at her own gullibility. “I wanted you to be the next victim, but Alison said we didn’t dare remove the only person paying attention to what was going on.”
“Whoa,” John said. “That was a close call.”
No lie. Being part of the mystery plot was liable to have spoiled getting to know John, and getting to know John was the best part of the trip by far.
Sally seemed about to explain further, but the hard, clear ring of silver against crystal cut across the noisy room. We all turned, falling silent.
Vanessa stood before the fireplace, but this was a very different woman from the afternoon’s Vanessa. She wore a black beaded sheath. Diamonds sparkled at her wrists and throat. She looked as cool and distant as a star in the midnight sky.
Her smile was hard and brittle. “I know you’re all dying to hear the details of our little mystery charade, but let’s save them for dinner. Grab your drinks and follow me.”
She glanced around and casually commandeered Trevor and Vance, strolling between them into the dining room.
The rest of us followed, quiet and docile, like lambs to the slaughter.
* * *
Something was wrong.
It was not the dinner, however. The mussel, onion and chanterelle soup was hot and delicately flavored. The roasted wild duck was perfectly seasoned and perfectly cooked. There was plenty of wine, good wine, and silver baskets of warm homemade bread were passed round the table many times. It was a wonderful meal, but after the first few bites, we could have been eating rocks in a box for all the attention I paid to the food.
As relieved as I was to find Rose still alive and Sally all in one piece, something still felt off. I remained uneasy, unsettled, though I couldn’t understand why.
Vance and Trevor were not speaking. That was immediately obvious to me, having been on the receiving end of Trevor’s icy and prolonged silences more than a few times. Vance, however, looked like he could hold his own in the sulking department, and they were not my concern anyway.
For the first time during the tour, Joel and Gerda Rice had broken off from Nelson and Wilma Scherf. The Scherfs spent the meal chatting with the Poe sisters. The Rices spent the meal chatting with the Kramers. And all the while, the Scherfs and the Rices watched John like cats keeping an eye on a particularly insouciant mouse.
If I noticed their attention, I figured John had to be aware of it, but if so, it didn’t worry him. He seemed in a great mood, eating his dinner with apparent appreciation, talking and laughing with the Matsukados and Alison and Hamish. He clearly thought the murder mystery weekend concept was no weirder than the tour’s original concept.
Yvonne sat on my left, sighing in long sufferance over each course, and serving as a buffer between me and Ben. If that was deliberate on her part, she could rest easy. Not only had Ben nothing to say to me, he had nothing to say to anyone at the table. That was puzzling. I didn’t think his dour mood could be all disappointment in me. So why had he gone so dark and gloomy since that afternoon?
All of these interactions were odd and uncomfortable, but could not account for my feeling of unease.
A pair of maids moved unobtrusively around the table, pouring wine and dishing out soup as Alison explained how Vanessa’s “murder game” worked. At the start of each tour, Alison selected two likely members of the group as “facilitators.” These people were given a very loose script to follow which they could embellish as they liked. Before the facilitators mysteriously disappeared from the tour, they each chose another person to act as an accomplice. As reward for their efforts, the facilitators came directly to the island to spend extra time with Vanessa in her castle.
“I wish it had been us,” Bertie said wistfully to Edie, who nodded sadly.
“By the time the tour reaches the island, it’s usually mayhem.” Alison was still smiling, but she sounded more put-out than pleased.
“It seems rather cruel to me,” Yvonne said.
Elizabeth Ogilvie, Vanessa’s PA, made a kind of clucking with her tongue. It was a uniquely Scottish sound, and clearly a reprimand.
Unexpectedly, Vanessa laughed. While she was following the conversations flowing around her, she had said almost nothing during the meal, and I think most of us were a little intimidated about trying to engage her.
Anyway, if she found it funny, Alison did not. She turned red. “Of course it’s not cruel,” she snapped. “It’s fun. You’re mystery readers. You all loved being in a real-life mystery.”
“This wasn’t a so-called ‘real life’ mystery,” Yvonne pointed out. “It was a needless and unwanted distraction from the tour we paid for. The very expensive tour we paid for.”
“Mother,” Ben murmured into the awkward pause.
“Oh? Some guests enter more into the spirit of things.” Vanessa shrugged her slim shoulders. She was still smiling that mocking little smile at Yvonne.
That was what had changed. That was what was wrong.
Something had happened since Vanessa had greeted us that afternoon. Something had made her angry. Very angry. It was there in the brightness of her tawny eyes and the twin points of color in her pale face, and it was in her smile. Not the wide, beautiful smile she had greeted us with. I could imagine her smiling like this right before she hit Donald Kresley with a rock. It made the hair on the back of my neck prickle.
What could have rocked her poise? Not Yvonne’s carping. If the rest of us could put up with Yvonne’s complaints for three days, Vanessa was unlikely to have reached the breaking point in the half an hour before dinner.
It needn’t be anything to do with the tour. Maybe she’d had bad news from her publisher or agent or salmon farm manager. Maybe the cook was quitting. Judging by this dinner, that would truly be a tragedy.
Anyway, for the most part I thought Alison was right. As a whole, our tour group seemed delighted to have taken part in Vanessa’s game, even if they’d missed most of the innings.
“The person searching our room—the guy who pushed me down the stairs—that was all part of this too?” I leaned over to ask Alison.
She shook her head. “No. That wasn’t part of the game. I’m afraid someone did try to rob you.”
I glanced at John. He was smiling as he listened to Laurel, but he patted my knee in apparent reassurance beneath the cover of the linen-topped table. I felt an unexpected surge of, well, call it affection because I was afraid to call it by the word that jumped to mind. No matter how easy and natural it felt between us, I’d only known him a couple of days.
After all, I’d lived with Trevor for three years and still hadn’t really ever known him.
Then again, I’d never had that instant sense of recognition, of being simpatico with Trevor that I’d felt with John. Maybe that meant something. Or maybe I just wanted it to mean something.
Could it really happen like that? So easily, so naturally? I’d heard friends talk about falling in love at first sight. I had always believed they were confusing lust for love, and then the love had come later. Not that there was anything wrong with that.
Alison interrupted my thoughts, saying darkly, softly, “She basically ruined this tour’s game. Until now it’s always been so much fun.”
“Don’t take what she said to heart. I think we all enjoyed being part of an adventure.”
She gave me an exasperated look. “I don’t mean her.” She glanced dismissively in Yvonne’s direction. She mouthed, “Bittywiddy.”
Oh. Right. Daya, who had agreed to take part in the murder game and then abruptly changed her mind.
“
Where is Daya?” I asked.
Yvonne, who had apparently been listening in the whole time, answered. “Roddy said she wasn’t feeling well after the ferry ride.”
“It was rougher than I expected,” I admitted.
Alison, still brooding over the spoiled game, said, “Ordinarily, by the time we get to the ferry, everyone is totally engaged and going crazy trying to figure out what’s happening. It’s like a team building exercise. And having shared that experience, it makes the rest of the tour brilliant.”
“Anyway, I thought it was a lot of fun,” I said. Which was true, especially in hindsight.
“You were pretty much the only person playing.” Alison suddenly laughed. “Oh my God. That was priceless when you snuck into Rose’s room. Hamish and I were rolling. We had a bet on that one.”
“You were watching?”
“Of course we were watching! I knew you’d go for it. Librarians are always the most proactive about getting to the bottom of the mystery. And teachers, of course, but you can’t count on all teachers.”
On that cryptic note, she turned away leaving me to wonder how many people had been spying on me that night and whether there were peepholes or miniature cameras or periscopes or whatever the hell installed at the Ben Wyvis Manor House Hotel. I sincerely hoped no one had been peering through the keyhole of our room—or that no film of any of my exploits existed.
Dessert was served. Toasted coconut ice cream with raspberry sauce. It was sweet and tart and delicious. Drambuie and other liqueurs circulated, but I stuck to ice cream. I’d had plenty of wine already, and my sense of disquiet persisted.
That said, by the time the meal was finished, Vanessa seemed to have relaxed a little. We adjourned to the library on the first floor.
As I walked through the carved double doors, my immediate thought was that this was where Vanessa lived. It just felt different from the rest of the castle.
The room was enormous, lined floor to ceiling with books as well as beautiful objets d’art. Not the curiosities and kooky knickknacks that decorated the halls and guest rooms. No stuffed animals or phony family portraits. Genuinely lovely pieces of sea glass and stone sat on low tables or behind the glass panes of the bookshelves.