Murder in Mystery Manor

by Anthony E. Zuiker

  The food was good enough that in spite of their surroundings, most of the guests ate enthusiastically. Darrel and Sophia were the only two guests who barely touched their food. Even Frank, one of the two Scared guests, ate nearly every bite he was served. In fact, being Scared almost seemed to have the opposite effect on him than it would on most. He attacked his meal in an almost violent way that made several of his fellow diners uncomfortable.

  The conversation during dinner stayed surprisingly irreverent. They talked of their jobs and families and sports. Neither Darrel nor Frank pled his case to the guests, one of whom was the killer and would ultimately decide their fate, as to why he should live. Darrel once again simply assumed he was doomed and spent most of dinner with his head down, saying very little. And Frank, on the contrary, believed he had nothing to fear. The killer wanted to be challenged by his knowledge and investigative skills. He knew that psychotic types like this always wanted a challenge. It’s why serial killers sometimes mailed letters and clues to law enforcement officials.

  After the meal, Giles entered the dining room and addressed the guests.

  “The killer has another surprise in store for us, it seems,” Giles said, and some of the guests groaned. “Fear not, though,” he continued, “this time it is a quite pleasant twist indeed. The killer has shared with me that the next murder will not occur within the next twenty-four hours. So, please, relax and enjoy your night. Tomorrow afternoon, the entirety of the estate will be made available for your enjoyment. Fishing on the lake, horseback riding, a trip through the hedge maze, the game room, the swimming pool, whatever you’d like, the choice is yours. But I do encourage you to enjoy your brief reprieve from the game at hand, as we may not get another. The maids will be available for drink service until eleven P.M. tonight. Otherwise, I will see you on the patio at ten A.M. for breakfast. Until then, I bid you all a good evening.”

  CHAPTER 19

  QING DING PEARL

  That night and into the following day, most of the guests thoroughly enjoyed their break from the game.

  Sophia and Parker spent the morning horseback riding, followed by a picnic on the west lawn, prepared by the house kitchen staff of course. After that, they spent the next several hours by the pool and the rest of the afternoon in Sophia’s suite.

  Thomas played several games of pool with Bryce in the recreation room and later lounged in the library reading a book. After leaving Thomas, Bryce went to the swimming pool and later back to his suite to get stoned and play offline games on his now mostly useless phone.

  Jacqueline and Darrel attempted to get through the hedge maze but eventually had to ring their emergency bells and be escorted back to safety by the groundskeeper. After that, Darrel went to his room to sulk and Jacqueline lounged by the pool, drinking cocktails and smoking cigarettes.

  Guadalupe took a long bath in her amazing tub, read a book, and even allowed herself some room service and champagne. But she also spent the better part of the late afternoon scribbling on the estate stationery in her room, strategizing ways to attack this game going forward. She was not about to lose.

  Frank spent the day mostly alone but more at peace with how the night before had played out. He went fishing out on the lake for six hours in the early morning, convincing the maintenance super to let him take out one of the small rowboats. The lake was amply stocked with trout and bass, and he caught no fewer than twenty fish that morning, most of which were trophy-sized. It was a shame he wasn’t able to eat them; there was nothing quite like the clean taste of fresh fish in his opinion. After fishing, he’d retired to his favorite red sofa in the trophy room for a nap.

  It had occurred to Frank early that morning, as he sat out on the lake all alone with the sun just poking above the trees to the east, that he could paddle to the far side of the lake and hide out in the woods. He doubted the killer would be able to find him without giving him- or herself away. But he’d dismissed the notion rather quickly. For one, he was sure he had nothing to worry about. He was going to win this game in the end. He just had to get through this one rough patch. And he would. Darrel had seemingly given up already. And perhaps it was the law enforcement officer still inside of him, but disregarding the game’s rules just didn’t seem like a good idea. It wouldn’t feel right.

  The guests’ spirits were surprisingly high by the time they all grouped in the dining room that evening for a formal dinner. As usual, their assigned spots at the table were already set. A fresh seaweed salad and designer Christofle chopsticks were already on the table.

  “Sushi? My, I don’t know,” Jacqueline said.

  “Trust me, this will be unlike any sushi you’ve had before,” Giles said. “The fish was flown in fresh whole just three days ago. It was then cut and flash frozen for the past forty-eight hours.”

  “You froze fresh fish?” Bryce said.

  Giles grinned at him.

  “Sashimi-grade fish must be frozen for at least forty-eight hours in order to make it safe to eat raw,” Giles said. “It always surprises me how few people know that. Freezing fresh fish and then later cooking it… well, that I agree would be a crime. But enough talk. Please, enjoy!”

  He left the room. The guests ate their seaweed salads. Most of them did, anyway. Frank picked at his clumsily with his chopsticks, making faces the whole time.

  “Get the fish out here, I’m starving,” he muttered at one point.

  Jacqueline didn’t even try hers at all.

  Next they were served a choice between miso soup or green onion consommé. After that, the chef wheeled out a cart containing various platters of ingredients. There were four different kinds of fish: salmon, tuna, red snapper, and yellowtail. Each was labeled with a small card indicating the dates on which they’d been wild caught. The chef prepared various rolls, hand rolls, and traditional sushi bites tableside.

  Jacqueline, again, seemed hesitant to eat raw fish.

  “You’ve really never had sushi?” Bryce asked her as he practically inhaled his pieces.

  “A few times my grandkids made me. I just didn’t much care for it!”

  “Well, I’m not a big sushi fan, either, but you really should try this. It’s the best I’ve ever had,” Darrel said.

  Jacqueline tentatively picked up a traditional piece of salmon sushi, dipped in a small tray of soy sauce and the chef’s own wasabi crème. She ate it in one bite and then smiled, before belting out her distinct and thunderous laugh.

  And so they ate, devouring a good portion of the fish, as the chef continued preparing them. A short time later, a round of specialty rolls was brought out by another chef. He walked around the table, placing pieces on the guests’ plates. As the dinner wound down a short time later, the mood was so high that an outside observer would never have guessed that they’d all witnessed two murders in the preceding two days. But then suddenly the mood shifted.

  “Man, I don’t feel so great,” Bryce said, clutching at his stomach.

  “Now that you mention it, I don’t, either,” Thomas said quietly, his normally pale face turning so ashen that it almost looked translucent.

  One by one, the guests began clutching their stomachs. Had they been collectively poisoned? some of them wondered. But if that were true, then the killer had poisoned him- or herself as well. Either way, Jacqueline was the first to excuse herself to her suite, a hand over her mouth as she hurried upstairs. The other guests followed shortly after.

  Giles stood in the doorway, unsure of what to do. The killer had left no instructions or indication to him as to whether this was part of the game. So he merely kept apologizing as the guests hurried to their rooms.

  The only person who didn’t rush to his suite was Frank. Instead he made his way to the red couch in the trophy room. It was a lot closer than his suite, and he honestly didn’t think he would make it up the stairs before passing out. He also really felt like the couch would calm him. It had been doing so since his arrival. So that’s where he headed after a quick
stop by the hallway bathroom.

  And so, a jovial dinner had quickly ended and the mansion grew eerily quiet as the guests tried to rest off an apparent case of food poisoning. The rest of the guests could be found lying in bed or on their toilets. The maids delivered small bottles of Pepto-Bismol to their suites.

  The quiet was broken an hour later by a sharp, metallic crack, followed shortly by a loud thump. The noise alone only woke or alarmed some of the guests. But the horrifying and bloodcurdling scream that followed could have raised the dead.

  CHAPTER 20

  THE THIRD VICTIM

  The guests, mostly feeling better by now, rushed down to the main floor of the mansion. Giles greeted them in the foyer at the bottom of the stairs. He waited until all the guests but one was present.

  “It appears that one of the maids has made a rather grisly discovery,” he said. “Please, follow me.”

  The seven wary guests followed Giles into the trophy room.

  “Oh, Jesus Christ!” Darrel said, covering his mouth as they entered the room.

  The rest of the guests reacted similarly. Jacqueline had to sit down in a chair by the door to keep from fainting. Bryce cursed under his breath, and everyone looked away from the sight after only a few moments.

  Frank was lying on his back on his favorite red sofa. The swordfish that had been suspended above had somehow fallen and impaled him right through his chest, and through the couch, and all the way to the floor below. The petrified fish’s tail stuck straight up into the air. Frank’s open but lifeless eyes stared vacantly up at his death’s audience hanging on the walls around him.

  “It appears our early frontrunner has met an untimely end,” Giles said. “Perhaps the very creatures he so loved to catch have gotten their revenge at last. And so, after a short but wonderful reprieve, it would seem as though our game resumes. By now I hope you all know what must come next. Please, follow me.”

  The seven remaining guests followed Giles back into the foyer of the mansion. Most of them had already changed into their pajamas or were wearing sweatpants and T-shirts. Giles looked at their tired and queasy expressions.

  “Please, take ten minutes to go make yourselves presentable, for you will not be going to bed just yet. When you return, you will be asked to decide which area you’d like to investigate: the crime scene, the morgue, or the last known whereabouts, which in this case is the dining room. Please hurry—it’s already getting late and you still have a crime to solve!”

  CHAPTER 21

  STABBING WESTWARD

  “Man, what a way to go,” Bryce said. “Stabbed to death by a giant fish!”

  He leaned over the couch and looked at the floor through the small hole the fish’s bill had made.

  If Thomas had heard him, he didn’t answer. Instead, he was pushing a chair over from across the room, hoping to get high enough to examine the chains that had held up the swordfish.

  “So, how do you suppose the killer managed to get the fish to fall?” Bryce asked, still looking at the couch.

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out,” Thomas said.

  Of all the people, Thomas wondered why the only other one to pick the crime scene had to be this moronic slacker. Although Thomas was starting to think they all might be underestimating him. Bryce had yet to be Scared, after all.

  Thomas was surprised at the lack of sadness he felt about Frank’s murder. He had bonded with the old grouch, in a way, during the past few days. And Thomas never had been very good at making friends.

  But that was neither here nor there. The old guy was dead. And now Thomas’s only concern was figuring out how Frank had been killed so he didn’t end up a human skewer himself.

  Thomas climbed on top of the chair and examined the ends of the two broken chains dangling from the ceiling. The chain that had held the fish’s head appeared to have been melted somehow. He wondered if it might have been done with a welding torch. The other chain, the one that had held the tail, was merely bent and broken, as if it had snapped from excess weight. The killer had clearly melted the front chain and then just waited for the weight of the entire fish to snap the back chain.

  “Find anything useful?” Bryce asked from below him.

  “No, not really,” Thomas lied. “It looks like the chains just snapped from the weight. Which is weird, of course. Or maybe they were cut with bolt cutters.”

  Underestimating him or not, Thomas knew that Bryce would take his word for it and not climb up here to check himself. He was a pretty naive kid. Too trusting in that way only kids were. Thomas had been that way himself once.

  “Huh, weird,” Bryce said, considering what that might mean.

  Then he got down on his hands and knees and started looking at the floor underneath the couch while Thomas climbed down from the chair and moved it back across the room. The swordfish itself had been removed. Thomas wondered if it would be in the morgue for Jacqueline, Darrel, and Guadalupe to investigate.

  “Dude, come check this out,” Bryce said excitedly from the floor.

  Thomas got on his hands and knees and looked under the couch. There was a small indentation where the tip of the fish’s bill had hit the hardwood. There were also a few drops of dried blood around it.

  “What am I looking at?” Thomas asked.

  “Where’s all the blood?” Bryce said. “I mean, this guy got stabbed in the chest by that thing, right? So shouldn’t there be a ton of blood? It’s not like I’ve ever stabbed anyone, but I watch Dateline when I get stoned sometimes, and I’m telling you, when people get stabbed, there’s a ton of blood.”

  Perhaps they had been underestimating the little punk after all, Thomas realized. Because he was right. Thomas wasn’t sure if he even would have noticed that himself. But either way, there definitely should have been way more blood. On the floor, on the couch, everywhere. But there were just a few drops on the floor and a little bit around the hole in the couch, and nothing more.

  The real question, then, was what exactly did that mean?

  CHAPTER 22

  LOWERED EXPECTATIONS

  Jacqueline was yet again the first guest to choose the morgue for much the same reasons she had the other two times. Besides, it had served her well so far, so why risk changing what was already working? It was like her daddy always used to tell her: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

  Darrel once again stuck by Jacqueline. He was determined to get himself back into this. He was not a quitter, after all. As a coach, that was the one thing he hated, the only thing that he absolutely couldn’t tolerate on his team: quitters. So he wasn’t going to be one himself. He’d been acting like a pussy. He knew that now. And if he didn’t stop, he wouldn’t ever make it out of here alive. He’d never get to see his daughter again.

  Guadalupe’s mind-set was much the same as Jacqueline’s. She was going to stick with what had been working for her so far, which was why she once again chose the morgue. She never had been one for radical change, anyway.

  Frank’s eyes were still open when they arrived in the basement morgue. Jacqueline closed them right away. She pitied the old man. He’d seemed like a decent enough person. But what was done was done.

  “So, where do we start?” Darrel asked, seeming to have more energy than he’d had since he arrived at the estate.

  “I like to start at the top and work my way down,” Jacqueline said.

  Guadalupe scribbled notes on her notepad and quietly watched as Jacqueline examined Frank’s head. She lifted it, felt through his thin hair for wounds, and shined a penlight into his hairy ears.

  “What’s that crusty stuff on his lips?” Darrel asked.

  “I’m getting there, keep your pants on!” Jacqueline said, and laughed.

  The laugh echoed unnaturally in the morgue, as if the walls were rejecting it. And true, morgues were not typically the place where laughter could be found. But it almost seemed as if the guests were growing comfortable with their roles as amateur sleuths, in a st
range way that also made them somewhat uneasy, like a sort of paradox that only a life-and-death competition can create.

  Jacqueline opened Frank’s mouth and then pulled her face back quickly.

  “Looks like he vomited while lying on his back,” she said. “And I think he ended up swallowing most of it.”

  Guadalupe shuddered and Darrel made a face.

  “So, you don’t think he choked on it to death or anything?” Guadalupe asked.

  “It’s hard to say for sure, but I doubt it,” Jacqueline said. “But then there’s this white stuff here, crusted on his upper lip.” She poked at his lip with tweezers. “This isn’t vomit. It’s almost like froth or spit of some kind. Like he had a seizure or something…”

  “Maybe the swordfish didn’t kill him after all?” Darrel said.

  “Ain’t that usually the case, honey?” Jacqueline said, and laughed again.

  She seemed unusually chipper to Guadalupe, but then again, the stress of this had been affecting them all in different ways. Plus, she’d noticed that the old woman always seemed to see the bright sides of things. Nothing seemed to get her down. And a lot of the other guests, including Guadalupe herself, were starting to appreciate that about her.

  As Jacqueline continued examining the rest of the body, Guadalupe drew a quick sketch of it and noted the location of the wound just below the victim’s heart. It was likely not an entry point that would have killed him instantly, or maybe even at all, without the eventual significant blood loss. Even with her very limited medical knowledge, Guadalupe knew as much. She assumed that Jacqueline would notice the same, but she kept quiet, just in case.