‘So how old is the castle?’ I adopted a clipped voice to try and give myself extra gravitas.
‘No idea. Wait—’ Marsha turned to me — ‘you’re Ursula, aren’t you?’
I winced a smile. In my experience, it’s never good when people say that.
‘I read your mother’s interesting article about how you seem to attract murderers like . . . wait, what did you say, Pandora? “Like Most Haunted attracts the disturbed”.’
I paused, giving Mother my really? face.
‘Let’s hope your magnetism takes a rest this weekend.’ Lady Marsha grinned. ‘Don’t want any killings at the castle now, do we?’
It was just another moment when I wanted to blend into the air.
‘But listen, the article said you guys are a regular little Famous Five—’
‘I didn’t say that exactly,’ Mother interrupted.
‘I’m not a mother myself, but using your own daughter to write about murderers, is just . . . so fascinating.’ She said it in that way where ‘fascinating’ can easily be substituted with a number of other words — disgusting, distasteful, repulsive, grim, odd.
Finally, we ended up at the door to a large sitting room. Marsha told us to come into the parlour, like a spider might invite in flies. It had taken me very little time to stop thinking of this woman as Lady Marsha. Simple Marsha already seemed more appropriate.
As we walked into the vast, velvet-festooned room, I immediately saw there were already some visitors caught in the web. Mirabelle and Bridget.
‘And look,’ Marsha announced. ‘Here’s the rest of the little gang you write about.’
Everything about Mother tightened as quickly as if she’d just been vac-packed and put in the sous vide machine she’d bought last Christmas and never used.
‘Pandora!’ Bridget chimed. ‘How lovely to see you. And your charming daughter.’ She laughed, her thin mouth a wound slowly opening up. ‘I’ve not read that article, I’m afraid. But I haven’t really read any of the little things you write.’
Mother’s smile spread like a crack through a sheet of glass. ‘I’ve not read any of yours either.’
‘I don’t write any . . .’ Bridget’s voice fell away.
A sharp little scream of vicious laughter came from somewhere above us.
I looked up quickly.
‘Oh, don’t mind Dupin. He’s nothing to worry about.’ Marsha spoke dismissively and threw out her hand. She rolled her eyes. ‘Another of Elzevir’s ridiculous ideas.’
‘Dupin, du vin, du . . .’ Aunt Charlotte saw Mother’s face and her voice petered out.
Sitting on a thin perch, at the end of the room, was a sharp-faced little monkey with russet-coloured fur. He had a lead round his ankle that tethered him to the wooden beam. Although his mouth looked something like a smile, the rack of teeth on display was far more disturbing. He watched us with two keen, polished eyes. There was an astuteness in the way he surveyed us all, almost mockery. He pinched his eyes together and let out another scream of delight, dancing on agile, little feet.
Marsha gave the animal a spiteful glance. ‘Don’t worry, he looks smarter than he is.’
‘So does Charlotte and it doesn’t stop her causing trouble—’ Mother stopped as her eyes landed on Mirabelle. Since she found out about it, she hadn’t mentioned her beloved Mirabelle moving in with the hateful Bridget. And it’s always a sign of trouble if Mother isn’t talking about something. Mother doesn’t do enigmatic silences.
‘Well, we all know each other, so let’s get down to it,’ Marsha said. ‘Who’d like a cocktail? Now, I seem to remember you guys are partial to a bottle or two of Prosecco, so I’ve had some specially brought in. None of that Champagne nonsense for you, eh? I said to Lord Elzevir, “Zavvy darling, they’ll be such good house guests. They really don’t need any of the finer things in life. They’re such simple, home-spun ladies. It’ll be fun and cheap.”’
As she walked over towards a large sideboard, her laughter and rich spiced perfume rippled along like an expensive car passing by.
Marsha didn’t seem to drop the act once. She conducted herself as if the kind of men who would describe her as ‘fragrant’ were watching at all times. There were no cracks in her armour, at least none that I could see yet.
I stayed close to the door. I like to maintain a secure escape route when I’m in unfamiliar places these days. Mother sat down without speaking and kept her eyes firmly on Mirabelle. She hadn’t looked at Mother yet, resolutely staring straight ahead at the large leaded window framed by layers of dark pink velvet curtains. As the table lamps shone across the folds, a rose glow lit the room. The deep sofas were also pink, the fringed lampshades blooming with large, salmon-coloured flowers. The whole effect was quite saccharine and very much at odds with the stark stone walls bristling with shields, crests and swords.
I was distracted by a strange scratching sound near the sofa.
Marsha raised an eyebrow. ‘She brought her cat.’
The monkey hissed and screamed again, its eyes fixed on the floor next to the sofa.
‘Come on, darling.’ Bridget leaned down and picked up the small, wrinkly animal. It was completely hairless and as pink as the furnishings. ‘Come on, my little Schrodinger.‘
‘Wait, you called the cat Schrodinger?’ I said doubtfully.
‘It seemed appropriate.’
‘Why, because you’re a pretentious arse?’
Bridget shuffled indignantly in her chair like a twee, uptight librarian. ‘Let me tell you something—’
‘There is nothing you could tell me that I could possibly want or need to hear.’
Mother settled further into the large flesh coloured armchair.
‘Oh, I beg to differ.’ Bridget smiled. ‘I’m living with Mirabelle and she understands me. She’s told me a lot.’
Mother was practically vibrating, a tense ball of anger that might combust at any minute all over the pink velvet. She was staring at Mirabelle, who still wouldn’t look back at her.
The monkey clapped eagerly in excitement.
‘We’re friends, that’s all,’ Mirabelle said heavily, as if the words were a burden. Her eyes flicked towards Mother. ‘I needed a friend. You were so busy with all the interviews and articles and your daughter, that . . . that . . . well, I just felt a little . . . unnecessary.’
That is Mother’s great skill, making people feel unnecessary. One day, maybe she’ll make herself feel that way.
‘All these years, Pandora.’ Mirabelle was barely audible.
Bridget placed the bald cat onto the sofa beside her. Its colour matched the material so perfectly that in the dim light it blended in, leaving only a pair of sharp, dark eyes lingering next to her. She stroked the reluctant animal, dragging thin rolls of the animal’s loose skin down its back until those eyes bulged like marbles.
‘You just took Mirabelle for granted. She needs nurturing.’ Bridget made it sound like she was going to consume her, savouring every last morsel.
‘Mirabelle,’ Mother breathed. ‘I could have nurtured you.’
The monkey laughed.
‘Quiet, Dupin!’ Marsha handed us our drinks and the monkey fell into immediate silence.
‘Now, let’s not sound so desperate, ladies. You don’t want to ruin the weekend before its even started now, do you? Shall I run you through the itinerary? There’s also a document in each of your rooms that outlines the schedule and what we expect of our house guests. Our cleaner, Lucy, is utterly incompetent, so we don’t like to rely on her for anything.’
Marsha’s newfound refinement seemed to be slipping a little. A coarse, sharper edge was cutting through. ‘At the end of your stay you must strip your bed, wash the sheets, pillowcases and towels, dry them and put them back in place exactly as they were. I recommend taking a photograph on your phone so you know precisely where everything should go.’ She smiled. ‘Miss Morello, Lucy that is, will show you where the washing machine and drier are, if she can re
member.’
I stared at her in astonishment. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever stayed anywhere that expected house guests to do all that.’
Marsha analysed me until I was very aware of my awkwardness. I sat down on the edge of the over-stuffed sofa.
‘I don’t think you’ve ever stayed anywhere I’d be familiar with either, dear,’ she drawled.
I looked towards Mother for moral support. I couldn’t imagine she’d be too happy about stripping beds and washing sheets. She hadn’t shown any inclination towards it before.
But Mother and Mirabelle were still locked in eye combat. They didn’t look like they’d taken in anything apart from most of their drinks.
‘The safari supper starts at eight, so we’ll reconvene just before then. It’s going to be enormous fun.’ Marsha’s tone suggested she thought entirely the opposite.
A violent gust of wind seemed to rock the stones around us, howling its way in disapproval down the chimney and circling the room.
‘We move around the village and have a course in each house. Everyone starts here with cocktails and fizz and then we move to . . .’ She unfolded a map that she’d picked up from the small side table. ‘Verity at the Vicarage first. Jocasta MacDonald and her husband, Ron, are meeting us here.’
‘I’m sorry?’ I spluttered my drink out. ‘Her husband is Ron MacDonald? Ronald MacDonald?’
‘They’re pagans.’ Marsha said it as if that was all we needed to know. ‘They live in the Lodge. You’ll have seen it on your way in. It’s all wind chimes and stone mushrooms.’
This was perhaps the first sign that the sleepy village of Greystone had a lot more going on behind its cosy windows and floral drapes than might first meet the eye.
‘Then we’re moving onto . . .’ She scanned the hand-drawn map of the village. It was incredibly detailed and had obviously taken somebody a long time to compile from a lot of careful observation.
‘Did you make the map, Marsha?’ I asked without thinking.
She looked at me disdainfully. ‘I don’t have time for that sort of thing! I don’t know who drew it up. It just landed on my mat one morning. Then Verity came up with this idea of the safari supper and suggested we use the drawing that had been sent. What does it matter who drew it?’
‘May I look?’
She seemed doubtful for a moment then, spotting her own empty glass, handed over the map before moving back towards the long sideboard and the bottle. She watched me distrustfully as though I might be about to set the piece of paper on fire. I’ve not done that since I got my A level results and Mother couldn’t be bothered to look at them. They were good, but the only way I could get her attention was to create a little blaze over her silk woven rug. Life has just carried on in that vein ever since, really — setting fires to get her attention.
I studied the map. There was a lot of detail. Whoever had drawn it had enjoyed being quite meticulous. It seemed like a lot of effort to go to just for a supper party. It was intricately drawn and each house had a name next to it. The castle was clearly marked. I could see the vicarage Marsha had mentioned, and the Lodge, complete with its fast-food pagans. The church was next to the vicarage, and the name Reverend Vert was written next to a small structure at the back of it rather than the vicarage.
There were, in total, ten dwellings in Greystone, including whatever structure was behind the church and, of course, Black Towers. Someone had also found it amusing to leave the ‘s’ off when they’d compiled the map, and someone else, presumably Marsha, had petulantly added the missing letter in red ink.
I’d been completely absorbed by the intricate little map for quite a few minutes when a strange and unnerving grinding noise drew me back into the room. Slowly, the voices petered out, the scraping sound growing louder as we fell silent.
CHAPTER 4: INSTRUMENTS OF TORTURE
On the furthest wall of the room, near the large full-length window looking out onto the lawn, was a tall, wide metal box. The whole front was slowly swinging open on hinges. As I looked more closely, I could see that there were two black holes driven through the metal and the shape around them was that of a loosely drawn head. The structure was shaped like an oversized human body with its hands folded across its chest and its mouth sealed shut.
‘Please excuse our iron maiden.’ Marsha gave a simpering smile. ‘It sometimes does that.’
‘Oh, I quite like them.’ Aunt Charlotte bounced her leg up and down and nodded her head repetitively as if in time to a rhythm only she could hear.
The upright metal coffin continued to open with a dramatic, cold groan. We fell into a tense silence.
Bridget gasped and clutched the cat closer. ‘Dingerling, have courage.’
In one last violent surge, the door opened and a large, limp object slumped against the inside of the door before collapsing onto the floor.
It was a body.
No one moved. I felt eerily calm in those opening moments.
We were staring transfixed at the unmoving form of a man.
‘Oh my God!’ Aunt Charlotte breathed.
‘Elzevir?’ Marsha said in disbelief.
A scream lit up the other side of the room.
I turned to see a young woman standing at the door, her eyes bulging and mouth slack with a trail of loose spit dangling from it.
My head was filling up with panic, the pulse surging against the sides of my skull. I looked back to the body. Pin holes of blood started to seep through the caramel-coloured jacket, blooming out across the material in two perforated lines. His strange, gingery-brown hair had fallen at an odd angle to his head. His arms were both beneath him.
The iron maiden stood open, looking down disdainfully at where it had spat him out. The great spikes were dripping with sticky trains of blood.
‘You’ve. Killed. Him!’ The woman at the door panted out each word as if she was blowing them at us.
The angry pools surfaced in a blotted pattern down the man’s back.
‘Elzevir.’ The name came out of Marsha slowly in a quiet stream. It had a dreamlike sound to it. Her face was entirely expressionless. It was as if she was looking through what we could see at something else entirely.
‘You murderer!’ the woman at the door shouted. Her furious reaction stood in stark contrast to Marsha’s coldness.
The body lay so still it could have been a very natural pose, resting as though the man had just stumbled a little, and this was merely the pause before he got up and everyone asked if he was all right. The blood stains down his back told a different story. A much more savage one. A brutal death was staring back at us.
Slowly, I began to stand, each of my movements making this seem more real. More believable.
There really was an impaled man lying dead on the sitting room floor. His body was there, right in front of us. My mind hadn’t just invented the last few seconds. I wasn’t just imagining this in an idle moment at a drinks party, bored and conjuring up dead bodies on the carpet.
Marsha placed her glass down with careful movements, taking a long breath. She began to move towards the bundle of clothes thrown on the floor. Everything about her had the self-conscious action of a person who knows their every move is being watched.
My head felt dull, as if I was watching all this underwater, the movements fluid, the noise muffled. I couldn’t close my mouth. My breathing was short, fluttering. There was a dead man. There was a murdered man on the floor. Right in front of us. I couldn’t take it in. There was no space inside my head.
‘Mother?’ I stuttered, the light dizzying in my eyes.
She moved closer towards me. I swayed and looked at the body, leeching out into the pale carpet.
‘Don’t you touch him!’ the woman at the door cried.
‘Be quiet, Lucy.’ Marsha spoke in a crisp, efficient voice. It echoed in my head. I saw a strange look of confusion pass over her face — almost annoyance, as if a child had spilled something, nothing more than that.
I could f
eel my heart desperately jittering away inside my chest.
‘Touch nothing, Your Ladyship.’ Bridget hurried across the room clutching her cat as though there was still a threat, an imminent danger. ‘Forensics will be all over it!’
Marsha paused.
Mother had moved close and was at my side, her eyes still on the dead man’s outline. She threaded her fingers through mine without looking at me.
I thought I heard Marsha whisper, ‘How?’ or ‘Now?’
It did seem impossible that this had happened just at the moment when we had all gathered here. It was already starting to have a very pre-planned feeling to it, a drama that was timed to perfection and intended to go off at that very second. The door slowly opening to reveal the dead man just as the party had gathered. It all felt very staged.
I caught sight of our reflection in the long, black windows. Rain stippled the image of each person carefully positioned around the dead body.
Aunt Charlotte had adopted a resolute face. ‘We need to get help.’
Marsha looked to the door. ‘Lucy, fetch Mrs Abaddon.’
The girl didn’t move. She was shaking as she watched Marsha with blazing eyes, tears pooling in the bottom lids.
‘Now! Please, Lucy.’ Marsha had a controlled authority to her that seemed to have surfaced quite naturally and quickly.
The girl let out a small noise of anguish before running from the room.
Marsha moved closer to the body, her eyes pinching into a wary look. She took careful, precise steps, as if she thought the body might leap up at any moment.
It did.
CHAPTER 5: RESURRECTION
In one great explosion of bloody clothing and confusion, the body was on its feet, shouting words I couldn’t unpick. The face had a frenzied grin. The arms were spread wide.
‘Save us!’ Bridget threw herself into a chair, clutching the bewildered cat, her eyes tight shut.
My heart hit the front of my chest. My jaw instantly clenched so hard I felt sure I heard my teeth crack.
THE SUPPER CLUB MURDERS a gripping murder mystery packed with twists (Smart Woman's Mystery Book 3) Page 3