THE SUPPER CLUB MURDERS a gripping murder mystery packed with twists (Smart Woman's Mystery Book 3)

by VICTORIA DOWD

  A shadow quickly appeared at the glass in the door. When it opened, it took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust. Before anyone else could move, Marsha had flown forward. I couldn’t see what she was doing as her body blocked my view, but as she moved to the side, I could see that the two women were holding hands tightly. They locked eyes as if they were silently speaking to each other. Both with anguished looks. Then Verity held Marsha unbreakably tight.

  ‘Oh Verity, dear Verity,’ Marsha whispered into the side of her head.

  ‘I can’t believe he’s gone.’ Verity said the words carefully as if each one made it more real.

  ‘I’m so sorry, my darling. I’m so sorry.’ Marsha spoke tenderly. She kissed the side of her head before slipping her hand from under Verity’s and wrapping her arm around her.

  ‘Hello?’

  We swung round to look back into the night.

  ‘Who’s that? Who’s out there?’ Bridget called. ‘Show yourself.’

  There was a moment before a figure in a cape stepped out of the rain.

  ‘What on Earth is going on?’ Jocasta MacDonald moved into the porch light, and I could see that she was wet and looking very dishevelled.

  No one answered.

  She looked from face to face until her eyes landed on Verity and Marsha.

  ‘Marsha? Verity? What’s happening here? What are you doing?’

  ‘We might ask the same of you, witch.’ Harriet Bradshaw gave her a judgemental look.

  ‘I . . . What do you mean?’

  ‘She means, what are you doing out on such a dark and stormy night? Where have you been?’ Bridget stood stiffly, holding the cat.

  ‘Where have I been?’ Jocasta repeated.

  ‘I know exactly where she’s been,’ Mrs Abaddon sniffed. ‘Churchyard.’

  ‘I’m sure I don’t—’

  ‘Tell them what you were doing there.’

  Jocasta stared furiously at her. ‘Watching the ghosts.’ She raised an eyebrow at Marsha and Verity, who slowly let go of one another.

  ‘My husband is dead,’ Marsha said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Murdered.’

  Jocasta’s lips parted slightly.

  ‘So perhaps this is no time for your brevity,’ Marsha added.

  ‘I . . . What? I don’t understand.’

  ‘What’s not to understand? He’s been bludgeoned to death by a cannonball.’

  It struck me what an interesting choice of words this was. And I wasn’t the only one of us to be intrigued. Mother was watching Marsha very closely.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Jocasta whispered.

  ‘Might be best for you to come clean, dear.’ Mirabelle gave Bridget a swift glance as if checking it was all right for her to speak.

  Bridget nodded. ‘Mirabelle is quite right. If there’s a dangerous killer on the loose, we need to be sure of everyone’s whereabouts.’ Bridget placed a reassuring hand on Mirabelle’s arm. Mirabelle didn’t look very reassured — more wary.

  ‘A dangerous killer?’ Jocasta repeated. She looked around our faces. ‘I need to . . . I need to get to him.’ She paused, suddenly adopting a flat voice. ‘I need to go home. My husband will be wondering where I am.’

  ‘I doubt that, dear,’ Gerald said archly. ‘I imagine he’s got a very good idea where you are.’

  The tension seemed to almost vibrate in the air.

  ‘I’m not staying here to listen to this.’ Jocasta spoke vehemently in hurried breaths. ‘Goodnight, and I’m sorry for your loss, Marsha. Although, I suspect you’re not.’ She turned and let her cape flare up behind her. Then she was gone, back into the night.

  ‘Let’s get you sat down,’ Marsha said wearily. She spread her arm across Verity’s shoulder and guided her through into the sitting room. The door was closed very purposefully.

  We stood in the hall for a few moments, suspended in an awkward moment where we knew we should leave them alone with their grief but had no idea how to.

  ‘Gerald and I need to go home,’ Harriet announced.

  He gave her a questioning look which slowly unfurled into understanding. ‘Yes, yes. Quite right. Our daughter, Scarlett, you know.’ They backed out of the door with thick smiles painted on.

  ‘I’ll make some tea,’ Mrs Abaddon said and disappeared through another door without waiting for a response.

  We waited, Bridget stroking her cat and shaking her head. The rest of us stood in stunned disbelief.

  ‘How are we involved in this?’ Aunt Charlotte sighed.

  ‘We are not involved.’ Mother widened her eyes. ‘We just happen to be here.’

  ‘We happen to be in a lot of places we shouldn’t,’ I murmured.

  ‘And who’s fault is that?’

  ‘Well, not mine, Mother. You were the one wanting to come and play with the lady of the manor.’

  ‘I wasn’t even invited!’

  Bridget laughed.

  Thankfully the doorbell rang before Mother had a chance to respond. We looked at each other.

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, I’ll answer it.’ And Bridget opened the door to a very wet and agitated Lucy Morello.

  ‘I had nowhere else to go,’ she said.

  ‘And where have you been?’

  ‘Nowhere. Just wandering, lost in the rain.’

  Bridget gave her a suspicious look. ‘How very Wuthering Heights of you.’

  The door to the sitting room opened and Marsha emerged, her eyes swollen with tears.

  Lucy looked at her with a surly face.

  ‘I want you to sleep here tonight, Miss Morello.’ Marsha didn’t look at her when she spoke.

  ‘With pleasure,’ the girl snapped.

  ‘You can sleep in the upstairs room, as you were instructed to previously. Verity will sleep in her bedroom downstairs.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Just do as you’re told.’ Mrs Abaddon had reappeared from the kitchen with a distinct lack of any tea.

  Marsha continued. ‘Mrs Abaddon, I’d like you to accompany me back to the castle.’ She cast her eye over our group, stranded in the middle of the hallway. She spoke softly, already adopting the manner of someone in a house of mourning. ‘And you too, ladies.’ She glanced back towards the sitting room, where Verity sat motionless. ‘Verity has insisted I come back with you to the castle and make sure everyone is as comfortable as possible and everyone has a bed tonight. If that is all right with you ladies.’

  We nodded in unison.

  * * *

  We walked back to the castle in cold silence. There was a very long way to go until morning. This night still seemed frighteningly long.

  CHAPTER 23: AFTER DEATH

  Most people associate death with peace, silence, rest. I do not. It’s a scream inside your head that never dissolves. You crave silence from your thoughts every waking second — every sleeping second.

  The bed was church pew hard. There was a sparseness to everything here, even the air felt mean and cold. I wrapped the thin, unfamiliar covers around me pretending there was some comfort in them. There was only one way I was going to find sleep in this dank place. I levered myself up on my elbows and reached for Dad’s Bible. I took out my hipflask and only fell into a dead sleep when most of it was gone.

  It felt like I’d barely touched sleep when the first sound woke me.

  A scratch. Muffled as if it was under something. Or behind something. My eyes flickered open. The moonlight spread a cold, grey light across the room.

  Scratch.

  This time louder. My eyes travelled quickly along the walls.

  The sound came again and more repetitively. It echoed as if it was inside the stones themselves, rising up from beneath the ground, inside the walls, moving round the perimeter of the room. Stalking me.

  Scratch. Scratch, scratch.

  It came again, a much longer and deeper sound as though something was being scraped along the thick stone.

  No, not scraped. Dragged. In that one word, my thoug
hts had given the sound movement. A frightening action. I pushed myself up onto my elbows. There was nothing in the room. That’s what I told myself. I tasted the bitter saliva pool behind my teeth. I instinctively pulled my arms around myself and gripped tight.

  The noise made a busy path along the inside of the wall now, unaware or dismissive of its new audience. It was grating along the other side of the wall, opposite to me.

  I took a deep, cold breath that shocked my throat. Then I moved — slowly at first. Swinging my legs round and standing. As my feet touched the rough carpet, I felt the overwhelming need to run. To get out of the open centre of the room. I was too exposed here. I had to get to the edge. I ran with soft steps.

  I tripped on an uneven lip of the carpet and landed on my knees near the door. My head glanced along the edge of a small side table and I instantly felt a shard of pain. As if in response, there was a sudden dead thud from behind the wall and then silence. A sigh.

  I waited.

  Whatever was there paused. Could I hear drawn out breaths? Or was that me?

  ‘Dad?’ I whispered.

  It was the last thing I heard.

  * * *

  The light cut a thin, sharp line along my eyelids. I paused before flickering into consciousness. As they opened, a shock of blue-white light flared round the circles of my eyes like a gas ring lighting up. I pinched them shut but the glare remained. The darkness of dreams had gone.

  I was still on the floor, the rough imprint of the carpet against my cheek. I could taste the sour remains of the brandy, the faint ginger scent lifted up on my breath. In one sigh, I let my eyes slowly drift open.

  I hadn’t got as far as closing the curtains last night. I seldom do, even though dawn always punishes me. I waited a moment. The day was still at that tipping point where nothing would be real until I moved. An insipid light washed over my eyes. Specks of white floated across and I felt the first shivers of pain surface in my head.

  Carefully, I felt my temple and the crusted trail of blood down the side of my face. I began to sit up as if my body weighed me down. As my eyes adjusted, I could see a precarious light slipping over the high tower. The day already felt tentative.

  Thoughts started to trickle through the gaps. There was a dead man down there. Framed by his own black pool of blood. Crumpled and small, as if someone had screwed him up like rubbish. I rubbed at my forehead briskly trying to scrub away the image. But it was too late, the thought had already congealed. My brain felt swollen up against my skull, trying to push the pictures out through the front.

  I stood up and walked to the window, the world warped by the thick bottle-bottom glass slick with winter grime. Curves of light hung under the low clouds. Grey layers of rain were still being driven over the far-off moors. There was no sun waiting on the edge, just a line of cold light behind the rain.

  I looked down into the courtyard. The grim daylight picked out the slippery cobbles, water trickling in crooked streams all meeting down there at the gatehouse. There were cracks in some of the windows and ivy spooling its way up the walls.

  My eyes drifted back to the gatehouse and last night. Both portcullis gates had been down. The cannonball sat on the floor beside him. But it couldn’t have got through those small gaps in the gate without damage. There was no damage to the gate. Lord Elzevir would have been blown backwards. But the injury was to the very top of his head. In any event, we’d been told the cannon had not even fired. The gates came down so fast. No one could have been in there with him, hit him and got out as the gates were falling. Why would anyone hit him, then come out and purposefully close the gates? Why not just wait for the Midnight Gun? They would have come down anyway at twelve o’clock. Someone took the trouble to bring them down two minutes before that.

  The only thing above him was that murder hole and that was conclusively sealed. Nothing could have moved that and it had been concreted in for some time.

  Marsha was very obviously, perhaps purposefully, the only one here. All the staff were elsewhere. It was impossible to remember who had dispersed and at what point from our strange travelling dinner party. But we’d had enough time to work out all wasn’t well in His Lordship’s marriage. And Marsha told him to be home before midnight or the portcullis would come down. Everything pointed to who and why. Just not how.

  I watched my breath leave circles of fog on the window that slowly pulled in and dissolved. Shadows of clouds drifted in black stains across the hills. The light had a different edge here, a veiled quality. It should have been a very prim and perfect village, all ‘More tea vicar?’ and Sunday services, but this village had an anxious nature and had watched us all with a distrustful eye from the very beginning.

  Something moved behind me. I turned. There was a subtle change, a ripple in the air. I could sense something in the room with me. Life? Death?

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘Don’t be so ridiculous.’ Mother had opened the door with her usual inability to knock. ‘Get ready. We’re meeting downstairs.’

  ‘I . . .’

  She held up her hand. ‘Not today, Ursula. Lock up your crazy and get changed into something you didn’t sleep in.’ She started to turn away and then paused. ‘And brush your teeth.’

  CHAPTER 24: AN ASTRAL HOLE

  I only noticed the dry mud splattered up the sides of my jeans when I was approaching them all. Mother watched me with her ‘What have you been up to?’ face. Her eyes instantly landed on my dirty, slept-in clothes.

  I looked around the rest of them. Aunt Charlotte was slumped in the large, pink chair looking as though she was becoming part of it. Mirabelle and Bridget sat rigidly on the sofa with Dingerling perched between them. The cat wasn’t much more than two black eyes against the flesh-coloured cushions.

  Mrs Abaddon had materialised and was setting out coffee cups on the sideboard where the Champagne glasses had sat in rows just a few hours ago. The iron maiden still stood open in the corner by the long picture windows, a silent reminder that no one was going to be leaping out of there this morning. The spikes were clean of blood. Had Mrs Abaddon spent time scrubbing away the fake blood when Lord Elzevir’s real blood had just been spilled?

  Standing by the side of the contraption, staring out across the windswept gardens, was Marsha. Rain was still dappling her reflection in the windows and rolling down. But there were no tears on Marsha’s face. She was immaculate in the kind of jeans that were clearly expensive and a black cashmere jumper, a stylish nod to her new-found widowhood. The rows of pearls were an even bigger nod to her new-found wealth. She held a cup of coffee but made no movements to drink it. She looked so perfectly posed, as if she was about to have her picture taken — Lady Black in mourning.

  The red-furred monkey, Dupin, sat crunching on some nuts with a look of evident delight. He’d just been given some marvellous treat. His busy little eyes glimmered as he looked around us all. He made a sound that seemed like he was laughing at us.

  ‘Would you like some coffee, ladies?’ Marsha’s voice cracked on just the right note. She turned. ‘Mrs Abaddon, is Lucy here yet?’

  ‘She’s still with Miss Verity. Lucy’s making out she’s been hit hard. Taking on screaming and crying like that when it’s Miss Verity’s brother! Just isn’t right.’

  ‘And my husband.’

  We all paused.

  ‘I’ll take some coffee,’ Mother interrupted as if she couldn’t help herself. I looked at her bloodshot eyes. She had that pinched look of regret for how much brandy she’d had the night before.

  ‘Tea for me,’ Aunt Charlotte chimed. ‘Tea for breakfast. Coffee later.’

  ‘Then straight onto the scotch,’ Bridget sneered.

  ‘How very dare you?’

  ‘Not now, Charlotte,’ Mother sighed. ‘There’s been a death. I’m going to need my coffee first.’

  Marsha turned her mouth down and looked back at the gardens brushing us all away.

  Dupin gave her a strange little grin and then carried
on eating.

  The electronic doorbell sounded out of tune. Being at someone else’s house when there’s a death is difficult enough to negotiate, but when you suspect the owner might be the murderer there’s a whole extra layer of excruciating tension that makes even the most normal of occurrences seem awkward.

  Mrs Abaddon set down the cup. ‘A moment, please, ladies. I will serve coffee after I’ve answered the door.’

  Marsha turned to us with her first look of genuine concern. ‘See? This is what happens when staff fail to turn up. Lucy Morello should be here to serve coffees. Mrs Abaddon always opens the door.’

  It seemed like such an unnecessary, fatuous comment to make for a grieving widow. But grief can make even the smallest of things take on dramatic levels of importance. When Dad died, nothing could interrupt my rearranging of the books on my shelves as if somehow it might re-order events until the story read differently. The strange fiction growing from the order of the words would somehow make it all a mistake and he would still be alive. But then no words in any book could ever change that. He was dead. Amen. And when I fell into his Bible, it wasn’t words I was looking for anymore.

  But there was no mistake here. Lord Elzevir was dead, and Marsha seemingly had no wish to rearrange any of that. A new self-possession had already settled in and she was more contained, more serene. More controlled. We’d all seen first-hand how he’d treated her, so why should we expect grief or even, perhaps, remorse from her?

  ‘Mr Ronald MacDonald,’ Mrs Abaddon announced without a trace of irony.

  Faces twitched. The morning was already slipping back into that surreal world we’d encountered last night.

  Ron didn’t wait to see if anyone was laughing. He barged into the room with the look of someone who had an earth-shattering announcement to make.

  ‘There’s . . . There’s a . . . Someone’s dead!’

  ‘We know.’ Marsha sounded almost bored. ‘My husband. In the gatehouse. With the cannonball.’

  The man’s face contorted into a strange look of astonishment. ‘I was actually on my way to tell you that Jocasta didn’t come home last night. I think she might be dead.’