Guests and Guilt

by Diana Xarissa

  “I thought you said he was an author?” Mark asked.

  “He is an author, but he only wrote one book. Stephanie was helping him with the next one.”

  “When did the first one come out?”

  “Oh, a while ago,” Fenella said lightly.

  “How long ago?” Mark pressed her.

  “Thirty-odd years ago,” she said softly.

  “I see,” Mark said. “And here we are.” He parked the car in front of a building that could have been just about anything. Mostly it looked like an office building. He turned and faced her. “This isn’t going to be easy. We’ve done our best to make her look presentable, but there’s only so much we can do, especially under the circumstances. In some ways it might be easier for you, as you only met the woman yesterday.”

  “Is it too late to change my mind?” Fenella muttered as she climbed out of the car.

  “It isn’t, but you’ll be helping Stephanie by doing this. Surely that’s what you want to do.”

  Fenella sighed. “Yes, of course it is.”

  She followed the man into the anonymous building. He stopped at the desk and said something to the woman behind it. She gave Fenella a sympathetic look and then picked up the phone on the desk next to her. She said a few words into the receiver and then a loud buzzer sounded behind her.

  “Here we go,” Mark said, offering Fenella his arm.

  She took it and let him lead her through a series of doors and then down a long corridor. At the end of the hallway, a man who was holding a clipboard met them.

  “We need to talk,” he said sharply to Mark.

  “Let me get the body identified first,” Mark replied.

  “Okay, but it’s urgent,” the man said.

  Mark raised an eyebrow and then nodded. “Give me five minutes,” he told the man.

  The man nodded, but he didn’t look happy. Mark took Fenella’s arm as he pushed a buzzer on the frame of the door at the end of the corridor. A moment later the door swung open.

  “Ah, yes, Inspector Hammersmith. Come in,” the man who’d opened the door said. “Have you brought someone to identify the body?”

  “I certainly hope so,” Mark replied. He didn’t introduce Fenella, which made her feel as if she ought to introduce herself. She knew she was just stalling for time. She really didn’t want to see a dead body, whether it was Stephanie’s or not.

  “It isn’t too bad,” the man told Fenella. “I’ve seen much worse. You probably haven’t, though. Sorry about that.”

  He moved over to a long table that was covered with a sheet and pulled the sheet down. Fenella swallowed hard as she saw the blonde hair.

  “Take a deep breath,” Mark told her. “If you feel sick, run out of here as fast as you can. We don’t want you compromising any evidence.”

  Fenella nodded and then took several breaths before she took a few hesitant steps forward. It only took her a moment to recognize the woman on the table. She knew Mona would have lots of questions for her later, but she simply couldn’t bring herself to study what she could see of the body.

  She turned and took a few steps away before she tried to speak. “It’s the woman I met yesterday who called herself Stephanie Arnold,” she said. “That’s all I can tell you for sure.”

  “Do you have any reason to believe that she might not have been who she claimed to be?” Mark barked at her.

  “No, none at all. Quite the opposite, really, as I met several of her friends from the island last night. I was just being extra careful.”

  Mark nodded. “I suppose, with your history, that makes sense. Let’s get out of here.” He took her arm and escorted her out of the room. The man with the clipboard was still waiting in the hallway.

  “Now?” he asked Mark.

  “Sure, why not,” Mark muttered. “Wait here,” he told Fenella. “Don’t talk to anyone. Don’t call anyone, and if your phone rings, don’t answer it.”

  Fenella nodded and then leaned against the wall. It felt cool, which made her feel slightly better. She watched as Mark and the other man walked a short distance away and began an intense conversation. Mark shook his head several times, and Fenella was sure that he glanced over at her at least twice during the ten-minute conversation. When he walked back over to her, he looked angry.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” he snapped. “Let’s get you back to the house. I’m going to need an official statement from you and one from your brother.”

  “Official statement? You didn’t mention that earlier.”

  “No, well, I should have. I should have insisted on it the moment you opened that door. Nothing is ever straightforward when you’re involved.”

  “It wasn’t an accident?” Fenella guessed.

  Mark shrugged. “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  “Which means I’m right,” Fenella sighed. “Someone murdered Stephanie. It must have been one of her friends from her past, but I can’t imagine why.”

  “Let’s leave speculation out of this,” Mark said. “Let’s not even talk about it until we get back to the house, actually. I’ll take a formal statement from you there. I’d rather you didn’t even think about the case until then.”

  Of course there was no way Mark could keep her from thinking about Stephanie and her untimely death. Fenella sat in silence with her mind racing all the way back to the house on the outskirts of Douglas. The only people who might have murdered the woman were her three friends from the previous evening. But which one of them had a motive for murder?

  Mark parked in the driveway behind Fenella’s car. “When we get inside, I don’t want you to speak to your brother at all. I’ll do all of the talking.”

  “Okay,” Fenella replied, as she knew she had no choice in the matter.

  “I’ll take your statement first,” he said as they walked up to the house.

  Fenella knocked on the door, wishing she’d thought to take the key with her when they’d left. Constable Corlett opened it a moment later.

  “Mr. Woods has fallen back to sleep,” he told them in a whisper. “I didn’t know whether I should wake him or not.”

  “Better not, actually,” Mark replied. “You can sit with him while I talk to Ms. Woods. We can wake him when I’m ready to talk to him.”

  “Yes, sir,” the constable replied. He left them in the living room and returned to the kitchen.

  Fenella sank onto the couch and sighed. It had already been a very long day and it wasn’t even noon yet. Mark sat down on a chair opposite her.

  “I’m going to be taking notes on my phone, if you don’t mind,” he told her.

  “Whatever,” she replied.

  He raised an eyebrow but didn’t respond. After typing on his phone for a minute or two, he looked up at her. “Start with what your brother said about Stephanie before they arrived,” he told her.

  “He didn’t say anything about her before they arrived,” she replied.

  “Nothing? You mean nothing except that he was bringing her on his visit?”

  “No, I mean nothing, as in he never mentioned her existence, never said he was bringing her, nothing. Shelly will tell you that I was as surprised as she was to see the woman when they arrived together yesterday.”

  “Okay, then, start with their arrival. Walk me through everything that you can remember from the airport.”

  Fenella took a deep breath and then did her best to comply. Mark tapped on his phone the entire time, until the noise began to annoy Fenella. She tried slowing down or speeding up her words, but the rate at which he tapped seemed constant, no matter what she did. She recounted what she could remember up to their arrival at the house and then stopped.

  “I’m going to have to talk to Shelly, too,” the man told her.

  “She might be at home or she could be at my apartment,” Fenella replied. “I told you that she’s staying with me at the moment.”

  “You did. Remind me of why?”

  Fenella sighed
and then glanced toward the kitchen. There was no sign of James, at least. “I didn’t want James staying with me,” she said in a low voice. “Shelly agreed to pretend that her dishwasher had flooded her apartment so that she needed a new kitchen. Obviously, she couldn’t stay in her apartment while all of the work was being done, so she moved over to stay with me.”

  “Her dishwasher flooded her kitchen?” Mark asked.

  “No, not at all. We just told James that as an excuse for why Shelly was staying with me.”

  “So her kitchen is fine?”

  “Yes, as far as I know.”

  “So why is she really staying with you? Surely it would have been just as effective to tell James she was there but not really have her move in?”

  “James will be visiting my apartment as some point. I wanted it took genuine,” Fenella explained, feeling foolish.

  Mark nodded and then tapped on his phone a bit more. “Okay, let’s keep going. What happened when you got here?”

  Fenella told him about showing James and Stephanie around the house. “And then I left and went home for a while,” she concluded.

  “I may want to hear about what you did at home later, but for now tell me when you next saw James and Stephanie.”

  She told him about their dinner together at the pub, repeating everything that Stephanie had said about her friends. “And then they arrived,” she added.

  Mark nodded at her. “Tell me everything you can remember from the evening,” he instructed her.

  Fenella did her best, but she knew she’d forgotten things. “I hope I haven’t forgotten anything important,” she said when she was finished.

  “We can go back over it all later, after I’ve compared your version of events with everyone else’s,” he told her. “You didn’t see Stephanie again after you and James left the pub?”

  “No, I walked back here with James and then I went home to bed. James called me at five and woke me.”

  The inevitable tap, tap, tap followed Fenella’s words. “Okay, then, I suppose it’s time to wake your brother,” Mark said after a minute. “Do you want to do it or shall I?”

  “Are you going to tell him that the body is Stephanie’s?” she asked.

  “I’d rather he didn’t know until after he’s given me his version of events, but I suspect the identity of the body will be his first question.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Do you want to be the one to tell him, then?”

  Fenella started to nod and then shook her head. “I don’t know. He’s going to be upset.”

  “Thinking about it, I’d rather he not talk to you. Maybe you could wait here and I’ll talk to him in the kitchen.”

  “If that’s what you want,” Fenella agreed, feeling both relieved and disappointed at the same time.

  “Fenella? What is going on? Where’s Stephanie?” James’s voice seemed to echo all around the house.

  Fenella exchanged glances with Mark as James stomped into the room with Constable Corlett on his heels.

  7

  “Mr. Woods, I’d like to speak to you privately,” Mark said, getting to his feet.

  “I’m not really interested in what you want,” James snapped. “Fen, what’s going on?”

  Fenella opened her mouth, but Mark held up a hand. “Ms. Woods isn’t able to answer your question right now,” he said firmly. “We should move this conversation elsewhere.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” James said. He dropped onto the couch next to Fenella and took her hand. “If she can’t speak to me, she can at least hold my hand. Should I guess from your attitude that the body truly is Stephanie’s?”

  Mark hesitated and then nodded. James stared at him for a minute and then started to cry. Fenella let go of his hand and started digging around in her handbag for tissues. She handed one to James, who wiped his eyes.

  “Thanks,” he said gruffly. “I didn’t think I would cry. While you were gone, I started thinking, and the more I thought about it, the more likely it seemed that the body was going to be Stephanie’s. I thought I was ready to hear the news, but clearly I was wrong.”

  “I’d rather you and your sister didn’t talk right now,” Mark said.

  “I won’t talk to her,” James promised, “but please let her stay with me. I’m not sure what to think or feel right now.”

  “She can stay until she opens her mouth,” Mark replied, giving Fenella a warning look. “Constable, have a seat,” he told Constable Corlett. The man glanced around and then settled into a chair next to the inspector.

  “Mr. Woods, I’d like you to tell me everything you can about Stephanie Arnold. How did you meet?”

  “She sent me a letter,” James replied.

  “An email?”

  “No, a real letter on real paper in a real envelope with a proper stamp,” James replied. “I get about a dozen every year from people who either loved or hated my book. It usually runs about fifty-fifty, but in the last few years I’ve had more hate mail than fan mail.”

  “Do you get emails from fans as well?” Mark asked.

  James shrugged. “I don’t have email. My publisher might get some, I suppose, but we haven’t really spoken in years.”

  “What about threatening letters?”

  “I’ve had a few over the years, but none recently. There was nothing threatening about Stephanie’s letter, anyway.”

  “What did it say?”

  “It was long, but otherwise fairly typical of the sort of thing I get. She talked about how brilliant I was and told me which passages meant the most to her. It went on and on for about four or five pages.”

  “And you replied?”

  “And I photocopied it and sent it back to her with proofreading marks all over it. She couldn’t spell to save her life and her punctuation was all over the place. I’m a college dropout, but I know when to use a semicolon.”

  Mark raised an eyebrow and then added something to his phone notes. “What happened next?”

  “She sent me another letter. This one had clearly been much more carefully written. Maybe she had a friend go over it for her or something, I don’t know. It was less fan mail and more like a letter to a friend. I found myself intrigued.”

  “Really?”

  James flushed. “She also included a few photos,” he said quietly.

  “What sort of photos?”

  “Just a few pictures of herself,” James said. He glanced over at Fenella. “She was, um, naked in one of them.”

  “That’s one way to get your attention, I assume.”

  “It wasn’t the first time I’d been sent such things,” James replied, “but it was the first time in a long time. If she’d been less interesting in her letter, I wouldn’t have replied anyway, but as I said, I found her intriguing.”

  And naked, Fenella thought to herself.

  “So you wrote back?”

  “Yeah, and then she wrote back, and after a while she decided to come and visit me.”

  “She knew where you live?”

  “I get my mail at a post office box. My house is a little bit remote, and I don’t want fans or disgruntled undergraduates turning up there. I agreed to meet her at the café in the nearest town.”

  “How long ago did you actually meet?”

  “Oh, goodness, two, maybe three months ago? I don’t pay that much attention to the passing of time, especially when I’m working, and Stephanie and I were working on a book together. Time lost its meaning.”

  “Presumably that changed when you decided to visit your sister?”

  “Not really. I suppose I had to pay more attention to the date, if that’s what you mean.”

  “What did Stephanie tell you about her past?”

  “One of the first things she told me was that she’d grown up on the island here. It was another point of connection in our early days together. We talked about the things I could remember about the island. I was only twelve or thirteen when we left, but Stephanie hadn’t left unt
il she was older, maybe twenty. She had better memories of the place than I do as a consequence.”

  “What did she tell you about her family?”

  “Not much. She was an only child and her parents both died within a fairly short space of time not long after she’d left school. That was why she decided to leave the island. She wanted to get away from the memories.”

  “What did she tell you about her friends here?”

  “Not much, not until last night, anyway,” James replied. “Last night over dinner she gave Fenella and me a quick history of them.”

  “Whose idea was the trip to the island, then?”

  “Mine,” James replied. “I’ve been wanting to come and see Fenella since she moved here. Stephanie wasn’t even going to come with me until the last minute.”

  “What changed her mind?”

  James shrugged. “I’m not sure. I was thinking about that earlier. It sort of seems as if one day I was planning to come to see Fen and then the next day we were both coming. I don’t think I even told Fen anything about Stephanie. I probably should have warned her.”

  Fenella gave his hand a squeeze. Now wasn’t the time to worry about such things.

  “Did Stephanie have any particular reasons for wanting to come with you?”

  “She just said the more she thought about it, the more fun it sounded. She emptied one of her savings accounts to pay for her plane tickets.”

  “So she really wanted to come back to the island.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “And what did she want to do here?”

  “The only thing she ever mentioned to me was looking up her old friends,” James told him. “She was really eager to see Annie and the others from their little group back in the day. She called them the CAMS.”

  “CAMS?”

  “From all of their first initials,” James explained. “Courtney, Annie, Maureen, and Stephanie.”

  Mark spent a minute typing into his phone before looking up at James again. “And did she have other friends she wanted to see?”