Page 27 of Murder Most Actual

“Oh, fine.” There were, Liza was realising, few people who could pout quite as well as Ruby. “I thought you might be interested to know that the young footman argued quite violently with Mr Ackroyd a couple of nights ago. Mr Burgh is in a terrible panic about it. He’s worried that one of his staff killed a guest.”

“Sorry, which of them did you seduce for this information?” The moment Liza asked she knew she’d regret it.

“Why”—Ruby raised an eyebrow—”does it have to be which?”

Hanna, who was generally all for sex positivity but drew the line at sex positivity that was directly aimed at seducing her wife, did her best to change the subject. “And that was it? That was the big come-to-my-room-alone reveal?”

“I never said alone; I was quite happy to accommodate both of you. And it was never meant to be a reveal. I just thought we might want to keep each other …”—Ruby twirled her hand in an exaggerated looking-for-words gesture—”abreast of our enquiries. I suppose you’ve made some progress yourselves.”

A light switched on in Liza’s head. “Oh right, this is a mutual trust thing?”

“Since you turned down the other way of building mutual trust, I thought this one might work.”

Hanna had de-slumped and was now standing with her arms folded and a deeply sceptical expression on her face. “This sounds a lot like you’re trying to scam us.”

“Alas, I am unmasked.” With a theatrical gasp, Ruby clasped her hands to her chest. “You have seen through my dastardly plan to trick you into sharing information that might stop us all from being brutally murdered.”

“Nobody,” Hanna insisted, “has been brutally murdered. Not for certain.”

“Yes, for certain.” For all her flirtatiousness and self-conscious obfuscation, Ruby seemed suddenly very serious. “Where Mr B is concerned—”

“Oh, not you as well.” For reasons Liza understood, Hanna was not in a patient mood. “Can we stop with the Mr B nonsense? It makes this whole thing sound like an episode of Sesame Street.”

Ruby gave a not-the-point shrug. “Where my former employer is concerned, there are no coincidences. Mr Ackroyd’s death is very likely to be part of something. The question is what.”

“Maybe.” There were two conflicting impulses at war in Liza’s mind, and she still hadn’t decided which it made more sense to go with. “Right now, all we have is the dead body of a man who seemed to rub a lot of people up the wrong way. He argued with the footman, he also argued with the colonel. Hell, he argued with Hanna.”

“Definitely wasn’t me,” Hanna volunteered. “I’d have remembered.”

“And he still might just have slipped and fallen. If the manager is leaning towards the staff, that might mean something, or it might just mean he’s thinking about the scenario that’s worst for his job. So the way I see it, it’s an even …”—she counted quickly in her head—”six-way tie between an accident, the colonel, the footman—what’s his name, by the way?”

“Never bothered to find out.” There were too many teeth in Ruby’s smile.

“The unnamed footman,” Liza continued, “Mrs Ackroyd, Emmeline White, or a mysterious shadowy assassin working for an underworld kingpin.”

Ruby sat up. “What makes you suspect Ms White?”

“She found the body.” It wasn’t a great reason, but then Liza didn’t feel there were many great reasons to be had. “But that probably doesn’t mean much in this case.”

“Why not?” asked Hanna, still not taking her eyes off Ruby. “I’ve listened to your podcast, the person who finds the body is usually a prime suspect.”

“Yes, but that’s sort of …” Liza waved her hands. “There’s context there.”

“Tell me?” Hanna was doing her interested voice. She probably wasn’t; she’d only ever listened to Actual in a dutiful way, but it was nice she was making the effort. Of course, she might have only been making the effort to show up Ruby.

“Okay, so the thing about murder”—fighting the temptation to go into lecture mode, Liza began pacing—”is that nine times out of ten it’s really petty and really obvious. You get killed in your own house by somebody you know, usually by somebody you live with. Usually for a reason that’s incredibly boring and trivial.”

Ruby cocked her head to one side. “Like, they’ve realised that you were only sleeping with them in order to get your hands on the diamonds they stole from the Louvre? That kind of boring and trivial?”

“Or,” Hanna suggested, “like your wife pushing you off a balcony because she’s sick of you trying to get mobile phone reception at one in the morning?”

“More like the second one,” said Liza.

Ruby was sitting up now, almost as if she was actually paying attention. “Really? The thing with the diamonds has happened to me quite a lot.”

“Yeah, I don’t think your life is typical.” Liza tried to get her monologue back on track. “And I’m not ruling the it-was-the-wife option out, even if it is a bit …”

“Unsatisfying?” asked Ruby. “Tawdry? Unbecoming?”

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