Page 34 of Murder Most Actual

“You mean, locked up in the gun cabinet that somebody definitely already managed to break into?” There was a definite tension in Hanna’s body as she spoke.

“Better than having it just floating around the hotel, surely?” said the professor. “And, you know, if we find the gun, we might find the killer.”

“If they haven’t thrown it in the loch already.” That was the vicar, once again showing he’d put a disturbing amount of thought into the matter of murder.

“I don’t think they have.” And that, to Liza’s mild surprise, was Liza. “I found another set of footprints coming to and from the woods. They were careful to come and go from the south, out of sight of the hotel, and I don’t think they’d have risked being seen throwing the gun away.”

“But they wouldn’t be keeping it in their room?” That was Mrs Ackroyd, and it was definitely a blurt.

“Of course not, dear lady.” Professor Worth patted her arm again. “They probably hid it somewhere in the hotel. Or on the grounds perhaps?”

“Too snowy.” Liza was slightly shocked at her own confidence. “There’d be footprints.”

Colonel Coleman was on his feet. “Right, well, enough sitting around. I say we put the boffin’s plan into action and go find the shooter.”

“Capital notion.” Sir Richard joined him. “But might I suggest, if we’re going to do so, we take groups of at least three? That way nobody gets left alone with a murderer. And might I also suggest we start after dinner?”

“Well, I shan’t be a part of it.” Mrs Ackroyd was stumbling away from the table, supported by the professor. “I’m going to have an early night, and good luck to all of you.”

Without quite planning it, Liza stopped her. “Before you go, you didn’t … see anything earlier, did you? From your room, I mean.”

“See anything?” Vivien Ackroyd stiffened.

“Your room overlooks the loch.” Liza turned to Ruby. “Yours too. I just thought—if you’d happened to be looking out when the shot happened, or just after, you might have seen the killer leaving.”

“No,” said Mrs Ackroyd at once. “I mean—I might—I mean…”

“Now, now, you don’t have to answer any of these questions if you don’t want to.” Putting a reassuring hand on Mrs Ackroyd’s back, the professor turned to Liza. “Can’t you see you’re flustering the poor woman?”

“I didn’t see anything either,” Ruby confirmed. “When guns start going off, I get away from the windows; I don’t dash towards them.”

Professor Worth escorted Mrs Ackroyd out of the dining room, and the remainder of the guests debated over their meal whether “Operation Search the Hotel” was a good one or not. By the time the professor had returned they’d decided that on balance it was, and, following Sir Richard’s suggestion, they had broken into teams of three. Ruby had latched onto the colonel and the vicar, the professor had attached himself to Sir Richard and his aunt, which left Hanna and Liza with Mr Burgh. Ms White declined to join them, citing her actual job.

It wasn’t until they’d split up and started poking around the nooks and crannies of the hotel that Liza spotted the flaw with the groups-of-three plan. That flaw being that even though nobody was going to be alone with a murderer, if the murderer had a gun, that wouldn’t necessarily help. And if Mr Burgh was the killer—which seemed hard to rule out—then while Liza didn’t like to steer too hard into gender stereotypes, she wasn’t sure that the two of them could take him even if he was unarmed. Sure, Hanna was feisty, but she also weighed about six pounds and had a day job that didn’t involve lifting anything heavier than a manila folder full of share certificates. Liza was slightly taller and occasionally went jogging, but she wasn’t exactly a fighter either. Especially not since she’d chosen her footwear—currently a pair of high espadrille wedges with glittery ankle straps—for looking cute on holiday, rather than running away from serial killers.

Which meant that as they were searching the lounge—a room that was full of tiny cabinets and little nooks a hypothetical murderer could easily stash a weapon in—she kept glancing uneasily over her shoulder in a way that she was worried was becoming increasingly obvious. Mr Burgh almost certainly wasn’t the killer. But that was surprisingly little comfort when he was standing right behind her.

“Hey.” Hanna shifted a small bookshelf to reveal a small door, just visible, painted the same off-yellow colour as the walls.

“Ah.” Mr Burgh looked apologetic. “I don’t think that’s anything.”

Guilty evasive, Liza wondered, or bumbling evasive? “It looks like something,” she said.

“According to the plans it’s one end of an old secret passage,” he explained, “but it was bricked up years ago.”

“Where’s the other end?” asked Liza, not quite willing to let mysterious secret passage go without at least one follow-up question.

“The conservatory, I think.” Mr Burgh shrugged. “But I’m afraid we can’t get it open now.”

It didn’t seem worth forcing the issue, so Liza filed it away under weird things about the hotel and got back on with looking for a murder weapon. The search did not, in the end, reveal anything unusual. Either the killer had not been so foolish as to hide the murder weapon in the hotel, or they had hidden it well enough that three groups of amateur sleuths running on adrenaline and uncertainty couldn’t find it. At the very least it was in nobody’s room, which ruled out one quick and simple way of identifying the culprit. Or, Liza’s mind immediately added, the person the culprit was trying to frame.

Of course, Mrs Ackroyd had left early, and so if it had been her, she might have ditched the gun anyway.

She might, for example, have thrown it out of the window.

“Hang on,” she told Hanna and Mr Burgh as they were about to give the search up as a bad job. “I’ve had a thought.”

She took them outside to the foot of the tower where poor Mr Ackroyd’s body had been found the night before. Trying not to think too much about the previous evening’s grisly business, she looked up, then around, to see if she could work out where a desperate woman might throw an Enfield No. 2 Mark 1 revolver.

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