Page 17 of Murder Most Actual

“This is probably my working-class roots showing,” said Liza, staring at the menu, “but why would you smoke haddock in peat? Why would you smoke anything in peat?”

“I think it’s supposed to give it a richness?” Hanna didn’t look entirely sure herself. “Or an earthy flavour?”

“You don’t know, do you?”

“Of course I don’t—nobody does.” And now she was smiling, although whether it was because she was feeling better or because they were in public and she didn’t want people to look at them the way they’d looked at the Ackroyds, Liza didn’t know. “You think the Etonian pricks I work with actually appreciate fine dining? They like things that other people can’t afford, and that’s all there is to it.”

“So I should stick with the cereal?” Honestly, Liza couldn’t have faced much more than that anyway.

Hanna took a sip of freshly squeezed orange juice. “Since the chef watched a man die less than eight hours ago, I think that might actually be safest. In her position I don’t think I’d exactly have my head in the game.”

The door opened and Ruby walked in. Although walked didn’t quite describe it; she glided, she flitted, she barely touched the ground. She was wearing a new dress in the old colour.

“See?” Liza gestured with her fork. “Told you she was real.”

Hanna blinked. “Even now, I’m not sure I believe it.”

“I know.”

She blinked again. “It’s like she’s come to a costume party as the abstract concept of heteronormative sex.”

“I know.”

Normally very much a one-woman woman, Hanna was still staring at Ruby in frank disbelief. “She isn’t even my type and I still want to bite her face to see if she’s a dream.”

“I know, right?” concluded Liza, thankful to know that her wife was beginning to be on at least some of the same pages as her.

Hesitantly, Hanna reached across the table and took Liza’s hand. “For what it’s worth, I’m now a lot more flattered that you turned her down.”

Ruby took a seat at the far end of the table, where she ate fresh fruit and sipped water while watching the other guests like the kind of predatory cat that knows for certain that bigger predators are out there. Most of the rest of the guests from the previous evening were already in place. There was the colonel, slathering mustard onto a Cumberland sausage. There was the professor, sipping coffee and picking a plum from the fruit bowl. There was Sir Richard and his aunt. As yet, there was no sign of the vicar—the mysterious vicar who wasn’t what he seemed, according to a woman that had as good as told Liza she couldn’t be trusted. Nor was there any sign of Mrs Ackroyd, but that was—that wasn’t suspicious, was it? Wouldn’t being here be even more suspicious? A woman whose husband has only just died doesn’t rush downstairs at eight the next morning to try the Porridge Brulée.

And there, at last, striding through the doors with the confidence of a man who had never admitted a fault in his life, was Belloc. Expecting a show of some kind, Liza set her phone to record.

“Mes amis,” he announced. “I have examined the room in which the crime took place and have concluded that there was indeed a struggle and that Monsieur Ackroyd was thrown to his death by an assailant with intentions most deliberate.”

“Just checking, old boy,” put in Sir Richard, “is that a long-winded way of saying that you don’t know anything you didn’t already know last night?”

“What Belloc suspected last night Belloc has now confirmed.”

The manager sidled in behind Belloc and tried to speak up. “There was one other thing. When we checked the gun room this morning—”

“But that is not all!” Belloc interrupted. “When the staff they made the check of the gun room this morning, they discovered that a pistol had been taken from its cabinet.”

Hanna’s head came up abruptly. “Sorry, why does this hotel have a gun room?”

“Shooting parties,” explained Mr Burgh. “And there’s a range on the grounds. Then there’s the antiques—it’s one of them that’s gone missing.”

“What kind of antique?” asked Liza, opening up a notebook app on her phone and trying to ignore Hanna’s look of disapproval.

“Enfield No. 2 Mark 1 revolver,” Mr Burgh said.

“Fine weapon.” The colonel laid down his fork. “M’father had one in the war. Swore by it.”

“We know”—Belloc returned to his monologue without giving any real indication that anybody else had spoken—”that nothing had been disturbed when the maid locked the gun room at ten yesterday evening, but that when she opened it this morning, the weapon had vanished.”

“Who has the keys?” Liza found herself wondering aloud.

The detective shot her an impatient look. “Belloc has already ascertained this information.”

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