Page 20 of Murder Most Actual

Honestly, Liza hadn’t been that keen on sitting around stewing either. “Yeah. That sounds nice.” And it did, if you ignored the context. The murder context and the marriage context.

Walking down the front steps of the hotel and into the gardens should have been a magical experience: a landscape blanketed in snow unfurling before them, the cloud-capped mountains of the highlands, trees limned with frost. But there was nothing like a corpse and the spectre of divorce to take the shine off the pretty scenery. At least the body had been moved—two of the staff had shifted it to one of the outbuildings a little after breakfast.

Out of nowhere, Hanna laughed.

“What’s so funny?”

“Oh, I just realised that thanks to Mr Ackroyd we can have a shit, miserable weekend and I won’t even slightly feel it’s my fault.”

Liza looked at her wife. Hanna’s ability to find humour in unexpected, often dark, places was one of the things that Liza loved about her. “It wouldn’t have been your fault anyway.”

“It would, though, wouldn’t it? I dragged you out here without even asking you. I was overcompensating. I always overcompensate.”

She did. There had been a time when Liza found it sweet. “It was thoughtful,” she said. Then in the spirit of honesty added, “In a way.”

“A controlling way.”

Reaching out a hand, Liza stroked Hanna’s arm through her inadequate coat. “You were showing you care,” she told her.

“Isn’t that …” Hanna shivered, and not because of the weather. “Doesn’t that sound kind of like an excuse?”

As they made their way into the gardens, Liza put her arm around Hanna’s waist. It was a small step, and felt strange. “I think if you’re worried it’s an excuse, that means it’s not an excuse.”

There was a lake, or perhaps technically a loch, a little way along the hillside with a neat clump of woodland on its east shore. Liza and Hanna were just making their way down when they noticed a trail of fresh footprints headed in the same direction and, shortly afterwards, noticed Sir Richard at the end of them.

“Why, hel-lo.” He waved a cheerful greeting then returned to his previous attitude, which was staring at the hotel, one hand shielding his eyes.

“Hi.” Liza waved back. “What are you …? Why are you looking up at the hotel like that?”

“Just thinking.”

In the cold, Hanna huddled a little closer to her wife. “You don’t buy this there’s-a-mysterious-master-criminal thing, do you?”

“Not especially.” Sir Richard gave a shrug. “But … well, there are some rather rum things going on, tell the truth.”

“Rum in what way?” asked Liza, which earned a must you look from Hanna.

“Well, leaving aside the inherent rumminess of an otherwise ordinary chap taking a swan dive off a balcony, it all seems a bit dashed unlikely. Mysterious assailant strikes the moment the missus takes a wander down to look at the car and all.”

“They could have been watching the room,” suggested Liza at exactly the same time as Hanna said, “There probably wasn’t one.”

“Both possibilities,” Sir Richard admitted. “And of course, there’s still every chance it was just a tragic accident.”

That was, Liza had to agree, the most likely outcome. Which was good, wasn’t it? Sure, it would have been more exciting if there was an actual murder, but by the low bar of ‘good ways for an innocent man to wind up dead’, the best option was definitely the one where it was nobody’s fault.

Still, there was a speculative note in Sir Richard’s voice that Liza couldn’t quite let slide. “You don’t think it was, do you?”

Sir Richard wasn’t quite as preening as Belloc, but having had more than one conversation with him, Liza was well aware how little provocation it took to make him wax expository. “Well.” He gave the Blaines a conspiratorial smile. “There are one or two things I noticed.”

“I don’t suppose”—Hanna’s tone was dry—”either of them was that a human being has just died and we should treat that with respect?”

Sir Richard looked down his nose at her. “‘Fraid not. What I noticed was that his wife not being in the room at the time made ‘accident’ a much less probable explanation.”

“So when you say one or two things,” Hanna pointed out, “you mean one?”

“Well, yes.” Sir Richard had the grace to look suitably abashed. “You know, you’re supposed to ask me why I think that.”

Liza could have, but actually, she was beginning to think she knew. “It’s because if he was going to fall off the balcony by chance, it could have been at any time. But if he was pushed, either his wife did it then ran, or somebody waited for his wife to leave and then came in and did it.”

---