Page 28 of Murder Most Actual

“Sad, I was going to say.” And it was. Now she thought about it, Liza couldn’t quite shake how pointlessly sad she found it. “I’d rather believe Mr Ackroyd died because there’s a master criminal on the loose than because couples fight sometimes.”

Hanna winced. “For what it’s worth, I promise I won’t throw you off a balcony.”

“That’s the thing.” Liza turned to her wife. “You can’t promise that.”

The look in Hanna’s eyes was on the border between offended and incredulous. “I kind of think I can.”

Hoping that she wasn’t about to make herself sound like a total psychopath, Liza shook her head. “You can’t. I can’t either. People make mistakes. They snap, they shove somebody when they’re standing in the wrong place or lash out when they’re holding the wrong kind of knife.”

“There’s a right kind of knife?” asked Hanna.

Ruby grinned. “Dozens. If you’re very good, I’ll give you a demonstration.”

“Sorry,”—Hanna turned her attention back to the bed—”are you making flirty references to blood play while we’re discussing a man’s actual death?”

The grin didn’t seem to be going anywhere. “Ask your wife what I’m calling my autobiography.”

“Anyway.” Liza made an effort to drag the conversation away from the cliff it seemed about to pitch over. “The point is that the reason the person who finds the body is so often the killer is that if you kill your own husband in your own home, not finding the body would look much more suspicious.” She thought that was right, at least. It wasn’t like she was a criminologist. “But if you’d gone to a complete stranger’s room and shoved him off a balcony … I don’t know. I think you’d be better off pretending you were never there.”

“It’s what I did.” Ruby put one delicate finger to her lips. “Sorry, I mean, what I would do.”

“Wow.” There were few words Hanna put less enthusiasm into than wow. “You are really bad at this building trust thing.”

Before Ruby could reply, a sharp crack echoed from outside. It was loud, too loud, and to Liza suggested some things she’d really hoped weren’t going to be suggested.

“What the fuck was that?” asked Hanna.

“Unless I’m very much mistaken,”—Ruby rose from the bed with an eerie mix of grace and enthusiasm—”it was an Enfield No. 2 Mark 1 revolver.”

Chapter Eleven

Liza, in the Boathouse, with a Camera

Saturday, early evening

Following the sound of a single gunshot through the expansive grounds of a luxury hotel across a wide expanse of snow was not as easy as Liza had hoped it might be. Plus, Hanna had been really, really unhappy about running towards the sound of guns. Especially since Ruby had elected not to join them.

“It just seems,” she had said as they hurried downstairs, “that if there’s one thing about her I trust, it’s her survival instincts.”

Liza put an arm around her wife, partly for reassurance and partly because she felt a bit guilty for dragging her back into the cold. “Look at it this way: if somebody’s been shot, then probably wherever that happened is the last place the killer is going to want to be. So, it’s actually the safest place in the entire hotel.”

“That seems specious.”

“Well … maybe a bit. But would you rather just stand around not knowing what’s going on?”

“Honestly, if it was the best way to not get killed, yes.”

The grounds of the hotel were relatively open, which, combined with the conveniently white background, made the other guests stand out quite clearly, although they were hard to identify from the courtyard. Two figures were already hurrying along the shore towards the trees by the loch, and another two were descending towards the same destination from a different direction. The latter pair, Liza felt sure, were Sir Richard and his aunt, her sapphire blue dress standing out bold against the snow.

Hurrying, despite the fact that there was almost certainly no reason to hurry, and quite a good reason—in the shape of an armed murderer—to want to avoid being first on the scene, Liza and Hanna stumbled down the bank towards the wood, holding onto one another to keep from falling, or at least to make sure that if one fell, both would.

When they reached the loch, they collided with the two men they’d seen from the hotel. One, it turned out, was Professor Worth, shivering in a deep purple overcoat. The other was the vicar. Up close, he was taller than Liza might have expected—not that there was a height limit for clergy. He had a sort of ranginess to him that looked out of place as well, but maybe she was just unfairly applying Ruby’s warning to an innocent man of the cloth.

“You heard it too, I assume,” the vicar said.

Liza nodded. “I think it came from down here? It’s hard to tell with the echoes.”

“It’s where I’d bring somebody if I was going to shoot them.” It wasn’t a comment Liza expected from a man whose work outfit included a dog collar, but then again, her job-slash-hobby was talking about serial killers, so she wasn’t really in a place to judge.

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