Page 4 of Murder Most Actual

“They’re actually very conscientious.” There was Hanna, riding to her rescue like she always did. It would have felt romantic if they weren’t in the middle of a non-consensual holiday, and if Liza hadn’t been drinking a cup of tea she hadn’t asked for. “They never speculate, they never harass survivors or dredge up old wounds. They just talk about interesting cases.”

“‘Two Girls Drinking Wine and Talking Murder,’” put in Sir Richard, who clearly felt the conversation had gone on too long without a contribution from his corner.

“Murder,” said Belloc with more than a hint of sanctimony, “is not a subject for talk with the girls. It is not something for a casual chat over wine and nibbles. Murder is a serious subject for serious people. It is, as the saying has it and most rightly, a subject most foul.”

That quieted the room for a moment, even the loquacious Sir Richard. Then Hanna said simply: “Bollocks.”

“If you will pardon me, madame, it is not, how you say, bollocks.”

“Yes, it is.” Hanna was doing her scornful tone. It was a tone that Liza hated to be on the end of but secretly enjoyed hearing directed at other people. “The world is full of terrible shit, but everyone copes with terrible shit in different ways. And yes, obviously, there will be people who feel hurt by podcasts like Actual, and there will be people who feel helped by them. And people who don’t give a fuck either way. But from what you’ve said it sounds like all you really care about is girls playing on your lawn.”

“Belloc does not have to listen to this,” Belloc said. And demonstrating his determination not to listen to it, he rose and left the drawing room.

“Well.” Sir Richard leaned contentedly back in his chair. “You showed him, eh what?”

Hanna settled down onto a short sofa and, after a longer pause than was probably appropriate for a married woman, Liza settled down beside her.

“I wasn’t trying to show anybody anything,” Hanna insisted. “I just can’t stand gatekeepy bullshit. I get enough of that at work.”

There were no two ways about it: Hanna was magnificent. She was a fighter. She was forging her own way in a notoriously hostile world, and Liza loved her for it. But fuck was it annoying right then. “Thank you for standing up for me,” said Liza without much conviction. Then she kissed her wife on the cheek, and it felt like a lie.

For a while they chatted with the ebullient Sir Richard. Which mostly involved him talking without pausing for breath while Hanna and Liza made occasional encouraging noises. So it came as something of a relief when the pseudo-monologue was interrupted by raised voices from the corridor outside.

“… nearly eight thirty.”

“So what? Nobody is waiting for us, Vivien. We are on holiday and we can take as long as we damned well please.”

“Don’t you ‘we’ me, I was ready half an hour ago. You were the one who had to ‘see if you could get reception.’”

“There was a signal on the balcony. I’m sure of it.”

“We’re in the middle of nowhere, Malcom. You won’t get a signal no matter how much you wave your phone around and stand on one leg.”

“Just because I have the sort of mind where I have to try things for myself instead of just accepting—” The door to the drawing room opened and an unmistakably married couple entered, any signs of their previous bickering vanishing like a road in the fog.

“Why hello, Sir Richard.” The man who was presumably called Malcom gave a cheery no-problems-here smile. “Lovely to see you. And new arrivals as well?”

Sir Richard rose with the effortless social grace of the class for whom effortless social grace was the only skill they needed to develop. “Quite so. Liza and Hanna, these are Vivien and Malcom Ackroyd. Vivien and Malcom Ackroyd, these are Liza Blaine and Hanna—sorry, didn’t catch the surname.”

“Also Blaine,” said Hanna. “I took her name.”

“Really?” Sir Richard looked like he was trying to work out how to parse this. “Deuced modern of you. Or possibly deuced old-fashioned. Hard to tell which when you’re both gels. How did you decide which way it went?”

“My original name was Hanna Smellie.”

“Ah.” Sir Richard’s nose wrinkled. “Probably the best decision all round then.”

The Ackroyds made the usual pleased-to-meet-you noises and settled into two of the available chairs. For a moment, the conversation stalled as everybody tried to navigate the complexities of having a polite chat with people you would never under normal circumstances choose to spend time with. But in the end social nicety won out, and the five of them eased into the usual nothing-topics of people who meet on holiday and have nothing in common: the journey, the weather, their various experiences of the stay so far.

Eventually the atmosphere relaxed enough that Liza was almost able to forget how little she actually wanted to be there, and things settled into a natural rhythm. That rhythm being Sir Richard pontificating on whatever topic came into his head, and his various interlocutors making interjections whenever they could. After about fifteen minutes of trying to get a word in edgeways, Malcom Ackroyd—doing a remarkable job of pretending he hadn’t just finished a screaming row with his wife—suggested that they go in to dinner. And although Liza wasn’t especially hungry, it seemed rude to decline the invitation. So, as an almost-functional party of five—or at the very least, a party of five with their resentments deeply buried—they went through to the dining hall.

Chapter Three

The Guests, in the Dining Room, with Dinner

Friday, late evening

There were, Liza was beginning to notice, a lot of signs that the hotel hadn’t been designed as a hotel. The dining room was one such sign—rather than little individual tables where guests could get on with politely ignoring each other, it was laid out more like something you’d get in a stately home: one long table around which everybody gathered, while near-invisible waitstaff faded in and out of the background like servile ghosts.

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