Page 36 of Murder Most Actual

“Somebody is running around this hotel with a loaded revolver,” Ruby pointed out. “Being too careful about finding and stopping them might get us killed.”

She had a point, although Mrs Ackroyd hadn’t struck Liza as the hardened killer type. Then again, if there was one thing she’d learned from over a hundred episodes of Murder Most Actual, it was that hardened killers didn’t always look like hardened killers. And if there was another thing she’d learned, it was that most murders weren’t committed by hardened killers at all. “Right,” she said, “how about we round everybody up, get together in the lounge, and talk it out?”

“Everybody,” began Ruby, “including the woman you believe threw her husband off a balcony and then went on to murder a private detective in cold blood?”

Liza thought about this. “Actually, I think so. I don’t see any point in talking about this behind her back. We’d have to go and confront her anyway.”

“Might be good to work out what we’re going to say first?” suggested Hanna. “Otherwise it’ll just be everybody shouting at once.”

Ruby’s lips curled into a smile. “Come now, I’m sure Mr Burgh can manage a few talkative guests. Besides, if she suspects something is up, she might run.”

“Run where?” Hanna’s tone wasn’t hostile exactly, but it had an edge to it.

“To the gun.” One of Ruby’s eyebrows curved into a perfect, victorious arch. “Call me selfish, but it’s not her escaping I’m worried about; it’s her retrieving a weapon and killing me.”

“Or,” Hanna suggested, “somebody else?”

“No, mostly just me.”

Hanna glared.

Ruby met the glare with a defiant smile. “Oh, don’t look at me like that. I don’t know any of you—why should I pretend to care about your lives as much as my own?”

That rather put an end to the discussion, and the four of them set about gathering the rest of the guests. The Quirkes and the professor, it transpired, had also parted company when a sudden noise which turned out to be a particularly aggressively blocked pipe spooked the professor so badly that he needed to go and lie down. Mrs Ackroyd resented the summons but came along with the rest, and then the guests, plus a largeish chunk of the staff, gathered in the lounge where, to Liza’s surprise, Mr Burgh handed straight over to her.

“Okay,” Liza began, and then waited to see if anybody would shout at her or throw anything. This was way easier with a microphone and wine. “I think I’ve got something.”

Sir Richard gave her an enthusiastic nod. “Good show, old girl. I mean, late-twenties-early-thirties girl.”

“Thanks,” she replied in her most sincere pretty-sure-I’m-being-patronised voice. “I had a look around the woods and I think I found the killer’s footprints, but they just came back to the hotel. Then when we searched the hotel, we didn’t find anything—”

“Because there was nothing to find,” protested Mrs Ackroyd. Protested too much, Liza thought.

“But then we looked outside. Because we thought maybe the killer might have thrown the gun out of the window when we started looking for it.”

Mrs Ackroyd blanched. It couldn’t be this simple, could it? Except wasn’t it always this simple? In real life. No twists or shocking revelations, no need to get everybody into the drawing room at the end and give a big speech about how it all fit together. Just, “Yeah, it was probably that person.”

“And we found evidence,” Liza continued, “that something had been thrown from a long way up into a bush just next to where we found Mr Ackroyd’s body last night.”

The professor took off his glasses, polished them, and put them back on again. “Good Lord, you’ve found the gun.”

Well, that was embarrassing. “Not exactly.”

“Oh.” An expression of puzzlement spread across the professor’s face. “I just assumed—you know—because we’d all been gathered together.”

“Does seem a touch premature,” agreed Colonel Coleman.

Fuck. Did it? To her it had seemed pretty cut and dried, but perhaps she’d been overthinking it. Or underthinking it. “No, but—it’s just too big a coincidence.” She turned to Vivien Ackroyd. “You left early when we said we were looking for the gun, then something hit a bush right outside your win—”

Mrs Ackroyd was in tears. “He was my husband, Ms Blaine. We’d been married six years. And now you’re saying you think that I—that I …” She began to choke, gasping out harsh, guttural sobs. “And Belloc too?” she managed.

Perhaps fatally, Liza tried to remain calm. “You and your husband were clearly having difficulties and—”

“And I suppose you and your wife have never had an argument in your lives,” Mrs Ackroyd snapped back.

“I’ll be honest,” said Sir Richard apologetically, “I was getting a bit of a … sense from you two last night, so, you know, glass houses and all that?”

Sometimes, Liza reflected, Hanna’s protective streak was wonderful. This did not turn out to be one of those times.

---