Page 35 of Murder Most Actual

It was a pretty slim hope, she realised, but to her surprise she saw something. A bush running the length of the hotel wall, still thick with the snow that, even now, was falling all about them.

Mostly thick with the snow. Because just at one side there was a patch where the snow had been knocked off, as if something heavy had struck it from above. Not quite willing to believe she could have got quite this lucky—or possibly unlucky—Liza approached the hedge. The branches, dense and neatly trimmed, had definitely been snapped by some kind of impact, but whatever had caused the damage was long gone. Perhaps it was a coincidence, but it was looking a lot like the gun wasn’t in the lake, and a lot like at some point, by whatever means, it had wound up following Mr Ackroyd over the edge of the balcony.

And now it was out there, somewhere in the hotel.

For just a moment, Liza understood what Hanna was so afraid of.

Chapter Thirteen

Mrs Ackroyd, in the Lounge, with Witnesses

Saturday night

“It’s what?” Mr Burgh was asking.

“It’s where the gun fell,” Liza explained for the third time. “It has to be.”

“Are you sure? It could be a bird or … or a badger.”

Hanna gave him a look. “A flying badger?”

“It could have burrowed underneath and … and shaken the branches?” He didn’t sound like he was convincing himself, much less anybody else.

Liza joined in with the look given. “Put it this way. Maybe I’m wrong, but if I’m right, Vivien Ackroyd killed her husband and Belloc, and then she threw the gun out of the window when we said we were going to go and search the rooms.”

“Which means we should …?” Hanna prompted.

Liza hadn’t thought quite that far ahead. “I don’t know. Go and confront her about it?”

“And after that?” They were back in the scratchy space. They were definitely back in the scratchy space.

“We lock her up?” suggested Liza, not quite able to keep the apologetic tone out of her voice.

Mr Burgh looked uncertain. “I’m not sure locking up a guest is really the best thing for the hotel’s reputation.”

“Your hotel has had two murders in two days,” Hanna pointed out. “Its reputation might be in need of the tiniest bit of rehabilitation anyway.”

Across the courtyard, there was the soft sound of the front door closing. And there was Ruby, pausing for a moment, framed by the doorway with snow swirling about her. “Found something?”

“Maybe?” The moment she’d spoken, Liza wondered if she should have let somebody else answer. It was probably best not to be too eager to interact with the immaculate femme fatale. “I think we’ve found where the gun was hidden.”

“Was hidden?” Ruby sashayed towards them, her dress scuffing the snow up behind her.

“Somebody took it,” explained Liza. “At least, I think that’s what happened.”

“It might have been a badger,” explained Mr Burgh.

Hanna was staring at Ruby suspiciously. And not you-tried-to-seduce-my-wife suspiciously. “Aren’t you supposed to be with the colonel and Reverend Lincoln?”

The insouciant way Ruby shrugged in response must have taken hours of practice. “Didn’t work out. The colonel wanted to stop searching and try to get into the gun room, the vicar wasn’t having it, they split up, and I decided I’d rather be alone by myself than alone with a strange man who might be a murderer.”

That made things more complicated. Liza had been working with the assumption that everybody was accounted for. “How long ago was that?”

“Ten minutes, perhaps twenty. They weren’t completely hopeless.”

Still, Liza reflected, plenty of time for any one of them to find and retrieve a gun. “We should get everybody back together. Tell them what we know.”

“Do we know anything?” Hanna asked, then seemed to regret her tone. “I mean, I’m not saying—I just—we should be careful.”

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