Page 38 of Murder Most Actual

Chapter Fourteen

Vivien, in the Bedroom, with the Door Closed

Saturday night

“I guess we both fucked that up,” Liza admitted as they made their way from the dining hall to the tower. “I just thought it would go more … more smoothly, you know?”

“You thought Vivien would hear your brilliant deductions,” suggested Hanna, a note of irony in her voice, “crack under the strain, and immediately put on a 1920s villain voice and say, ‘Yes yes, I killed them, I killed them both, and I’d do it again’?”

Despite herself, Liza laughed. “Well, not exactly, but I did think we’d maybe get people to agree that something needed to be done.”

“I suppose not having the gun was a bit of a dealbreaker.”

“Yeah. It’s just … I looked under her window, and there it was. Not the gun, but a place where a gun could have been. It’s like … it’s like that bit in A Study in Scarlet where Holmes is all, ‘I expected to find these pills at the last crime scene, and here they are at this crime scene, and I am a genius.’ And it felt—it felt good?”

Hanna gave her a cautious look. “I get it. Just … don’t get carried away. You aren’t Sherlock Holmes. Also, Sherlock Holmes was fictional.”

“I’m not getting carried away. I—I suppose I’d rather feel like I’m doing something.”

And now Hanna was laughing. “Now that I understand. Hell, what do you think this holiday was?”

“A misguided effort to fix everything at once with a big romantic gesture?” suggested Liza.

“It’s my equivalent of trying to solve a murder.”

They heard footsteps behind them and, with the deaths and the gun still floating around, that spooked them enough that they pressed themselves flat against opposite walls. Except it turned out only to be the vicar. Or perhaps not only, if Ruby was right.

“Ms Blaine,” he said, “and Ms Blaine, before you go to see Mrs Ackroyd, I thought I should tell you something.”

Liza immediately tensed. “Why didn’t you mention it at dinner?”

“I’m sure it’s unclerical,”—the vicar looked genuinely apologetic—”but do you trust everybody in that room?”

“Yet you trust us?” asked Liza, still not totally certain that she trusted him.

His eyes narrowed. “I think you are who you say you are, which isn’t something I think about everybody else.”

Hanna, apparently torn between not wanting to take Ruby’s warnings at face value and not wanting to take the vicar at face value either, gave Reverend Lincoln a challenging look. “Okay, so what do you want to tell us?”

“People confide in me,” he began. “It’s part of the job.”

“Sorry,” Hanna told him, “atheist.”

“I’m not saying you should confide in me. But I’ve heard some things that might matter.”

“What things?” asked Liza, still cautious.

“This morning, Mrs Ackroyd came past my room, rather early. I thought it was unusual at the time. Later on, one of the maids told me that she’d heard her having some kind of confrontation with Lady Tabitha.”

That was another unnecessary complication. “Lady Tabitha?”

“It may be nothing, but … I thought you should know. As it happens, I agree with you that Mrs Ackroyd is the most likely suspect in both murders and, well, if she’s also engaged in something nefarious, you should be careful.”

“Tell me you’re not another one who believes in Belloc’s mystery mastermind.” Hanna’s tone was contemptuous.

Reverend Lincoln gave a good-humoured smile. “I’d have thought you’d expect me to believe in unusual things.”

“There’s a difference between supernatural and wacky,” Hanna replied. “Plenty of reasonable people believe in God, but I mean, come on—a mysterious criminal genius who goes only by a single initial and who, what, sends a bickering middle-aged couple to do his dirty work for him?”

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