Page 65 of Murder Most Actual

“It won’t be long now,” Ruby went on, apparently to the middle distance. “If he’s coming for me, he’ll come soon. But he won’t until he’s sure that those numbers aren’t getting out.”

Propped against her own tree, Hanna sucked in a sharp breath. “Yeah, that kind of sounds like you’ve screwed us.”

“I would, but you keep turning me down.”

Sometimes, Hanna could take a joke really well, but for some unfathomable reason, in a dark wood with a gun-toting stranger who kept trying to fuck her wife wasn’t one of those times. “I’m serious, you … you … self-consciously enigmatic tube of amorality. You’ve set a fucking serial killer after us.”

“He’s not a serial killer,” Ruby replied only slightly chidingly. “Serial killers are pathological. Mr B is just very, very ruthless.”

Liza’s true crime podcaster instincts kicked in before she could stop herself. “Actually, there’s some debate about that. While a lot of people do think that killing to satisfy a psychological need rather than for some other motive is a necessary part of the definition, most law enforcement organisations define a serial killer as anybody who kills three or more people in separate events.”

“Oh, good.” Hanna did not sound amused. Apparently, in a dark wood with a gun-toting stranger who kept trying to fuck her wife was also a context that lowered her tolerance for pedantry. “I’m so glad that we’ve got the man who is going to murder us both in our beds properly classified. And”—she glared angrily at both Liza and Ruby—”if either of you two even thinks about saying, ‘Well, actually, none of the victims so far have been in their beds at point of death,’ I will fucking scream.”

“And risk alerting whoever’s out here?” One of Ruby’s less attractive qualities was her refusal to rise to anything resembling bait.

“Oh, nobody’s out here.” When irritated or frightened, Liza knew from long experience, Hanna had a habit of retreating into certainty. “The professor probably just shot at a menacing branch.”

“Perhaps,” wondered Liza aloud. The whole situation was growing increasingly suspicious, and the more pieces of the puzzle she picked up the more convinced she was that there was more than one picture. She had too many corners, for a start. “Or perhaps it was the chef, or Mr Burgh, or one of the staff.” Or, she added silently, Malcom Ackroyd wandering around headless, or having faked his death. “Anybody could be skulking around out here.”

“But,” Hanna added, “they probably aren’t.”

Despite the probably-aren’tness, they peeled themselves away from their respective trees and continued their circuit of the eastern grounds. The snow had thinned enough that if it hadn’t been after dark, and on a mountainside, and with temperatures still hovering in the vicinity of freezing, Liza might almost have suggested that the three of them say fuck it and try to make a break for the nearest town. Well, not the three of them, except she figured Ruby would be hard to shake.

In the end, though, the risk of falling off a frozen road to their frozen deaths proved more worrying than the risk of falling victim to a mysterious gunperson in an otherwise warm and cheerfully lit hotel, so they made their way back around to the loch, and from there towards the main building.

At the front entrance, they met the trio of other guests that Ruby insisted upon referring to as “the boys.”

“Find anything?” asked Sir Richard.

“A lot of darkness, a lot of snow, and no sign of anybody,” replied Liza. “Probably a false alarm.”

The colonel made a sort of harrumphing noise and returned his pistol to his coat pocket. “In that case, I’m going for a nightcap. Anybody joining me?”

Sir Richard indicated that he would be, as did Ruby, but Reverend Lincoln demurred, citing the clerical virtue of temperance and the need to get a good night’s sleep.

“Yeah,” Liza said, casting a glance at Hanna, who did not seem especially keen to spend an evening in the drawing room with people who were all armed and drinking. “We might turn in too.”

Ruby smiled. “Well, if I’d known that was an op—”

“Stop it.” Hanna held up a hand. “It’s late, we’ve just been chasing a ghost around a snowfield for the best part of an hour, and none of us are in a mood to be seduced.”

One of Sir Richard’s eyebrows quirked upwards. “Speak for yourself.”

Leaving the trio of drinkers to negotiate the question of seduction or otherwise, Liza and Hanna decided that politeness required them to stop by Professor Worth’s room on the way back to theirs in order to tell him that whatever he’d shot at probably wasn’t a murderer.

They knocked at his door and he opened it a crack, the gun waggling through the gap and the gleam of his patent leather shoe just visible beneath. “Who goes there?” he asked in the tones of somebody who vaguely thought that was the kind of thing you should say, but who wasn’t really sure what answer he was expecting.

“Liza,” said Liza, “and Hanna. We’ve looked outside and we didn’t find anybody. We think you probably just shot at a shadow.”

“Oh.” There was a very, very audible sigh of relief from the other side of the door. “Well, thank you for telling me. Good night.”

The door clicked shut, leaving Liza and Hanna standing alone in the corridor, a little miffed at the abruptness of the farewell but generally pleased that they didn’t have a man who seemed to know nothing about guns pointing a gun at them.

Upstairs, they let themselves into their room, and at once a feeling like needles ran down Liza’s spine. Unlike the reverend’s room, she was familiar with the space and so could spot the little things out of place—the dressing table that had been slightly shifted, the pillows on the bed not quite the way they were normally arranged by the staff. The way her laptop was very obviously missing.

“Fuck.”

Hanna shut the door carefully behind them and then stood with her back to it. “This is bad, right? This is very, very bad.”

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