Page 66 of Murder Most Actual

“Probably?” Searching for an upside, Liza settled on, “I mean, unless it’s good. Maybe whoever it was realised that what they were looking for isn’t here and has moved on. Maybe this is it, and we’re done now.”

“Does that honestly seem likely?”

Honestly, it didn’t. Hell, the very fact that her laptop—which contained all her notes for the next episode of Murder Most Actual and the half-edited recordings of the last episode, along with just straight up being logged in to her personal email—had been stolen and it wasn’t her biggest concern right then was a pretty major sign that something was very wrong indeed.

“Do we tell the manager?” asked Hanna.

Liza was at best only sixty percent sure that Mr Burgh was trustworthy. Which meant there was a forty percent chance of his being a manipulative sociopath who would definitely want them dead if they confirmed that they had access to his banking information. And forty percent seemed like bad odds. Especially because he was on quite a short list of people who could have searched their room in the time they’d been out of the hotel. “I think maybe no. At least not everything. We should probably report the computer stolen because,” she winced; this was about to go down a but-we-know-that-they-know-that-we-know rabbit hole, “if we didn’t suspect that somebody came to my room looking for something specific, that’s what we’d probably do.”

Perching on the very corner of the bed, Hanna rested her chin on her hands. “While we’re there, do you think we could get a different room?”

“It does feel a bit yicky still staying here, doesn’t it?”

“Not yicky. Unsafe.”

Liza went and sat next to her wife, putting an arm around her protectively. Not that she was really able to offer much protection. Maybe she should have taken that gun. “We’ll be okay.”

“Will we?” It was a challenging will we, not a reassurance-seeking one. “Because if somebody came through that door right now and tried to murderise us both, I’m not sure what we’d do.”

“Hide under the bed?” Liza was trying to be light-hearted, but it was scary to think about.

“First place anybody would look.”

“You say that, but when was the last time you looked under a bed?”

With an almost apologetic air, Hanna peeled Liza’s arm from around her shoulders and stood again. “I’m sorry, I’m not in the mood to joke about this. Now can we please go and try to get another room?”

So they went down to Mr Burgh’s office. They found him sitting in a wheely chair backed against the wall, a gun on his desk. His hand was hovering suspiciously near it when they opened the door, even though they’d knocked.

Reporting the laptop missing was a formality. Liza held out little hope that it would be found, and Mr Burgh, like everybody else in the entire hotel, had other things on his mind. Getting a room reassignment was more difficult.

“The thing is,” Mr Burgh explained, “we’re actually quite a small hotel. So we do have some free rooms available, but, well …”

“But they all belonged to dead people?”

“Um … yes.”

Liza and Hanna formed a little huddle at the back of the office, talking in low voices and hoping that Mr Burgh would be polite enough not to try to listen in.

“I actually think we should take it,” said Hanna.

That wasn’t the outcome Liza had been expecting. “Really?”

“Really.” Hanna nodded. “I’m worried about a murderer, not a ghost.”

Liza almost couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “And you don’t think it’ll be … you know, morbid?”

“Better morbid than dead.”

It was, Liza had to admit, a compelling argument. And while moving into the room where Vivien Ackroyd had died seemed genuinely disrespectful, there were other guests who had died a convenient distance from the place they’d actually slept. Also …

“I don’t suppose we could take Mr Belloc’s room, could we?” Liza asked in her most I-have-no-ulterior-motives of tones.

Mr Burgh looked worried. “Ordinarily, I wouldn’t. He’s technically still a resident.”

“Yes, but he’s dead,” Liza pointed out. “And we might be too if we have to stay in a room that’s been ransacked.”

Apparently at least slightly invested in minimising casualties amongst his guests, Mr Burgh nodded. “Yes, I was just about to say.” He produced a key from behind the desk. “I’m afraid we haven’t cleaned any of his things out. There didn’t seem much point.”

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