Page 74 of Murder Most Actual

That did tally with what Liza knew. She just wasn’t sure it all added up to four murders.

“I don’t suppose”—Hanna stirred sleepily on the sofa—”that while you were digging up all this information you bothered to find out what this young woman’s name was, did you?”

Sir Richard looked perplexed. “Should I have done? Didn’t seem terribly important. Anyway, she’d also apparently had a bit of a run-in with Mr Ackroyd. The footman even confronted him on her behalf.”

There was a lot about this that Liza still wasn’t buying. “You think she responded to workplace harassment by becoming a serial killer?”

“Don’t be silly.” Sir Richard looked borderline insulted. “I think she was already a serial killer, and Mr Ackroyd made the mistake of harassing the wrong person.”

By Liza’s side, Hanna lifted her head blearily. “Is there a right person to harass?”

“Well, somebody who isn’t a serial killer is probably a good first filter,” Ruby pointed out. “But go on, Richard, run us down the other murders.”

Sir Richard steadied himself and rubbed the sleep from his eyes with his free hand. “Well, most straightforwardly, she was staff, so she had access to the gun room—in fact, she was the one who reported the weapon missing, suggesting she even had access to the safe itself.” He took a brief pause for breath and implied applause. “She could go about the hotel without being noticed—we’ve none of us been paying attention to the staff—and could easily access the master keys. Nobody would see her as a threat, which would let her get close enough to Belloc, and to Vivien, and to Aunt Tabitha to finish them off.”

On the sofa, Hanna had almost completely stirred. “And her motivation for this is …?”

“Perhaps she’s just mad?” suggested Sir Richard.

“One,”—Hanna rolled onto her back, fatigue warring with irritation—”mad isn’t a thing. If you mean she might have a specific mental illness, you’d need to say which. Two, if you do mean she has a specific mental illness, then you should know that virtually all mental illnesses—including the big famous ones like schizophrenia—make you less likely to commit crimes and more likely to be the victim of them, not the other way around. Three, so, having worked at this hotel perfectly happily, she suddenly decides to start offing guests for no reason?”

“Not no reason.” Sir Richard, it seemed, was as keen to stick to his metaphorical guns as the colonel had been to stick to his literal ones. “She had disagreements with Mr Ackroyd and my aunt. Belloc was on her trail, and Vivien Ackroyd was in her way. It all makes a certain dark sense if you can get into the mind of a killer.”

Did it? Liza had a nasty suspicion it might. And wouldn’t that make her feel—actually, what would it make her feel? Wasn’t it better if this was all the fault of one psychopath instead of … of whatever other set of ideas she’d been working on? And Sir Richard was a proper detective—a proper amateur detective at least. What were the odds that she was right and he was wrong?

“And do you,” Ruby asked, innocuous as only a professional femme fatale could be, “think that she’s also the mysterious Mr B? Or do you think that Belloc was just wrong about that?”

Sir Richard waved a dismissive hand. “The man was a fool, and Mr B is a phantom. I’d stake my reputation on it.”

“Because organised crime existing is more improbable than a random hotel worker being an actual psychopath?” asked Liza.

“I have my theory of the case and I stand by it.” Sir Richard leaned back contentedly in his chair. “Do you have a better one?”

She didn’t. Or at least, she didn’t yet. “I guess I just think it might be … messier than that.”

“I see.” The expression on Sir Richard’s face was the opposite of impressed. “How very specific.”

On the sofa, Hanna shifted her position so she could put a supportive hand on the small of Liza’s back.

“Okay,” Liza tried again, “how about this. I think there’s reason to believe that Mr B is real and—”

“What reason?” asked Sir Richard, raising a quizzical eyebrow.

While Liza didn’t want to look foolish in front of Sir Richard, she also didn’t see what she’d gain by dropping either Ruby or the reverend in it, so instead, she said: “Belloc was eccentric, but he wasn’t incompetent. He wouldn’t have just made up a crime boss out of nowhere. That means he—”

“Or she,” added Hanna dozily from the sofa.

“Or she … is probably really here. And in that case, we should probably factor them in.”

So far, Sir Richard remained unconvinced. “That seems like speculation.”

“Speculation is all we have. It’s just that, to me, it makes more sense if there are multiple killers, some of them nudged that way by Mr B, than if one mastermind is behind everything.”

“Go on then.” Sir Richard tapped his pistol on his knee in a way that must have been breaking some kind of gun safety rule. “Who was it then?”

“Vivien Ackroyd killed her husband and Belloc. Then Mr B—whoever that is—killed her, and …” She trailed off. There was a look in Sir Richard’s eye. Because if she followed the line of reasoning she was inclined to follow—that in these crimes, like all crimes, it was usually the person closest to the victim—that meant she was about to accuse him of murdering his aunt. And, by extension, of clinging to his implausible single-killer theory as a smokescreen. “And I’m not sure yet on Lady Tabitha,” she finished.

“Well,” huffed Sir Richard, more than a little defensively, “I suppose we’ll see when the snow melts.”

---