Page 81 of Murder Most Actual

Outside the snow was slowly melting, and somewhere—Liza knew—a killer, perhaps more than one killer, was waiting to make their last move for blood or for freedom. But in that room, it wasn’t important. They weren’t safe—they hadn’t been safe since they got there—but if Liza was going to die, then there were far worse ways to go than with her wife in her arms, with the scent of her on the pillows, with the taste of her on her lips.

So, in the still eternity of a night that might never end, they moved together, held to each other. Touched and kissed and bit each other as their bodies fought to express what for years they’d thought they’d forgotten how to express.

Love, as it turned out, was like arsenic. Over time, it built up in the system and, contrary to what Mithridates believed, you could never truly immunise yourself. Instead, the effects grew stronger over time until, in the end, they overtook you entirely.

At last they collapsed, twined around each other, Hanna resting against Liza’s chest and tracing lazy fractal patterns across her stomach with her free hand. As the wind outside dropped to a gentle breeze and the whole hotel fell quiet, they gazed into each other’s eyes and sighed.

“That was—” Hanna began, but Liza placed a finger over her lips.

“Hold on, I think I heard something.”

Dropping a kiss on her wife’s cheek, Hanna laughed. “And she’s back. I suppose I should be flattered I managed to distract you as long as I did.”

“I’m serious, I think—”

Except, as it turned out, she didn’t need to think. Because soon the sound of scraping, and the click of the window catch, and the slide of the sash, were all too obvious. As the two women watched, frozen, the curtains parted, and a shadowy figure slipped into their room.

Chapter Thirty

Mr B, in the Bedroom, with a Gun

Wednesday night / Thursday morning

Even if they hadn’t both been naked, Liza and Hanna would have been feeling incredibly exposed as the intruder prowled towards the bed. If she’d been certain he only intended to rob them, Liza would have told herself that the best strategy was to lie very still, pretend to be asleep, and hope that he—or she, although it seemed unlikely from the silhouette—was just passing through. But so far nobody had been robbed in this hotel; they’d just been murdered. Pushed off balconies. Poisoned. Gunned down.

And for all Liza had thought that if she was going to die, she wanted to die with her wife in her arms, she had to admit that she was also very, very keen to die with answers.

So she sat up. The figure turned. He was armed, definitely armed, although since her knowledge of crime didn’t extend too much to guns—Murder Most Actual tended to be about crimes of a less shooty, more locked-roomy variety—she couldn’t remember whose pistol it actually was.

“I suppose,” she said while Hanna lay beside her projecting intense what-the-fuck-are-you-doing vibes, “that you’re here for the numbers.”

In the darkness, the figure nodded.

“And you’re the mysterious Mr B?”

Another nod. Slow, almost courteous.

So, this was it. This was where Liza found out if all her Nancy Drew bullshit had meant a damned thing. Because while she hadn’t been totally sold on Belloc’s mysterious mastermind theory, it had been at the back of her mind this whole time. And she’d been paying attention. More attention, perhaps, than she’d realised. Her one chance of survival, she suspected, was to keep him talking. And it was a him, definitely. Pieces were beginning to fall into place. Carefully, she reached for her dressing gown. “If you’re going to shoot me, you won’t mind me covering up a little first?”

He shook his head, and she robed herself. It wasn’t much, but it was better than getting into a battle of wits with a criminal mastermind with her boobs hanging out.

“Come forward so I can see you.” It was a bold gambit, and one that earned another pleading look from Hanna, but Liza was beginning to see a very, very narrow road to survival.

The figure shook his head again.

“We’re going to need to talk if I’m going to tell you where the data is. And …” She swallowed. This was a risk, but it was one that might pay off. “And I don’t think there’s much point hiding your identity anymore, Professor.”

A laugh came from the shadows. It wasn’t the nervous laugh she was used to hearing from him, but nor was it the cruel laughter she might have expected from a master criminal. It was gentle, indulgent, like a schoolteacher who had just seen a student perform a moderately clever trick. “I suppose,” he said, “convention demands that I let you explain how you worked it out.”

Reaching back slowly—despite the professor’s cordial tone, Liza didn’t think making sudden moves in front of a gunman was a good idea—she switched on the reading light above the bed. It illuminated her more than it did him, but it showed the professor clearly enough, standing tall and confident, his hands no longer shaking, his eyes set and cold.

“I think I’ve known for a while,” she said, and she thought she had, although she hadn’t admitted it to herself. “Or suspected, at least. Right from the first night, you were the one who went to Mrs Ackroyd after her husband died. Somebody talked her into killing Belloc, and it could only really have been you or the reverend. Then there was the night you sent us all running out into the dark. You couldn’t have seen anybody out there because there was nobody to see, but you needed to get as many guests as possible out of the hotel so you could search our room. You’d changed your shoes by the time we got back, and there was no reason to do that if you were just going to sit on the bed quivering.”

He gave her an approving nod. “Oh, well done, Ms Blaine. You could be giving Belloc and Quirke quite the run for their money.”

“You also shot Sir Richard,” Liza went on, “to keep him from shooting Ruby. I’m not sure if that’s because you wanted to kill her yourself, or because you were worried that she still had information you needed.”

“The latter.” The professor smiled quite calmly. “I’m a practical man, not a vindictive one.”

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