Page 29 of Seven Reasons to Murder Your Dinner Guests
“Ridiculous,” Janet says.
He takes a deep breath. There’s no point in trying to explain his theory to them any further. They are simply incapable of understanding. Vivienne does have a point about ethics. Such an experiment wouldn’t be allowed by the scientific authorities. But Gordon believes this experiment is being conducted outside their jurisdiction.
“It could be a psychic,” Janet suddenly pipes up, having now polished off her plate of burger and chips.
“Be serious,” Gordon admonishes.
“I am being serious,” Janet says. “I saw a psychic when I was a teenager. She knew so much without me saying a word, like that I had a younger sister, that my auntie Margaret had recently died. She predicted I’d marry an older man whose name started with the letterWand that I would be a successful businesswoman…”
“She probably said that to everyone,” Vivienne says with a sniff. “We did a feature about fraudulent psychics. It’s such a big business, they’ll do anything for clues—go through your rubbish, search social media, ask around among friends.”
“Well, like I said, I don’t think it matters anymore,” huffed Janet. “I’m on the countdown now, and I’m going to make the best of things.”
They fall silent for a moment. Then Vivienne shudders.
“I’ve been having disturbing dreams about the dinner party.That table with the vines coming down, the silent waiters and strange pictures on the wall…” she says, her cheeks now pink, probably due to the champagne. She flips a few pages back in her notebook to where Gordon sees some rough sketches.
“I was trying to remember exactly what was on that strange picture on the wall. It had a load of animals dressed as humans and matched our place settings: Mine was an eagle, and I remember Tristan’s showed two dogs fighting,” she says, turning her book around and showing them drawings of an eagle holding up weighing scales and a dog in a shirt raising his fist.
“I’d forgotten about that,” Melvin says. “Mine was a cat smoking a pipe, I think.”
“I had a pig—bloody charming,” Janet snorts, pushing her empty plate away and taking a large glug of her champagne.
Vivienne scrawls in her notebook and looks expectantly at Gordon.
“I believe mine showed a peacock in a top hat, but I’m quite sure it’s not significant…” he says.
But now Melvin is talking to Janet about the steak and Vivienne is flicking through some papers on her knee. He never let on to the others, but the night of the dinner party had changed things for him. After Elizabeth found out his little secret, she made him promise to seek counseling. Gordon recoiled at the thought. There was nothing some jumped-up busybody with an airy-fairy psychology degree could teach him. But Elizabeth wouldn’t let it go, so he gave her a name and told her he’d booked a weekly counseling session. Every Saturday morning, he said goodbye to his wife andspent a delightful hour working out at a gym in Richmond. That was all the self-improvement he needed, thank you very much. It was the perfect arrangement, until Elizabeth did her own research and discovered that Dr. Leonard McCoy was, in fact, a character inStar Trekand not a psychologist specializing in eating disorders. He spent the last three months sleeping in the spare room and being ignored by both his wife and daughter, who didn’t know about the argument but just presumed Gordon was in the wrong.
This ostracization had the opposite effect of what Elizabeth might have hoped. Gordon enjoys the space to think, the lack of interference from his family in his routines. He is constantly striving to be a prime specimen, both physically and mentally, and has started to wonder if certain elements of his life have been holding him back.
The only negative has been the cessation of his television appearances. It seems his momentary lapse knocked the producers’ confidence in him, and the calls have stopped coming. He even phoned them up to offer his take on the “cotton ball diet” that some silly models had been swearing by lately. They promised to ring back, but the following morning, Gordon was horrified to see the smug face of Dr. Beverley Booker explaining exactly why the cotton ball diet is ineffective and also dangerous. Once his indignation passed, Gordon reached the conclusion that, actually, the TV appearances were most likely adding to the stress in his life and that he could use his time more wisely.
Last week, when Melvin emailed with the news about Matthew, Gordon was sitting on his bed in the spare room, hislaptop balanced on his knees. He knew Matthew’s office; he’d been in the area only recently himself to attend a seminar titled Multivitamins: The World’s Greatest Scam. He’d walked past the tower block on that day, had remembered Matthew proudly telling him the name of his company at the dinner party. Gordon’s mouth curled into a smile as he read the email, thinking back to Vivienne’s smug theory about Stella’s death. She’d been so pleased with herself, but she was embarrassingly far off the mark. Then Gordon stayed sitting on the bed for a good half hour afterward, working his way through the problem. Until finally, he reached his conclusion. He agreed to come along to Matthew’s memorial under the guise of paying tribute to him, but actually it would be an information-gathering exercise. It was crucial he had all the facts at his disposal before he proceeded with his plans. For Gordon has become convinced that the dinner party was put on by a secret scientific society. He’d heard whispers of them since university. You can only join their number by completing an intellectual challenge like no other. Serendipity’s, the numbers, the envelopes are Gordon’s challenge. And he’s going to rise to it. In fact, he’s going to do better than that. He just needs to keep one eye on this group, track their numbers and their reactions to them, and gather all the information he can. Then he will make his move.
He’s about to ask Vivienne about her number when raised voices from the next table put a halt to the conversation. It’s the table belonging to Matthew’s harem, as Gordon has come to think of them.
“What did you just say?” the woman, Robyn, who said she was Matthew’s girlfriend, screeches.
“You don’t care about him. You’re just looking for sympathy—and another rich banker,” an auburn-haired woman responds, wiping a fat tear from her blotchy face.
“So what, you think helovedyou?” Robyn hisses through clenched teeth.
“Yes,” the sobbing woman splutters, now dissolving in another torrent of tears.
“He told me he loved me too,” a curly-haired woman says sadly, patting Robyn on the back.
“Come on, Natalia, you met him on Tinder. Didn’t you suspect he was dating other girls?” asks Robyn, indignation dripping from her every word.
“Oh, shut up. You’ve got no idea what Matthew and I had. We didthingstogether I’ve never done with anyone else,” Natalia snaps before turning pink and rushing toward the ladies’ room.
“Don’t worry, love. We all know about his taste for the perverse,” Robyn calls to her back.
Gordon and the others turn their attention back to their own table as Matthew’s boss scuttles over to “comfort” dry-eyed Robyn.
“I do feel that the animal drawings could be a clue,” Vivienne says, looking over the scribblings in her notebook. “I’m pretty sure the image on the wall had been papered on, and they were on each of our place settings…”
Gordon sighs heavily. He really must get this conversation back on course.
