Page 36 of Seven Reasons to Murder Your Dinner Guests
“Have you heard?” he asks, walking inside holding his mobile phone in front of him with both hands.
“‘Tributes paid as underwear chief dies suddenly,’” Vivienne reads aloud, then drops down onto the sofa as the words sink in.
“So it looks like Janet is no longer a suspect,” Tristan says.
“Oh God,” Vivienne cries, covering her face with her hands. “What happened?”
“She was knocked over by a taxi in Notting Hill,” says Tristan. “Just three days before her forty-fifth birthday.”
Vivienne gazes up at Tristan and then tries to focus on breathing. But all she can see is Janet’s envelope:
You will die aged forty-four.
***
Later still, Vivienne is lying in bed but is unable to sleep. She can’t help remembering her words to Janet at Matthew’s memorial:He turned you down, you got angry, and you pushed him…Janet had laughed it off, hadn’t seemed to take anything seriously that afternoon, but Vivienne’s words must have hurt. And now Janet is dead and Vivienne is no closer to finding the killer. Because now, no matter what Melvin says, she’s sure their party host is a murderer and won’t stop until they are all dead. Then she has a thought: that strange black-and-white picture on the wall at Serendipity’s, their matching table settings… She grabs her notebook from her bedside table, pulls her laptop onto her knee, and searchescat smoking a pipe. Hundreds of cartoon drawings pop up, some trendy posters and apron designs, and she gasps when she finds the very image from the wall of the dinner party. The devilish face peers at her once more, the seven anthropomorphic images around him. Underneath, there’s a brief description.
“The seven deadly sins,” Vivienne reads.
She looks at the pig image, remembers Janet saying,Mine was a pig, charming!Next to the picture is the wordgluttony. Thinking of Janet stuffing her face with that greasy burger, downing the champagne, Vivienne realizes Janetwasgluttonous.
The leering sheep was on Matthew’s place setting, depicting lust. Well,thatmakes sense too. Working her way around the image, she notes that the pipe-smoking cat on Melvin’s placesetting is for sloth. Gordon’s was the peacock, for pride. Tristan’s was wrath, and Vivienne’s was envy. Which means Stella’s must have been greed. So if each of them represent a “sin,” who is the “devil” in the middle orchestrating it all? It dawns on Vivienne that perhaps she’s been looking in the wrong direction. Rather than pointing her finger inward to the table of guests, she should turn her accusations outward.
Who is the devil?she scribbles in her notebook.
***
A week later, Tristan and Vivienne walk into the Royal Oak pub in High Holborn. Vivienne cringes as her heels stick to the carpet.
“Well, this isn’t what I expected for Janet’s wake,” she says, glancing at the 2-4-1 DRINKS ON SEXY SATURDAYS posters on the wall. The pub is dark and has the vague odor of stale beer mixed with old socks. Two tables are taken up with people of various ages, including an elderly lady in a wheelchair and a frazzled-looking mum rocking a baby. Presumably Janet’s family. Then a couple more tables dotted around are taken up with mostly middle-aged, mostly red-faced and rotund men in suits. Janet’s colleagues, Vivienne guesses.
“Me neither. I don’t think Janet would be impressed,” Tristan says.
They walk to the bar, where an older chap leans heavily on his elbows. The end of his tie dangles into a puddle of spilled drink, which he seems oblivious to.
“You here for Janet’s memorial?” he splutters, his cheap-whiskeybreath creeping into Vivienne’s nostrils.
“Yes, we’re so sorry—” Vivienne starts, but the man interrupts her.
“Worked with her for years. Bit of a ballbreaker, but all right, really,” he slurs, stuffing a piece of paper into her hand and swaying off in the direction of the mens’ room. They both peer at the paper. A folded piece of A4 with a blurry picture of Janet on the front.
RIP Janet Tilsbury 1971–2016
She skims over the brief bio and well-worn poems without enthusiasm.
“Stop all the clocks? What a cliché!” she says, sighing and tossing the paper back onto the bar. “Is this really what forty-four years of life adds up to?”
A loud guffaw bursts forth from across the bar, and Vivienne sees an overweight man in a waistcoat beaming at the auburn-haired bartender. His large nose is an unnatural shade of red and trickles of sweat snake down his face.
Bill?she mouths to Tristan, and he shrugs his shoulders.
They order their drinks and sit down at the table near the window.
Tristan
Tristan sips his Guinness and gazes around the pub. It is strangely silent, there’s no music playing, and everyone speaks at a very low level. Then a baby starts to cry, and its mother stands up, rockingher sacred bundle back and forth. He glances at Vivienne, expecting to hear her usual complaint about “children in adult spaces,” but she’s looking over with a benevolent smile on her face.
“Poor woman looks stressed,” she murmurs, then digs into her handbag, pulls out her notebook, and places it on the table between them.
