Page 43 of Seven Reasons to Murder Your Dinner Guests
She leans back on the bench and folds her arms across her chest. Then it hits her. She sits forward again.
“Not…her brother-in-law? Caroline’s husband from the wake?” Vivienne cries.
“The very one,” Melvin tells her, trying but failing not to smile broadly at the revelation.
“So that’s where she must have been. Oh, Janet, of all the men in London,” Vivienne says, then reaches into her voluminous handbag to pull out her notebook.
“He was shocked—but I wouldn’t say devastated, exactly,” Melvin says, hoping this nugget of information will get Vivienne off his back for a bit.
“That actually fits in with a theory I’ve been working on,” Vivienne tells him, flicking through her book. “I know it sounds odd, but I wonder if Janet’s behavior somehow led to her death.”
“All the evidence points to another accident,” Melvin says. “She probably stormed off after a lovers’ tiff and ran into the road.”
Vivienne purses her lips, sighs.
“I keep thinking about her drinking, her eating, her flirting—her gluttony.”
“OK…”
She opens her notebook and shows him a circular sketch featuring seven rough drawings of animals with a word written in red next to each one.
“You remember we talked about the black-and-white drawing on the wall of Serendipity’s, with the same images on the place settings? Well, I found out that it’s a very old portrayal of the seven deadly sins.”
“Like, pride, lust, gluttony, and all that?”
“There were seven images and seven guests.” Vivienne points at each drawing in her book. “Janet’s showed a pig eating a roast dinner, and that’s the image for—guess what?”
“Gluttony?”
“Stella’s was a lizard with a scroll, depicting greed; Matthew’s was a male sheep leering at a ewe—lust; Gordon’s is peacock, for pride; and Tristan’s was two dogs fighting, that’s wrath,” she says.
“What about mine? The cat smoking a pipe?”
“It’s supposed to be sloth, Melvin,” Vivienne tells him with a grimace.
“Well, I’ve never thought of myself as lazy,” Melvin says.
“No, you’re not lazy at all,” Vivienne responds. “I looked it up. Sloth can also refer to a lack of action, a person who just lets things happen.”
“Ha. Well, perhaps this party planner knows me better than I know myself,” Melvin says, then rubs his eyes. He’s too tired for this.
“I mean, they don’t all add up,” Vivienne goes on. “Was Stella really greedy or just prideful? And I’d never describe Tristan as angry.”
Melvin thinks of the many glimpses of barely contained anger he’s seen from Tristan, the clenched fists and jaw, the scathing comments and withering looks, but he doesn’t want to encourage another of Vivienne’s wacky theories. Since Matthew’s funeral,Vivienne has been bombarding him with requests to help with her “investigation.” To appease her, he replied and told her he’d spoken to the Serendipity’s landlord, who claimed he couldn’t find the contact details of the person who hired the venue that night. After that, she messaged every few days, asking about Janet’s records, about how CCTV worked, even requested copies of the police reports for Matthew’s and Stella’s deaths. Sometimes he responded to say his superior wouldn’t allow it, sometimes he told her he couldn’t find anything, other times he just deleted her message.
“If it makes you feel any better, mine is envy. It’s described as ‘rottenness of the bones.’” Vivienne shudders. “Perhaps the worst death is waiting for me.”
Melvin looks at Vivienne and, for the first time, sees fear in her face.
“You must try and forget about the numbers,” he says softly. “It will drive you insane. The best thing to do is just live your life.”
“I know, but it’s eating me up. My life feels richer than it ever has, which only makes me more afraid that it will be ripped away when I’m least expecting it,” she confesses.
Melvin rests his large hand on Vivienne’s small one and smiles at her.
“The other part of my seven deadly sins theory is that the party host—the killer—is the devil character in the picture,” Vivienne babbles on.
“I’ll humor you,” Melvin sighs. “So who’s the devil?”
