Page 48 of Seven Reasons to Murder Your Dinner Guests
“Why would Melvin say he’d spoken to the landlord when he hadn’t?” Tristan wondered out loud.
“I don’t know. To be honest, Melvin has disappointed me. Hehasn’t helped me investigate this at all. In fact, he’s impeded the investigation, if anything…” Vivienne said.
“His behavior is certainly…odd,” Tristan said. “I tell you what, I’ll look that name up for you. See what I can find.”
***
A month after her trip to Salvation Road, Vivienne suddenly found herself sitting on the low wall outside her house. Her right hand was throbbing, and she looked down to see blood pouring from a deep gash in her palm. The last thing she remembered was leaving her house that morning to pick up the papers. Glancing at her watch, she saw it was after 4:00 p.m. She searched around for her handbag, which always contained a fresh pack of tissues, but it wasn’t there. Another fugue state. This one had stolen her bag, about six hours of time, and had left her bleeding. She tried to stand, but her head spun so aggressively that she was forced to sit straight back down on the wall, using the sleeve of her sweater to try to stop the blood pooling in her palm. Finally, she managed to wobble her way to the front door, found her spare key under the red potted plant on the windowsill, and stumbled her way onto her settee, where she collapsed. Thankfully, Cat had taken Charlie to the zoo for the day, so she slept it off without having to answer awkward questions.
But the next morning, Cat spotted Vivienne’s still-bloody hand and insisted on driving her to the hospital for stitches. Vivienne explained it away with a story of a smashed glass and clumsy hands. Cat fussed over her for days afterward, keeping up aconstant stream of milky tea, biscuits, and chatter. But the incident cast a dark shadow over Vivienne for days, leaving her wondering if her increasingly troubling fugue states were a message that her number was catching up with her after all. The thought made her more determined than ever to solve the mystery of Serendipity’s before it was too late.
***
At the school gates, Cat glares at Vivienne.
“What are you doing here? I told you I’d pick Charlie up today so you could relax and enjoy your date!” she cries, neglecting to even say hello.
“Robert Redford? You should get your eyes checked,” Vivienne snarls back, and then they both burst out laughing.
Charlie’s face breaks into a huge smile when he sees her, and Vivienne’s decision to leave her date early feels even more justified.
“Do you know, Cat, I think you need to stop worrying about me and sign yourself up for a dating service,” Vivienne says as they drive home.
“I’ve already told you, Charlie’s the only man for me at the moment. Maybe once he’s a bit older, I’ll think about it,” she says, her eyes not leaving the road.
Back at home they fall into their usual routine. Vivienne makes dinner for them while Cat sorts out the laundry.
“This one for tomorrow?” she asks, pulling a pale-blue blouse from the laundry basket.
“Yes, I think so. I’ve never been to a university lecture before,but you can’t go wrong with a blouse and smart trousers.”
“No, you can’t,” Cat says, adjusting the iron so that Vivienne’s delicate blouse isn’t scorched. She might be haphazard with her cooking and patchy with her cleaning, but you couldn’t fault the woman’s ironing.
“Gordon’s wife and daughter must be pleased they’re commemorating his work, given everything that happened afterward,” Vivienne says, throwing some penne into the pan of bubbling water.
“Yes, the stuff in the papers was pretty awful,” Cat says.
Two days after Janet’s wake, Vivienne popped into the corner shop and picked up a pile of the tabloid newspapers. Of course, most of the news is online now, but she’d never gotten out of the habit of buying papers by the armful, enjoying the smell of the ink, how her fingers turned black after flicking through them. When she opened the middle pages of one paper, an image made her inhale sharply. It was Gordon, blue eyes peering out from under his white hood and over the scarf wrapped tightly around his mouth. He must have been caught unawares, as his expression was one of fear, like a hunted white rabbit. The headline screamed “TV Doctor’s Devastating Decline,” showing this image alongside a freeze-frame of Gordon sitting on the burnt-orangeMorning Showsofa, his navy-blue suit perfectly skimming his slim frame, a look of confidence verging on arrogance on his face. Vivienne imagined he was explaining to the host in his typically patronizing fashion exactly why the baby-food diet was not to be recommended. The article went on to talk about a “worrying” (who was worried,Vivienne wondered; certainly not the journalist writing the article) TV appearance before he disappeared from the spotlight and left his wife to live a “hermit’s existence” in his small studio flat near the university where he worked. An unnamed student was quoted as saying, “We are all worried about Dr. MacMillan. He looks ill lately; there are rumors going around that he’s been doing weird experiments on himself.” A small note at the end stated that Gordon had refused to comment. Although Vivienne wasn’t convinced by the content of the article, it did explain Gordon’s strange behavior on the day of Janet’s wake.
Then, last week, Dr. Gordon’s name had been splashed across the same newspaper:
“Dr. Gordon Dead from Allergic Reaction”
The article had listed all the important work he’d done in the field of nutrition, his “insightful” TV appearances, and just a line referring to his “controversial new research.” How he’d ended up eating something containing sesame seeds was unclear; the article just stated that he’d been found dead in his flat, and early reports had shown it was a result of his allergy.
With a heavy heart, Vivienne opened her hummingbird notebook once again. She scoured the articles about Gordon’s death, making notes as she went. He’d eaten an apple pie containing sesame seeds, but she could find no further details about where the pie had come from. An online search showed that sesame seed wasn’t a usual ingredient for apple pie. So Vivienne made her way to Gordon’s street, walked past the block of brand-new flats where Gordon had lived, past scores of baggy-trousered students. Shewasn’t sure what she was looking for until she spotted one student carrying a cardboard box bearing the name Happy Day Bakery. She walked in the direction he’d come from and found a row of shops, including the bakery. The articles reporting Gordon’s death didn’t name the bakery where the pie had come from, but on a hunch, Vivienne stepped inside the busy shop. She got short shrift from the woman who worked there, who snapped that she’d “told the police already” that her apple pies contained no sesame seeds, so “God knows why it was inside one of my boxes.”
On the train home, Vivienne pondered the woman’s words. Tristan’s self-fulfilling prophecy theory didn’t work in this case. Presumably, Gordon hadn’t known the pie contained sesame seeds, as surely there would have been a better way to go if that had been his intention. The only explanation was that someone who knew about Gordon’s allergy had baked the pie with the intent to kill him and then put it in the bakery box. She typed out a message to Melvin, asking if what the woman had said was true. She went to press Send, then stopped. She hadn’t heard from him since Janet’s memorial.
Vivienne then flicked through her notes, from beginning to end. Her scribbled words, interspersed with drawings, told their own story. Following Stella’s death, she’d been sure that a trolling victim was responsible. After Matthew’s death, she’d accused Janet. Then her mind had spun off on the notion of this eighth character, this watchful devil who was somehow connected to them all. Even her handwriting told a tale, starting neat at first, proper sentences and punctuation, but gradually becoming messier, with crossings-out and random words. Vivienne’s desperation clear tosee. Her desperation to live. That’s when she noticed something for the first time. A series of clues pointing to a killer. And to one person in particular.
***
Walking toward the black cast-iron gates of the university, Vivienne takes in Tristan’s stooped frame. She’d made a few phone calls and found out that the university was holding a commemorative lecture in honor of Dr. Gordon.
“I always wondered if my life would have been different if I’d gone to university,” she says to Tristan as they walk past students with giant headphones and even bigger trainers.
“It isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be,” Tristan mutters, eyeing the students warily, as if they might pounce on him at any moment and demand he hand over his wallet.
