One by One

by Ruth Ware

  “Drugs? Injectables? Pills?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know. Holy fuck. Danny, what do we do?” The reality—if you can call it that—of our predicament is sinking in. We are stuck here—very stuck, in my case, with my wrenched ankle—in a chalet with a group of people we barely know, and two of them have died in the last twenty-four hours. Eva—Eva’s death was a tragic accident. One of those horrible, awful lightning strikes that can occur in even the most tranquil places. But Elliot—surely there is no way his death can be anything but murder or suicide. A brain aneurism—a massive stroke—a heart attack—any of those might kill near enough instantly. But they don’t explain the smashed-up computer.

  “Was he definitely dead?” Danny asks.

  “Definitely.” I can’t suppress a shudder as I think of it.

  “Are you sure?” Danny is grasping at straws, and I think he knows it, but he can’t stop himself asking. “Are you absolutely certain, mate?”

  “Danny, I may have dropped out of med school without a degree, but I’ve seen enough dead bodies to know one. I promise you, he was dead. Dilated pupils, absent pulse, the works.” I don’t mention the puddle of piss under the chair. Danny doesn’t need to know about that.

  “But how?” Danny says. He looks like he might be sick. “How the fuck did someone get to him, if that’s what happened? Something in the coffee?”

  “Maybe, I don’t know.”

  “Should we go and, you know… check?”

  “I don’t know,” I say again, more forcefully this time. My head is spinning, trying to figure out the right course of action. “The police will want to—I mean, we shouldn’t disturb the scene. But maybe if we knew what it was—”

  I look down at the key in my hand and make up my mind.

  “We’ll go and check. We won’t touch anything, we’ll just look.”

  Danny nods, and together we make our way quietly up the service stairs to the first floor, trying not to let the others see where we’re heading.

  We don’t discuss our decision to stick together, but I know we are both thinking the same thing. If Elliot didn’t commit suicide, then someone in this group is a murderer. And that is a very scary idea indeed. Could one of those sleek, monied hipsters downstairs really have murdered someone? I try to imagine gentle Tiger with her slim hands around Elliot’s neck, or Topher whacking him with an empty bottle of whiskey—and I feel suddenly sick.

  The staff key grates in Elliot’s locked door and then turns, and Danny and I tiptoe inside the room. It is very cold, and it smells of spilled coffee, and something else, more acrid: that stench of urine, which I recognize from my hospital days.

  Danny hangs back, by the door, as if he can’t bring himself to come any closer to Elliot’s body. So it’s clearly up to me. I swallow. Very, very cautiously, trying not to disturb anything, I move forward towards the desk. Elliot is still lying in the same slumped, unnatural position, his face in the puddle of cold black coffee. I already moved him slightly to check for signs of life, but I want to avoid disturbing the scene any further. So without touching him, or anything else, I lean over and try to peer inside the empty, fallen cup. It’s difficult, without moving it; the angle is all wrong. I go round to the other side of the desk—and suddenly, there I can see it.

  Shit. Danny was right.

  “There’s something in the cup,” I tell Danny, who is not coming any closer than he can help. “Something white.”

  “Sugar?”

  “No, definitely not. It’s… chalky.”

  “Fuck.”

  I straighten up and Danny and I look at each other, trying to figure out what this means. His black eyes are very, very worried.

  “I think this rules out suicide,” I say, with immense reluctance. I am keeping my voice low. I don’t want anyone but Danny to know I’m in here.

  “Do you think?” Danny looks like he is desperate for an alternative. I can’t blame him. “What if he was really bad at taking pills—don’t you think someone might crush them?”

  I shake my head.

  “You didn’t see him eating, Danny.” I think of Elliot at dinner, spooning down his venison with concentrated ferocity, swallowing great gulps of it while barely chewing. “But it’s not just the pills. Look at the computer.”

  “What do you mean? He could have smashed it up himself, couldn’t he?”

  I shake my head, pointing to the wreckage, strewn across one of the chalet’s thick, fluffy white bath towels.

  “Someone wrapped it in a towel before they destroyed it. Which means they didn’t want to be heard. If it was Elliot smashing up his own laptop in a fit of frustration, he wouldn’t have bothered to keep the noise down. And if he was trying to cover something up covertly, he’d just have reformatted the hard drive—why take the risk of smashing it up if you can just rewrite all the data? No, this was done by someone who couldn’t log in. Someone who couldn’t afford to be overheard.”

  We both stand, contemplating the smashed screen and broken pieces of hard drive. Danny doesn’t say anything. I’m not sure there is anything he can say.

  Then something else occurs to me.

  “Were they his pills, do you think? Did he take any medication?”

  “We’ll have to ask the others.” Danny looks like he’s relishing the prospect about as much as a slug enema. “Jesus. How do we have that conversation?”

  How do we discuss any of this. Hey, guys, listen, there’s a strong chance one of your colleagues is a murderer.

  But why? Why would anyone want to kill Elliot? His shares? His support for Topher? With Eva dead, is it possible someone is trying to undermine Topher’s support?

  None of that would explain the destruction of Elliot’s computer, though. It is the computer that I keep coming back to. That vicious, efficient, stealthy act of destruction. That could not have been an accident. And I don’t for a second believe it was Elliot.

  There is only one plausible reason for this action—to hide something on the computer itself. Something Elliot knew. Something that got him killed.

  I think of Topher’s anguished wail, when we found Elliot’s body: Oh God, oh Jesus—he wanted to tell me something…

  I swallow.

  “Danny, what if Eva’s death wasn’t an accident?”

  LIZ

  Snoop ID: ANON101

  Listening to: Offline

  Snoopers: 0

  Snoopscribers: 1

  We sit, all of us, huddled around the woodburner in the living room. Except it is not all of us, that is the problem.

  Now we are ten.

  Now we are nine.

  Now we are eight.

  The words chant inside my head, a kind of gruesome countdown, edging closer to zero, one by one.

  Suddenly I think I might vomit.

  “Was it…,” Tiger speaks. Her voice is cracked and rough, as if she has been crying. “Was it… suicide?”

  “No!” Topher’s answer comes as quick as a gunshot. He stands up. He begins to pace. “Fuck no. Elliot? Never.”

  “So what?” Rik stands too, squaring up to Topher as if he is about to punch him. “What are you saying?”

  Topher looks at him. I think he genuinely does not understand Rik’s question.

  “Use your head, Toph. If it’s not suicide”—Rik’s voice has an edge I have never heard before. He sounds… dangerous—“Then it’s murder. Is that what you’re saying, Topher? Is it?”

  Topher’s mouth falls open. Then he sits abruptly. He looks winded, almost as if Rik really had punched him.

  “God. You’re right. Oh my God.” His face is ashen. “Elliot,” he says brokenly. And then he begins to cry.

  It is awful, watching him. None of us knows what to do. Rik looks at Miranda, whose face is aghast. Carl puts his hands up in a Don’t look at me, mate gesture of repudiation. Inigo’s expression is pure panic.

  It is Tiger who steps up. She goes to sit beside Topher. She puts her hand on his arm.

>   “Topher,” she says. Her voice is gentle. “We all feel his loss, but it must be incalculable for you, more than any of us. Coming on top of Eva’s death—”

  She stops. Not even Tiger can spin this as what will be, will be.

  “Why?” Topher’s mouth is square and ugly, tears running down his cheeks. He looks so far from the polished, urbane sophisticate I used to know; I am not sure if I can bear it. “Why would anyone do this to him? Why would they hurt Elliot?”

  That, of course, is the $64,000 question.

  We all look at one another. No one is sure what to say.

  “Come on,” Tiger takes Topher gently by the hand. She leads him from the room. “Let’s go and splash your face with water.”

  As they leave, a sigh of released tension ripples round the room.

  “Jesus,” Carl says gruffly.

  “But he’s right,” Rik says. “Why would anyone hurt Elliot? I mean, Eva, okay. But Elliot? It makes no sense at all. I know Topher doesn’t want to hear it, but maybe he did commit suicide, uncomfortable as it is for all of us to face? Eva’s disappearance and then on top of that the shock of the avalanche—he was quite a—” He stops. I think he is trying to work out how to phrase it without giving offense. “He was quite a quirky personality.”

  “I think that’s a pretty offensive stretch, Rik,” Miranda says wearily. “Yes, he had his eccentricities—we all do. But to go from that to—”

  “No,” Rik says defensively, “that’s not what I meant. Jesus, I liked him. We were at school together, for goodness’ sake. I’m just saying—look he was very hard to read. Still waters run deep and all that. There could have been a lot going on underneath.”

  “And what do you mean, you could understand someone wanting to hurt Eva?” Carl says suddenly.

  Rik winces. He knows that he has made a misstep, not once, but twice.

  “I didn’t mean that either. Oh bloody hell, I’m putting my foot in it all over the fucking shop.”

  “So what did you mean?” It is Inigo. His voice is bitter, almost accusing. His interjection is so uncharacteristic that we all turn and stare at him.

  Rik flushes.

  “All I meant,” he says carefully. I can tell he is picking his words now. “All I meant was Eva’s death… it changed stuff.”

  “What stuff?”

  Rik does not want to spell it out. I can see that he doesn’t.

  It is Carl who says it for him.

  “Eva’s death gave control of Snoop over to Topher, isn’t that what you mean, mate?”

  Rik cannot bring himself to reply, but he gives a small, tight nod.

  There is a moment’s long, shocked silence, as what he is saying sinks in around the circle.

  Rik has joined the first two dots, but no one wants to go any further. They can already see the pattern that is forming.

  Several people here had a powerful financial motive for Eva’s death. Specifically Topher, and Elliot. Plus anyone else who was opposed to the buyout for their own private reasons.

  Which means…

  It means—

  I feel the blood rush to my face. Suddenly I can’t go on with this, can’t sit here thinking the thoughts that are threatening to overwhelm me. I have to get out—get away.

  I stand, and I run out of the room.

  ERIN

  Snoop ID: LITTLEMY

  Listening to: Offline

  Snoopers: 5

  Snoopscribers: 10

  Danny and I are still standing outside Elliot’s room when I hear the sound of running feet, and I turn to see Liz hurrying along the corridor. For a minute I think she is running towards us, and I tense, bracing myself for whatever has happened, but she stops halfway along the corridor, opens her bedroom door, and slams it behind herself. I hear the key scrape in the lock from the inside, and then nothing.

  “Jeez,” Danny says. He looks taken aback. “What’s eating her?”

  “Do you need to ask?” I whisper it. The doors here are thick, but you can hear through them if your room is quiet.

  “Do you think she heard?” Danny lowers his voice too. “You know. What we were saying before.” He doesn’t repeat it, but the words I uttered just before Liz came barreling towards us still hang in the air between us. Maybe Eva’s death wasn’t an accident.

  “I don’t know,” I mutter. “Let’s get out of here. We can’t talk here, and I need to think this through.”

  As we make our way down the corridor to the staff part of the building, where Danny and I have our private rooms, my mind is racing, ticking through possibilities. But it’s only when we’re safely in my little bedroom, the door closed behind us, that I feel able to voice them.

  “What I just said—”

  “Eva’s death?” Danny looks troubled, but skeptical. “Yeah, how d’you make that out? Elliot, sure. There’s some kind of hanky-panky there. But Eva? She skied a black run in a fucking blizzard and fell off the edge. It’s a tragedy, but I can’t see how it’s anyone’s fault.”

  “Listen,” I say. I’m speaking very low, even though we’re behind two sets of doors. Somehow it feels like I need to get these suspicions out in the open, like it might even be dangerous to keep quiet right now. Because if I’m right, it was Elliot’s silence that killed him. “Listen, we’re missing the important thing here. Whoever killed Elliot—”

  “If he was killed,” Danny breaks in.

  “If he was killed,” I echo impatiently, brushing his words away like irritating flies. “But the point is if he was killed, whoever killed him didn’t just get rid of him, they got rid of his computer. Why would they do that? It’s really hard work to destroy a hard drive—it takes a while, and they must have risked someone noticing their absence or hearing them do it.”

  “So… you’re saying… he was killed for something on his computer?”

  “Yes. He was killed for something he knew, but it must have been something he’d figured out from his computer data.”

  “Something about Snoop?”

  “Maybe. Kind of. Look at the timing. Elliot is coding this geolocation update, whatever they’re calling it. Then he realizes that the information he’s got can lead him to Eva. That much we know. But what if he began to track back from that? What if he was looking at her movements before she died? What if there was something fishy about them, like perhaps she didn’t shoot off the edge, but stopped for a chat with someone, and was pushed?”

  “Holy fuck.” Danny’s face is stricken. “You’re saying… someone in that group got rid of Eva and then killed Elliot to cover their tracks?”

  “I don’t want to believe it, but… I can’t see what else makes sense.” I feel sick even saying the words. “There is one other possibility, but I don’t know if it’s much better.”

  “Which is?”

  “Well, Elliot is the only person without any kind of alibi the day Eva died. He was supposed to be here, working on his code, but there’s no corroboration of that. It’s not impossible he had something to do with her death. Maybe… maybe he couldn’t live with that knowledge any longer.”

  “You’re saying he topped himself out of guilt??”

  “I’m saying it’s a possibility.”

  “Okay, yeah, but even supposing he killed Eva to help Topher, then had an attack of conscience, why would he destroy his computer? If he’s dead, why would he care about the evidence?”

  I swallow. This is why this possibility isn’t really any more comforting than the others.

  “Because whatever was on there, implicates someone else. Someone he’s trying to protect.”

  “Flaming Nora.” The words should sound funny, coming in Danny’s deep, matter-of-fact voice. In fact, they’re anything but. Actually I think I want to be sick.

  “So you think I’m right?”

  “I think…”

  I can see Danny’s brain processing furiously, trying to find holes in my logic and failing. He pulls off his bandanna irritably, scrubs his face with it.
“Fucking hell. I don’t know. I think you could be, and that’s enough to give me the cold heaves. What do we do? We gotta tell someone, right?”

  “Who can we tell? And what could they do even if we did?” I wave a hand at the window, where the vicious wind is whipping the snow past the glass with the scouring force of a sandstorm. No one can go out in that, let alone fly a helicopter. You’d be mad to try.

  “FUCK!” Danny bellows it, standing up and running his hands over his short hair like he can cudgel an idea out of his head.

  “Shh!” I say frantically. “Be quiet! The others’ll hear.”

  “But we have to tell them!” he says. “Don’t we? I mean what’s the alternative, we keep quiet and let some homicidal prick pick them off one by one?”

  “We can’t tell them!” My voice is a screaming whisper now. “Are you mad? Tell whoever’s responsible for this that we might be onto them?”

  “We can’t not tell them!” Danny takes my arms, and for a minute I think he’s going to shake me, like an actor in an old movie dealing with a hysterical woman, and I feel a desperate urge to laugh in spite of the predicament we’re in, but he doesn’t; he just stares into my face, his dark eyes very wide and as scared as I feel. But somehow seeing my own fear reflected back at myself, the realization that Danny’s as terrified as me, and that we’re in this together, it anchors me. I take a deep, shuddering breath, and Danny says quietly, “Erin, I’m shitting myself as much as you are. But I don’t think I’m going to be able to go down there and act normal, knowing that one of those hipster wankers might be an honest-to-God murderer. Look at me—” He holds out a trembling hand. “I’m shaking like a bloody leaf. Whoever’s done this, they’re going to figure out that we know something, and if we haven’t told anyone what we know, we’ll end up the same way as Elliot. The best way to make ourselves safe is to not keep this a secret.”

  His words silence me. There is a kind of horrible logic in that.

  “And besides,” he adds, “I reckon we owe the others the chance to protect themselves. What if they know something they don’t realize? What if they’re the next people drinking coffee with a kick?”