One by One

by Ruth Ware

  I swallow. But his words have an undeniable truth behind them. Put like that, it’s hard to justify not warning the seven innocent people in the chalet, even if that means giving the murderer a heads-up.

  Murderer. The very word, hanging unspoken in my mouth, feels unreal. Is this actually happening? Are we really going to do this?

  “Okay,” I say at last. I look out of the window, at the storm, a sinking feeling beginning to churn in my gut at the thought of the meeting to come. “Okay… maybe you’re right. So… what? How do we tell them? What do we tell them?”

  “We tell them the truth,” Danny says. His expression is set and grim now. “We say we think Eva’s death may not have been an accident after all and that Elliot might’ve been killed for whatever he was about to tell Topher. We tell ’em to stay in pairs at all times, make their own drinks, eat nothing but stuff you and I serve them. We’re the only people who can’t possibly be suspected. We didn’t know any of them before they came here. We weren’t up on that mountain. We’ve got no connection to any of that group.”

  I nod. Only… and I can’t bring myself to say this to Danny, not now… the problem is, in my case, it’s not quite true.

  LIZ

  Snoop ID: ANON101

  Listening to: Offline

  Snoopers: 0

  Snoopscribers: 1

  I am up in my room with my head in my hands, trying to block out the reality of what is happening, when I hear the sound of the gong in the foyer being struck.

  My head jerks up.

  I open my door cautiously. Erin’s voice comes floating up the stairwell.

  “—you could all come and gather in the lobby for a second. This won’t take long, and then we’ll serve lunch.”

  I am not ready to face the others. But whatever is going on down there, I have to know. Maybe the police have been in contact. Maybe we are about to be airlifted out.

  I take a deep breath. I flex my fingers. I open the door of my room and walk downstairs.

  The others are all waiting in the foyer, huddled around the woodstove. It has got noticeably colder now. The warmth leftover from yesterday’s central heating has dispersed, and now only the two stoves downstairs are keeping the place from slowly freezing.

  Erin is standing a few steps up on the spiral staircase. Her face is very white, and her scar looks more shocking than ever, a livid slash against her pale skin. Danny is at her shoulder like a lieutenant. I have to push past them to get to the ground floor. There are puddles on the wood in the foyer, where the piled-up snow is leaking in through the bowed front door, spoiling the polish.

  When we are all gathered in front of them, looking up expectantly, Erin clears her throat.

  “Okay, is everyone here?” She’s counting heads, and I realize with a shudder that she is thinking of our abortive meeting this morning, which ended with the realization that Elliot was missing. I taste blood, and I realize I am chewing my cuticle again. Disgusting little girl. I flinch. I shove my hands in my pockets.

  “We’re going to serve lunch in the living room if that’s okay, the dining room is starting to feel quite cold. It’s salad—I know that’s not the most appropriate, but without electricity Danny is very limited on what he can cook, and we need to finish up the fresh vegetables, now that the fridge is off.”

  There’s a mild grumble from Topher, but Miranda glares at him, and everyone else nods. We know we are not in a position to complain.

  “But… the real reason we asked you all here—” Erin stops. She looks a little bit sick. Like she is working herself up to say something she really doesn’t want to say. Suddenly, I do not want to hear what she is about to say. “Danny and I, we…”

  She looks over her shoulder at Danny. He gives her a look back. I am not sure if it is encouragement or impatience, but it seems to spur Erin on.

  “We have some concerns,” she finishes, in a rush, “about the manner of Elliot’s death. We’re pretty sure that he—that he was poisoned.”

  Little gasps come from all around the room. It is what they have all been thinking, but there is something horrifying about hearing the words spoken aloud.

  “There are traces of crushed pills in his coffee,” Erin says, “and while he may have taken an overdose deliberately, the sabotaged computer makes it at least possible—”

  Danny mutters something. His voice is too low for me to hear, but Erin sighs. She tightens her fists at her sides.

  “Maybe even probable, that Elliot was murdered. And that leads backwards to the possibility that Eva was killed too, and Elliot was murdered because of what he knew.”

  There is another ripple of reaction around the room, but it is not really surprise. She is only voicing what most people here had already begun to suspect. It is more like a kind of horror: these are no longer paranoid fears, but a potential reality.

  “Danny and I debated this announcement long and hard,” Erin continues, “because ultimately it’s only speculation—we have no proof of any of this. It’s still possible that Eva’s death was an accident and Elliot’s was suicide or an accidental overdose. However, the fact remains that two deaths have occurred and that is… well, concerning doesn’t really cover it. So even while we hope this is overk—”

  She stops. I realize that the word she was going to use was overkill but that she has thought better of it.

  “Even while we hope this is overly cautious,” she rephrases, “we would still urge everyone here to take precautions. If you know something that may endanger you, come and tell me and Danny as quickly as possible. Stay in pairs or groups at all times. That includes sleeping. Prepare your own drinks and don’t leave them lying around. Only accept food from Danny or me. There’s no need to be paranoid but—”

  Carl breaks in. His short laugh sounds like the bark of a dog.

  “No need to be paranoid? Are you having a giraffe?”

  “I realize this is all—” Erin begins, but he cuts her off again.

  “You’re telling us there’s a homicidal fucking maniac running around and the answer is to make our own coffee?”

  “I’m not telling you anything of the kind,” Erin says. Her voice is very level. “I am simply stating the facts of what’s happened. Whether you concur with my conclusions and follow my advice is up to you.”

  “This is a fucking shitshow,” Carl says angrily. “And I should sue the arse off you. Thousands of pounds to stay in a tin-pot little shithole with a psycho on—”

  “Oi,” Danny breaks in. He steps forward so he is close to Carl’s face. “That’s enough of that, mate. Erin and me are not responsible if you brought some psychotic fucker with you from the airport.”

  “Are you accusing Snoop employees of this?” Carl is practically shouting now. He and Danny are squaring up. “Because that, mate, is slander, and I’ll see you in court.”

  “I’m not accusing Snoop employees of anything,” Danny snarls, “I’m saying that we’ve hosted a hundred fucking holidays and it wasn’t until you lot turned up—”

  “Hey,” Erin steps forward. She is speaking to both of them, but it is Danny’s arm she takes. She shakes it gently. “Hey. This isn’t helping.”

  “Carl,” Tiger puts her hand on Carl’s shoulder. “Come on, Erin’s right. It’s completely understandable that you’re angry, but you need to channel that energy into a more positive place. Erin and Danny aren’t at fault here. They’re trying to help. C’mon. Deep breaths.”

  Carl is still muttering as he stalks to the other side of the room. He slumps on the sofa, arms folded, but I can see he knows Tiger is right.

  “Inigo,” Erin says now, “have you had any more luck with mobile reception?”

  Inigo shakes his head.

  “Nothing, sorry. And now I’m down to twelve percent battery, so I’m trying just to turn it on occasionally to check.”

  “Anyone else?” Erin says. There is an edge of desperation in her voice. There are headshakes all around the room. Most people must
be out of battery now, anyway. I turned my phone off when it got to 4 percent.

  “And what did they say when you spoke to them?” Erin asks, turning back to Inigo. He frowns.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, did they give any timescales at all? Any indication of how they proposed to get to us? I know they didn’t know the full extent of it then, but they knew we had someone missing, right? I would have thought we’d have been quite high up the list of priorities.”

  “I…” Inigo is frowning, as if he is trying to remember. “Yes, I mean, I told them Eva was missing and that we were trapped in our chalet at the top of the funicular. And I said… I told them about your ankle. And they just asked some questions about supplies and then said they would come out to us as quickly as possible.”

  “That was it? No timings at all?”

  “N-no…” Inigo sounds uncertain. “I mean, the reception was really bad. I’m trying to remember, but I don’t think it was mentioned.”

  “Okay,” Erin says. There is an edge of frustration in her voice that her calm politeness doesn’t quite mask. “That’s understandable. Well, we’ll just sit tight I guess. Okay, well, that’s it, everyone. If you go through to the living room, Danny and I will bring lunch along very shortly.”

  Everyone begins to disperse. Carl is still muttering angrily. Tiger is talking to him soothingly. Miranda and Rik are the last to leave the lobby. I am directly in front of them. I can hear their low conversation as we file slowly into the lounge.

  “I suppose Inigo did actually phone the police?” Rik speaks. His voice is barely above a mutter.

  “What do you mean?” Miranda sounds surprised.

  “Well… I mean… Erin seemed pretty concerned that we hadn’t heard anything. And I can see her point. You’d have thought they’d have got someone up here, right? Even if it was just a scout.”

  “But we heard him, Rik, we heard him calling them.”

  “We heard his end of the conversation, yes. But how do we know he actually made the call? I mean it’s a bit suspicious full stop that he managed to get reception when none of the rest of us did. What was that all about?”

  Miranda doesn’t answer that. But I notice that when we are all gathered in the living room, she takes the seat farthest away from Inigo, and she doesn’t meet his eyes.

  ERIN

  Snoop ID: LITTLEMY

  Listening to: Offline

  Snoopers: 5

  Snoopscribers: 10

  “Bollocks.” I’m standing in the kitchen, watching Danny put the finishing touches to big bowls of salad. He’s done an amazing job with tins and jars, but there is no way of masking the fact that the bread is stale and the lettuce has seen better days. Twenty-four hours without electricity is starting to take its toll on the freshness of the chilled food.

  “What do you mean, bollocks?” Danny doesn’t look up. He’s crumbling crushed walnuts over a big plate of ripe, sliced pears and slightly overripe Bleu d’Auvergne cheese.

  “I just… I feel like that didn’t go so well?”

  Danny tastes the dressing and then shrugs.

  “I dunno. You were telling them something they didn’t want to hear. What did you expect them to do—applaud?”

  I shrug. I am not sure what to say.

  At last Danny is ready, and we each pick up a couple of bowls and carry them out. As I limp after Danny, through the empty lobby, I see croissant crumbs from earlier today scattered across the thick sheepskin rug. There’s not much I can do without any electricity for the Hoover, but in my current mood it feels like a sign of the way things are fraying at the edges, falling apart while Danny and I desperately try to keep the wheels on.

  In the living room, the silence is deafening. There’s no longer any friendly backdrop of music to mask the tensions in the group, only the soft roar of the log burner, and the patter of snow against the window. Rik and Miranda are sitting together, their arms touching. They seem to have abandoned all pretense of not being a couple, and as I draw closer I see that their hands are entwined in Miranda’s lap.

  Tiger is still talking to Carl in a low voice, as if she can calm him down.

  Liz is sitting awkwardly on the edge of her seat. Her fingers are in her mouth, chewing at her nails, but as I enter the room she takes them out and flexes her hands nervously, cracking her knuckles. The little volley of clicks is very loud in the quiet room, and Ani, sitting between Liz and Topher, makes an involuntary grimace at the sound.

  Only Inigo is by himself, and when I offer him the last bowl of salad, he waves it away with one hand.

  “Thanks, but I’m not hungry.”

  “You’ve got to eat, Inigo,” I say, but the look on his face worries me more than his appetite. The last thing we need is someone sinking into a depression.

  “I’m not hungry.” He says it with more force, and I put my hands up.

  “Okay, okay. Not trying to strong-arm anyone. I’ll leave it here, okay? If you don’t want it, no pressure.”

  I am turning to go back to the kitchen when I hear his voice, very low.

  “I feel like everyone is blaming me.”

  “Blaming you?” I say, in surprise. “Why on earth would they do that?”

  “Because of what you said before—about not being able to get through to the police. I heard them.” His voice drops to a whisper, and I have to bend closer to find out what’s being said. “I heard Rik and Miranda, they were saying—” He stops, swallowing heroically, and I see there are tears in his eyes. “I think they think I was making it up. That I didn’t talk to the police, or if I did that I didn’t stress the urgency of the situation enough. But why?” He looks up, his extraordinary blue eyes swimming with tears. “Why would I do that? Unless I’d—unless I’d k-k—”

  But he can’t say it. Unless I’d killed her.

  “I loved her,” he says, his voice cracking on the last syllable. “That’s what none of them understand. I loved her.”

  Oh shit. I remember the rumors of the first morning, Inigo coming to bed late, Topher’s drawling, Not that again. Eva should know better.

  “I loved her!” Inigo repeats, and I very, very much want to tell him to shut up. Because he seems to believe that this confession will exonerate him. But if anything, it’s the reverse. Because you need a pretty powerful motive to kill someone—and one of those motives is money—that’s the one we’ve all been assuming was at the bottom of this. And Inigo has no financial motive to kill Eva. Only Topher and Elliot fall into that camp, as far as we know. But the other thing that provokes people to kill is love. And Inigo’s just put himself forward as the only candidate for that category.

  “I’m sure you did,” I say quietly, and then I watch as he stands and walks out of the room, unable to hold it together in front of his colleagues anymore.

  In the kitchen I sink into my chair, prop my aching foot on Danny’s makeshift footrest, and wait for him to come in through the service door.

  “What was all that about with Inigo?” he asks, and I explain.

  “Bloody hell.” He runs his hand through his hair. “What a stupid little prick. What, with Eva shagging Inigo, and Topher getting his end away with Ani—haven’t they heard of Me Too? You can’t go around bonking your employees anymore. It’s not right.”

  “It gives him a motive though, doesn’t it?” I say reluctantly, and Danny shrugs.

  “I dunno. I mean we could probably give them all motives if we needed to. Miranda could be madly in love with Inigo herself. Rik might be a raging incel who hates having a female boss. Who the fuck knows. I could come up with some old bollocks against all of them if I had to. If you ask me it’s alibis we should be looking at. There must be some of them we can rule out.”

  “Not for Elliot’s death. That could be anyone. We were all here—everyone was coming and going from the living room.”

  “Ani took him the coffee. And we all know she’s got the hots for Topher.”

  “She took hi
m a coffee, but we don’t know if it was the same cup that killed him. You’d have to be pretty stupid to announce to the world you were taking up coffee to someone you were about to poison.”

  “Could be a double bluff,” Danny says, a little feebly, but I can tell he’s only playing devil’s advocate. “But okay, sorting out alibis for Elliot’s gonna be tricky, I can see that. What about Eva though? If we’re accepting that Elliot was killed because he knew something about what happened to Eva…”

  “Well…” I’m trying to think back, remember what everyone said about their whereabouts when we were discussing Eva’s disappearance. “Ani and Carl saw Eva safe and sound halfway down La Sorcière. So if someone did kill her, they must have been on the mountain before Ani and Carl. And they must have been a good enough skier to intercept Eva halfway down that run. Right?”

  “Riiight…,” Danny echoes, slightly doubtfully. “Although… if it comes to that, Carl never actually said he saw her. It was only ever Ani’s word for it.”

  “Okay, but she did see her, she must have done. This was before Elliot’s GPS information came out. Ani had no way of knowing that Eva had gone down La Sorcière otherwise, surely? If she were lying, she’d have said that Eva went down Blanche-Neige, which is what you’d assume, and what anyone would say if they were trying to throw someone off the scent.”

  “Okay, I can buy that. So Ani and Carl are in the clear, is that your point?”

  “Yes, and Liz, because she’d already gone down in the bubble lift. She left before Eva even arrived at the top. We’re looking at the people who were at the top of the run before Eva—which means Topher, Rik, Tiger, Inigo, and Miranda.”

  “Not Miranda,” Danny says unexpectedly, and I frown.

  “Why not?”

  “Well, if we’re accepting Ani’s sighting, Eva was killed about halfway down La Sorcière. Which means we’re looking for someone who’s good enough to ski that run.”

  I nod slowly. He’s right. Which means… Well, it’s actually a pretty small group of people in that case. Tiger. Inigo. Maybe Rik, though I’m not certain about that. He’s good, but you wouldn’t need to be just good, you’d need to be very good indeed. And Topher.