by Alex Pavesi
He didn’t clarify this cryptic comment and they both left the room.
Behind the last door they found the body of a young man, also lying dead on his bed, though he was wearing his nightclothes and was under the covers. The room was equally bare.
‘The quiet young man?’
Sarah nodded. His bag was fully unpacked; she found the optimism of that touching, in light of later developments. ‘So sad,’ she said. ‘He seemed a very nice type.’
‘Well, certainly an attractive one.’ And Charles pulled the sheets up to cover his face.
Sarah knelt to retrieve something from under the bed; it was another book. Tales of Mystery and Imagination. She turned to the desk opposite the bed. A dark green candle was placed there, half melted. She ran her finger carefully over the tumbling wax. ‘The room next door had a green candle like this, which had also been lit. These last two rooms are both without electric lighting. I think the candle must contain something poisonous.’
‘That gets released when it’s burned, you mean?’
‘Yes. A poison mixed into the wax, which creates a deadly vapour. It must be what killed the two of them, this man and the woman next door; it’s the only thing they have in common. They were probably the first to die. I saw a candle in a bin in one of the other rooms.’
Charles looked sceptical. ‘How can you tell they were the first?’
Sarah pointed at the bed. ‘They’ve been examined and laid out neatly and respectfully. All the other bodies we’ve found have just been left where they died, except for the woman in the room with the clocks. All three of them must have died before the panic set in, before anyone knew what was happening. And these two must have died at the same time; the poisoned candle is too obvious a trick for it to work twice.’
He took her hand. ‘That’s very clever, my darling. But we can’t stand here and theorize all day. There’s a shed outside; it might contain an axe or something. To take down those two locked doors. Then we must leave.’
‘I will wait here.’ She wanted to investigate further.
He shook his head. ‘Heavens, no. It’s not safe. The killer could spring from behind those two doors at any moment.’
‘It will be fine, Charles. Every movement in this house is announced by a loud creak. And those two doors are locked. If I hear a single footstep or a key colliding with metal, I’ll immediately run out and find you.’
‘Very well,’ he sighed, ‘I suppose there’s a logic to that. But do be careful, my petal.’
‘Besides,’ she added. ‘The killer is more likely to be hiding in the shed.’
He paled, trying to look brave. ‘Well, then.’
And he kissed her and left before she could push him away.
Sarah stood alone at the end of the corridor; the silence was like a warm bath.
She pressed her forehead against the wall. It was an unladylike habit – Charles would have disapproved – but it helped her to concentrate. No distractions, just her and her thoughts and the hot feeling in her forehead from the friction as it slid imperceptibly along the wallpaper. And then she had it: ‘Where is the best place to hide a leaf? In a forest. And where is the best place to hide a piece of paper?’
She entered the room with the dead young woman. ‘Russian short stories,’ she said to herself, taking the heavy volume off the desk. ‘Forgive me, but you didn’t seem the type. This book was picked because of its size.’ She searched through its pages. ‘And yet in many ways you were the most astute.’
Tucked inside were a folded, handwritten note and a small white square of cardboard, netted with faint lines that indicated it had at some point been screwed into a ball. ‘Scarlett Thorpe, slattern, is accused of seducing a man and persuading him to commit suicide for her own benefit.’
The accusation seemed even more brutal in the silence of the bedroom.
The note was more welcoming in its tone. Sarah sat down on the bed to read it.
‘I find myself in the most extraordinary set of circumstances. I was invited here for the weekend by a man called Unwin, who got my details from a previous employer. He didn’t specify which one. He needed someone to act as his niece while meeting prospective clients. He wanted to stress that his was a traditional family business. All I had to do was make a good first impression, appear competent; that sort of thing. So I followed instructions and found myself travelling with a number of other people, all of whom had been approached by this Unwin. It wasn’t clear to me whether they were the clients in question, so I introduced myself as his niece to be on the safe side. I didn’t know that we were going to an island. That did seem odd, but I didn’t think of turning back. The money was too good. Unwin’s man Stubbs rowed us over. He told us Unwin was delayed and would be joining us later. There are eight of us, plus Stubbs and his wife.’
Sarah turned the page.
‘It was all rather strange from the start. There was far too much small talk, and a general sense of confusion. Then at dinner Mrs Stubbs gave us all envelopes with our names on them, only she hadn’t learnt our names yet and had to call them out like it was the register at school. Each of the letters accused its recipient of some undiscovered crime. That caused quite the uproar. One man read his out and there was some squabbling about whether the rest of us should do the same. We all did, in the end. Except for two ladies who caused a fuss. An exotic old bird, Mrs Tranter, and her caged companion, Sophia. She’s one of those insufferable religious types who’ll never admit to a flaw. I stood behind them, though, and could read most of it. Something about them travelling in Amsterdam and pushing a beggar into a canal. Fairly horrid. Then the doctor – a man I don’t like the look of – did the very manly thing of assuming authority.’
Sarah knew the man she meant; he’d walked past her house with the schoolteacher in the red cardigan. His wasn’t one of the bodies they’d so far discovered.
‘He turned on Stubbs, but Stubbs insisted he was just following instructions and had never met Unwin. There was almost a fight. He’s a wild one, that doctor. I got some awkward questions too, being the man’s niece, so I came clean about the whole thing. The funny thing is, my accusation was mostly true. It basically said I seduced Benny and then talked him into killing himself. Well, the seduction was mutual, but it’s true I gave him the pills and told him to use them. The world is better off without a man like that; too keen with his hands. Not many people knew about it, though. Unwin had certainly done his research. Then in the midst of all this, as if it wasn’t chaos enough, a shrewish lady along the table started to choke. We thought it was just shock at first, then it got serious. She was given water to swallow, but it came back up bright red. They tried patting her on the back but that only seemed to make it worse. Then she was all around the room, flailing at the furniture and making the most horrible sounds. Eventually she collapsed into the curtains, dead. In a way, she’s done the rest of us a favour. Whatever kind of blackmail Unwin had planned, the police will have to be involved now. Stubbs says he will row to the mainland at the first opportunity tomorrow morning. A lucky escape, all considered. I won’t be able to sleep tonight. There is somebody coughing at the far end of the hallway.’
The note ended there.
Charles returned a few minutes later. ‘My dear, you’ve moved. I thought the worst had happened.’
She showed him the note. He was holding a small axe in one hand, the gun in the other; he put both down beside the book and read carefully. ‘So the death she describes at the end is the woman we found with the clocks?’
‘It seems that way.’
‘Do you think she could have been poisoned, then? Something in her food?’
‘I found a fork on the dining table that was missing a tine. I believe she choked on that. There was a hole where it might have slotted in. Once stuck in a tough piece of meat it would have just slid right out and been swallowed.’ Charles narrowed his eyes and mimed eating from a fork. ‘The hole was wedge-shaped, as if the hidden end had been sh
arpened. A blade, designed to get stuck in the throat.’
‘That’s abominable. The poor woman.’
Sarah shrugged. ‘She was a torturer, apparently. Did you find anything outside?’
He drew back his shoulders. ‘I searched the whole island in the end. When I was in the shed I heard movement and went to investigate. It was only a seagull, but since I’d started I decided to check everywhere. There’s no trace of anyone alive, and no more bodies either. The only place I didn’t look is the beach, where Stubbs and his wife are. There is a way to get down to it, but it’s a precarious path and I wanted to get back to you.’
‘We know now that Stubbs and his wife died fourth and fifth. I was wrong, of course, about these two. They weren’t the first to die. That was the schoolteacher. Then when everybody went to bed – early, probably, after all the drama of the evening – they both lit candles and stayed awake. One to write and one to read. Both died, poisoned by the candle fumes. Three deaths: that’s when the situation must have dawned on them all. One could be unlucky, but not three. I assume that Stubbs and his wife were already dead by the time these two bodies were discovered. They must have been killed early the next morning, before the dining room could be cleared. The obvious explanation is that Unwin asked to meet them by the top of that cliff – perhaps to get their stories straight before telling the police about the little accident at dinner – and pushed them over while they were off guard.’
‘The note doesn’t mention Stubbs being accused of anything, or his wife for that matter. Why bring them here at all?’
‘To help with the preparations. After that they must have been seen as expendable. It would have been impractical, I assume, to try and find a servant with an undiscovered crime in their past who is also willing to work for a pittance.’
‘I see.’ Charles looked morose. ‘At least their deaths were relatively quick and painless. Maybe that explains it.’
‘Unwin has a heart, of sorts.’
‘We must check the other rooms. Come.’
Charles beat at the first door with the axe, hacking at the hinges until the whole thing came away in his hands. He lost his grip on the gun and started to panic, the tumbling door pushing him back against the wall – like a child building a fort of furniture – but no one came rushing out at him. Sarah stepped over the door and into the empty room. There were no bodies, just a bare bed and a bare lightbulb. Facing her was a small window. There wasn’t even a candle. A lone mosquito watched from the ceiling beside the bulb.
Behind the door was a suitcase, neither locked nor fully closed, and a pile of canned food. On the floor next to the tins was a fork, a large carving knife, and a basin full of water. ‘Someone made preparations,’ said Charles, ‘locked the room and then never came back.’
They took the door off the next room in a similar fashion. This time Charles moved back as soon as it started to topple and waited with his two weapons. ‘These rooms would have offered little protection, if push came to shove.’
This room was larger, with a double bed and a bathroom to the back of it. They noticed a series of scratches, bloody and splintered, around the doorframe. ‘There was violence here,’ said Charles.
‘Of course,’ said Sarah, ‘it’s the safest room. It has a supply of water and no balcony or other entrance. They probably fought over it.’
The bed was a mess: unmade, littered with tins of sweetcorn. The contents of a suitcase were strewn across the floor.
‘There’s a shape in the bathtub.’ Charles stepped slowly towards the bathroom with his gun pointed. He reached the door and looked down. ‘Another one.’
Sarah was approaching behind him. He turned. ‘Sarah, you mustn’t.’
She slid past him. The dead, naked body of a man lay in the tub, which was still full of water. The body was covered in patches of blistered and singed flesh; its hair smelled burnt. There was water on the floor. ‘Come,’ she said. ‘This might not be safe.’
They both sat down on the edge of the bed, where the blistered, skeletal figure was hidden from view. ‘I wonder if that was Mr Townsend?’
Charles nodded: ‘Nine bodies, leaving just one guest unaccounted for.’
Sarah looked concerned. ‘I remember the tenth. He was a doctor, I believe. He didn’t seem very pleasant.’
‘Then you think he was Unwin? He killed the other nine?’
‘That seems to be the only conclusion.’ She sighed. ‘It doesn’t seem quite right.’
‘Why not?’
She shook her head: ‘There are missing pieces that I can’t explain yet.’
‘Well, there is one place we haven’t explored.’
‘The beach, where Stubbs and his wife fell.’
‘Yes,’ said Charles. ‘I used to play down there as a child. It’s tarnished now.’ He looked at Sarah. ‘That man there, in the bath. How do you think he died?’
She answered abruptly. ‘He burned.’
‘You think perhaps the bath was tricked to give out boiling water from both the hot and cold taps?’
She shook her head. ‘You’d be able to sense that before you got in. No, he was electrocuted. The bath is porcelain but the overflow outlet is made of metal. You could run a current through the centre of that. It’s a clever trick. He could have tested the water with his hand and found it perfectly safe, then only when he got in fully would the water level rise enough to reach the overflow outlet. That’s when the electrocution would start. It would switch itself off, too, when the outlet does its job and the level goes back down. From the state of the body I imagine it took him a long time to die.’
A barrier broke within Charles and he rushed to the bathroom and vomited into the sink, the boiled corpse in the corner of his eye. Sarah came in after him and rubbed his back, sitting on the edge of the bath.
‘Careful,’ he spluttered, pointing at the water.
‘I am being careful.’ She sighed. ‘When you’re ready, let’s go and explore that beach.’
It was the afternoon now. The tide was draining rapidly and all around the island the water was scarred with rocks. They looked like a congregation of monsters, sleeping beneath the waves. It was a familiar sight to both of them but Sarah had never seen it from this close before.
The sky was overcast and a ceaseless wind blew in towards the coast. What a miserable place to die, she thought.
Charles led them over the few slight hills that formed the distant side of the island and when they came to the cliff both were fearful of getting too close.
‘Here.’ Charles showed her a path leading between the bushes: it wound back and forth along the cliff and then, after a short scramble over a rock, came out on the sands at the base.
They proceeded one carefully placed step at a time. When they crested the rock Stubbs was staring up at them, his dead eyes glazed with fear and his chin propped on a slight rise in the sand. The rest of his body followed the upwards angle of the slope: his neck must be broken. Mrs Stubbs looked more peaceful, face down in a halo of wet sand. Both arms and both legs seemed to be broken.
‘She must have landed like a cat,’ said Charles.
He lifted her body with one hand and found the sand underneath was red. The impact had pulled her jaw upwards, slightly away from her body; the soft neck was split open. Her clothes were wet. He searched through them and found a damp square of white card in a pocket of her apron. Mr Stubbs had landed closer to the water; Sarah found a soggier version of the same card in one of his pockets, wrapped in a handkerchief spotted with blood. They looked the same as the accusations, but printed on them were the words: ‘You are no longer needed.’
‘That’s particularly cruel,’ said Charles.
‘It fits my theory.’
There was nothing else of interest on or about the servants’ bodies, so they laboured their way back to the top of the cliff. ‘We’d need equipment to move them,’ said Charles, prompted by nothing.
When he reached the top he turned and lo
oked at the cold expanse of sea, as if the sight was cleansing, though around the island the sea looked diseased. ‘It’s been an unusually cold year,’ he said, morosely.
This set something ticking in Sarah’s mind; she watched the clockwork motions of the distant waves and sought for connections. Colour came into her face. ‘That’s what we missed.’
She raced off towards the house. Charles, uncomprehending, struggled to keep up with her.
As they passed the body in the grass by the front door, Charles caught hold of her and slowed her down. ‘That man there, strangled by the wire,’ he said between breaths. ‘You said you thought he’d died recently, possibly this morning. Could he have been in on it, with Unwin?’
‘We’ll come back to him.’ She shook his hand off her shoulder and pushed through the front door, up the stairs and along the corridor to the left, into the empty room they’d found locked earlier.
‘Tell me what’s wrong here, Charles.’
‘The room is unused and the bed is made, but there’s a suitcase.’
‘That’s true, but there’s a more obvious discrepancy. It’s a cold year, as you said. I’ve yet to see a single mosquito. Except for that one up there.’ The lone mosquito was still on the ceiling, next to the lightbulb.
She tested the bed with her hand: it would take her weight. Then she climbed up on it and inspected the insect. It didn’t move. One flick and it fell to the floor, bouncing into a corner of the room.
Charles retrieved it. ‘It’s a toy, a model. Made of wire. Do you think that’s significant?’
But she was already busy pulling the sheets from the bed. There was no mattress, just a hard metal framework covered in canvas. ‘Give me a hand with this.’
They applied pressure to the bar at the top of the bed and were able to lift it up; the bed was covered with a kind of metal lid. Inside, it was hollow. A fine mesh was stretched across the opening, with a large rent in the middle, and through this they could see the missing tenth body. Charles went to her side. ‘The doctor?’
She nodded.
‘He’s Unwin, then?’
