by Tess Little
The Last Guest is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 by Tess Little
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
Ballantine and the House colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Originally published in the United Kingdom as The Octopus by Hodder & Stoughton, an Hachette UK company, London, in 2020.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Little, Tess, author.
Title: The last guest : a novel / Tess Little.
Description: New York : Ballantine Books, [2021] |
Identifiers: LCCN 2020056517 (print) | LCCN 2020056518 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593238073 (hardcover ; acid-free paper) | ISBN 9780593238080 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Murder—Investigation—Fiction. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PR6112.I876 L37 2021 (print) | LCC PR6112.I876 (ebook) | DDC 823/.92—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020056517
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020056518
Ebook ISBN 9780593238080
randomhousebooks.com
Book design by Caroline Cunningham, adapted for ebook
Cover design: Sara Wood
Cover art: © Caroline Walker. All rights reserved, DACS 2021, The Plunge Pool
ep_prh_5.8.0_c0_r0
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Prologue
Act I
Act II
Act III
Epilogue
Dedication
Acknowledgments
About the Author
We believed he had died from an overdose. There was no reason to suspect otherwise: limbs limp on the couch; pink vomit splattered across his shirt, dribbling from the corners of his mouth; the Gucci belt, the residue-stained needles—our own memories, in flashes and throbs and waves. We did not call an ambulance. The flesh was cold to the touch.
It had been my fingers stroking his stony neck for a pulse. With none to be found, I looked up, caught Honey’s eye, gave the nod. The others were lifting their heads. I would have to tell them, I realized, as Honey crept over their stretching arms, slipped the cellphone from his back pocket, and disappeared around the corner.
I shut my eyes, let the morning light glow through, as it had for a few moments upon waking. There were yawns and groans, and then a gasp. I steeled for the chaos.
“Elspeth,” he said.
His eyes were tired, but his teeth were whiter than before. He held open the door to the house.
“Richard,” I replied. “Happy birthday.”
We leaned toward each other for a kiss of each cheek. His stubble pricked. One hand on my inner elbow pulled me close—his other still on the door. He pushed back to regard me once more. I told myself not to tuck the hair behind my ear again, not to smooth my skirt or run my finger beneath the gold band on my wrist, tried to calm the cells of my body. Let him look at me; let him see what I had become.
“And what a fabulous present you are.” He grinned. “I’m so glad you came.”
Laughter echoed from the belly of the house.
“Here,” Richard said, twitching to action with a wave down the hall. “Come in. I can’t wait to introduce you to everyone.”
Entering the house, I found I had been deceived. From the driveway, the façade loomed large: two colossal cubes atop a thin rectangle, all in a smooth, pale concrete. Its angular gray assaulted the eyes, accustomed, as they had grown on the drive up, to the thick, hatching branches of the pines, the swells of the landscape. This was not the home we had once shared—sold, immediately, to pay the settlement. This was a fortress. As I had stood in its shadow, tugging my skirt before ringing the doorbell, I’d tried to imagine the harsh surfaces, the darkness within.
Instead, I followed Richard into brightness.
“Welcome,” he said, “to Sedgwick.”
He watched for my reaction to the name, but he would find no trace of surprise. I had seen the sign, driving in, and I refused to acknowledge it.
“How long have you been…?” I asked, trailing off as my eyes skittered over the bare gray walls, the cold marble and clean glass. All were flooded with natural light, but from where, I could not tell: Each room we passed seemed a floor of its own, overlapping and overlaid. To draw a map of the place would be impossible.
“Living at Sedgwick? Five years now, and it does feel like home.” He walked three feet ahead of me, spoke without turning. His voice—that familiar British accent—rang clear and confident, bounced off the walls. “And yet every time I welcome a new guest, when I see their expression as I open the door, I’m reminded of its beauty all over again. Classical in its modernity. Sparse, but with a flourish.”
I hummed my agreement, concentrating on the placement of my stilettos. My stomach was acid. My tongue was dry. And I was here, with Richard, a decade to the day since the last time we had spoken, unaccompanied, in the flesh.
As we continued down the hallway, Richard asked about my trip, asked if he could put anything in the coat closet. I declined, clutching my purse close, regretting, not for the first time, that I had been forced into arriving alone. Perhaps it could have been interesting, peering into Richard’s new life with Lillie on my arm. Facing him by myself, I could barely muster a sentence. I let him tell me about the architect, who had lived in the home until his death, which occurred, so fortunately, a month before Richard had begun his property search. I let him recount his first visit, how it had been love at first sight. I let him talk about the origin of the materials; the trajectory of the sun; refittings, renovations.
They were nothing but boasts: a spiel he had presumably recited to his other guests. It was only when he mentioned the interior—“the vision isn’t mine, of course; I’m not the aesthetic genius”—that I bristled, knowing who that true visionary was.
The voices grew louder—my heartbeat faster—as we passed into a darkening area illuminated cool by a wall of water. It was exquisitely blue, perfectly clear.
“How unique,” I said to Richard, who turned to me, shadows tracing the contours of his blue face, and smiled. I noted his lingering scent, still Eau Sauvage, of course, of course. “Some kind of contemporary sculpture?”
Richard laughed. I waited, uncertain and unsmiling, for him to finish.
“Yes, I can see it. A slice of the sea, a light installation,” he said, and laughed again, one staccato: Ha. “What a marvelous notion. But no, it’s not artwork. I had to find somewhere to show off Persephone, and this was the only suitable space.”
“Persephone?”
The wall was empty. I would have thought the water motionless were it not for dancing rays of light.
“You’ll meet her soon enough,” he answered, continuing along the passage.
And then we emerged to sunlight and sound. Richard threw out his arms and announced: “The atrium.”
It was magnificent. If the façade of the house had concealed a secret, then this was its dazzling conclusion. The hallway opened onto a vast, vaulted room, which, I realized as we entered, was only a mezzanine, overlooking another floor below. But these shifting perspectives were
not the showstopper. For where a wall should have faced us, at the far end of this concrete cathedral, there towered instead a window, stretching all the way across and up.
There it was, the iconic sloping vista I had avoided until now. There, in the pit of my throat—the sudden drop, the return of those hills.
Richard called my name. I pried my fingers, knuckles white, from the balcony wall and turned to catch him disappear down a spiral staircase.
However unexpected this architectural drama, none of it surprised me. Instead, I was surprised by the lack of faces that now tilted upward to register my arrival, examine my appearance. Seven faces: two known, the rest perhaps familiar—from the pages of a magazine, pixels, or parties, I could not say. Lillie was not among them. Lillie had not arrived. My hands trembled, my nerves thrummed, at this terrible realization.
I neatened my skirt, my hair, my bracelet. I followed Richard down.
Picking my way, I told myself to calm. I had spotted Jerry and Tommo, two old friends. They would look after me until Lillie arrived. Which had to be soon. Everything would be fine. The group of guests, sitting on couches at the center of the cavernous room, was surrounded by twice as many champagne-bearers; I was simply early. Lillie would arrive, the house would fill with people, and everything would be fine.
My heels clanged the metal steps. I winced with each ringing note.
Three staff, solemn in head-to-toe black, awaited me at the bottom of the stairs: one with a tray of full flutes, one with a dish towel and frosty bottle, one to ask, “Champagne?” and hand me the stem.
Richard lifted a glass from the tray for himself.
“You’re drinking these days?” I asked, and took a mouthful. The fizz stung; the gulp was harsh. I blinked back the tears in my eyes.
He laughed, like the question had been ridiculous. “For a once-in-a-lifetime occasion, darling, yes.”
I pursed my lips, but he could do whatever he wanted. Richard was no longer my responsibility.
As we neared the little gathering, the room fell silent. There were smiles both warm and empty—and, I noticed, a smatter of annoyance at my presence interrupting talk.
“So”—I looked around the guests, at the staff lined up behind them—“am I early?”
Jerry winked, approaching me for a kiss, and added, “Yeah, Rich, where are all your friends? Interstate bumper-to-bumper?”
“Fuck off,” said Richard. Then, to me, gently, “I felt an intimate gathering would be more…”
“Manageable?” said Jerry.
“Fitting.”
Conversation had bubbled back on the couches. I could now see that it was not simply a wall of water we had passed in the hallway upstairs but an enormous aquarium spanning both floors. Above and beneath the blue, the shape of the tank continued in concrete, smoothed seamlessly into ceiling and floor. But it was so luminous, so alive with dancing sunlight and swaying plants—so antithetical to the surroundings.
The nearest waitress, a woman with sunny hair slicked into a ponytail, replenished the sips I’d taken from my glass.
“Thank you,” I said.
She beamed at me, replied, “Of course,” then let her face fall back to blank.
“Let me check something with the caterers,” said Richard, touching my back. “And after that I can introduce you around properly.”
“Caterers?” I turned to Jerry. He was dressed in characteristically hopeless clothes: a suit both over- and undersized. The shoulders were wrinkling, belly pushing at the shirt. “Is this a dinner party? I hadn’t—I didn’t expect any of this.”
“Tell me about it. And when he says intimate”—Jerry lowered his voice—“I don’t know. I’ve been here for an hour now and you’re the only person that’s arrived.”
“You’ve been here an hour? He told Lillie things weren’t starting till six-thirty, so I thought seven—”
“Rich told me five-thirty. But I got the impression, when I came in, that some of the others might have been here for a while. They were surprised when I showed up.”
We examined the group. Only four discussions were taking place, including ours. Tommo smiled at me, nodded, over the shoulder of a short dark-haired woman. To their left were two men: one older, sitting with his legs spread wide, dominating the conversation; the younger barely listening, eyes blandly roaming the room. An actor, almost certainly: He had a striking yet forgettable face—the kind of face one could mold into any thick-necked all-American Wonder Bread hero. I wasn’t sure whether I recognized him or not.
And there, on the other couch, sat Richard’s partner, speaking with a woman whose face I could not see. I did not let my eyes linger in that direction; I couldn’t be caught staring.
“Wonder what’s on the menu,” said Jerry.
“This is ridiculous,” I said. Then, pathetically, “I already ate.”
Jerry chuckled. “I don’t know, I gotta tell you, I can’t see Rich accepting that excuse.”
“Well, maybe he should let people know what they’re getting into.”
“Elsie,” he said, “come on, you know that’s not his style.”
“So he can accept the consequences,” I said. “I’ll stay for one more drink after Lillie arrives, and then I’m leaving. It’s lovely to see you, of course, but I didn’t fly across the country to spend time with”—I whispered—“whoever these people are. Not for an unexpected, intimate, whatever-he-wants-to-call-it dinner party.”
Jerry clasped his chest. “You mean you didn’t schlep all that way for me? Because you missed this beautiful face?”
“If I could spend all evening with your beautiful face, Jerry, I’d be thrilled, believe me. It’s the thought of spending hours with a handful of strangers that concerns me.”
I had expected a large, bursting party—one of the sprawling carnivals Richard usually held in his own honor—and on the flight I’d comforted myself with the thought that I could tuck into a corner, avoid uncomfortable encounters, cling to Lillie’s side. I hadn’t prepared for this claustrophobic, unnatural scene. It was a movie set. The cast, costumed, at the center; the staff circling the periphery, ensuring everything would unfold as planned. Constructed scenery, the carefully placed furniture, the champagne and glasses as props. And there was Richard, slipping between the two worlds, ready to choreograph the dialogue between guests, to task his crew, here and there.
What did that make me? I felt I belonged to neither role, but I was not like Richard—I was not in among it all. I wouldn’t perform. I was passive. Maybe the camera, or the audience.
I sipped again; the woman standing at my shoulder filled my glass again; I thanked her again.
“Of course,” she said.
It was a chirpy response, I thought, but not one that entirely made sense.
“Glad to hear Lillie’s coming,” said Jerry. “Oh,” he added, as the woman moved to refill his champagne, “no, thanks. Actually, you know if there’s any Scotch?”
“Of course,” said the woman. “We’ve got a Macallan—would that be okay, sir?”
I studied the aquarium while they talked. The rocks and plants—purple, green, and red—were hypnotic. Enough to distract my stare from the couch on the right, where Richard’s partner sat. The stalks were rippling; the water almost glowed. It was a splendid display, but for what? “Persephone” must have been there, among the crags and fronds. Yet the luscious foliage appeared unoccupied from where I stood. The blue stretched empty above.
“Very nice,” said Jerry. “Sure. Neat, but I can get it myself if you—”
“No, please, allow me, sir. Macallan, neat.”
“Thanks,” said Jerry.
“Of course,” repeated the woman. The emptiness of the phrase, her enthusiasm, was grating. What did it mean? That we should, of course, be thankful?
“Lillie, yeah—what wa
s I saying?” said Jerry. “Yeah, it’ll be good to see her. Finally emailed my pal Bob, like she asked, and he’s fine with her getting in touch. Guess I’ll give her his details when she gets here.”
I nodded like I knew who Jerry was talking about, like my daughter let me in on the details of her life, her career. Jerry was Richard’s manager, so I imagined this Bob was a casting director, maybe an agent or manager.
“How is she?” Jerry said.
“Lillie? She seems to be doing great. New house, new life. I’m staying with her. Over on Cahuenga.”
“You must be so proud of her.”
“I am,” I said. “I am.”
The waitress returned with Jerry’s Scotch, presented on a black square napkin. He thanked her.
“Of course.” She took up the champagne bottle and resumed her position, just a foot behind us. Would the group be waited on like this all night?
Jerry held the napkin in a pinch to inspect it—then scrunched the thing into his pocket.
“Anyhow,” he said, “I gotta say, it’s nice to have you in town again. Long time no see.”
“Not since Richard’s fortieth,” I replied.
“Was it really ten years ago? Fuck. Ten years. But you look great.”
And I did, following a weekly facial and the extra half hour added to my daily schedule for moisturizing, for smudging Touche Éclat, for taming flyaways. Had Jerry become as paranoid about aging as I had over the last decade? Or was it simply a new item to add to my never-ending checklist: Wipe the lipstick from your champagne glass; cross your legs; lift your chin to hide the budding jowl?
“You look like shit,” I said, touching his arm. And he did—hair thinning, withered. His hopeless suit.
Jerry laughed. The laugh was the same, as was his voice. Thick, a little throaty: peanut butter scooped straight from the jar. “Been keeping busy?”
It was the question I dreaded the most. There were different ways to answer. I could invoke my investment portfolio, my charity work—but this was Jerry. I opted instead for honesty.
