Zoe turned to look at the others. They were calm. A few were smiling. It was as if Aaron Kennedy’s tirade had never happened.
Chapter 49
Cocktails were to be announced soon. Gewel and Anthony sat very close on the sofa in front of the dark fireplace. The others had gone for walks or up to their rooms.
Zoe took a trial step toward the reception desk, turning to see if either of the two on the sofa stirred.
She lifted the phone. When she hit the dial button, she squashed the phone against her ear and bent over it. Nobody was going to grab her hand until she knew if she’d been lied to all along.
No dial tone. She punched in other buttons. Nothing. There was a cord attached to the base it was sitting on. She pulled it, just to find the plug it was attached to. The cord came at her. The more she pulled, the more it came, until the plug bounced over the desk.
Unplugged.
Zoe tiptoed around the back of the desk. She stuck the plug in the wall, then punched a button. The phone lit up, as it should. In a few seconds a dial tone came on. Without another thought she dialed Jenny’s number, listening to it ring twice.
“You’re not allowed to touch our phone.” Someone behind her yanked the phone roughly from her hand, and the cord pulled across her throat.
Zoe grabbed the cord and held on, turning, pulling at it to keep from choking. She turned to look into Gewel’s fierce blue eyes. She wasn’t smiling, wasn’t coy, wasn’t anything but determined. Anthony was behind her and reached around to pull the phone from Zoe’s hands.
Gewel clucked her tongue. “You know we were told not to use this phone, Zoe. You’ve got to wait until we’re rescued, along with everybody else.”
She was scolding her.
Anthony shook his head. “That’s not what we’re supposed to do, Zoe. Can’t break the rules.”
When the cord was pulled from her neck and wrapped around the phone, Anthony held it out of Zoe’s reach. She stepped quietly, almost daintily, away from them, not turning her back until she was across the reception room, to the open front door, where she stood, head tipped to one side.
“Now, Zoe. There’s no place to go until they come for us. Stay here. We can listen to music.”
“No, we can’t, Gewel. I have to get home.”
“But we want you …”
Back to Oz. “Of course, you would.’
This was nuts. Perfectly crazy. Nothing meant anything, and yet some of it had to mean something. She put her hands to her head and pushed hard at her temples, trying to distract herself with pain.
* * *
Later, close to dinnertime, when she was up in her room, away from those two crazy people who’d attack her, she heard her name being called from downstairs. Emily’s voice wasn’t subdued or strained as she yelled out “Zoe! Zoe Zola!”
At the top of the stairs, Zoe looked down at her, waiting.
“Zoe? Miss Zola? You’ve missed cocktails. Now we’re almost to dinnertime. Bella’s fixed a special surprise for everyone. Please come down.”
Zoe lay back on her bed and closed her eyes. Of course, she would go downstairs. She had no choice. Something had been decided on—with Anthony and Gewel, with the others, with the lodge, with the dead animals in every room. She knew, the way she’d known things all her life, that something was about to happen and she was a part of it. Maybe a larger part than she could imagine.
Another call from downstairs. Gewel’s sweet voice. “Zoe. Dinnertime.”
No reason to change her clothes. She didn’t have anything different left to wear, and what anybody wore, or said—or pretended to be—didn’t matter.
Lamb. And there was a Jokela—Emily’s name. She whispered the word as she picked up a satchel holding pages to edit, in case she had to leave or in case she needed to throw it at someone.
She shut her bedroom door behind her—no use locking it—and hesitated at the top of the angled staircase.
* * *
Emily was watching for her when she got to the bottom of the steps. She hurried over to put her hand on Zoe’s shoulder, leaned down, and declared for all to hear, “Bella’s made Leipäjuusto. It’s a celebration, ya know.”
“Really?” Zoe pretended great surprise. “What is it? And what are we celebrating?”
“Bread cheese.”
“We’re celebrating bread and cheese? Astounding.”
“A very special Finnish dish. You should know more of your heritage. Served with cloudberry jelly. Since this is our last night, Bella wanted to do something special. Besides the Leipäjuusto for an appetizer, she’s made mustamakkara for dinner.”
Gewel held her hands out as she walked in from the hall. She smiled sweetly. “You look rested, Zoe. I’m happy for that.”
“What’s mustamakkara?” Anthony, behind her, asked Emily.
“I won’t tell until you taste it.” Emily looked over her shoulder at him, teasing. “It will be familiar. Any good Finnish boy would recognize it immediately.”
“Ah, but I’m not really Finnish. Only married to a Finn. I’d give my life for a single meatball.”
Emily waved a hand at him. “Ech, meatball. Wait until you taste what Bella’s prepared— then you can talk to me about meatballs.”
As the others laughed, Zoe stood near the open front door. Something about an open door signaled escape.
She didn’t’t dare try.
Chapter 50
They followed their noses, sniffing the air.
Betty and Anna went in to dinner ahead of Zoe, talking only to each other.
Anthony and Gewel were behind them, his arm around her shoulders as he leaned down to talk into her ear.
That left her and Nigel to go in with Aaron. Though they didn’t talk to each other, having no pleasant conversation left in them. They went straight to their accustomed seats at the table, leaving three empty places scattered among them.
Zoe had the head of the table to herself.
The appetizer was presented and passed with fanfare. Bella took a few bows, waited until her bread cheese was properly raved over, then went back to her kitchen.
Zoe asked Nigel to pass the water pitcher, which he did with a smile, then leaned close to say that the table was either getting larger or they were getting fewer.
Zoe pretended to look around and notice the empty places for the first time. “Oh yes, the three who had to leave. Too bad. I was hoping we’d have a round-table discussion after I speak tomorrow. You know, Nigel, to sum up everything we’ve learned.”
He leaned back to stare at her, his multi-colored eyebrows in the air, mustache hairs sticking out at many angles, his pinprick pupils fixed on her. “Have you really learned anything, Miss Zola? Was there a single word said that you haven’t heard before?”
His voice was louder than it should have been, but no one took notice.
“And why bother to think of the commotion Aaron caused with his talk?” Zoe said.
Nigel nodded very slowly. “I must confess, I wasn’t paying attention. I thought he would try to make a hero of himself, only to be different from the rest of us.”
Aaron beside him said nothing. He sat as far back as he could get in the chair and once in a while made a face at what they were discussing. He didn’t take part. He sat with his the edge of his napkin going back and forth between his fingers. Finally, he turned to her.
“It’s too bad we landed at this poor excuse for an academic affair. I know why I came, but whatever made you want to take part?”
Down the table, Anthony heard. “I imagine our Zoe recognized true scholarship.”
Aaron threw back his head and laughed. “And you, Anthony, I’m sure you don’t get many requests to take part in programs. What was that last book you edited? A Guide to Fields and Streams?”
“Or maybe my Christie’s Life would be a better example, Kennedy. Diminishing me does little to add to your luster. Tell us what you have added to the Christie scholarship, other than to diminish her ta
lent.”
With a well-placed “Ta-da,” Bella came from the kitchen with a large platter in her hands. “Mustamakkara,” Bella said as she laid a platter of sausage, black and not exactly appetizing, at the center of the table.
Gewel wrinkled her nose. “What is that, Bella? Something special you’ve made?”
“Not with my own hands. I don’t kill pigs.”
“Pork sausage. I’m afraid I don’t eat pork.” Anna tried to smile, but Bella’s face, when she turned to her, was dark enough and tight enough to scare Anna into muttering something like “ I’ll … try. I just hope …”
“Blood sausage.” Bella looked around at them, one by one. “Killed today—if you heard something squealing—so the blood is fresh as you can get it.”
She turned and left the room, coming back with a bowl she dropped heavily to the table. Zoe heard it clank against the bare wood. She waited to hear the crack of the bowl that had to follow, but the bowl survived.
“Kaalikääryleet.” Bella said the word and stopped where she was, looking straight at Anna. “You allergic to cabbage rolls too?”
Anna shook her head. She kept her mouth shut as Bella went back to the kitchen and returned with a bowl of something red to go with the blackened green cabbage and the very black blood sausage.
“Rosolli,” she said. “Beet root salad.”
She set her hands backwards at her waist, leaned forward, and announced, “I made a Puolukkapiirakka for dessert. Don’t eat so much, now, ya hear.”
Anthony shook his head at her. “Puolukkapiirakka! Hmm … who would miss that?”
Bella narrowed her eyes hard and stood close beside him. “It’s lingonberry pie, fool. For the people who don’t know what’s good in this world.”
Anthony made no more jokes but put his hands together in front of his plate and pretended to pray.
“Who wants a blood sausage?” Gewel stood, pushing the chair back behind her and picking up the dish to circle the table, offering the sausage at each seat.
Betty tried to stave off the sausage on Gewel’s platter, but she wouldn’t let her. “New rule. Everybody takes something of everything.”
Betty let the black sausage hit her plate, where it jiggled there by itself. She picked up the beet root salad and carefully piled it atop her sausage until nothing of the black sausage could be seen.
Next the cabbage rolls were passed and remarked over as they were cut up and eaten.
The problem with the blood sausage was still a problem when the cabbage rolls were all gone. Gewel picked at the beet salad and said it was very good—vinegary. She nodded and the others began eating their beet salad until it was gone from their plates and the blood sausage lay exposed, each plate with a plop of plump, black cigars.
“I’ll try,” Anna whispered toward Betty.
Anna carefully cut her first sausage into three pieces, then put one piece in her mouth. She held it there until she bit down, tasted the sausage, and her shocked and then unhappy face gave away what she thought. Without a worry about the others, she spat her mouthful back onto her plate.
“Tastes like singed dog hair,” Betty said.
“That good?” Anthony tipped his head and smiled.
“I can’t eat it.” Betty wiped her tongue with her napkin and shuddered.
“Any other guinea pigs?” Anthony asked, then looked to Gewel, who shook her head.
“Here.” Zoe took her papers from her briefcase, set them on the floor, and held the case open toward Gewel, who pushed the sausage in, thanking Zoe.
Zoe put the sausage from her own plate into the case and hurried around to Aaron, who did the same. Then Nigel. And the others, until her case was heavy, but their plates were clean.
Just in time. Bella was back to clear the table for dessert, smiling and nodding, as if bestowing her approval on the guests.
Dessert was a very good berry pie, served as Emily came back in with news of a man who got over the creek in a small motorboat. She shook her head at them as they all asked if they could get out of there yet.
“He says not yet. Tomorrow some time. It was dangerous for him to even try, but he did and is staying here until the men come to fix the bridge.”
Disappointment forced the air out of the room. Someone’s stomach rumbled. Like sheep, they got up, first one, then the next, to follow one another down the hall to hear Gewel Sharp, who had asked, as a special attraction, to give her take on Murder on the Orient Express.
Only Aaron stayed behind at the table, looking out the windows, at the unusually bright sunset, until he finally braced his hands on the table and got up.
Chapter 51
Zoe tried to get outside to dispose of the sausages in her case, but was stopped by Anna Tow, asking in a low voice, looking over her shoulder, “Do you think they’ll ever let us leave?”
The voice was panicked. She sounded the way Zoe wouldn’t let herself feel.
“Of course,” Zoe said, reaching up to pat her arm. “Just bad luck—all the rain. No one is going to die.”
The skin around Anna’s eyes tightened, making her eyes stand out even more.
“Well, I certainly hope not. That’s not at all what I came here to do.”
Anna went off in a huff.
Zoe turned away, about to scurry outside to the edge of the woods, when Gewel began herding everyone to the Michigan Room. “No sense wasting time. I’m eager to see how you all feel about this little talk I prepared. Not what I’m normally known for, but—well, I’ll explain …”
She couldn’t leave the overstuffed satchel behind or leave it out in the hall until she could find a place to dump it. There was still the smell to deal with.
Zoe hoped Gewel wouldn’t talk too long. If her bag began to smell, she would have to get up, pretend to be sick, and leave the room, dragging her satchel behind her.
Inside, nobody sat close to anyone else, and no one spoke.
Zoe climbed onto a hard chair at the very back of the room to listen to Emily, giving Gewel an introduction, stressing that Murder on the Orient Express, as they all knew, was one of Christie’s most famous novels.
“Our own Gewel Sharp will address the group mentality that allowed all of the people on the Orient Express to plan and execute a murder no one could be blamed for. We hope she will intrigue you with what she’s found about the characters and whatever she has brought to convince you that group murders don’t work in fiction. But can sometimes be an only means of justice.”
Gewel looked over the faces looking back at her. She began: “Though Murder on the Orient Express is meant to be a group murder, done by everyone and therefore by no one person, Christie, by closely examining the minds that could conceive and execute such a thing, did not at all solve the problem of the multiple killer.” She cleared her throat. “There always has to be a real murderer. The person whose knife does the killing, whose bullet is the one of many found in the victim, or the first to add poison to the drink that will kill.”
Zoe smelled sausage, the odor curling up from under her chair. She bent down to tighten the top of the satchel, moving it with her feet. The case left a wet lane of grease on the floor. How could she ever get it out of the room?
Zoe sat lower in her chair. How would she explain the bag of sausage if Emily or Bella caught her? What do you say when it looks as though you’re stealing someone else’s blood sausage?
She put her toes to the floor. Gewel had to take a breath soon. She would be fast, getting out during the questions—maybe. Nobody would notice her leaving if they all got mad and into proving their own points.
“I just want you to know about those people—and the man they had to kill.”
Zoe slipped from her chair. She knew the book very well and didn’t need to be reminded who the dead man was.
She tried to slip out as Aaron Kennedy walked in, but Zoe heard Gewel saying, “The whole world hated him.”
She stayed.
Aaron was barely into a seat befor
e he called out.
“And Ratchett is a man named John Cassetti, who murdered a little girl and shocked her pregnant mother, who also died. Disaster piled on disaster, poor souls. Another example of Christie’s overwriting.”
Gewel looked slowly from face to face. “One after another, the family left behind committed suicide or died in some fashion. More victims of this man.”
She dropped her head to her chest and stood there, silent, until everyone in the room was holding their breath. “Clues to the murderer of John Cassetti began to appear: a cup, a button, a uniform, a red kimono. People are shot, even Poirot, but not seriously. Nothing seems to be done seriously on The Orient Express, except murder.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sakes. Why must we wallow in this melodrama? Mr. Poirot thinks that Cassetti died when the train was stopped by the avalanche. But then comes the genius theory—that they all killed the man, that they took turns stabbing him, and here, in Poirot’s shining hour, he absolves himself of blame for not anticipating the death. Then he absolves the group of their kindred guilt and walks away from The Orient Express, satisfied he has proven his case and made the correct decision.
“But listen,” he said, “Did the man deserve the death he got? Or was he deprived of the trial he was due? Does any group have the right to redress their own wrongs, or are we a civil society? Bigger questions.”
Gewel’s round eyes fell on Anthony. “What else could those people do if the police can’t or won’t find enough evidence against him?”
Anthony looked toward Aaron. “You’re saying Cassetti should have been tried the usual way. If he had, those people wouldn’t have murdered him.”
Aaron laughed. “I always thought this book one of Christie’s worst, to tell you the truth. She treated the legal system callously, only to provide herself with a novel to sell. Terrible of her, if you ask me.”
“That man, Ratchett—he murdered a young girl, didn’t he?” Betty asked. “Sounds like he got what he asked for.”
“He did,” Anna butted in. “I wonder if he killed more girls. That would make it even worse, wouldn’t it?”
And Then They Were Doomed Page 21
