An Unwanted Guest

by Shari Lapena

  James glances at Bradley. Bradley is standing in the hall with the rest of them, staring down at the floor, unaware that he’s being observed. There’s naked fear on his face. And something else that James can’t quite read. It’s a look he’s seen before—

  James feels his stomach drop with a sickening lurch. He doesn’t really know everything about his son. No parent does. Bradley has had some brushes with the law. James thought those days were behind them. Dear God, he hopes Bradley hasn’t become involved with something bigger than he can handle. But then he assures himself that anything Bradley might be involved in couldn’t have anything to do with this. Bradley is a good boy, who once got involved with some bad people. But he’ll talk to him, when he gets a chance.

  He comes up beside his son and whispers, “Are you okay?”

  Bradley looks up at him, startled. “Yeah, I’m fine.” And that look on his face is gone and he looks like he always does, and James tells himself he’s worrying for nothing. This has nothing to do with Bradley. He’s just frightened like everybody else.

  “Bradley,” James says, “you’ve got the lamp, why don’t you lead?”

  * * *

  • • •

  This time, they take the back staircase down to the first floor. It’s the first time Beverly’s seen it. It’s narrow and uncarpeted. They go down single file, their steps echoing.

  “This was the servants’ staircase,” Bradley says.

  “Is there an attic we should be checking out?” David asks.

  “No,” James says.

  They arrive at the bottom of the stairs, where a door opens onto a hall that runs along the back of the hotel. Immediately to the left is the kitchen.

  “Let’s leave the kitchen and cellars for last,” James says. “Let’s try the woodshed.”

  Down the hall from the kitchen is the door to the woodshed. They follow Bradley. Beverly hadn’t really looked closely at the woodshed when she was here before, being in a hurry to follow the others to the icehouse. But she looks at it now. It’s really cold in here. The walls are simple barn board. It’s not insulated. There’s a large wooden stump with an ax plunged into it in the center of the earthen floor. Cords of wood are neatly stacked all around. Kindling too. There are some gardening tools, and a musty smell, but there is nowhere to hide in here.

  They move farther along the hall at the back of the hotel and turn left, toward the lobby. On the right-hand side is the library. James opens the glass-paned door and they all follow him. There’s nowhere to hide in here either.

  They move on next to the sitting room, but again, there’s nothing to find.

  When they get back to the lobby, they turn down the corridor toward the bar. It yields nothing. Farther down the corridor is the door to James and Bradley’s apartment. James unlocks the door and invites them in. The apartment is small but tidy and nicely appointed. There’s no one there either. As they return to the lobby, Beverly is both relieved and disheartened. She doesn’t know what they are going to do, how they will find the killer.

  “There’s nothing left but the kitchen and the cellar,” Bradley says.

  Beverly feels uneasy at the thought of going down to the cellar, but she follows along as they go back to the kitchen.

  “Come in,” Bradley says. With Bradley holding the oil lamp aloft, they enter the enormous kitchen. It’s half country kitchen, half industrial. Beverly notices the enormous refrigerator that must be eight feet wide, and which is now full of food that must be thawing and spoiling. There’s an oversized island in the middle of the kitchen—obviously a busy workspace on most days. Cupboards line the walls, and there’s a large double sink and an industrial dishwasher.

  Beverly watches James open the large refrigerator and look inside. Nothing. Then he opens the closet and they all look inside with the aid of the sputtering oil lamp. It’s empty too.

  James turns to them and says, “Only the cellar left.” He opens an old wooden door and automatically reaches for the light switch before remembering. “Give me that,” he says to Bradley, and reaches for the lamp.

  “No, let me go first,” Bradley insists, and pushes past his father with the light.

  They creak down the rough wooden stairs. There are no backs on the stairs, and there’s no handrail either. Beverly keeps her hand against the rough stone wall for balance. When she arrives at the bottom, it’s like stepping into another century. Thick, heavy ceiling beams support the building overhead. The foundation walls are made of stone.

  “Two feet thick,” Bradley says, pointing casually.

  Beverly looks, impressed, at the whitewashed stone. The paint is flaking off.

  “Are there rats down here?” she asks. There are probably rats. Beverly is terrified of rats. This is the country, and the cellar is directly below the kitchen.

  “We take care of them,” Bradley says. “Don’t worry.”

  “How?” Henry asks.

  “Warfarin,” James says curtly, and Beverly’s uneasiness increases.

  James seems uncomfortable about his guests seeing this rather primitive cellar, and possibly rats; it’s nothing like the fancy hotel upstairs. He must feel like he’s stripping down to his underwear in front of them, Beverly thinks.

  She sees a rude wooden shelf built into the stone wall that must be original to the building. It’s empty. Bradley sees her looking at it.

  “We don’t use the basement much,” Bradley explains. “We keep everything in the pantry upstairs.”

  Beverly gazes around the very large open space. The cement floor is uneven. There are some small windows set into the stone high up in the wall. A modern electrical panel stands out for being clean and new. The furnace is relatively new as well.

  “There’s no one here,” David says, peering around behind the furnace.

  “We’re not done yet,” Bradley says. He moves toward the back of the cellar and slips through another opening to the right. “The cisterns are in here,” he says, his voice sounding far away.

  Not wanting to be left behind, Beverly reluctantly follows the others and glances through the rough doorway. There are two large concrete square cisterns to the right.

  “Empty now,” Bradley says.

  Beverly shudders. She doesn’t go inside the room with the cisterns. She stands at the opening, watching as Bradley looks down inside each one, holding the light aloft. David comes up beside him and looks down with him.

  Bradley shakes his head. “All clear,” he says.

  “Look,” David says, his voice sharp.

  Beverly follows where David is looking. There’s a window on the far wall, near the ceiling.

  “Shit,” says Bradley.

  Beverly watches, tense, as Bradley approaches and examines the window. She can see that the glass is broken; there are fragments on the floor below.

  “The window is still latched,” David says, standing beside Bradley, studying the window.

  “So it might just be a broken window,” Bradley says.

  “Or it could have been deliberately broken, unlatched from outside, and someone could have slipped in this way and latched the window again.”

  Beverly feels herself go a little faint.

  David says, “We’d better go outside and take a look around. See if there are any footprints. Bradley and I will go. Everybody doesn’t have to come.”

  Matthew says, “I’ll come.”

  Saturday, 7:10 p.m.

  Matthew pulls on his winter jacket and boots and follows David and Bradley outside onto the porch. The wind is a force to be reckoned with, angry and noisy; the trees seem to cower before it. They’ve checked all the first-floor windows and doors from the inside, and they are all secure. There’s just the one broken basement window they have to go look at now. Matthew wonders how they’re going to make it around the east side of the hotel to check t
he window, given how slippery it looks out there.

  They’ve had to leave the oil lamp inside because no one wants to scramble over the ice holding an oil lamp. Instead they’ve got Matthew’s iPhone flashlight—David has hardly any charge left in his and wants to conserve it. But Matthew isn’t going to lead the way—he’s given his phone to Bradley.

  “Follow me,” Bradley says.

  They slide slowly across the front of the hotel, and then round the corner and make their way along the side of the hotel, their hands against the wall for balance. As they near the basement window, they can see there’s a broken branch lying in front of it, fallen from a nearby tree crippled by the storm. They bend down and peer at the window, Bradley shining the light.

  But they can’t tell if the branch fell and broke the window, or someone used the branch to break the window. With the ice, they can’t see any footprints.

  “What do you think?” Matthew asks, studying the window, the branches strewn about in front of it.

  “I don’t know,” David says, looking worried.

  TWENTY

  Saturday, 7:30 p.m.

  David, Bradley, and Matthew return to the lobby, to the anxious faces of the others waiting inside.

  David sags into a chair by the fire and explains their findings to the others. He finishes wearily, “So, we have a room that looks like it’s been used, and a mysteriously broken window. Other than that, we haven’t seen any sign of someone else in this hotel. Or of anyone going in or out.”

  They all glance at one another in silence, as if they can’t possibly make sense of this information. They’re visibly on edge.

  “So is there someone else here or not?” Riley asks, her voice strident.

  “I don’t know,” David says. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  Ian says, “Are you really suggesting that it might be one of us that killed Dana and Candice?” Ian’s voice rises with incredulity. “Why on earth would one of us kill either of them? We don’t even know them.”

  “We don’t know that. We don’t know that no one here knew Dana or Candice,” David says evenly. “I don’t know anything about anyone here.” He looks around them as if daring someone to speak. “As far as I know—as far as we’ve led each other to believe—we are all strangers. But maybe that’s not the case.” He looks around slowly at the assembled group. “In any event, when the police get here there will be an investigation. They will look very carefully into Dana’s background and Candice’s background—and into all of us, as well.”

  And he knows what that’s going to be like. He watches the others as they look uneasily at each other. “Just for a moment, let’s assume it is one of us. We need to know where everybody was this afternoon. Bradley saw Candice alive when he picked up her lunch tray from the library—when was that, Bradley?”

  “It was about one thirty,” Bradley says.

  David continues. “All of us were here in the lobby together, with the exception of James and Bradley, until around two, when Henry and I went to get wood and everyone seemed to go their own way. We all met down here for tea at four o’clock. All of us then went out to the icehouse together and came back together. With the exception of James.” He pauses, and adds, “Of course, Bradley, you came back in to look for her, when the rest of us were in the icehouse.” He gives everyone a frank glance. “But let’s focus on where everyone was between about two o’clock and four. I was in my room, alone.”

  Gwen says, “Riley and I were in our room.”

  Lauren says, “Ian and I were in our room too.”

  Matthew says, “I was in my room—you told me to stay there. I only came out when I heard that scream when you found Candice dead.”

  Henry says, I was down here, in the lobby. I fell asleep in my chair for a bit. Then I went upstairs to freshen up just before four.”

  Beverly nods, “I was in our room—I came down briefly to chat with Henry in the lobby, but went back up to our room after. He came up just before four.”

  James says, “I was in the kitchen, and Bradley was helping me.”

  David says wearily, “So, that doesn’t help much, does it?”

  * * *

  • • •

  “If you think it’s one of us,” Henry says into the ensuing silence, “if I had to guess, my money would be on Matthew.”

  Matthew turns to him in shock.

  Henry’s been thinking about this during the long, cold search of the hotel. If it’s even possible that the murderer is one of them, maybe it’s time to shake things up a bit. He’s decided to play devil’s advocate. “You’re the most likely culprit,” he says mildly, turning on Matthew. “Maybe you killed Dana after your argument and Candice figured it out and you had to shut her up.”

  The others watch in alarm, but no one tries to defend Matthew.

  Lauren says, “How could she have figured it out?”

  “I don’t know. She seemed kind of snoopy to me. Or maybe”—he’s thinking out loud here—“maybe Candice was writing a book about Matthew—the famous, wealthy businessman. Or about Dana, who was about to marry him. And Dana argued with her about it at the top of the stairs and Candice pushed her down. And Matthew knew it must have been her that killed Dana, so he strangled her.”

  “That sounds pretty far-fetched,” Ian says.

  “Murder is far-fetched,” Henry says. “We’re not dealing with normal here. Somebody around here is a killer. Somebody had good enough reasons to kill Dana and Candice. I’m just trying to figure out what they are.”

  Lauren turns to Matthew and says haltingly, “Candice was staring at you and Dana at dinner last night.”

  Matthew looks back at her, frowning. He shifts uneasily in his seat. “Was she? I’m—well known in the business world. Our engagement was announced in all the society pages. So yes, it’s possible she recognized me and knew who I was.”

  Lauren says, “She knew who you were—she told us all at breakfast this morning.”

  “But I didn’t know her,” Matthew snaps, “and Dana didn’t either. If she was writing a book about us, we didn’t know about it. And neither of us have anything to hide, so we wouldn’t give a shit.”

  Then Riley says, “But maybe Dana did have something to hide, something you didn’t know about. Maybe Candice knew about it, and was writing about it, and she and Dana fought on the stairs and Candice pushed her down.”

  “But if I didn’t know about it, why would I conclude that Candice pushed her down the stairs and then kill Candice?” Matthew says sarcastically.

  “Maybe you did know about it,” Henry says. “We only have your word for it.”

  Matthew leans forward and says, deliberately, “I didn’t kill anybody.”

  Riley says, her voice intense, “You brought a gun. Maybe you knew Candice was going to be here. Maybe you planned to kill her all along but the thing with Dana happened first.”

  “I don’t have to listen to this,” Matthew says.

  Beverly breaks in. “Hold on. Maybe the fact that Candice is dead, too, means that Matthew didn’t kill Dana, and that he has nothing to do with this—did you ever think of that?” She turns to Henry and says, “Doesn’t it make him less likely to be guilty?”

  “Possibly,” Henry says.

  “That’s kind of what I was thinking,” Gwen admits. “If it was just Dana, then yes, I’m sorry, Matthew, but you would seem like the obvious suspect. Especially since—Beverly heard you arguing late last night.” She turns to the others. “But once there’s another death, doesn’t that make it seem less likely that Matthew did it?”

  “She kind of has a point,” Ian says.

  Henry watches everyone carefully. He doesn’t know anything for certain, but he’s going to keep his eyes open.

  * * *

  • • •

  “If we could all just stop pointing the finger at m
e for a minute, there’s something I’d like to bring up,” Matthew says. He knows he sounds a bit aggressive; he doesn’t care. They’ve practically accused him of murder, for God’s sake.

  “What’s that?” David says.

  “I think James and Bradley are hiding something.”

  James looks completely taken aback. Bradley flushes to the roots of his hair. “What do you mean?” James stammers.

  Matthew leans toward James and Bradley, who are seated together. “This is your hotel. Maybe you know something the rest of us don’t.”

  “Like what?” James says, on the defensive.

  “I don’t know. But I’ve seen you two whispering together. What have you been whispering about?”

  “We haven’t been whispering,” James says, coloring.

  “Yes, you have, I’ve seen you.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Ian interjects, “they’ve got a hotel to run.”

  David turns to James, his face serious. “Is it at all possible that there is someone who might wish you—or your hotel—harm?”

  Matthew watches James closely. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Bradley shaking his head.

  James shakes his head stiffly. “No. If I thought that was possible I would have said so.”

  Matthew sinks back in his chair, dissatisfied, unconvinced. “I don’t believe you.” He looks from James to Bradley and back again. “I still think there’s something you’re not telling us.”

  * * *

  • • •

  David watches as Gwen rises restlessly from her chair and wanders over to the windows. It’s darker by the windows but he can see her in the gloom. She looks out, pointlessly. No one is coming. David leaves his seat and goes to her. He can feel the others watching, but he doesn’t care.