The Murder of Twelve

by Jessica Fletcher

  “How you holding up, Mrs. F.?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  “Can I hang up now and send this call to voice mail? You’re stranded in a mostly empty hotel in the midst of a killer blizzard. You can’t possibly be calling to report a murder.”

  “Well . . .”

  “Please tell me I’m dreaming this.”

  “Not a murder, Mort—at least not yet.”

  “We talking about those near newlyweds again who may have been inside that abandoned Lexus?”

  “No, they’ve apparently turned up at the Roadrunner Motel, about forty miles down the road. This is something else—someone else. The groom’s mother. I think she was poisoned, Mort. She suffered a seizure during dinner just minutes ago.”

  “This would be the dinner you weaseled your way into.”

  “I didn’t weasel my way in—I was invited.”

  “So, you’re eating gourmet through this muck while I’m surviving on reheated pizza and stale coffee. What’s wrong with that picture?” He paused. “So, what’s the prognosis for this potential victim?”

  “Too soon to tell. Seth talked me through the process of stabilizing her and not doing the wrong thing. The family just brought her up to her room.”

  “And if she really was poisoned . . .”

  I nodded, even though Mort was on the other end of the line. “The suspects aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.”

  “You thinking this has something to do with the missing bride and groom?”

  “I told you, they’re not missing anymore.”

  “What happened to that suspicious nature of yours, Mrs. F.?”

  He was right. I was taking Mark Mulroy’s word that he’d gotten a call from his fraternal twin brother with the explanation of bad roads and second thoughts. If Mark had been lying about receiving such a call for whatever reason, Connie’s potential poisoning would take on an entirely different context.

  “I guess I just wanted those kids to be found for Connie. The missing groom is her son.”

  “Who’s Connie?”

  “The victim of that suspected poisoning. We’d become friends, or that’s what I thought.”

  “Something changed?”

  “Our meeting earlier in the day wasn’t coincidental,” I told Mort. “Constance Mulroy was staking out the lobby because she wanted my help with something, something involving family secrets. I think she had reason to believe she was in danger.”

  “That’s what she said?”

  “Not in those exact words, but pretty much, yes.”

  “Constance Mulroy,” Mort repeated. “Could you spell that for me?”

  I did.

  “Okay, let me see if flagging her name brings anything back. And what’d you say the name of that motel was?” Mort asked me.

  “The Roadrunner.”

  “Just off the highway, same exit you take to get to Appleton.”

  I hadn’t thought in some time now of the town where Frank and I had spent a number of years raising our nephew Grady. “That’s right.”

  “Power’s down already in much of that area and I doubt I’d be able to get the place checked out, but let me put in a call to the State Police and see if they’ve got a cruiser that’s still moving in the area.”

  “And we need to find out who hired that private detective, Mort. Loomis Winslow.”

  “The only connection to this wedding party is that abandoned Lexus SUV rental with its front doors left open. If those kids really did get stranded by the storm, we’ve got no reason to believe that Winslow, or Bigfoot, is related to this in the slightest.”

  “In other words, I’m barking up the wrong tree.”

  “Or trying to climb two at the same time, Mrs. F.”

  “Not in this weather, Sheriff.”

  A heaviness settled over the line, lingering long enough to make me wonder if we’d been cut off.

  “Mort?”

  “I’m still here. Just thinking that I’m not going to be able to get over there to help you on this one, Jessica. You’re on your own.”

  * * *

  * * *

  If there was a criminal about—a potential murderer, no less—I didn’t want to risk drawing undue attention to myself by remaining absent for too long. My call to Mort over, it was time to join the wedding party up in Connie’s room.

  On the way out of the Sea Captains Room, though, I couldn’t resist stopping before the projection screen that was flush against the far wall and waiting for the picture of the nursery that had grabbed my attention earlier to come back around.

  Because of that shadow that loomed at the rear of the shot.

  It could have been, probably was, nothing. I can’t describe why it had stuck in my mind or what its significance might be. This time, when the slide in question came around again, I hit the laptop’s space bar to freeze the screen. I then studied the bouncy, happy forms of fraternal twins Daniel and Mark. The still shot had been taken either from the doorway or just inside it, sharply angled to keep the cribs in the foreground of the picture.

  With no need to rush and no eye over my shoulder, I studied particularly that portion of the picture backlit by a light shining close to Daniel and Mark’s cribs. The shadow that had drawn my attention earlier didn’t look to be much of anything at all, as it turned out, and I was beginning to think it was no more than a trick of the light. Then I stepped back a bit to view the shot in the context of the nursery’s two cribs. That perspective clarified at the far edge of the screen an object that wasn’t a shadow at all.

  And it was something that made no sense, no sense at all.

  Chapter Ten

  I headed up to join the others in Constance Mulroy’s room with fresh vigor and a renewed spring in my step, albeit with a sense of anxiety and uncertainty added to the mix. If I was right about what I’d spotted in that seemingly innocent nursery photo, another potential piece had been added to the puzzle here.

  First, Private Investigator Loomis Winslow had been found dead in what could easily have been passed off as a tragic accident.

  Then that abandoned Lexus had been discovered with the occupants of the front seat nowhere to be found, and with whoever had been in the back linked to the original crime scene by gravel that had collected in the grooves of the Lexus’s winter floor mat.

  Now Constance Mulroy was unconscious following a seizure that may well have been induced by some kind of drug stealthily mixed with her wine.

  I had the very real sense that all of these things were intrinsically connected. And I suspected there was far more afoot in the mechanics of what I was slowly uncovering than I could possibly realize at this point. The guest list made for an odd lot indeed, and I suspected that among those guests Tyler Castavette was far from the only one with both skeletons in his closet and secrets to bear.

  With all that in mind, my first order of business once I got upstairs was to have a talk with Mark Mulroy. I needed to hear more about that purported phone call from his brother about the couple’s decision to ride out the storm at the Roadrunner Motel around forty miles down the road. With his mother incapacitated, Mark was also likely the only person here who could definitively confirm whether my suspicions of what I was convinced I’d spotted in that video display slide were accurate.

  My path to the lobby elevators took me past a bank of windows that revealed the power of the storm in all its glory. It looked as if another ten inches of snow had fallen since the time I’d left my suite for the dinner, bringing the total to somewhere around eighteen already in a blizzard that was just reaching its peak. I tried to picture in my mind what it might look like outside in the morning, since at present the snow was climbing the glass at a fever pitch and swirling winds conspired to hide the outside world from sight. I should have felt comforted by being safe and warm
inside the confines of Hill House, a site that had weathered more than its share of storms and emerged from each and every one of them in remarkable condition.

  There was a Cabot Cove legend that on the eve of the hotel’s opening in 1888, Hill House had been blessed by a local priest revered by the townsfolk for his piety. He was also rumored to have a touch of healing power, and to this day many locals will tell you Hill House owes its nearly hundred-and-fifty-year existence to that blessing. Those who know our town’s history best are fond of relating the tale of lightning strikes obliterating the buildings on either side of the hotel during a storm that didn’t so much as scorch the hotel’s structure. It had also weathered any number of expansions, growing to four times its original size in the past twenty years alone. So, too, had Hill House survived every financial crisis that had led to changes in ownership while never costing the facility its character.

  Tonight, although I felt safe within its walls from the raging storm beyond, a different storm was brewing inside. Indeed, Constance Mulroy’s poison-induced seizure left me filled with a deep sense of dread, not for the poisoning alone but for what it suggested might be to come. The continually deteriorating weather conditions might have made it increasingly difficult to discern the view beyond the windows, but the picture taking shape inside looked dark and ominous to me. The strange events of the day had given way to equally strange events of the night, starting with Constance Mulroy’s believing her life to be in danger, apparently because of the “family secrets” she had mentioned to me on whispered breath.

  As far as I was concerned, that left two things reasonably certain: that none of us was going anywhere and the worst of this night was yet to come.

  * * *

  * * *

  By the time I got upstairs to join the remainder of the wedding party in Connie’s room, she was resting comfortably atop the bedcovers with a spare bedspread covering her fully clothed form. Her breathing seemed to have steadied, and if I didn’t know better I’d say she was no more than taking a nap. I cataloged the other eleven persons in the room—twelve, counting Seamus McGilray, who must have remained after supervising the effort to safely transport Connie to her room.

  I had known not a single one of the wedding party until mere hours before, and now I felt tasked with determining the means by which the comatose woman had been poisoned and by whom. Given the lateness of the arrangements to hold the dinner here, certainly the wineglass she’d drunk from at the head of the table couldn’t have been tampered with until that table was set, and likely not before the glass had been filled. So, standing there surveying those before me, I knew one of them had to be the culprit who’d poisoned Constance Mulroy.

  “You look deep in thought, Mrs. Fletcher,” the esteemed defense lawyer Harrison Bak said, suddenly alongside me, leaning awkwardly on his crutches. “A notion coming to you for a new book, perhaps? How about twelve people gathered for a wedding that’s been waylaid by a blizzard?”

  “Hardly original, given the Agatha Christie classic And Then There Were None.”

  “Never read it, I’m ashamed to say. And now I’d rather wait for your version.”

  “I’m guessing Henley Lavarnay is the only one you know among these people,” I put forth.

  “Well, I have met Tyler, and Doyle, of course, but otherwise your assumption is correct.”

  “What do you think of Tyler?”

  “How frank would you like me to be?” Harrison Bak asked softly, even though we stood at the very rear of the room, close enough to the wall to note the slight bubbles in the wallpaper.

  “As frank as possible.”

  He leaned in slightly closer to me on his crutches. “Then let me put it this way, Mrs. Fletcher. When I’m in Tyler’s company, I always keep hold of my wallet. There’s something—how do I say this?—well, slippery about him. Charming and charismatic to a fault. The kind of young man who greets you with a hug so he can pick your pocket.”

  I nodded, not afraid to show that Bak’s impressions of Tyler Castavette mirrored my own. It would be some time before I relieved myself of the image of him entering my suite unannounced earlier that evening. And strangely enough, I was just thinking of that when Tyler turned from Constance Mulroy’s bedside, caught my eye, and flashed the disarming smile that I’m sure he employed like a Halloween costume.

  Of course, this didn’t make him a murderer, but I had the distinct sense that someone in the room was.

  * * *

  * * *

  It was determined that someone should remain with Connie all through the night on the chance that her condition changed, she awoke in some distress, or she just needed a telling of the events that had led to this point.

  “Why don’t I take the first shift?” I offered for my own reasons, when no one else stepped up.

  “We saw Mrs. Fletcher with Constance,” Beatrice started.

  “Earlier in the day,” her twin, Olivia, said, picking up her thought.

  “And they were getting along wonderfully.”

  “Quite so.”

  “Then it’s settled,” said Doyle Castavette, asserting himself as the person in charge, especially as Connie’s son Mark offered up no argument.

  “I’ll take the second shift, Mrs. Fletcher,” Mark volunteered. “Since there are twelve of us, we can make the initial shifts an hour each. How’s that sound?”

  “Count me out, if you don’t mind,” insisted Doyle Castavette.

  I quickly smiled and looked toward Mark, figuring I’d have to delay the questions I had for him until he came to replace me at the end of my shift. “I’ll be here until you relieve me.”

  Mark gazed down at the still form of his mother. “I think I’ll try out the hotel gym in the meantime. You know, relieve some stress . . . after I call my brother to tell him what’s happened.”

  “I’ll head downstairs with you,” said Seamus McGilray. “Make sure all the equipment’s in working order.”

  “Oh, Seamus,” I said, trailing him out into the hall and drawing him aside slightly. “You’ll note a wineglass missing when you replace the dinnerware. I promise to return it in good time,” I added, patting my handbag to indicate where it currently rested, securely wrapped in the napkin I’d neglected to mention had also gone missing.

  He caught the look in my eye. “Whatever you say, Mrs. Fletcher. Just tell me everything’s okay.”

  I squeezed his arm as reassuringly as I could manage. “I promise to, just as soon as I can.”

  * * *

  * * *

  I closed the door once I was alone in the room with the peacefully resting Constance Mulroy and waited for a few moments to make sure none of the wedding party returned. Satisfied that they’d all gone to their rooms, I turned my attention to Connie. Maybe she’d magically wake up and finish the explanation of why she feared her life was in danger. Maybe she’d even have a guess as to who among the guests had poisoned her wine. No such dramatic moment ensued, and I was left with the same realization I’d faced too many times before—that crimes in real life were not as conveniently resolved as fictional ones.

  I laid my handbag on the room’s desk and removed my cell phone. Seth Hazlitt’s number was already keyed up, and I pressed it again.

  “How’s the patient?” he greeted, upon answering his phone.

  “Resting comfortably, by all indications.”

  “Are you up to doing some doctoring, Jess?”

  “So long as it doesn’t involve surgery.”

  “Is the patient in bed?”

  “Atop it, covered in a light bedspread.”

  “On her back?”

  “Yes.”

  “Safer for her to be resting on her side, in case she’s concussed and comes awake vomiting.”

  I gauged the effort it would take to roll Connie onto her side by myself. “I don’t want to disturb
her, Seth.”

  “Understandable. The alternative is a very careful watch, something I assume has already been arranged.”

  “It has.”

  “Then I suggest when your replacement arrives, you turn the woman onto her side together.”

  “Will do.”

  “Now,” Seth resumed, “move to her bedside. You’re going to peel open one of her eyelids to check the reactions of her pupils to light, a flashlight preferably.”

  “I don’t have a flashlight.”

  “Yes, you do. Your phone.”

  “Of course,” I responded, thinking there might be a way for Seth to see for himself what he needed to. “You don’t have FaceTime on your phone, do you?”

  “Have you seen my phone lately?”

  “No.”

  “Then suffice it to say I don’t have FaceTime. And when did you become such a technology maven, Jessica Fletcher?”

  “You don’t have to be a maven to know about FaceTime, Seth.”

  “I suppose, if you say so. Now, shine your phone flashlight beam directly into her eye and then tell me if the pupil reacts or remains fixed and dilated.”

  I carefully peeled back Connie’s eyelid and did exactly as Seth Hazlitt had instructed. “Fixed,” I said, iPhone back at my ear with flashlight feature disabled.

  “That confirms the coma. My impression is that it’s moderate in nature. Can you check her pulse for me, Jess?”

  I put the phone on speaker and felt for a pulse in the spot that was always easier for my characters to locate than me. “Feels steady,” I said. “Hold on. . . . Heart rate is around sixty-five,” I reported after a minute had passed.

  “I don’t believe she’s in any immediate danger, but she will still need professional medical attention as soon as the roads allow.”