Do Not Go Alone (A Posthumous Mystery)

by C. A. Larmer

  Has anyone looked into their recent financial records? Paul’s family is growing bigger by the day, yet he just downshifted to a shoebox. Has he lost his job? Is he broke? That’s got to eat away at you while you watch your baby sister laze about in the family palace.

  Not to mention Mr so-called Moneybags. Why was Peter staying in a two-bit hotel and using public transport when five-star and business-class are more his style? Does he, too, have money issues, or does he have a drug problem he needs to finance? I can still hear Paul’s words, like a slap across Peter’s face.

  “What were you doing last night? Pulling chicks? Scoring a hit?”

  Was Peter’s drug problem back?

  I have a strong memory of giggling… Peter by my side, the laptop in front of him as we snorted with laughter. We joked about dressing up and hitting nightclubs and getting “out of it” together.

  Was that why he was at a dingy train station in the dead of night? Was he getting out of it to get over the trauma of what he’d done?

  And what about Arabella? Maybe she’s no innocent! Maybe she was in it with Dr Vijay, giving him the fake alibi he required. Maybe she’s just pretending to be a jilted lover to cover her tracks.

  What about Tessa and Roco and their obvious love affair?

  Or Leslie or Jonas for that matter…

  There were almost a hundred people at my house last night. Surely one of them could have done this thing. Surely we can’t rest the case this quickly!

  There is no way, dear reader, that I took that gun to my own head and fired that shot for no good reason. And, frankly, I’m offended that anyone would even consider it. I have no choice now. I have to try harder to remember.

  Think, Maisie, think!

  Go back to ground zero.

  Go back to the moment you died.

  There was someone in my Dad’s office last night, I just know it. I didn’t go in there to kill myself. I went in to see who had turned on the light.

  And I did see! I must have! Just like I know somebody else rolled that office chair across to the wall, closer to that gun. It wasn’t me. I know it wasn’t.

  Yet the memory remains just out of reach, and the answer feels like it’s a million miles away.

  Chapter 26

  DS Powell is issuing orders. Kelly is to gather my entire family in the living room. But it will be a party of a different kind.

  As he does that—asking Mum to wake Peter, even getting Paul to call his wife—I sneak another glance towards the McGee household. Roco has returned inside and is hooking into greasy bacon and eggs with little more than hunger on his mind while Mrs McGee watches him wistfully, thinking how lovely it would be to have a man in the house again.

  Tessa has woken and is slumped at a kitchen stool, wishing she’d stuck with the mocktails Arabella was whipping up instead of spiking them with tequila. Una is on the stool opposite her, staring at the fridge, the coffee plunger now empty in her hands. She is thinking, I need another coffee. I haven’t got the strength yet.

  They’re no use to me. Their thoughts have all moved on, and so I go back home. I go back to my mother.

  Sometime in the past ten minutes—or was it thirty?— she has showered and changed into fresh clothes. She looks better, almost normal, and this time I’m glad of it. She’s going to need her wits about her. Ruth’s news will hit her like a rock in the head. Seated beside Mum on the living room couch, Dad still looks a mess. He can’t find the energy to do anything but chew at his bottom lip. Like father like son, I guess.

  Peter has appeared and is clutching a can of Coke like his life depends upon it, and Paul is sitting across from him, his brow wrinkled again, his wife at his feet. I don’t know where their kids are, but I’m glad they’re not here. This is no business for young children.

  My mind flits suddenly to another child, a cheeky smile, a smothered giggle, but it is lost again as Ruth claps loudly.

  “Okay, people, thanks for coming.”

  Like she’s Lady Muck and they are the visiting peasants.

  Ruth is standing in the centre of my living room, her shoulders straight, her hands behind her back. Now she looks like Hercule Poirot about to deliver the climactic denouement, all eyes are upon her, including my own.

  I think I know what she is going to say, so I am thrown completely when she produces a plastic folder and waves it about.

  “I don’t know who colluded here, who knew what,” she begins, “and frankly, I’m not sure I want to know. This is tragic enough.”

  Sorry, what?

  She slaps the green plastic folder on the coffee table dismissively and turns to Kelly, one hand out. He has two sets of printouts and hands one across.

  “First,” she says, “we have checked the fingerprints on the pistol. Apart from Mr May’s, which we’d expect to find”—she shoots my worried father a glance—“there were no other prints but Maisie’s.”

  Then, in case they didn’t get it, she looks at each of them in turn as she says, “Maisie is the only other person who touched that gun. We also found gun residue on her right hand.”

  They all nod, like that’s perfectly acceptable, but I can’t believe what I’m hearing. I’ve read enough murder mysteries. The killer could easily have wiped away his prints before smudging mine on postmortem. As for the residue? Perhaps I raised my hand as the gun went off.

  She looks at Kelly, and he passes across the second printout. “Even better for you lot, we have some preliminary tox results, and they’ve come back clean. Maisie did not have anything in her system, no drugs, no alcohol, nothing.”

  Again they all nod, but this time their relief is palpable while my head is left spinning. That bit most certainly does not add up. I remember being shaky on my feet, slopping margaritas about the place. They must have found something in my system. How do they explain that?

  Mum is nodding like a yo-yo, and Dad has his hands at his mouth as if trying not to say what he is thinking, which is Thank God.

  Ruth is not quite finished yet. “That does not explain, however, why we found these in the pool toilet.”

  She produces the evidence bag with the illegal drugs and drops it onto the table, on top of that plastic folder.

  Dad’s relief vanishes as quickly as it came. Mum turns to look at him, and he recoils under her gaze.

  “I didn’t buy those, honey, I promise—”

  A throat clears. “It’s okay, Dad,” says Peter. “It was me.”

  “Shut up, Peter!” growls Paul as his wife nestles into his legs as though hoping to block the whole ugly saga out.

  “No, you shut up, mate. I’ve had enough of all the lies.” He looks directly at Ruth. “I helped her find them online. She asked me. I had to help.”

  Mum looks at him aghast, but that box looks suddenly familiar and now more of my memory is clicking into place. That’s what we were doing with the computer on my bed. We were ordering those drugs online. No, actually, he was. It was his credit card, his laptop.

  Ruth says, “The seal has not been broken. They are unopened.”

  She is addressing this to my mother, who looks marginally relieved. “That doesn’t detract from the fact that it is an offence to solicit pentobarbitals over the internet.”

  Pento-what?

  “I’d do it again,” Peter says defiantly. “In a fucking heartbeat.”

  “Peter!” Mum cries out, but I’m not sure if she’s upset by the swear word or the sentiment.

  “She was depressed Mum, she was miserable, it was the kindest thing.”

  Dad nods at him, over and over. Now he’s turned into the yo-yo. “Good on ya, Peto,” he growls. “Good on ya, mate.”

  What’s going on? Why is my family so keen to drug me? To see me get out of my mind? Was I really that miserable? Was I really that depressed?

  “But I let her down, Mum,” Peter is saying, his eyes welling up. “I was supposed to leave them by her bedside. But I didn’t. We…” He looks at Paul, whose eyes are firmly shut,
Jan’s the size of saucers below him. “We were going to hold her hand through it, yeah? But… but Paul’s kids got sick and he couldn’t make it and we agreed to put it off.”

  Paul shifts in his seat. His eyes remain shut. “My kids weren’t that sick,” he mumbles. “I just… I just couldn’t.”

  Peter sniffs like he already knew that and then stares at his lap.

  Ruth does not seem at all surprised by this outburst, but she’s not particularly pleased by it either. She waits a few moments, then she says, “Which brings us back to last night. I have a theory if you’d like to hear it.”

  All eyes are back upon her.

  “As I said before, I don’t know who was colluding with whom, and who was planning what, but I think your daughter saw an opportunity and she took it.”

  “The gun,” Dad says.

  “The gun,” she repeats. “These pills may have been her first option, but something changed her mind. I believe Maisie saw the gun, made a snap decision and took her own life.”

  They are all yo-yos now, their relief intensifying with each nod, and I want to scream and rail and thump my fists at their stupid bouncing heads.

  I want to shout “But I wouldn’t do this to myself! I wouldn’t!”

  Dad asks, “And Una’s friend? That man, Vijay?”

  “We don’t believe he was involved, Mr May. Not this time. We’ve checked and double-checked the witness statements. He was never alone with your daughter, and we don’t believe he was involved in this particular suicide, at least not directly.”

  Again, they nod as though this is a perfectly reasonable assumption.

  Ruth reaches down and retrieves the pill packet and the green folder. It’s the one she found down the side of my bed, but she never even explained what was in it, and nobody seems even remotely interested in asking. As she hands it across to Kelly, I try desperately to read the sheets inside, but again it all looks like hieroglyphics to me.

  Why? Why? Why!

  “What happens now?” someone asks. Paul’s wife, I think.

  Ruth glances back at her as she exits the living room.

  “Now you organise the funeral,” she says gently. “Now you grieve.”

  Chapter 27

  I stand alone in the middle of nothing. Bleak. Bereft. Befuddled.

  Am I really to believe I killed myself? Is that all there was to it?

  Maybe the truth was never going to make sense. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t remember. Maybe that’s why I refused to accept.

  I smooth down my blue jumpsuit, straighten my tiara and glance towards the tunnel. Hello? Where are the dancing girls? Where is the marching band?

  I know what happened now, so why aren’t they dragging me across?

  “Because you need to see it all, the good bits and the bad.”

  That’s Deseree, and I am so glad of her presence. I’d hug her if I had any strength left.

  “What do you mean?” I say. “What bad bits? I had a secure home, loved ones, friends who cared. I could have been born in an impoverished African village. Instead, I fell apart at the first hurdle! I thought I was a little more resilient than that. I used to be the one in control. I was the one that kept the family together!”

  “And that’s why you had to do it, don’t you see, Maisie?”

  “No, that’s the thing! I don’t see! I still can’t remember! How can I not remember taking a gun and putting a bullet into my head?”

  Deseree gives me a sad, sad smile. “Because you are still not ready to accept what you have done and who you really are. It’s like you forgot that bit the moment the bullet left the gun. Go back and look at yourself more closely.”

  “I know who I am! I’m the ditz who blows her brains out because she can’t keep a boyfriend or a job.”

  “No, before Roco, before the job. Who were you from your earliest days?”

  “Oh you mean the little brat who forced her poor brothers to play stupid games and told lame jokes and bossed everybody about. I was an annoying little snot.”

  “Snot of a different kind.” She smiles at herself. “You were the glue, Maisie. You were the one who held them all together.”

  “So why kill myself?”

  “Because you’re still holding them together, don’t you see that? You did it for them.”

  “What rubbish! Suicide is selfish; it’s never a good thing. Look at them down there. They’re distraught. I’ve torn them apart.”

  “No, honey. You had nothing but love in your heart.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense! Was I really so miserable I was destroying the rest of them at the same time? I don’t understand what you mean by that.”

  “Then you’re not ready, my darling. You need to go back. Just for a little longer. You need to go back and really see. You need to face the truth.”

  I need to snot you in the face, I think as I draw myself away and drag myself back. Why can’t they just let me rest? The tunnel light still shimmers; it’s not so garish anymore. It flickers and teases. It lures me in.

  Have I not been through enough? Can’t I just cross?

  Down at the pool yet another party has begun, and it seems I am forced to join in, even though the last thing I feel like is company—at least not the living, breathing kind.

  Paul’s kids have arrived, all four wearing matching beanies—what is it with everybody today? It’s midsummer for goodness’ sake. Jan’s mother must have brought them all over. She’s now sitting on the daybed. I wish I could remember her name. How shameful. Paul and Jan have been together fifteen years, and I can’t even remember the mother-in-law’s name.

  Deseree is full of crap. I was a dreadful sister. A dreadful person.

  Jan is sitting beside her mum, the youngest child, the sick baby, lying between them, fast asleep. I watch as the two middle kids run around the back garden, one of them stopping to rattle the pool gate, the other naked, apart from the beanie, and reaching for the pink flamingo which has been wedged between the fronds of a palm.

  Dad’s barbecue is starting to hiss and spurt, my brothers standing to attention beside it, Paul with metal tongs, Peter still clutching a Coke, while Dad appears from inside, a tray of sausages in his hands, Mum just behind him with some onions and a loaf of bread.

  Is that it? Really? A few firm words from a detective and everyone gets on with their lives?

  I watch as one of Paul’s boys, four-year-old Toby, gives up on the gate and dashes off, giggling like he’s drunk, and I’m about to look away, their fun too painful, their laughter like razor blades through my heart, when a creepy scraping sound pulls me back.

  Toby has stopped giggling and is now pulling one of the deck chairs across the pavers and towards the pool gate. I’m not sure he should be doing that. I’m pretty sure he can’t swim. I glance back to his mother and then to his dad, but they are both moving swiftly towards Mum.

  They are going in the wrong direction.

  Now they are huddled in a circle around Mum, and Peter is there and Tessa and Roco. When did they get here? And who is that in the middle of the throng?

  I cannot believe my eyes. It’s Una and she has the pink envelope in her hand.

  How is Una welcome in this house? And why is Mum smiling at her and sobbing instead of ripping her eyes out?

  I hear another giggle. I glance back towards the pool. Toby has scrambled up on the chair and is now reaching for the latch on the gate. He almost has it open.

  Wake up, Paul! Turn around Jan! Somebody? Anybody! Get your eyes off that dreaded pink envelope!

  Help!

  I see Jan’s mother glance up from the baby and towards the pool.

  I hear someone cry out, “No! Get down!”

  But the person crying out is me, and I am standing at the doorway to my father’s study, staring at the interior wall.

  I see a little boy’s feet. He is standing on his tippy-toes, his swimming trunks dripping water all over Dad’s good leather armchair.

  I go
to say something, I go to chastise, then I see what he is doing, what he is reaching towards on a handmade wooden frame.

  “The gun,” I tell Neal who is beside me again. Of course he is. He has been beside me all along.

  He nods, knowingly. “The gun,” he repeats.

  I close my eyes and I exhale.

  Did a small child shoot me? Is that it? Was it the boy I caught sneaking over the pool fence earlier in the night? Did he wander into my dad’s office and get excited by the gun? Did he pull the chair over, reach up towards it and rip it from the wall? Did I startle him, or did he do it deliberately, thinking it was a toy, pointing it at me with delight?

  No, that can’t be right.

  Ruth said there was gun residue on my fingers, my fingerprints on the weapon. I must have wrestled the gun from him. The gun must have gone off accidentally.

  I feel an enormous weight lift. I feel lighter suddenly.

  “This makes more sense now,” I tell Neal. “I didn’t kill myself. It was an accident!”

  Then I think of the child and I am horrified for him. Will he remember any of it? Is that why he looked so traumatised as he left my house?

  Although, why didn’t they find the kid’s fingerprints on the gun?

  I shake the question away. I just don’t care.

  “I’m glad Ruth never connected the dots,” I tell Neal now. “I want to take the fall for that poor kid. I don’t know how he could possibly get over such a thing.”

  I expect Neal to high-five me, but he’s barely even smiling. I look back, and the tunnel seems further away than ever. And it’s depressingly dark again.

  “You really think that’s what happened?” Neal says. “That it was all just an accident?”