by Annie Dalton
‘Ach, the Baroness is a monster,’ sighed Isadora, ‘if there were any justice in this world, she would be the murder victim!’
For the first time, Anna took a good look at her friend in her new incarnation as the Baroness von Rosenbaum.
‘You look amazing Isadora!’
‘I based my impersonation on one of my more frightening Russian aunts,’ Isadora said, with one of her dark laughs. ‘Apart from the Bavarian accent obviously.’
Isadora’s costume consisted of a long, tweed, riding skirt, a fitted jacket which she wore with a pair of her own glossy, leather boots and a military, little hat, which she’d eventually managed (Anna had registered a few hissed expletives) to pin to her cloud of wiry black and silver hair.
The door to the bathroom opened and Tansy emerged, slightly self-conscious, in a silky tea dress patterned with roses in subtle vintage hues. The wide sleeves, with their faint suggestion of butterfly wings, stopped at her elbows, showing her pale golden skin to full advantage. Tansy had painted her lips a startling, pillar box red. Her dark curls were caught up beneath a chic little hat. Her eyes widened at the sight of Isadora.
‘Wow, all you need is the whip!’ She belatedly registered Isadora’s fur with its tiny feral teeth. ‘Euw! Isadora, tell me you’re not going to wear that minging piece of fur?’
‘She’s the Baroness now,’ Anna reminded her. ‘You should probably not describe items of her clothing as “minging”. You look gorgeous by the way,’ she added warmly. ‘I totally believe you are making a film in Berlin.’
Tansy did a little twirl. ‘Thank you, Anna! I mean, Miss Smith,’ she corrected.
‘No, please, call me Evelyn,’ Anna said in her Evelyn voice. ‘Maybe over time we can become friends? I can darn your silk stockings for you and you can give me your old worn-out dresses.’
Tansy laughed. ‘Your costume isn’t that bad.’
Anna looked down at her dreary, Fair Isle sweater. The colours made her think of congealing school dinners.
‘Thank you,’ she said politely. ‘I knitted it with some wool that no-one else wanted while the Baroness was taking her afternoon nap.’
Isadora gave a disparaging glance around their institutional looking room.
‘They could use this as a set for a low-budget production of Jane Eyre.’
‘Absolutely no changes needed,’ Anna agreed.
‘It’s better than the dormitory option,’ Tansy reminded her.
‘There never was a dormitory option,’ Anna said firmly. She had made that quite clear to Anjali. She had agreed to help her sister-in-law out. After three female participants in Anjali’s company’s first ever murder mystery weekend had dropped out at the last minute, Anna had even co-opted her friends to help make up the numbers. Yet she’d refused point blank to share one of Mortmead Hall’s former dormitories with a bunch of strangers.
‘We should probably go,’ Isadora said.
Anna stood up with a sigh, pulling down her frumpy tweed skirt.
‘No phones, remember,’ Isadora said sternly to Tansy, who was quickly checking hers. ‘Once we get outside our room it’s 1939.’
The former matron’s quarters were situated up one of several confusing side corridors. Luckily, Tansy had brought her floor plan. She consulted it for a moment.
‘Oh, wow, there’s a maze. Oh, but it’s off-limits,’ she added disappointed.
With the help of her floorplan, Tansy reoriented them towards the front staircase. As the friends descended the wide curving stairs, Anna was surprised by a pang of genuine emotion. We look like the real deal, she thought.
At the same moment, Tansy said, ‘This is so cool! We look like we really belong in the 1930s!’
Hearing her voice, a man appeared through a doorway, wearing the sober clothing of a hotel concierge.
‘Guten Morgen, Baroness,’ he said to Isadora, clicking his heels. ‘I hope your accommodation is satisfactory?’
‘Yes, yes,’ Isadora said tetchily. ‘It will serve, given the unfortunate circumstances.’
‘We live in terrible times?’ the concierge said, shaking his head. ‘But I would like to reassure you that we will do everything in our power to make you and Miss Smith comfortable during your stay with us.’
‘I love this guy! I totally believe he’s for real,’ Tansy whispered to Anna.
They had already met the concierge on their arrival. He was actually one of several professional actors hired to help facilitate the ten different murder mysteries being played out in Mortmead Hall over the weekend. Their mystery was titled ‘The Last Train from Munich’ and was set just before the outbreak of the Second World War. It featured eight ill-assorted travellers, who found themselves stranded in a Munich hotel after missing the late-night train to Paris. No one, of course, was what they seemed and at least one of the characters was responsible for the murder of an Austrian industrialist, whose body had been found in his bed before the murder mystery properly began.
The concierge gave Tansy a respectful bow. ‘Miss Fonteyn! How wonderful to have you with us at the Hotel Aurora.’
Tansy gave him a pleased little grin. ‘I’m thankful to be here believe me. For a while I was worried I’d have to spend the night on Munich station!’
Her American accent wasn’t bad, Anna thought. She was thankful that her part only required her to trail around being put upon.
‘Coffee is being served in the library,’ the concierge said. ‘If you will please follow me, you can make the acquaintance of your fellow travellers.’ He pushed open the panelled doors. Five strangers, clothed in pre-Second World War styles, looked back at them with unreadable expressions. Anna fought down a powerful urge to bolt.
‘I shall return shortly,’ the concierge murmured and left them to it.
Isadora took charge, sweeping grandly into the room.
‘Good day, I am Baroness von Rosenbaum and this is my companion, Miss Smith,’ she said gruffly, relieving Anna of the necessity to introduce her character.
‘Betsy Fonteyn,’ Tansy said with a smile that combined Tansy’s genuine warmth with the airy confidence of a true star and she sank gracefully into the nearest seat.
The rules of the game had been explained in advance. Everyone in the group was a potential murder suspect. Predictably, everyone was also hiding secrets – some of them darker than others –and which they had to try hard not to divulge. People could ask each other any number of searching questions. They could also obfuscate and evade, making it hard for their team mates to uncover the truth, but they were not allowed to lie outright. The mysteries all had to be solved by supper time, after which there was to be a grand VE day ball – the weekend’s timeline jumping from the era immediately before the declaration of war to the euphoric celebrations at the war’s end – Anna presumed so everyone could go out on a high.
In addition to the Baroness, her dowdy, near-silent companion and the famous actress, Betsy Fonteyn, the suspects were: Monty Shine, a salesman in a very loud, ill-fitting suit; Edward Fairly, a brave RAF pilot; Daisy May, a bubbly upper-class girl fresh out of boarding school, (‘Yeah right!’ Tansy said at lunch); a mysteriously troubled Swiss scientist and Rory, a big game hunter recently returned from South Africa. Over the next few hours, the team members elicited further details about the fictitious characters’ lives and movements, in an attempt to shed light on the murder of the poor businessman, who was found dead soon after their arrival at the Hotel Aurora. But who was the dead man really? Was he perhaps after all a spy?
Every half hour or so, the concierge reappeared to help keep their investigation on track with prompts to go to a particular part of the house, where they had to seek out crucial clues. On these excursions, they ran into similarly dressed people from the other groups, intent on solving their own murder mysteries.
Anna seemed to be the only person who found this entire charade excruciating. Eighty or so adults, maintaining the childish fiction that this huge, Victorian house was actuall
y a German hotel or Bletchley Park or whatever the other fictitious wartime venues were, and getting hotly competitive about solving their imaginary murders.
It was especially ironic that Anna had cajoled her friends into taking part in this fictional murder mystery, since the three women had met over the body of a real-life murder victim in Oxford’s Port Meadow, while they were out walking their dogs. An unlikely basis for friendship, you’d think, yet they’d been through so much together that Anna felt like they’d known each other forever and Tansy and Isadora obviously felt the same.
‘This is actually just Cluedo isn’t it,’ Tansy hissed to Anna during a welcome coffee break.
‘Except Cluedo only takes like, an hour,’ Anna said gloomily.
Anjali seriously owes me for this, she thought. Really, she had done it for Tim. He’d phoned her late on Thursday night and she’d heard his colicky new-born screaming in the background throughout the call.
‘Anjali’s so stressed,’ he’d said, sounding extremely stressed himself. ‘The baby’s not sleeping and the guy who’s supposedly running High Table Events – while she’s on maternity leave – is having personal problems, so Anjali’s basically running things from home. They had everything set. They found an empty country house at a rock bottom rate, they got in a writer to create the mysteries, hired some actors and now all that hard work could go up in smoke. Please Anna, I know it’s desperately last minute but is there any chance you could help?’
Anna had only recently discovered that Tim – who had always seemed to her like a younger, far more appealing brother than her real brothers – actually was her brother. This discovery had arrived with a certain amount of weird baggage. Nevertheless, Anna welcomed it as a miracle. Out of the traumatic wreckage of her early life, she’d acquired a flesh and blood sibling. Of course she’d help him out.
Luckily Tansy and Isadora hadn’t needed much persuading and Jake had offered to dog-sit Bonnie. Now, Anna just had to get through the next few hours in this itchy sweater. She gave an unobtrusive glance at her watch and was appalled to realize that there was still a whole hour until lunch.
‘Ok, Liebling?’ Isadora whispered, ‘we’re all going to the conservatory now!’
Anna stooped to pick up Isadora’s gruesome fox fur, which had slithered to the ground unnoticed.
‘Coming, Baroness,’ she said in a dutiful voice.
They located the beautiful, if dilapidated, Victorian conservatory and roamed around, peering under wicker chairs and into potted palms, until the handsome RAF officer found the clue.
‘He’s a sweetie,’ Tansy whispered to Anna. ‘I’ve got a feeling he’s got a thing for Miss Smith.’
‘He wants to rescue you, Liebling!’ Isadora said as the Baroness then, in her own voice, she added, ‘He looks ridiculously handsome in that flying jacket. It’s a shame all the others are so dire.’
The others were indeed dire. Monty the salesman could never remember his character bio. He had to keep fishing the relevant sheets of paper out of his pocket, rereading them to himself with apparent bewilderment.
Rory, the big game hunter, had an alpha male complex and insisted on dominating proceedings. The scientist was not so much troubled as downright creepy and, as Tansy hissed to her friends over lunch, the woman playing Daisy (the girl who was supposedly fresh out of the sixth form) had to be at least thirty years older than her character if she was a day.
‘Plus, I’m sure “Daisy’s” married to “Rory” IRL,’ she added.
‘IRL?’ said Isadora.
‘In Real Life,’ Anna explained. ‘It’s an online thing.’
‘Oh,’ said Isadora, losing interest.
After lunch, they had to make their way over to the ballroom. ‘I hate to think how many servants they needed to run this monstrosity,’ Isadora said.
Tansy nodded. ‘Imagine those little homesick boarders rattling around in here when Mortmead Hall was a school.’
‘Not the most upbeat name for a school,’ Isadora said with one of her dark laughs. ‘The Mead of Death!’
‘I think it’s just been auctioned off,’ Anna told them. ‘It’s been on the market for years, ever since the school closed. That’s why Anjali got such a good deal. This weekend is like a trial run so her events company can iron out any glitches. If it’s a success, she’ll be looking for a regular venue.’
The afternoon seemed to pass quite quickly. The concierge kept them busy with timely prompts, small snacks and frequent changes of scene. By the day’s end, Betsy Fonteyn had been shockingly exposed as the cold-blooded murderer, who had been employing her acting skills as a double agent. Tansy was thrilled with herself.
‘I can’t believe nobody rumbled me!’ she said as they went to the school dining room where a makeshift bar had been set up. ‘Not even you guys!’ She darted them a look. ‘Of course, I did have an excellent role model.’ She was referring to her father, a London gangster, (a retired gangster he insisted) known as Frankie McVeigh.
‘Don’t be silly,’ said Anna.
‘I hope supper is better than our lunch,’ Isadora said, plaintively. ‘Mine was stone cold.’
‘And mine,’ Tansy admitted. ‘We should feed that back to Anjali.’
‘I don’t mean to be like the special little snowflake,’ Anna said, ‘but I’m going to skip supper. I’m a bit peopled out.’ The need to be by herself was suddenly overwhelming.
‘Me too,’ Tansy confessed. ‘Unfortunately I’m incapable of missing a meal!’
‘Go and have a lie down, Anna,’ Isadora said. ‘Tansy and I can wander around the grounds till dinner. I could do with some fresh air before we have to face those dreary people over dinner.’
Alone in their room, Anna checked her phone. Jake had left a message.
Bonnie took me and Liam on a long walk, now L and I are watching the Rugby and she’s in her usual spot.
He attached a photo of Anna’s White Shepherd, her head resting on Jake’s bare feet. This time last year Anna had nobody in her life, apart from her beloved grandfather, because of one fateful, summer night … She was just sixteen when she had let herself into the family home – reeking of dope and semi-hysterical from her breakup with Max – and discovered her parents and her three siblings had been savagely butchered. The murderers had never been found.
Remembering, Anna’s hand instinctively went to the small scar near her navel. She also could have lost her life that night. For a long time, she’d wished she had. Sixteen years had passed, but the horror never lessened and she had believed that she would never find her way back into the world. She had been convinced that she would never trust or love again.
Yet now she had friends, a brother, a new-born niece and a relationship with Jake McCaffrey, who asked absolutely nothing of her except that she should be herself. And she owed all of these things to Bonnie.
Her fairy-tale wolf. That’s how Anna privately thought of her White Shepherd. Before Anna found her in the rescue shelter, Bonnie had belonged to Jake, a former Navy SEAL. He had discovered her loyally guarding the body of a little Afghani boy, who had been killed by a roadside bomb. Jake had coaxed the traumatised pup into his jeep and took her back to base, where she’d become a kind of honorary canine marine, accompanying Jake and his men on various ops. When Jake was posted on to the Philippines, rather than abandon Bonnie, he’d sent her to live with his widowed aunt Mimi in Oxford, but when she’d died unexpectedly, Mimi’s neighbours had sent Bonnie to the shelter.
Bonnie was how Jake and Anna first came to meet. And a few months ago, after a long period of mutual caution, Jake had finally stayed the night, this time, in Anna’s bed.
The next morning, Anna had been amazed to find that the world didn’t seem to have suffered any ill effects. The opposite if anything. Though the sky was iron grey and rain fell steadily past the window, (Anna had forgotten to close the old-fashioned wooden shutters the previous night in their haste), everything looked ten times more alive than a wet winter�
��s morning in Oxford was supposed to look. Best of all, she and Jake had not turned back into two strangers, as she had secretly dreaded. She’d seen his face as he drowsily opened his eyes and caught sight of her. She had been raised up on one elbow watching him sleep and she thought, she hoped, it was a physical impossibility to fake that kind of sleepy tenderness.
She stretched out on her narrow bed and dozed a little, letting her mind drift and, for the first time, allowing herself to daydream of a future with Jake. After a while, she heard Isadora and Tansy’s voices. There was a discreet knock and Anna hastily sat up. ‘I’m decent. Come in!’
‘I know I sound like a broken record,’ Isadora said, fighting her way between their Dickensian iron bedsteads. ‘But God, those people are tedious! Why go to something like this if you have next to no social skills!’
‘We brought you a couple of starters and a pudding in case you were hungry after your sleep,’ Tansy said. She wafted two small parcels wrapped in paper napkins temptingly under Anna’s nose. ‘The mains were harder to transport.’
‘Tansy was all for making a Mallory Towers midnight raid on the kitchens later,’ Isadora said with a little snort. ‘That’s before she saw the chef.’
Tansy kicked off her shoes, collapsing on to her own bed which emitted a metallic jangle of protest. ‘He looked exactly like an ex-con who used to do a bit of this and that for my dad,’ she explained. ‘He’s probably as gentle as a little puppy, but I don’t think I’ll risk it!’
Isadora switched on her phone and began laboriously texting. ‘Just checking Hero is OK,’ she explained. Hero was Isadora’s Tibetan spaniel cross. Isadora’s lodger, Sabina, who had become a kind of surrogate grand-daughter, was taking care of her for the weekend.
‘I’m quite looking forward to this ball,’ Tansy said.
‘So am I!’ Isadora glanced up from her phone. ‘I heard someone saying it’s open to all kinds of people, academic historians, local history buffs, Second World War re-enactment types.’
