Mondays are Murder

by Tanya Landman

  As I reached the bottom of the stairs I heard adult voices coming from the office. In bare feet, I made no sound, so they didn’t hear me approaching. When I caught what they were saying, it stopped me in my tracks.

  “I just don’t understand it!” It was Mike. “How could it have happened? I guess it was sheer bad luck—”

  “Bad luck?!” Isabella exclaimed, her voice tight and high as if she was fighting hysteria. “Don’t you see? First Steve dies, now Bruce. It’s not bad luck. We’re cursed!”

  “No.” Mike’s tone was patient, as if they’d had this conversation several times before. “It was an accident!”

  “Like what happened in South America was an accident?” Isabella’s tone was suddenly so venomous that it made me wince.

  “That was different,” said Mike. “We’ve been over and over this, Isabella. Richard was dead. I had no choice!”

  “Didn’t you? I don’t think I believe that any more. You did the wrong thing. I did the wrong thing. And we’re being punished for it. I should never have married you!”

  There was the sound of a chair being pushed back hard as if Mike had leapt to his feet. I thought he was about to yell at her but then I heard him taking deep, ragged breaths to steady himself. When he spoke again it was slowly and with extreme care as if he was barely controlling his temper. “I’m sorry you feel like that, Isabella.” He gave a pained sigh. “But you can’t really believe we’re at the mercy of some sort of ghost?”

  “Can’t I? I don’t see any other explanation.”

  “But that’s insane!” he cried. “There’s no such thing as ghosts! It’s just not possible! And even if it was true – why kill Bruce? He wasn’t in South America. We’ve never even met him before.”

  “No … poor Bruce,” Isabella said quietly. Then her voice became harsh. “You were the one who planned to fall on that demonstration, weren’t you? It should have been you who died, not Bruce. He should never have swapped places with you.” Isabella began to cry in soft, despairing sobs.

  “I’ll get you something to drink. A cup of tea will help.” Mike’s words might have been soothing but his tone wasn’t. He sounded half strangled, as though he was forcing the words out between gritted teeth, and I realized he was extremely angry. Murderous, even.

  I could hear him moving quickly towards the door so I fled upstairs, leaving my book abandoned in the sitting room. I wrapped myself up in my duvet but it was a long time before I could stop shivering.

  frostbite

  We woke up the next morning to find that the rain had stopped, although the wind was so strong that helicopter and boat travel was still impossible. No rescue teams would be able to leave the mainland. We were stuck here for at least another day. Once we were dressed, we trooped down to the kitchen, where Donald was cooking a big fry-up.

  “Just the thing for keeping out the cold,” he told us heartily. “You’re going to need it today.”

  “What are we doing this morning?” asked Jake, tucking into a slice of bacon.

  “We were supposed to be canoeing, but the weather’s a wee bit rough for that,” replied Donald, squinting out of the window. “There’s a loch in the hills where I wanted to take you but it will be too dangerous up there for beginners just now.”

  “How about bringing your ride forward to this morning, Cathy?” suggested Mike. “You could go down past the woodshed and along the valley – the wind won’t be so bad there.”

  “That’s true,” agreed Cathy. “Yeah, we’ll do that. All OK for a ride then, guys?”

  A mostly enthusiastic series of replies rang around the kitchen, almost but not quite drowning out Graham’s, “Statistically speaking, more people die while out hacking than they do showjumping.”

  When we’d finished breakfast, it was on with the hard hats and sensible shoes, and off to the stables.

  Mike and Isabella joined us there. “We decided we could both do with some air,” Mike said, although Isabella’s face was an impenetrable, expressionless mask. She didn’t look as if she was capable of deciding anything. “Donald’s staying behind to do the lunch,” he added.

  Cathy smiled at Mike, though she seemed less pleased at the sight of Isabella.

  We were ready to go when Cathy suddenly patted her pockets. “Oh! I’ve forgotten my gloves!” she said. “Won’t be a minute.” She disappeared into the house for a few moments but was soon back, fully equipped for the great outdoors. She sprang into the saddle with practised ease, and I couldn’t help feeling a little bit envious as I clambered awkwardly onto the back of the pony I was riding. I took up the reins the way we’d learnt yesterday and, nose to tail, we set off across the yard. Donald was silhouetted in the kitchen window, his hand raised in a farewell salute, as we rode away.

  We followed the winding road down to the bottom of the hill, where a stone building stood in a clump of trees. Opposite it was a gate that led to the open moor. Cathy opened it from the back of her horse in a skilled manoeuvre and then led us along the valley floor.

  It seemed that horses didn’t like foul weather any more than Graham did. They plodded along in a dreary, weary walk, and when a sudden squall doused us with icy rain, the creatures all swung round, bums into the wind, heads down, refusing to budge. All we could do was sit there until it had blown over.

  But even though the horses were stubborn and the wind was cold and the rain was wet, it felt good to be out of doors. The scenery was amazing and out here in the daylight I just couldn’t believe the vengeful-ghost theory. OK, so I couldn’t come up with an explanation but that was because I didn’t know all the facts. After what Isabella had said last night, I knew that Steve had actually died in that weird shower-related accident. And Richard – whoever he was – had been killed in South America. Yet another dead person. Bruce brought it to a grand total of three corpses. How were they linked? And how was I going to find out?

  After an hour or so we headed for home and the animals sped up into a nice brisk walk. As soon as we entered the yard, Cathy jumped down from her horse and handed the reins to Mike.

  “Sorry,” she said, running for the house. “Desperate for the loo, I’ll be back in a second.”

  By the time she’d returned and we’d shut the horses up in their stables we were all looking forward to another of Donald’s hearty meals.

  “Go on in, kids,” urged Mike. “Give Donald a hand laying the table. Tell him it’s time to get the food on to plates.”

  But the kitchen was empty and dark, and no pans were simmering on the stove.

  “What the…?” said an irate Alice.

  “I’m starving!” complained Jake. “I thought Donald was supposed to be cooking.”

  “Something’s wrong,” whispered Graham, looking at me. “He ought to be here. Something bad has happened, hasn’t it?”

  I didn’t answer because at that moment the grown‑ups came in, and although they seemed worried Mike tried to hide his concern. “He was always doing things like this at university. He’s probably gone for a walk and forgotten the time.” He smiled at Isabella. “Remember when he invited us all over for a meal and we ended up having to cook it ourselves because he’d gone off in his canoe?”

  Isabella didn’t smile back. She didn’t look upset. She didn’t even look worried. She looked … what?

  All of a sudden I remembered an old film I’d watched once about Mary, Queen of Scots. Isabella looked exactly the way the queen had looked right before her head was chopped off. Resigned. Like there was no escaping what was about to happen. Like she’d accepted her fate and just wanted it all to be over.

  “The children need feeding,” Isabella said, and her voice was calm but oddly flat and emotionless. A dead voice. It turned my stomach inside out.

  “It’s too late to start cooking anything complicated,” answered Cathy. “Have we got any burgers, or chicken nuggets, or anything? I’ll knock us up something quick.” She crossed the kitchen to the walk-in freezer, unfastened the lock and p
ulled open the door.

  A second of silence. Cathy’s scream. And then Donald, stiff as a giant fish finger, fell out and hit the floor.

  He was frozen solid.

  It was another accident, according to Mike. “He must have gone in to get something to cook for lunch and the door blew shut behind him. Yes … that’s it. That’s what happened. It’s the problem with old houses – they’re so draughty.”

  But all the time he was babbling, Isabella was shaking her head. “We’re being punished,” she said suddenly. “Can’t you see? We should never have left him.”

  “Donald was thirty-two, Isabella,” snapped Cathy, “the same as you. Surely he was old enough to be left on his own?”

  “I wasn’t talking about Donald.” Isabella fixed her with a stare and Cathy turned away, flustered and uncomfortable.

  “We still need to get everyone fed,” Cathy muttered.

  In the end she found bread and cheese and some fruit and we ate in the sitting room. They’d had to stuff poor Donald back in the freezer to keep his body frozen so no one felt like eating in the kitchen.

  “It’s horrible!” Meera was crying. “Isn’t there anywhere else they could put him?”

  “There’s no undertaker here,” I said. “I suppose he’ll have to be buried on the mainland. But with no ferries crossing…”

  “Bodies start to smell after a couple of days,” Graham said helpfully. “And they leak body fluids. It’s the decomposition, you see? That’s why they invented morgues. You have to keep the body cold—”

  “Shut up, Graham,” said Jake. “You’re putting me off my food.”

  Mike went off to radio the police on the mainland. He came back a few minutes later looking even more white-faced and anxious. It seemed the radio had suffered some sort of mysterious breakdown. He couldn’t call anyone.

  The weird thing was that everyone just accepted his explanation that it was a series of unfortunate accidents. No one even mentioned the word “murder” but I knew it couldn’t be anything else.

  I mean, I’d helped myself to ice cream from that freezer on the first night and I knew perfectly well there was a handle on the inside of the door. Even if it had blown shut, Donald could have let himself out, no problem. But when Cathy had gone looking for burgers she’d had to unfasten the lock on the outside. Which meant someone had shoved Donald in and then locked the door. And now I wouldn’t mind betting all my pocket money that someone had also broken the radio so we couldn’t make contact with the outside world.

  Someone. But who? How? When?

  It couldn’t have been any of us kids because we’d been together all morning. Could Isabella or Mike have done it before they left the house? Or Cathy when she’d gone to fetch her gloves?

  It was impossible! Donald had been in the kitchen. I’d seen him with my own two eyes. He’d been alive when we left.

  It was like an invisible killer was stalking the island. Goosebumps prickled along my arms and my teeth started clacking together.

  “Scared?” asked Alice cattily.

  “No. I’m just cold.”

  “Me too,” agreed Meera. “I wish we could go home!”

  I didn’t answer. I was too busy getting a grip. There’s no such thing as ghosts, I told myself firmly. And even if there were, they absolutely positively definitely couldn’t do things like cutting ropes and breaking radios and locking big burly men inside freezers. Someone was doing it all. Someone in the centre. One of them. Or one of us.

  And whoever it was might already have planned another murder.

  champagne and roses

  By the next morning us kids were moving around together like a flock of anxious sheep. We ate our breakfast in the sitting room, not wanting to hang around in the kitchen knowing a corpse was in the freezer.

  All the time I was chewing my cereal I was watching the others, wondering if one of them might be the killer. It seemed unlikely. None of us had known the victims before we’d arrived. We were all there because our parents had been friends with their friends. I looked over the top of my bowl and saw that pretty much everyone’s faces wore the same expression: extreme nervousness. The only exception was Graham, whose face was creased with the signs of Deep Thought.

  I considered Graham as a possible suspect. OK, so he hadn’t wanted to come. He hated the outdoors. Maybe he even hated it enough to bump off the instructors and cut the holiday short. But I was absolutely one hundred per cent certain that he wouldn’t have sabotaged the radio to the outside world. He wanted to go home: he wouldn’t do anything that would prevent us leaving. I reckoned Graham’s brow was furrowed because he was trying to work things out, the same as me. Every so often his eyes darted in my direction as if he wanted to talk. I was going to have to catch him alone again as soon as possible.

  When Mike came in he looked like he’d aged ten years overnight. He had huge bags under his eyes and his skin had gone sort of grey and ill-looking. It wasn’t surprising. Hadn’t he been at university with Donald? They must have been old friends. Like Steve, I thought suddenly. Maybe even the mysterious Richard. Whatever was going on now might have its roots in the past. If only I could do some digging around!

  “Look kids, I’m really sorry this week’s turning out to be such a disaster. You must be desperate to get away.” Mike raked a hand through his uncombed hair. “The storm’s bound to blow itself out in the next couple of days. I’ll get you away on the first ferry, I promise you, even if I have to swim to the mainland to fetch it. But we’ve a bit of waiting to do until then. We can’t do abseiling but how about a walk this morning, eh? It should cheer us up a bit. The view from the top of the mountain is spectacular.”

  As one we all turned our eyes to Graham. “Walking,” he told us, “is a relatively safe activity. It can cause heart attacks in the elderly and the morbidly obese but as none of us fits that description we should be fine.”

  Our little flock moved off upstairs to zip ourselves into waterproofs and lace up our walking boots.

  Half an hour later we were marching purposefully towards the craggy mountain on the skyline.

  It was good to be outdoors. No one could sneak up on us out here, plus I could keep an eye on everyone’s movements. I was desperate for a private conversation with Graham but, even though he fell into step beside me, it proved impossible. Jake, Meera and Alice had accepted Mike’s assurances that the two deaths were unlucky accidents but they were still nervous and unhappy enough to walk in a tight group that we couldn’t shake off. Graham and I sped up. So did they. We slowed down. They did the same. There was no escape.

  It took two hours of hard walking but at last we reached the peak, breathless and tired but kind of pleased with ourselves.

  Mike was right – the view was stunning. It was all sky and water, and the land in between seemed really small and unimportant. If I turned a full circle I could see the entire island. Below me – smaller than a matchbox – was the centre. From up here I could see how remote it was. The mainland was just a grey line on the horizon.

  Mike was trying with all his might to be positive but he was finding it hard going until Cathy waded in to support him with a relentless burst of cheeriness. It was like being in The Sound of Music. I half expected her to pull out a guitar and start singing as she pointed out areas of outstanding beauty with energetic zeal.

  Isabella, on the other hand, stood apart, lost in thought, not talking to anyone. She had started the walk tight-lipped and pale, and by the time we’d ascended the peak her face had taken on a dark, gloomy aspect. I could almost see a black cloud hanging over her. Cathy’s determined optimism was driving her to distraction. Clapping her hands to her head, Isabella spat, “Will. You. Shut. Up!”

  Mike and Cathy looked at her aghast, but didn’t answer.

  “Can’t you see what’s happening?” Isabella sobbed. She took a deep breath to steady herself and then said more calmly, “I can’t stand any more of this waiting. I’ll go back now. Perhaps I’ll do s
omething about lunch.”

  “But we should stick together,” protested Mike.

  “Why?” she said bitterly. “You two seem to have everything under control. And you said yourself that they were accidents. Look around you, Mike. There’s no one but us on the island. And you don’t believe in ghosts, do you? What could possibly happen to me? I’ll be perfectly safe.” Isabella walked away without another word. I was reminded of that old film again: Mary, Queen of Scots, walking with dignity towards her executioner.

  She was lying peacefully on her bed when we found her later. An opened bottle of champagne was standing on the dressing table, beside a half-drained glass.

  And rose petals were scattered across her corpse like confetti.

  talking to graham

  Mike told us it was suicide: that she must have put poison in her champagne. I don’t know whether he was trying to convince us or himself, but he wasn’t doing a very good job of it. Even Meera had gone all slitty-eyed with doubt. Not that anyone said anything to contradict him. He told us that she’d been suffering from depression; she’d been very unhappy; things hadn’t been going well between them. With tears streaming down his cheeks, he said he should have done more about it. Insisted she see a doctor; had treatment; it was all his fault; he was to blame.

  He explained it very thoroughly and we sat there nodding as if we believed him because the alternative was just too scary to talk about.

  We’d been together. We’d followed Isabella home. All the way back we could see her marching along a few hundred metres ahead of us. We’d watched her going in through the front door. The centre had been in sight the whole time. No one else had gone in or come out – we would have noticed.

  I didn’t believe Isabella had killed herself. And yet none of us could have killed her. It didn’t make sense!