‘I’ll come, too,’ Gwen says.
No one else shows any interest in going up those dark stairs. Bradley grabs one of the flickering oil lamps off the coffee table and uses it to light their way. It’s getting properly dark out now, hardly any light at all filtering in through the windows.
Bradley holds the lamp high, and David and Gwen follow. The oil lamp throws shadows on the dark-papered walls as they ascend. David has his mobile phone’s torch on to provide more light for their footing. There’s not much charge left.
As they trudge up the stairs, Bradley says, ‘I saw her after lunch when I went to take the tray away. I told her we’d be having tea at four o’clock. She said she would come out if she wanted any tea, but otherwise she was not to be disturbed.’ He adds, ‘It’s really a shame she missed the ice bar. But we can always go back out again.’
They reach the second floor, which if anything, David thinks, seems darker and gloomier than the floors below. It’s bloody cold. Candice’s room is to the left of the stairs, across from the housekeeping closet. Bradley knocks on the door. There is no response from within. He knocks again. David’s uneasiness has grown to a mild alarm, but he tries not to show it.
Bradley turns to him, looking worried. ‘Do you think we should open it?’
David hesitates. ‘Is there anywhere else she might be?’
‘I’ve looked everywhere else.’
David nods. Bradley hands him the lamp and fishes the appropriate key out of the bunch. He feeds it into the lock and slowly opens the door. David holds the lamp high.
He sees Candice lying on the floor, her scarf pulled tightly around her neck.
Saturday, 5:35 PM
In the lurid light of the oil lamp, Gwen sees the body slumped on the floor, a flash of pale face, the pretty scarf around Candice’s throat, and screams. She feels David grab her with one strong arm and quickly pull her head into his chest so she can’t see Candice, but it’s too late. She feels the acid corroding her stomach, feels the bile slip up her throat.
Gwen trembles against David’s chest, trying not to be sick, her mind reeling. Dana had at least looked like an accident. Gwen hadn’t allowed herself to even think that it might be deliberate murder, despite what David said. She didn’t want to believe it. But there’s no mistaking this. Candice has been strangled with her own scarf.
Filled with dread, she hears the sound of running footsteps stumbling up the darkened stairs.
Chapter Eighteen
RILEY HEARS GWEN’S scream, and despite her own immediate fear, tears up the stairs. The others are close on her heels. She arrives at the open doorway to Candice’s room. The first thing she sees is Gwen with her face buried in David’s chest, to her right, and then, beyond them, the body on the floor. She gives a strangled cry, feels as if all the breath has left her body.
The others crowd around her, trying to see. Candice is clearly dead. They spill from the open doorway into the room. Riley steps to one side, allowing the others in. She feels her anxiety spiking as her mind desperately tries to make sense of what this means. She sees Gwen pull away from David, and David places the oil lamp on the desk. It creates a pool of light around Candice, as if she’s an actress on the stage, under a spotlight. She doesn’t look real.
Riley can’t bear to look at the body any more; she turns her attention to the others instead.
Bradley is staring at Candice as if he’s seen a ghost, grabbing the edge of the desk to steady himself.
David’s mouth is set in a grim line.
Gwen, beside him, has her hand pressed hard against her mouth, trying not to throw up.
Ian mutters, ‘Dear God,’ and stands flat-footed, as Lauren pushes past him to the body. She moves to pull the scarf loose, touching Candice’s neck.
‘Get back, everyone,’ David commands harshly. ‘There’s nothing we can do for her.’
Lauren sits back on her heels and looks up, pale and shaken.
Riley hears a sob and turns to see Henry and Beverly standing inside the open doorway, looking at Candice. Beverly is obviously trying to control herself. And now Matthew, tall and dishevelled, appears in the darkness of the doorway, James, out of breath, behind him.
Riley turns her attention back to the body and forces herself to look. Candice is lying on her stomach, her head turned to the left. Her face is bloodless against the dark carpet. Her eyes are open wide in surprise. She is … ghastly. Terrifying.
There’s no coming back from death.
She begins to feel the familiar sensation of panic, and she closes her eyes briefly and breathes deeply, trying not to give in to it. She opens her eyes again. Everyone is in the room now, ignoring David’s command to stay back. She wonders, fleetingly, who is going to keep order now. She knows how quickly things can fall apart; she’s seen it.
Riley looks now at Gwen – Gwen is still standing close to David, and is looking at the dead woman, too. Her face is crumpling like she’s about to cry. She’s too squeamish for this, Riley thinks.
‘We must leave her as she is,’ David says quietly. ‘The police will deal with it when they get here.’
‘When is that going to be?’ Lauren says, her voice tense.
‘I don’t know,’ David says.
‘How can you be so calm?’ Lauren asks, her voice shrill. ‘She’s been murdered! We need to get the police!’
‘How the hell are we going to do that?’ Henry shouts.
‘I don’t know!’ Lauren snaps. ‘But we’d better think of something.’
Henry finds the sight of the body deeply disturbing. He can’t bear to look at it any longer, so instead he studies Matthew, whom he hasn’t seen since Dana’s body was first discovered early that morning. Gwen’s scream has pulled him from the seclusion of his room. Some of them, he thinks, suspect that Matthew pushed his fiancée down the stairs. This changes things. He glances at David. The attorney’s usually calm exterior is definitely ruffled.
The fact that Candice has been murdered – it means that there is definitely a killer here, in the hotel. And the police aren’t coming.
Henry looks around at the rest of the little gathering and can see they are of one mind. The fear is palpable.
He can hear Beverly breathing heavily through her nose beside him. Henry wonders just how much danger they’re in. And suddenly he has a terrible thought. He realizes that if only it had been Beverly who had been strangled, instead of Candice, all his problems would be solved. It’s the first time he’s recognized that he would be free if only his wife were dead. It makes him feel strange, agitated. He has a fleeting fantasy of finding her strangled in their room, but it’s interrupted by David.
‘It might be one of us,’ David says.
There’s an awful silence.
Then Beverly shakes her head in disbelief. ‘Surely not,’ she says. When David doesn’t answer, she begins to protest. ‘You think that one of us is a murderer?’
‘It’s possible,’ David says.
‘But that’s absurd,’ Beverly insists, looking around wildly at the rest of them. ‘You seem to think that almost anybody is capable of murder. Murderers are not normal people.’ She looks desperately around the room at the others.
Henry silently agrees with his wife – the idea that it’s one of them is ludicrous, like something out of a novel. He was willing to credit that Matthew may have, in a fit of anger, killed his fiancée. But he doesn’t think that Matthew also killed Candice, in cold blood.
David has spent too much time with criminals, Henry tells himself now. He can’t picture any of his companions pushing that young woman down the stairs, then smashing her skull against the step. Nor can he imagine any of them strangling Candice. There must be someone else here. He looks around anxiously in the flickering dark.
Saturday, 5:45 PM
‘We should search the hotel,’ David suggests, as they stand above Candice’s corpse.