Snowed In With Death Read online

  “Just go and get him,” Lydia said, most likely thinking back to Rob’s cross-examination of her own case. Or, perhaps she subscribes to the ‘treat them mean to keep them keen’ philosophy, Holly thought.

  “So, should we…” Miranda’s hands fluttered over the ludicrous flounces of her apron, as she hovered in the kitchen doorway. Holly wondered if Miranda really was the super fan she claimed to be, or if she was an events specialist who was paid - probably by the detectives themselves - to run the whole event and further bolster their egos by playing the part. She had a feeling she’d have figured out the answer by the end of the weekend.

  “Oh my gosh, you cooked all this yourself?” Emma cooed when they entered the kitchen, sliding past a semi-protesting Miranda.

  “Yes! Well, you know… it was nothing,” the organiser said, slipping back into the room. She wasn’t fast enough to conceal the flash of white wrapping that was sticking up from the bin. So, Miranda had her flaws, too!

  Emma turned and raised an amused eyebrow at Holly, before they walked back into the dining room.

  “Can I help you bring things through?” Holly asked, turning back.

  Miranda stared at her like she had spoken a foreign language, before flapping a hand. “No, no. It’s okay. There’s really nothing to do,” she said, before rushing off and making such a clattering sound, it made Holly wonder if their dinner had just ended up in the floor. Sometimes, it was better to not have an enquiring mind.

  “I wonder where Rob is?” Lawrence asked, looking mildly concerned.

  “I hope he didn’t decide to tunnel his way into Pete’s room,” Jack said and guffawed loudly at his own joke. Holly opened her mouth to defend Rob, but then realised it was better not to join in the less-than-friendly competition and side-taking that was going on.

  They were just about to give up waiting and start dishing up, when Rob reappeared. He looked a lot less cool and collected than he had done when he’d come down the stairs the first time.

  “Pete’s dead,” he announced, his face pale. “Someone’s killed him. There’s a dagger in his chest and blood… lots of blood.” What little colour remained in his cheeks vacated when he said the word ‘blood’. A moment later, he pulled himself together. His mouth hardened into a determined thin line.

  “I think we should all go up and take a look,” Jack said, pushing his chair back. His drink and the food were forgotten.

  “Maybe the ladies could wait here, and someone should stay with them…” Lawrence suggested, looking wistfully at his food.

  Lydia rolled her eyes. “We’ve all seen our fair share of dead bodies, Lawrence. Even you don’t have a perfect track record.”

  Lawrence stopped looking at his food. His light blue eyes sharpened behind his spectacles as he absorbed the insult.

  “Well, I guess we’re all going,” Jack broke in, his eyes flicking up to the ceiling. Somewhere above them, Pete presumably lay dead with a knife in his chest.

  “Is this some sort of a game, like a fake whodunnit to solve?” Holly whispered to Miranda, who looked horrified by the thought.

  “Gosh, no! We would never trivialise…” She stopped talking. Holly wondered if she’d insulted the other woman, but to her surprise, Miranda’s eyes were beading with tears. “Oh, this is awful. Everyone here is just so nice! How could anyone kill Pete?”

  Holly opened her mouth to point out that the six detectives they were sharing the house with probably had more enemies than the rest of the population of Britain put together - not to mention their fierce inter-rivalry - but it didn’t seem the right moment to shatter Miranda’s odd delusion.

  “Yup, he is definitely dead,” Lydia commented, rather crassly, when they walked into Pete’s bedroom.

  Holly bit her lip hard, as she came face to face with her first ever dead body.

  Pete’s neatly side-parted hair was still in perfect condition. He lay on his back with his arms by his side. His expression held all of the serenity of someone still asleep, but Holly could tell from the grey pallor and the lack of a pulse jumping in his neck that this was one micro-nap Pete Black would not be waking up from.

  “Single stab, straight into the heart. That’s why there isn’t a lot of blood,” Jack commented. Holly tried not to hear the hint of admiration in his voice. This was an efficient kill. Also, how was this classed as being ‘not a lot of blood’? She supposed the walls hadn’t been redecorated, but she shared Rob’s opinion rather than Jack’s.

  All of the visitors in the room grew silent. They stared at Pete’s body for such a long time that the tension climbed to a point where Holly was half-expecting the corpse to jump up and scream at them.

  “Is anyone else staying here at the house, Miranda?” Lawrence finally asked, in his usual quiet way.

  Miranda quickly shook her head, her eyes determinedly fixed on the light fixture at the centre of the room.

  “So… it’s one of us. One of us killed Pete Black,” Rob concluded, sounding horrifyingly intrigued by the idea. “We have a murderer in our midst.”

  Dining with Death

  “I suppose now wouldn’t be the time to mention my record-breaking feat of solving a case in five minutes and putting myself forward for the role of lead detective on this case?” Rob asked, looking around at the ashen faces. “No, probably not the time. Maybe after coffee and mints,” he concluded.

  “We’ve got to call for help. The police will come,” Holly said.

  Everyone stared at her like calling the police was a completely alien concept.

  “Oh yes… the police,” Lydia conceded.

  There was some collective eye-narrowing.

  “It is the law!” Holly persisted. There was finally some grudging agreement, although, she heard a few ‘wouldn’t waste my time’ mutterings. They walked down the hall as a group, collectively deciding not to loiter in the room where the smell of death lingered.

  “Right… here we go,” Holly said, feeling a sense of trepidation, as she dialled 999.

  She’d never been in an emergency before, but this was a real-life situation, wasn’t it? Someone was actually dead. She blinked a few times and wished her head would clear. How could anyone think straight after seeing something like that? It was one thing reading about violent murders in a novel, but quite another in real life. Half of her still wanted to believe that this was all part of the event - a false death set up to challenge the other detectives. Unfortunately, she knew that Pete Black was no actor. He was a genuine private detective, whose short career had just come to a brutal - and very final - end.

  “Er, do they usually take so long to answer?” Holly asked, feeling stupidly unprepared for this. The phone was making a noise, but she wasn’t sure if it was ringing or not.

  Lydia seized the handset and listened. “Dead. Whoever did this has also cut our lines of communication.”

  They all pulled out their mobile phones and berated the evil genius behind the absence of cell service, until Jack pointed out that it was probably their fault for picking such a rural Scottish location for their meet up. The phone lines being down could also be explained by the snow.

  “This is probably all the work of someone who had an axe to grind with Pete. Someone who’s been unusually lost for words since Rob came down and told us he was dead,” Jack said.

  Everyone turned to look at Emma, who didn’t even have the good-grace to blush. “Oh, come on! I’m the last person who’d kill him. Seriously, when is it ever the obvious suspect who actually committed the crime?” she bit back, folding her arms.

  “Well, statistically…” Lawrence began, but Emma carried on speaking.

  “Pete and I had a love-hate relationship, sure. But if I’d killed that smarmy, cheating, good for nothing, I wouldn’t have stabbed him. I would have planned something a lot nastier. He’d have known all about it, and exactly who had done it to him, when he finally got what he deserved.” She looked around brightly.

  “Okay, great!” Rob said, look
ing nowhere near as perturbed as Holly felt. “That sounds perfectly reasonable to me. Does anyone else have questions? No? Well, how about we all go down and have some dinner? We’re all together, so the killer probably won’t strike again. We’ve all seen those bad horror movies. If we stay together, then we live. Or, hey! Look on the bright side! If someone else gets murdered, it will be a cinch to catch the killer because we’ll see it happen.”

  “What makes you think someone else is going to die?” Jack asked.

  Rob held up his hands defensively. “What? I didn’t say that, did I? I was just trying to lighten the mood. Dinner? Yes?”

  Seeing as no one else had any better ideas, they followed Rob back down to the dining hall. It was fortunate that none of the food had been dished up, and that it was served on large, communal platters. However, there were a tense few moments after Rob took his first bite, where everyone pretended to be engrossed in pouring their drinks, or examining the Christmas crackers.

  “Still alive! I told you it would be fine,” Rob said, a second before all the lights went out.

  They were plunged into darkness.

  Holly shivered in the icy breeze, which had been enough to extinguish all of the candles a moment before. She nearly jumped out of her skin when a loud bang echoed around the room.

  There was a moment of dead silence.

  “I don’t suppose that was someone pulling a cracker?” Rob enquired.

  Someone near Holly swore - probably when they realised Rob wasn’t the victim.

  “I think it was a gunshot,” Jack said.

  There was another bang, not as loud or as fatal as the first. Holly suspected Rob had just hit his head on the table.

  A Shot in the Dark

  Holly heard Rob mutter ‘Hey presto’ under his breath when the lights flickered and came back on. The person seated next to her remained silent.

  That was because they were dead.

  “Oh no, Lawrence…” Emma said, her voice emotionless. But then, during the very brief time Holly had known Lawrence, he had never inspired any particular emotion at all.

  So, why would anyone want to kill him?

  “I feel sick…” Lydia said. She pushed her chair back, sitting with her head between her legs and taking deep breaths.

  Holly looked back at Lawrence and found that Lydia’s reaction was not unreasonable. She was glad that she hadn’t got around to eating her dinner yet.

  She also wasn’t going to be eating it anytime soon.

  Her food hadn’t escaped the event unscathed. She looked down in horror at all of the… bits.

  Jack walked round the table to have a look. “Shot from behind…” he immediately said and then looked up and down the side of the table where Lawrence had sat. His eyes fell on Emma, who sat on one side of the dead man, and then they stayed fixed on Holly herself. “Have you got anything on you to prove that you aren’t a psychopath who has come here to kill us all?” His voice was deadpan.

  Holly didn't know if he was serious or not. “Uh… I…” She stumbled, wondering what she could possibly say or produce. An anti-psychopath ID card? These detectives had known each other for years. Wasn’t it far more likely that it was one of them who was the killer? But then - albeit rarely - psychopaths did exist, so she understood the reason behind Jack’s accusation.

  She shook her head free from confusion. She knew she wasn’t the killer!

  “No way. I saw how pale she turned when she saw Pete. That was definitely her first dead body. She’s not our killer,” Emma cut in. Holly didn't know whether to thank her or throttle her.

  “So… it’s one of us. It must be someone on this side of the table. They had to get around behind old Lawrence and do him in,” Jack said, his voice grave.

  Emma glared at him. “Do him in? What is this… an Agatha Christie novel? You were on this side of the table, too. You’re also a suspect and - much as I hate to admit it - you are the firearms expert. However… where you, or any one of us, have hidden the gun, I don’t know,” she finished.

  Holly revised her opinion that Pete and Emma’s rivalry was a big motive for murder. It would appear that Emma doled out her disdain in equal measures for all.

  “Now… this might be a shot in the dark, but are we a hundred-percent sure that we’re the only people here?” Rob ventured.

  Everyone stared at him.

  “What? It’s a perfectly reasonable theory!” He frowned and it slowly dawned on him. “Oh, right. It probably was too soon for that turn of phrase. Look, I’m sure Lawrence would want us to keep things upbeat. You know… if he wasn’t dead.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” Lydia said, her voice sounding terrible and her face looking worse. Lawrence’s death was clearly not sitting well with her. She raised her gaze to meet Rob’s. “But, you know what? I’m not going to sit around here doing nothing. Your last theory that no one would die if we all sat together and ate dinner hasn’t worked out. I’m going to conduct my own investigations. Alone. The way I always do.” She winced. “Right after I’ve been sick.” She stood up and hastened (surprisingly speedily, given the tightness of her dress) back towards the main stairway.

  So much for safety in numbers, Holly thought.

  “I don’t really feel festive anymore,” Jack grumbled, pushing himself away from the table and walking after Lydia.

  “I’d better go and make sure he hasn’t gone to kill her,” Emma said. Her tone was sarcastic, but her expression wasn’t. Trust wasn’t particularly high amongst the professional private detectives.

  Holly, Miranda, and Rob were left sitting alone in the dining room with the very dead Lawrence for company.

  “What are we going to do with the body?” Rob asked, in the same tone of voice you might use to propose a post-dinner game of charades. Miranda blinked a few times but said nothing (her horror akin to an unsuspecting person being invited to play charades).

  “We could put the bodies outside to stave off decomposition?” Holly suggested, wondering why she seemed to be thinking so clearly now. She was still seated next to some pretty gruesome remains, and her white dress had turned out to be a truly disastrous colour to choose, but all in all, she seemed pretty okay. She was alive. That definitely counted for something.

  “Ah. I just meant I’ve got a Santa hat that we could use. I’d suggest a paper crown, but it probably won’t cover much,” Rob said, looking serious and thoughtful. Holly was starting to wonder if he was actually insane and somehow no one had noticed.

  As if reading her mind, Rob spoke again. “By the way, I’m the sane one. It’s the others you want to worry about. Also yes, yes I am very attractive,” he said, with his fingers on his temples, staring at Holly with a smirk on his face.

  She rolled her eyes, beginning to realise why the others in the group exercised their eyeballs so often. Of course, if they were very unlucky, they’d all be bouncing out of their heads and rolling across the floor soon. She gulped. Perhaps she wasn’t thinking straight after all. “Er, we should probably…”

  “Get dessert?” Rob finished. “Great idea!”

  Holly looked from Lawrence to Miranda and realised they had to get the traumatised organiser out of the room. Or rather, she had to. Rob was already in the kitchen hunting for the next course.

  “It hasn’t been cooked yet,” Miranda said, her voice a whisper when Holly half-walked, half-carried her out of the dining room, back towards the living room.

  “The dessert… it was going to be warm chocolate fudge… cake.” Between the words ‘fudge’ and ‘cake’ Miranda burst into tears. Holly was left with a dress that was not only plain and splattered with debris, but was now also wet and in danger of turning see-through.

  “Found some cheese… no dessert, just powder. Even I’m not desperate enough to snort chocolate cake mix. See you girls later. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” He hesitated in the doorway with an entire block of cheddar in his hand. “There’s actually not a lot I wouldn’t do. Try not to ki
ll anyone or, you know… die. I guess we’ll count up in the morning and then we’ll try my suggestion. We’ll search this house from bottom to top, because I’m smart, and I’m nearly always…” He paused, lost in thought. “No… wait. I’m always right. Yeah, that's it,” Rob finished.

  “Count up?” Miranda said, her face somehow turning a shade paler.

  Holly forced a laugh, which came out alarmingly high-pitched. “He’s kidding, aren’t you, Rob? No one else is going to die.” She shot him a meaningful look, but he wasn’t even looking her way.

  “Well, we are all going to die one day. Just… maybe some sooner than others,” he concluded. Unsurprisingly, his reassuring speech did nothing to stop a fresh flood of tears from spilling down Holly’s dress.

  “I think you should go to bed now,” she suggested, wondering if she could get away with outright telling him to get lost.

  Rob cheerily waved the cheese at her. “All right. I’m going. Just a heads-up, don’t come into my room tonight. There’ll be numerous deadly booby traps set up, and don’t take it personally, but I’m not telling you what they are. Heck, I probably won’t even tell myself… just to make things more interesting.” He wandered off down the corridor.

  Holly turned to see that Miranda had calmed down a little. “On the plus side, there’s a good chance he won’t be down for breakfast,” she told the organiser.

  “I heard that!” Rob shouted from the corridor, before finally walking up the stairs.

  “I must say, being snowed in with a bunch of people who keep getting murdered is not exactly what I expected my prize to be,” Holly said to break the silence when she and Miranda were finally alone.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry this has happened. I would never have planned it here if I’d thought… “ Miranda sighed, completely missing Holly’s weak attempt at humour. “This is just terrible!”