“This doesn’t matter! None of this matters!” Ellie shouted. She grabbed the note card out of Lorna’s hand and tore it into pieces. “It was an accident! Callum’s death was an accident. Why are we being punished?” She shouted to the ceiling as if someone in the attic would hear her. “It was an accident!”
“We all know that’s not true,” Lorna whispered.
The silence after she spoke was deafening. She might as well have shot off a gun. The truth they’d blanketed safely beneath so many years of lies had now been aired. Spoken aloud for the first time. They might have all been culpable for some of what happened that night, but only one of them had done the act. Lorna looked at the pieces of the card now scattered on the carpet.
You try to leave when it’s too soon, you’ll die like Hollis in your room. Someone murdered Callum dear. Till they confess, you’re all stuck here.
“Hollis died because he tried to leave,” she said.
“Hollis wouldn’t do that,” Ellie said. “He wouldn’t have . . . He’s a detective. If he was leaving, it was probably to help us.”
“Was a detective,” Oliver corrected.
“Shut up!” Lorna took a breath and lowered her voice. “Sorry, Ellie, but Hollis must have tried to leave and that’s why he’s dead. Not because the blackmailer thought it was him. That he was the one who . . .” She couldn’t finish the sentence.
“We don’t know either,” Maeve said. “We’ve never known.”
Wind gusted against the house, flapping a shutter somewhere nearby. They looked at one another. Lorna knew what they were thinking. Which of them was it? Who had done it? And would that person finally break now that over twenty years had passed? Would they confess? Or would they cling to their secret ever more tightly? Try to throw someone else under the bus? Mistrust flickered from face to face. Then, by some unspoken agreement, they decided now was not the time to cast blame. That might come later, but not now.
When the storm was quiet again, Oliver spoke.
“Let’s tell him it was Hollis. It can’t do Drummond any harm. Not anymore.” He paled, like he knew it was a crass thing to say, even if it was practical.
“Hollis was the one who found him,” Ellie said. “And isn’t it normally the person who finds the body?”
But Lorna couldn’t let Hollis take the blame for something she knew he had not done.
“It wasn’t him, though, was it?” she asked, knowing that shifting the blame from Hollis meant she was suspicious of the others. “I mean, I never really thought . . . not him.”
No one said anything, but from the looks on their faces they all thought the same.
“Hollis had been in trouble before Caldwell Street,” she said, “but he didn’t harm anyone to get out of it. There’s no reason to think a boy who rescued baby birds and little old ladies and cried when one of his rugby heroes was injured would suddenly escalate to murder.”
“It might’ve been someone else,” Ellie said. “Someone else who was there that night. At the party.”
Not one of us was left unspoken.
“There’s always a chance,” Oliver agreed.
They all left it at that and stood there in silence, trying not to glance at one another. Trying not to send an accusatory look in the wrong direction. Right now, there was a bigger enemy to fight.
“Is there a landline?” Lorna asked. “This is an old house. It has to have a landline, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” Oliver said. “Maeve, did you happen to see a landline while you were wandering around the house by yourself?”
“Enough.” Lorna warned. “I think there’s one downstairs at the front desk, near the hotel register. It’s possible whoever installed the Wi-Fi jammer also cut the wires, but we should check anyway.”
They all agreed with the suggestion, but no one moved. The threat of leaving this hallway was too great. The house had become a giant mousetrap, filled with hidden dangers. The narrow walls on either side gave the illusion of containment, of safety. There was nothing to harm them in this hall. Yet their time here was limited. Eventually, they would have to move, and that time was nearing. The rain and wind picked up. The lights flickered, the house winking at them.
Oliver grabbed a heavy candlestick from a sideboard in the hall and handed it to Lorna, then gave the matching one to Ellie. He pulled open a drawer and rummaged around until he extracted what looked like a stone paperweight and tossed it to Maeve, who jumped back in fright, then bent down to pick it up. For himself, Oliver chose a smaller metal candle holder that had a bit of weight at the base.
“We’ll go downstairs together,” he said, looking each of them in the eye. “Slowly. Keep your eyes open for anything. Don’t hesitate to strike. But try to keep Caskie alive. I have a few questions I’d like to ask first.”
“God,” sighed Lorna. “When did my life turn into a game of Clue?” The comment slipped out before she could stop it. No one laughed, and she knew she shouldn’t have spoken. Like too many other things in her life, she couldn’t take it back.
Ellie
Their shoes against the hallway carpet sounded louder than shattering china. Several times, Oliver stopped and pressed a finger to his lips. He’d cock his head to the side and then wave them forward. The curves of the silver candlestick dug into Ellie’s palm as the sleeve of her jumper rubbed against the scratches on her arm. This would be heavy enough to crack open the skull of whoever had attacked her. She could still feel the nails on her skin. The hot breath on her cheek as she’d torn herself away. One false step down those attic stairs and she would’ve become like Hollis, her head bleeding out on the floor. She pictured Mr. Caskie standing over her, smiling as he watched her die, and wished she could scratch his eyes out.
Approaching the great red staircase was like walking into an open wound. Ellie stared across the upper landing to the other wing, watching for Mr. Caskie to appear.
But no one came. What was visible of the foyer remained empty.
They hesitated at the top of the stairs for what seemed too long a time, no one saying a word. Their panicked selves from moments ago had been left outside Hollis’s door. If they retraced their steps, Ellie knew they would see themselves trapped in time, crying and screaming. They were hollow copies now. Empty shells propelled onward on nothing more than some primal instinct to survive.
Oliver finally moved them onward. Two by two they traveled down the two flights of stairs, Oliver and Ellie in front, Lorna with Maeve behind, every step taken with caution. When they reached the foyer, they huddled together like a pack of frightened animals. Oliver scanned the room’s corners, then placed his hand at the small of Maeve’s back and pushed her forward.
“Go on, then. Check it,” he said.
“What? Why me? Why can’t we all go over there together?”
While the front desk was visible, someone could easily be hiding behind. Maeve looked to Lorna and then Ellie for help, but they said nothing. Oliver had singled Maeve out, and Ellie wouldn’t interfere. The group meant safety, and Ellie would do whatever was necessary to remain safe.
Maeve, realizing she wasn’t receiving any support, detached from their huddle, gripping her stone paperweight above her head, ready to strike. Her feet stumbled on the final steps.