Kill Joy (A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, #0.5) — Chapter no 7

The room was silent, just the up-and-down notes of the muted trumpets while Connor squirmed in his chair.

“Thanks, Dora, for revealing our private conversations,” Connor said, emphasizing the word.

“I had to tell the truth.” Cara put up her hands. “A man is dead.”

“Yes, but not because of me.”

“Is it true?” Pip asked. “Did you say that? Did you wish Reginald dead?”

“Yes, I said it, but I didn’t mean it.” Connor fiddled with his white bow tie like it was tightening around his neck, trying to strangle him.

“I was just blowing off steam. I’m sure most butlers have choice words about their masters. And, well, I was annoyed at him because a couple of weeks ago I asked him for some time off, and Reginald outright denied me. Said he was too busy to let me go at the moment with no notice, no matter how much I begged.”

“Why did you want time off?” Pip asked, pen ready and waiting above the page.

“To visit my daughter. I hardly ever see her. And now it’s…It was important to me, and I was angry, that’s all. But that doesn’t make

me a murderer.”

“Makes you look sketchy as fuck, though,” Ant said.

“You can talk, Bobby,” Pip countered.

“And anyway, if we are talking about sketchy”—Connor finally unclipped his tie, pointing a finger back at Cara—“let’s talk about Dora Key, shall we? Since you decided to spill my secrets.”

“Fine by me. I’m an open book, or an open cook,” Cara said with a wink.

Pip was caught between the two; she pushed her chair back so she could watch the altercation.

“Oh really?” Connor steepled his fingers. “Well, how about this, then? Dora Key was hired by Reginald only six months ago. I knew the cook before her very well; we’d worked together for fifteen years.

Then, all of a sudden, out of the blue, she quits, with no real reason.

She’d never mentioned leaving to me before. And as she left, just before she got on the boat to the mainland, she told me that someone was forcing her to quit, threatening her life, but she couldn’t say who. And then, two days later, Dora Key turns up. The new cook. And your food is terrible. So who are you and why are you really here?”

“How dare you? I made you Domino’s Pizza,” Cara said, trying to fight a smile. “Even extra pepperoni.”

“OK, OK,” Jamie stepped in, silencing them all. “It’s clear that there are a lot of secrets in this room. And some of those secrets might be linked to the murder. But right now it’s time for you to learn your own biggest secret. Please turn to the next page and be careful that no one else sees it.”

Pip’s chair screeched against the floorboards as she shuffled it back to the table.

“Wait, can I go for a piss before we do the next bit?” Ant asked.

“I’m bursting.”

Jamie nodded. “Yep, sure. The rest can be reading their secrets while we wait.”

Pip’s heart dragged its way up to her throat as she snatched up her booklet. What was her biggest secret? What exactly was Celia

Bourne hiding?

She turned the page.

YOUR SECRET

You are not who you say you are, Celia Bourne. You have been lying this entire time; you are not a governess.

You are a spy, working for His Majesty’s Secret Service. A few weeks ago, you were approached by a handler and offered a handsome sum and a permanent future position if you investigated your uncle, Reginald Remy. The government suspected that he was connected to communists and may have been involved in seditious activity. They think he might have recently paid a lot of money to a miner and known communist agitator, Harris Pick.

Your mission was to find evidence of this money transfer.

It was YOU who broke into the safe after leaving the library and before Reginald returned to his study at 5:15 p.m.

Page 4

You stole Reginald’s checkbook from the safe.

There was nothing else in there, certainly not the new will. When Ralph overheard you on the phone, you were speaking in code to your handler.

YOU MUST KEEP THIS SECRET.

If anyone finds out that it was you who broke into the safe, you must lie about your reasons. Tell them that you were simply looking for an old photograph of your mother and you believed your uncle kept it in his safe. You only took the checkbook because you wanted to see how much Reginald was paying other family members, as you have always felt bitter about this.

Page 5

Pip put her booklet facedown, refusing to glance up in case anyone was watching her and somehow read the secret across her face. Stole it from her head out through her eyes. Stupid, she knew, but still, she didn’t look.

A spy. She’d sensed her secret was pretty big, but a government spy? That changed everything. And during that phone conversation

with her handler, Ralph had overheard her saying the word terminate. What if she’d been given orders to take Reginald Remy out if she found evidence of his treason? What if she was the murderer? Could she have done it? Did Celia Bourne have it in her?

She tuned back into the room and the others had resumed talking. Maybe it was safe to look up now. No one was watching her, but she felt watched anyway somehow, hairs prickling at the back of her neck.

“Can I just check my phone for two seconds, Connor?” Lauren was asking. “Tom’s probably texting me and wondering why I’m ignoring him.”

“No,” Cara answered instead. “He knows you’re at a murder mystery party. You can go a few hours without contacting your boyfriend. You’ll live, I’m sure. I mean, unless you murdered Reginald Remy, in which case they’ll probably hang you.”

“OK, has everyone read their secrets?” Jamie said. “Oh, wait… Ant’s not back yet.”

Connor sniffed and stared at the open door. “He’s been gone a while. He hasn’t drunk enough to pass out, has he? I’ll go check on him.” He sidled out of the room, and his footsteps were lost beneath the music. But it wasn’t quite loud enough to cover the sound of the wind outside, whistling against the house, slamming the shed door.

Pip turned to the windows, but it was completely black out there now. All she could see was their own reflection, Cara making bunny ears over Pip’s head and the dancing flames of the candles. She locked eyes with the mirror-image Pip, trapped in the darkness of outside, until she saw Connor’s reflection return.

“I can’t find Ant,” he said. “I checked the downstairs and upstairs bathrooms. He’s not there. He’s gone.”

“What?” Pip said. “Well, he must be somewhere.”

“He’s not. I’ve checked everywhere.”

“Everywhere?”

“Well, no, not every room.”

Jamie pushed up to his feet, taking charge. “Come on, Con,” he said. “Let’s go look again.”

The brothers left the dining room and Jamie’s voice sailed through the house.

“Ant?! Where’ve you gone, you little shit?”

Cara turned to Pip. “What’s going on?” she asked, abandoning her Dora voice.

“I don’t know.” Those three words Pip hated to say.

“He can’t have actually gone anywhere,” Zach said, but even he didn’t sound sure.

“Ant?!” Connor’s shout was softened by the carpets and walls, but there was a new urgency to it. “Ant! ANT!” The word grew louder and louder as Connor made his way back to them, Jamie right behind him.

There was an awkward, expectant silence. And the music felt different somehow, changed; the climbing notes of the trumpets now sounded like a threat.

“Yeah, he’s, er…he’s not here,” Jamie said. “We looked in every room.”

“He’s gone?” Lauren fiddled nervously with her beaded necklace.

“How is he gone?”

Pip stood up. She wasn’t going anywhere, but sitting didn’t feel right anymore. From the corner of her eye she saw her dark mirror image get to her feet too, side-glancing back at her. No wonder she felt watched.

“How could he have left? We would have heard the front door,”

Cara said, looking to Jamie, who could only reply with a shrug.

“Connor, you need to unlock our phones,” Lauren said, “so we can call Ant.”

“How’re we going to call him when I also have his phone?”

Connor replied, a small bite to his tone.

As she watched the reflected scene unfold in the window, an idea took hold in Pip’s mind. This whole thing…it was a performance.

A game. It wasn’t real, just like those mirror people in their 1920s getups.

“Jamie,” Pip said, “is this part of the game? Ant going missing?”

“No, it isn’t,” he replied, his face giving away nothing.

“Was it something in Bobby’s booklet?” she said, her eyes seeking it out, discarded on Ant’s plate. “Did it tell him to hide? Is he the next person to be murdered?”

“No,” Jamie said, raising his hands earnestly, no hint of amusement in his eyes. “I swear this is not part of the game. This isn’t supposed to happen. I promise.”

She believed him, picking up on the growing unease in the lines on Jamie’s face.

“Where could he have gone? It’s dark outside.” Pip gestured to the window. “And he doesn’t have his phone. Something’s not right.”

“What do I do?” Jamie asked the room. He seemed to shrink, almost, lose six years until he was just one of them. “I don’t—”

But Pip didn’t hear what he said next.

The room erupted with a sharp pounding coming from the window.

There was someone out there. Someone unseen. Knocking on the window. Again and again. Faster and faster. So hard that the pane seemed to shake in its frame.

“Oh my god!” Lauren screamed, scrambling back to the far wall, her chair clattering to the floor.

Pip couldn’t see anything. It was too dark out there and too bright in here. All she saw was their own reflection, their fear-widened eyes. They were blind in here. Trapped. And someone was out there, someone who could see everything.

Pip watched Cara’s reflection grabbing for her hand before she felt it.

The knocking picked up, louder and faster, and Pip’s heart beat harder and harder to match it, trying to escape her chest. Too fast; maybe there was more than one someone out there?

And, just as sudden, the knocking cut out. The glass stopped shaking. But Pip could feel it still, as though the knocking was inside her now, hiding at the base of her throat.

“Wh—” Connor started to say, his voice shaking at the edges.

Then the outside flooded with light, blazing through the window at them, and Pip covered her eyes against the glare.