Chapter 5
GG is dead. Obviously. You don’t get screams and the police and Dad cosplaying a fireman unless someone is dead.
The surprising thing about GG being dead isn’t so much that she’s dead—it’s been my experience that old people only have one trajectory—but the way that she died.
I’m warning you now that it’s not great, but it’s also easier if I come out and say it, not talk around it like the police did when they interviewed me: GG was killed by being hit on the head with her improbably gigantic typewriter.
Not the most obvious murder weapon, you might think, but right up there in the gruesome stakes.
By the time we’re back from the police station, an ambulance has taken GG’s body away and a detective has taken statements from all of the family.
It doesn’t look like the crime scenes you see on TV, where cops are swarming everywhere, dusting for fingerprints and rummaging through drawers.
There’s one sad bit of crime-scene tape across GG’s bedroom door, and that’s… kind of it? Underwhelming is the word.
It’s a relief when the police leave in the afternoon so we can gather in the living room for cookies, tea, and wine for the adults.
I don’t bother asking if I can have a sip or explaining to Dad, yet again, how things work in Europe.
Last time I tried, he managed, through his laughter, to tell me to start with Italian lessons.
Aunty Vinka’s the only one missing: She’s getting Nick from the hospital (or so she thinks).
“This is the last of it,” Shippy says, pouring a splash into Dad’s mostly empty wineglass.
“That didn’t last long.”
“There’s three of us drinking it,” Shippy says defensively, and Dad is distracted enough, or on his best behavior enough, not to look at Aunty Bec’s untouched glass.
She’s perched on an armchair, ostensibly reading a book but really looking at Dylan, who is also allegedly reading a book on the far side of the same couch as me.
His earphones are on, but no way is he not listening to the adults.
Just like me. “Plus, none of us are driving tonight.”
“Or tomorrow,” says Dad.
“What do you mean?”
“The police are going to want to talk to us again, mate. Didn’t they ask you if you were sticking around?”
“Yeah, but—”
“I don’t think they’re going to be happy if we head back to Perth right away.”
“They’ve already interviewed us.”
“Come on, Shippy. We talked to that Officer Peterson—”
“Nicola’s a detective, actually. Nice lady. Do they still have minimum heights for the police?” Shippy asks.
“—for, what, half an hour? Forty-five minutes?”
“I dunno about that.”
Dad takes a sip of his wine. “Does that strike you as sufficient time to come to grips with a murder committed in the middle of nowhere with a house full of suspects?”
My eyes flick to Dylan, who’s watching Dad intently. (Those earphones are connected to nothing.)
Shippy still doesn’t get it. “What do you mean, suspects?”
“Come on, Shippy, you must have watched Midsomer Murders or Broadchurch at some point in the last twenty years?”
I wait for Shippy to fire back, but he just laughs, and the tension between him and Dad disappears like the wine.
“Do we need some more wine?” Shippy puts his empty wineglass down on the coffee table.
“Try the cellar—that’s where the good stuff is,” Dad offers. “Our dad used to stockpile brandy there, and there might even be a few bottles left, unless Gertie’s been hitting it hard. Actually, I’ll come with you.”
“There’s a cellar?” Shippy frowns.
“The wine cellar: It’s just that big cupboard in the hallway.”
“Can I have some?” Dylan asks, ostentatiously pulling off his earphones. (Impossible for my brain not to notice that, despite him not touching his phone, there’s no sound coming from the twin speakers now hanging from his neck.)
“Uh, no,” Dad says, giving him a nice try expression.
“I’m sixteen this year.”
“Exactly.”
“Mum?”
Aunty Bec’s let Dylan have a drink at home before—he’s told me about it—but she shakes her head. “I’ll make some more tea. Ruth? Dylan?”
I nod, more to get her out of the room than because I’m dying for another cup of tea, especially if she’s going to use one of Aunty Vinka’s tea bags, which smell like flowers but taste like hot water that only met flowers at a party once.
“Hey,” I say, scooting closer to Dylan now that the adults are out of the room for at least as long as it’ll take the kettle to boil. “What did the police tell you?”
“Same as you, probably. Mostly they just wanted to know what we did last night and if I heard anything. Mum was there the whole time.”
“Do you know how she died?”
“Hit in the head, right?”
“Yeah, by her old typewriter.”
This is clearly new information to him. Dylan’s eyes don’t go wide or anything, because I’m really not sure that happens outside novels, but his nostrils sort of flare like he’s sucking in a lot of air. “Did the police tell you that?”
“Only because I saw it in her room and asked them about it. Dad wasn’t stoked.”
“Why would anyone kill someone with a typewriter?”
I wait a beat for courage, then ask the question I was too embarrassed to ask the cops. “Could she have done it herself?”
“Bludgeoned herself in the head?” Dylan gives me just the kind of look I was hoping to avoid from the cops. “I don’t see how. Mum told me someone broke in through the window.”
The ladder. I didn’t even think to ask the police about the ladder I’d seen leaning up against GG’s window. Enola would be ashamed.
“Why would anyone break in? It’s not like she was rich.”
Dylan quirks his mouth. “She was kind of rich.”
“Hardly.” I push at the rip in the sofa.
Dylan’s look is pitying. “How much do you think this farm is worth? Mum says she’s got, like, a whole share portfolio as well.”
“Dylan.” It’s Aunty Bec, back with the tea I don’t want. She has that parental trick of finding extra syllables in his name.
“It’s fine B—Aunty Bec,” I say quickly.
She puts the tea down. “Is there anything you two want to ask me about all of this?”
I look at Dylan, trying to gauge if there’s a trap here. His face offers no warning, so I take her at her word.
“Was GG killed by someone who broke into the house?”
Aunty Bec looks alarmed by my question, but, seriously, what did she think I was going to ask about—the location of Grandad’s pudding cups? “That’s what the police seem to think,” she says slowly, stalling.
“Was it a burglar?”
“I don’t think the police know anything yet.”
“But is anything missing? What is there to steal?”
Aunty Bec’s face says she regrets opening this door and would very much like to slam it shut.
“Ruth, I really don’t know. Maybe we should wait for Andy—”
“Did Gertie have, like, a hidden past that would give someone a motive for murdering her?” Dylan asks, and Aunty Bec and I both give him the same look. “Sorry,” he says before his mother can get there. “You did say we could ask anything.”
“I’m not sure I did.”
“Ask anything about what?” Dad is back, a bottle in each hand. Beside him, Shippy is also carrying two, with a third cradled against his body like a newborn. Dad cracks one and pours himself a glass.
“Nothing,” Aunty Bec and I say, super suspiciously.
Dad might not let it go except Aunty Vinka gets home right then and distracts us all.
“Where’s Nick?” Dad asks, opening the front door before she can.
Aunty Vinka takes the wineglass, which was definitely not for her, and flops into an armchair. “It’s a nightmare.”
“Why? He didn’t kill Gertie, did he?” Dad holds up his hands before anyone can say it. “Too soon.”
“Nick’s still in the hospital. Apparently he’s picked up an infection.”
“At the hospital?”
“He’s going to have to stay in for a day or so.”
“He’s having a bad week. Not Gertie bad, but not ideal.”
Aunty Vinka waves her hand in front of her face like she’s dispersing a bad smell.
“Don’t even start, Andy. This one isn’t his fault.
But I’m sure he’ll be fine. I got him some essential oils to complement what the doctors are doing and they seemed to make him calmer.
” It’s a mark of how serious the situation is that Dad doesn’t even touch that.
“Honestly, it was more stressful talking to the police.”
“What did you tell them?”
“Who?” Vinka is clearly distracted.
“The cops.”
“About what?”
“About everything.” Dad holds his arms open. “About what happened last night. About, you know, whodunit.”
“What?” Shippy’s head jerks up.
“Andy.” Aunty Vinka nods at me, and I get that feeling you get right before someone sends you out of the room. Luckily, Mum, who would definitely be telling me to go upstairs right now, isn’t here. (I knew that divorce would come in handy one day.)
“Ruth’s already been interviewed by the police. She knows what they are investigating.” Everyone looks at me, like I’m supposed to say something.
“Yeah, I know GG was killed,” I say, trying to look like this doesn’t thrill me just a little.
I’ve read a lot of murder mysteries (too many, a child psychologist might suggest) and I’ve seen stories about real-life murders in the news (my parents’ fault for making me watch the news with them every night), but the idea that GG has been murdered still doesn’t feel real.
It can’t—otherwise, shouldn’t I be weeping in a ball right now?
“There was a ladder outside the window,” I say. “That must be how they got in.”
“I think it was left out in the garden by the guy who fixed the roof last month,” Aunty Bec offers.
“It’s the typewriter that I don’t get,” Dylan says. “Why hit someone with a typewriter? How would you even be sure it would kill them? You’d have to use so much—”
This time Aunty Vinka actually pokes Dad, right in his side. “Andy,” she says, and I know Dylan has ruined this for me.
“Ruth, your loving aunt makes a fair point. Maybe this is an adult conversation. Why don’t you go and have a shower before dinner or something?”
“I don’t need a shower.”