Chapter 5 #2
“Have a bath, then. There are some fancy bath-salt things in the cabinet.”
I don’t want to go because I know the adults are going to talk about GG and I’m going to miss everything. But if I stay, I’m pretty sure they’re not going to talk about GG at all. It’s all very Catch-22 (a book Dad bought me that I couldn’t finish, although, if he asks, I loved it).
“Is Dylan allowed to stay?”
“That’s up to his mum.”
Aunty Bec shrugs. Well, this is unbelievable.
“Fine.” I slide off the couch and take another cookie.
“I’ll go.” I stomp down the hall to the bathroom, get the bath started, then (obviously) sneak back like I’m six again and trying to catch Santa on Christmas Eve.
I know, I know, eavesdroppers only hear things they don’t want to hear, or however the saying goes, but this is a real-life murder mystery happening in my house, and if Dad thinks some fancy bath salts are going to distract me, he’s kidding himself.
(I do like fancy bath salts, though—he knew what he was doing there.) For once, luck is with me: Apparently, someone’s been redecorating, and the big standing lamp that usually lives in the corner of the hallway on the far side of the stairs has been moved closer to the open kitchen door for no reason I can see.
Under normal circumstances a lamp would offer bugger-all cover (exactly how skinny do you think I am?), but this is one of those boxy, full-length things, and if I crouch, there’s a chance it might hide me if someone decides to come and check on the bath situation.
“…not about fascism. It’s a murder investigation. It takes more than a couple of hours,” Dad is saying. Don’t ask me how they got onto fascism in the thirty seconds I’ve been gone.
“They should be out there, looking for the person who did it,” Shippy says, his words getting sloppy around the edges.
“As far as they’re concerned, we probably did it.” Dad shuts everyone up with that.
“What do you mean? Someone broke in through a window. There was a ladder,” Aunty Bec says.
“Right.” Dad puts a whole lot of weird mustard on that single word, hitting the t with the enthusiasm of Mrs. Labouchere, my choir teacher.
“Why would they think we…anything to do with it?” Shippy asks, his voice muffled (smart money says he’s going back for another drink).
“Great point, Shippy. It’s not as though one of us could possibly have slipped out of the house in the night, propped up the ladder, hit Gertie over the head, and made it back to bed before morning, is it?
” I can tell from Dad’s tone that he’s building to something, preparing to Make His Point.
This is helpful for me because his voice is getting louder.
“I don’t think—”
“I’m sure the police think it’s far more likely that a stranger happened upon this remote farmhouse and decided that, rather than break in at ground level, he was going to break into the window on the top floor for no obvious reason and with no obvious motive, just on the off chance there might be untold riches hidden under the bed. ”
“Andy.”
“Given we’ll inherit now that Gertie’s dead, I’m sure the burglar theory is where the police are going to be focusing their investigation.”
“Are we allowed to be discussing this?” Aunty Vinka says.
But Aunty Bec is talking now. “Hypothetically, I suppose we did all have a motive, but why would any of us need to use a ladder and smash the window?”
“I wouldn’t worry, Bec. You had the least motive out of all of us.”
“What do you mean?”
“Gertie’s biggest asset is this place, and that’s being split between me and Vinka. We went through all this with Dad’s lawyer after he died.”
“Bec didn’t tell you?” Shippy reenters the chat just when I’m starting to think he passed out.
“Shippy.”
“Bec, what is he talking about?”
“Gertie told Bec she…getting an equal share,” Shippy says.
“What?”
“Didn’t she?”
“You…tell them?”
“Mum, what’s he talking about?”
“Bec?”
“Should we be talking about this?”
Are you following this? Me neither. I should at least be able to tell who’s saying what, because I know everyone’s voices, but, honestly, I kind of tune out while trying to digest what Shippy’s just said: I definitely heard the words equal share, which would mean…
well, what would it mean? I should probably be listening if I want to find out.
I tune back in when Aunty Bec starts talking and everyone else shuts up for two seconds.
“Gertie and I had a talk,” Aunty Bec says. “She told me that now that I’m part of the family, she changed her will to split the estate evenly. She told me it’s what, uh, your dad. Our dad. What he would have wanted.”
Gertie changed her will just before she died? This is a big deal. I don’t really believe in using exclamation points ever since my English teacher once told me it was like laughing at your own joke (turns out she was quoting someone else), but if I did I’d be using them here! Like this!
“That’s great,” Aunty Vinka says, too late to pass off as a spontaneous reaction. “You should get an equal share, Bec. Just because you’re a half sibling doesn’t mean anything.”
“Of course you should,” Dad says quickly, probably annoyed he didn’t get to say it first. “I’m just confused about why Gertie didn’t tell us. Or why you didn’t tell us.”
“I was going to. I didn’t realize it would be an issue quite so quickly.”
“That’s great,” Aunty Vinka says again, too loudly. “It’s not like any of us would ever challenge the will anyway.” The words challenge the will do a lap of the room.
“Did you tell the police about the will?” Dad asks.
“No, I didn’t think about it. Why?”
There’s another silence, and if these guys don’t stop it with the awkward silences and the long, uncomfortable pauses, my bath is going to flood the entire house and I won’t be held responsible.
At the same time, I get it. I mean: Would you want to be the one who points out to Aunty Bec that the police need to know that she’s just added herself to the list of people who had a motive to kill GG?
“Where are you going?”
“I need some water. Anyone else?”
At some point in my adventures in eavesdropping I’ve crept out from behind the lamp so I’m nearly standing in the kitchen door.
Hearing Dad’s footsteps, I have just enough time to spring back behind the lamp before he comes into the kitchen.
I should go. But if I leave now, I’ll never know what else the adults are thinking.
Dylan could surely be persuaded to tell me later, but he’ll miss the nuance.
Dad won’t tell me anything; he’d be happy if I believed GG was just taking an extended nap.
The fridge door opens with the suuuuck noise it always makes.
“Did Gertie take her meds last night?” Dad calls through to the living room.
“No, remember it was a whole thing,” Aunty Bec shouts back.
“Did she change her mind, though?”
“Why?”
“There’s some missing.”
More footsteps. I’m tempted to shut my eyes, which is ridiculous, because I’m not a four-year-old playing hide-and-seek.
“Two doses are missing,” Dad says.
“Are you sure?” Aunty Bec asks.
“The packet hadn’t been opened last night. Now there’s two gone.”
“So I guess she took her meds after all?” That’s Aunty Vinka, who doesn’t sound bothered. I’m inclined to agree with her. It’s not going to make a difference to Gertie now whether she did or didn’t take her medicine.
“She’s only supposed to take one of these a night, so even if she did, where’s the other one gone?”
“One?” Aunty Vinka says sharply. “I’m sure it was two.”
“I see where you’re going, Andy, but Gertie didn’t die of a drug overdose,” Aunty Bec says.
“It just doesn’t make sense.”
“I think we should leave it to the police,” Aunty Bec says, “and forget this whole Poirot-in-the-drawing-room performance.”
“What?”
“Poirot. You know how at the end of every book the detective gathers all the suspects together and does the big reveal? Isn’t that what you’re aiming for, Andy?
” I never knew Aunty Bec was a Christie fan too.
Maybe everyone is secretly a sucker for books in which a seemingly inexplicable murder is solved by a smug know-it-all detective at the end. (I really hope you are.)
“I don’t think I could pull off a mustache.”
“I’ll say,” Aunty Vinka chimes in.
“You know what I mean, though,” Aunty Bec continues. “This playing-detective stuff. It’s going to be a long few days if we’re all sitting around here accusing one another of murder.”
Spoiler #1: It’s going to be a long few days either way.
Spoiler #2: I get to the bath before it overflows, but I won’t be so lucky next time.