Epilogue
brIDGET
Now that everyone is dead, I pick my way through the bodies.
I can’t say what woke me. Was it an explosion or just a slamming door?
To be honest, it’s difficult to know anything with any certainty.
The pain in my head is all-conquering. It feels as if I’ve spent the last day hooked up to a whisky drip and the hangover has just kicked in.
I stumble from my room and along the corridor, clutching railing after railing to stop myself falling with the movement of the ship.
On the stairs above, I spot that unique shade of red in a great long splash up the wall. There’s just enough blood to tell me everything I need to know; more people have died.
I remember now. Flashes of panic and anger come back to me and, a few moments later, I find the first body on the main deck.
Following handprints and dirty red smudges, I make my way towards the back of the boat where a woman lies motionless.
There are cuts all over her arms, but she’s clearly fallen from one of the balconies above.
Maybe the sound of her body smashing against the floor above my cabin is what brought me here.
A half-formed question of whether someone pushed her is quickly resolved as I look at the awkward position in which she landed.
She’s on her back, her legs twisted, and her arms stretched wide.
Surely she’d be face down if she’d jumped.
It could have been an accident but, given the circumstances, I truly doubt it.
Her face is pointed away from me, but I recognise who it is from her neat, unexciting clothes.
Poor Clara, I say to myself. What could she possibly have done to deserve to die like that?
I suddenly realise that I need a weapon, which isn’t that easy to find on the deck of a fancy yacht. It’s almost minimalist and, short of standing beside an immensely heavy chain and hoping the killer will submit to being knocked out with it, there isn’t much at hand.
The fog in my head has, if not cleared, then at least parted for a moment. I remember that there are bedrooms along the walkway on this side of the ship, so I move to try the various doors.
The first I come to is a storage cupboard with nothing for me except an unwieldy mop.
But I keep on. I persist. I won’t give up.
The wooden path curves around, and I find what I need.
The door slides open a little too easily, and I stumble into a musty room and onto the bed.
I push myself off the surprisingly hard lump under the covers, but I won’t peek to see who’s lying there. I really don’t want to know.
The cabin is similar to my own, so I get to my feet to rifle through a chest of drawers on the off-chance one of my friends has brought a handy hunting knife or perhaps a small gun.
Boxer shorts and T-shirts aren’t going to help much, and I’m about to give up and try another room when I spot the bedside lamps.
They’re shaped like candlesticks, as they are in every bedroom.
I grab the closest one and, with the shade removed and the cable detached, the metal body will just about do the job.
Back outside, I feel like every stupid hero in every stupid action movie I’ve ever mocked. I’m aware how ridiculous it is to even consider fighting a killer with half a lamp, but my friends are dead, and I have no desire to be next.
I hold the makeshift weapon in both hands and slowly mount the stairs to the bridge deck. My footsteps sound louder than at any moment in my life, and the wood beneath me creaks like it wants to let the killer know exactly where I am.
Just as I stop at the top to look around – just as I notice a knife on the floor and two definite pools of blood – a perfect shiver races through me.
I hear a sudden intake of breath, and a voice behind me says, “I didn’t do it. I promise it wasn’t me.”
I turn to see Ade sitting on a bench beside the door to the bridge. The captain has a firm hand on his shoulder, as if they’re playing cops and robbers.
“Bridget, you have to trust me,” my friend begs. “You know I’d never hurt anyone.”
But I don’t know anything anymore. To be honest, I’m struggling to make sense of the scene before me. The one clear thought in my mind – the one idea that I can hold on to with any certainty – is that I might finally have found a story worth writing.
*
If you were gripped by the deadly secrets aboard the Tanis and love a brilliantly plotted mystery, you’ll adore Benedict Brown’s Marius Quin mysteries.
Step back to the glamorous 1920s in Murder at Everham Hall, where champagne flows, fireworks dazzle, and a film star ends up with three bullets through his head.
Get it here, or read on for an exclusive extract!