13. Til Death Do Us Part
thirteen
Til Death Do Us Part
Any notions I might have nurtured about Franny Driscoll being the Paragon murderer disappear the instant I see her.
“That’s Franny?” I ask, pointing to what could be the smallest woman I’ve ever seen.
“Yep, that’s her,” Trystan says, bobbing up onto the balls of his feet.
The housekeeper is, in every sense of the word, petite.
She stands at approximately four foot nothing, has the equivalent body fat of a praying mantis, and I would hazard a guess at her age being anywhere from late sixties to centenarian.
She has the type of leathery white skin that hints at a lifetime spent outdoors, or with a cigarette against her lips. Or both, maybe.
I wouldn’t exactly describe her as frail. I bet she could stand up for herself in a pub brawl, but there’s no way in the seven hells she killed all those people and then carried or dragged their bodies to various other locations.
“When you were alive, how much did you weigh?” I ask Trystan, not taking my eyes off Fran.
She’s doing some kind of inventory check in the cleaning supplies cupboard. Peering around bottles, tapping the end of her biro against her mouth, humming to herself, and occasionally jotting something down on her clipboard.
“About thirteen and a half stone. Or a hundred and ninety pounds in the USA. Why?”
I don’t immediately answer him. “How much do you think Franny weighs?”
“Ohh,” Trystan says, cogs clicking into place. “She didn’t kill me, did she?”
“Not physically.” We follow Franny through the cleaning store to a different stockroom.
Here there are hotel branded notepads, pens, and lanyards, as well as a whole heap of printed stationery and papers.
“But I’m not ruling her out until we can categorically disprove any interest or motives.
She could have paid another person, or several people, to off you all.
I just need to figure out why. Why would she want Peter, Jeanie, Pixie, you, Stove, Camille, me, and a fifteen-year-old boy dead? ”
“Someone say my name?” Peter says, floating through the wall of the stationery room and coming to a stop beside Trystan and me.
He looks at Franny scribbling on her clipboard with mild curiosity.
Today, Peter has a purple silk pocket square peeking out from the left breast of his waistcoat. I’m sure that wasn’t there yesterday.
“This bloody thing.” He pulls on the handkerchief, and pulls and pulls.
Purple turns to orange, then to green, yellow, pink, blue, polka dot, silver, until the stream finally ends and a rainbow molehill lies at our feet.
“The trouble with dying mid gig is that I have this crap on me for all eternity.”
Pete plunges his hand into his trouser pocket and draws out a black and white wand.
He throws it to the ground. From his cape sleeve he dislodges a bunch of primary-coloured polyester flowers.
From the other pocket, a deck of cards, which on closer inspection are all printed with either the two of clubs or the queen of hearts, some red foam balls, a dummy gold key, and a handful of uninflated balloon animal balloons.
He tosses the rest of the items onto the pile.
“It never stays where I leave it, unfortunately.” Peter pushes the mound to one side with one of his shiny black ’80s loafers. “Doesn’t matter. I could throw it off the edge of Enys Marow, I could bury it, I could set it on fire, and it would still find its way back to my person.”
I think of Helga’s list of deceased that keeps wiping itself clean of my scribblings.
“Luckily for me, it’s all stuff in my pockets. Stove and Josh weren’t so fortunate. They’ll wake up with a microphone or a mobile phone in their hands every day.”
“Yes, that would be annoying,” I agree.
“Good morning, my lovelies,” Jeanie says, passing through the wall as Peter had done just moments ago. “What are you all doing cramped up in this cupboard?”
Pixie piles in next, using the open door. Then Camille.
“We’re . . . uh . . . trying to determine whether Franny Driscoll is a legitimate suspect,” I say, glancing around at the others. No Josh, but I guess even dead teenagers like lie-ins.
“Gary doesn’t think it was her,” Trystan announces.
I shake my head. “Never say no. Impossible things have happened and motives can be . . . bizarre at best, but what’s bugging me about this entire thing is why is she still here?
Why stay at the hotel for forty years killing apparently random people?
But she’s obviously not doing the dirty deeds herself.
If I can find a link between all of us, perhaps I can find a motive, but at the moment it seems strange to me that this tiny and seemingly harmless woman would want us all out of the picture. ”
“Idea,” Camille says, raising a hand. “Gary and I are both from ExorSquad. Maybe she killed us because she doesn’t want everyone to find out that ghosts are real. Maybe she doesn’t want us exposing the secrets?”
I find it a difficult notion to grasp, not least because where do all the other victims fit in? Why kill them too?
Camille obviously reads the hesitation on my face because they add, “Maybe it’s because she wants the ghosts to stay. Maybe she doesn’t want us to get exorcised.” They raise their hands and eyebrows in a “what do you reckon?” type of way.
“If that was the case . . .” I run my fingers through my moustache. “Surely she would have killed Helga instead.”
Peter flinches at his wife’s name.
“Helga hired ExorSquad. She’s the one gunning for our removal. It’s a great suggestion,” I say, and Camille preens. “But I don’t think there’s enough motive to kill everyone else.”
A thought pops into my head, but I’m not sure how to express it.
“Um . . . so I have been thinking—by myself, I guess I didn’t sleep so well last night—but I’ve been thinking about unfinished business.”
A few of the ghosts share looks with each other, but no one says anything.
“I’m wondering if there’s any chance that solving all your murders will .
. . finish your unfinished business, and I think it’s only fair that, if it is the case, you ought to decide for yourselves whether to listen to my verdict and how involved you all want to get with this investigation.
In case you perhaps hear something you aren’t prepared for, and just . . . pop off to the after-afterlife.”
Jeanie adjusts her sleep mask on her forehead. “Thank you, darling. That’s very considerate of you, but I am more than ready for those consequences.”
“Me too,” Pixie says, squeezing in between Jeanie and Camille.
Stove, who I hadn’t noticed floating into the stockroom too, nods. “I want off this ship.”
I spare a glance in Trystan’s direction, but he’s not looking at anyone. Instead, he’s twiddling a clump of his hair and staring down at the floor.
“Pfft,” Camille says. “It’s just a load of wank.
Unfinished business is . . . not a thing.
In my humble opinion, though, I am something of a spirit expert.
I enjoy being a ghost. I don’t want to leave this existence yet, but I also think the chances of that happening are .
. . slim to none.” Camille cups the side of their mouth and stage whispers to me. “Unfinished business is not a thing.”
“Of course it’s a thing,” Jeanie assures us, rolling her eyes. “Just look at Saul and Jason. If they had unfinished business, they’d still be ghosts. One day they were here, the next, gone.”
“I was told Jason died at the lighthouse,” Camille says. “So the Old Scares may have got to him.”
Peter’s nodding along. “Jason Barlby never stood a chance. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Old Scares were the ones who killed him in the first place. Saul too.”
“By killed, do you mean killed-killed or ghost-killed?” I ask.
He shrugs casually. “Both.”
“What about you, Peter? Do you believe in unfinished business? Are you worried about getting sucked into the after-afterlife, or are you cool with it all?” I say. My eyes keep drifting back to Trystan, who’s determinedly not looking at me.
“Oh, yeah. Unfinished business is absolutely a thing, but I’m not concerned,” he says.
Over his shoulder Pixie whispers something to Jeanie. I can’t be one hundred percent certain, but by the way her lips move, I figure she says, “Here we go again.”
Peter continues. “No, not worried.” He shakes his head and holds his arms out Jesus?style, and in that moment it dawns on me just how much he embodies his ex-career.
He is the ’80s magician. I have the absurd urge to laugh, but I swallow it down and listen to the rest of his words.
“One, because I already know who killed me, and two, I can categorically say with unwavering certainty that solving that riddle for everyone else is not my unfinished business.”
“What is your unfinished business, then?” I ask.
“That . . .” He swishes his cape, causing Pixie to turn her head to the side, hiding her eye roll. “Is for me to know and for you to find out.”
“Good job finding stuff out is my jam,” I say, and then even though I know what his answer will be, and everyone else knows what his answer will be, I ask, “So, who killed you, then? And is it the same person who killed all the others?”
As predicted, Pixie and Jeanie both heave out weary sighs. Camille, although only dead for a few months, gives me a look that screams, “Why?” Trystan still seems to be midway through his spiral-sandwich. Only Stove bears the slightest hint of enjoying this.
“It was her,” Peter says with finality.
I raise my brows. “A name would be nice.”
He glances at me like I’ve lost my mind, and gestures through the wall to what I assume—going by my mental map of the hotel—is Helga’s office.
“My ‘darling’ wife. Till death do us part. Or whatever.”