13. Til Death Do Us Part #2
Okay, he’s not wrong. Helga had indeed been the person to drive the sword through Peter’s heart, thusly making her his killer.
I scramble through my memories of Helga’s recollection.
She had said she’d felt no resistance, that the weapon was a trick weapon, and it felt as though it was sliding through air. She could of course have been lying.
I humour him. “Why, though? What was her motive?”
Pixie groans and flops to the ground, her face buried in the crooks of her elbows. I suppress my laughter.
“Apparently promises mean nothing to her. Apparently our love has only ever been one?sided. She got what she wanted from our relationship.”
I don’t want to ask what that was, everybody else doesn’t want me to ask, and I already know I won’t believe Peter, but I ask anyway. “Which was?”
“A ticket into the country. Leave her old, shitty life behind for the glitz and glamour of being my assistant.”
“But she’s Swedish?”
The UK joined the European Union in ’73 and Sweden not until the mid ’90s, but something about a green card motive feels all wrong.
And why, if she loved the “glitz and glamour,” would she murder the headline act?
The one person making that particular lifestyle possible.
I could perhaps get behind the reasoning if she’d taken over from Peter as the star magician.
Instead, she took a job here as a room attendant.
Why go from semi-stardom to scrubbing toilets and changing sheets?
I feel as though Peter’s unrequited love theory might be entirely inside his head, but I guess he’s had over forty years to mull it over. Forty years to bolster a lie he’s been telling himself, all to make himself feel better.
Is it easier to believe someone killed you deliberately or accidentally?
I have no doubt Helga was the one who physically ended his life.
There were plenty of eye witnesses, in fact an entire auditorium of them, to back up that theory.
Yet, from my years of figuring shit out, I just know there’s more to the story than is being told.
Either it wasn’t the sword that killed Peter—perhaps something else inside the trick box may have been triggered when the lid was closed, or someone else had tampered with the illusion’s equipment prior to the show—or Helga’s lying.
Maybe she did murder her husband, and the motive was . . . the motive was . . .
The motive is something I’ll figure out in due course. If there is one.
One question remains to be answered, though. “Do you think Helga killed everyone else as well?”
The question’s directed at Peter, but Jeanie answers. “No, she didn’t. That woman has been a godsend to this hotel, its reputation, and its bottom line. Guests love her. She’s really turned this place around since she’s been general manager.”
“Doesn’t mean she didn’t kill us all, though,” Stove says, his gaze flicking between Peter and Jeanie, a smile ghosting his features.
“Maybe she’s addicted to the thrill, the buzz of ending a life.
Look at the time span between each murder.
There’s nine years between Pete and Pix, and then Elsie and Cam were maybe one and a half years apart, and between Cam and Gaz is only about .
. . what, ten months? Eleven? If this pattern continues, it’ll be six months before she needs her next fix. ”
Pixie scowls, but says nothing.
“What?” Stove says. I know by the smirk on his face he’s deliberately saying the opposite of what most of his fellow ghosts believe.
He probably doesn’t even believe it himself, just playing devil’s advocate.
And by that I mean he’s being a facetious, antagonistic cunt.
“We’re all thinking it. We listened to ‘The Villain of Parlay.’ We know that someone can become an adrenaline junkie from killing. ”
“The Villain of Parlay” was one of the first episodes of Unalive on Air I recorded.
It was about a theatre tech who accidentally killed an actor backstage at the Parlay Theatre in Salisbury.
He then developed a hard-on for murder, and went on to repeat the process several times.
The length of time between each attack grew shorter and shorter, and in the end he was discovered only because his increasing insatiability made him sloppy.
It’s flattering that Stove would cite my own work to me to prove a point, and there’s a non-zero chance he could be on the money here, that Helga is indeed addicted to taking lives, but somehow it just doesn’t feel right.
I don’t say any of this out loud. Least of all because I spent my entire time at Swindon Sounds vociferously declaring that “feels” have no place in a murder investigation, but also because I don’t want to accidentally solve the case and have half the ghosts suddenly disappear on me.
I only have a handful of people I can converse with now, and as hard as I tried never to speak to anyone when I was alive, I’d rather not whittle down my options to myself, the magician, the teenager, the edgelord, and Magnus, who I’ve yet to meet.
It’s not even as though I can talk to a mirror any more.
“Give Gaz enough time, and he’ll prove my theory about Hels,” Stove says. He looks at me. “Just don’t take any longer than six months, or you might not be the new kid on the block by then.”
“Please don’t call me Gaz,” I say. “I really hated that name in school, and I’d prefer not to be called it in my afterlife too.”
“Sure thing,” he replies, and then under his breath I’m certain he says, “Gazzy-boy.”
I pretend I can’t hear him, because it’s just easier that way, and I address the group instead.
“So, everyone here either doesn’t believe in unfinished business, knows their unfinished business is something else entirely, or is willing to take the risk of being vaporised into the next realm by finding out whodunnit? ”
“Yeps” and nods fill the space, and it’s only now that I realise Franny had left a while ago and us ghosts are crammed into the tiny storage cupboard for no reason.
I leave in order to find her, and the other spirits follow behind me. Peter abandons his anthill of magical items on the floor. “Okay, well, if you’re all cool with . . . that, I’ll continue my investigation.”
“Excellent!” Jeanie claps her hands together.
“Franny’ll be in her office now if you’re looking for her,” Trystan says.
I smile at him, but he’s playing with the button on his Hawaiian shirt. “Thanks.”
“No, thank you for . . .” he whispers, not bothering to finish his sentence. Finally, he meets my eyes and gives me this half-nod, half?grimace gesture. “It’s just through this wall.” And then he disappears.