Henry suspects he is looking at it from a slightly different perspective than the others. He looks at his wife, seated a short distance away, and allows his gaze to rest on her. He doesn’t doubt that David killed his wife. Because he can understand it. He can understand the impulse to want to kill your wife. To just want to end things, and to be able to move on, without all the carping. He would like to reach over to the hearth and grab the iron poker – it’s an arm’s length away – and strike his unsuspecting wife over the head with it. He knows just how it would feel, how the poker would feel in his hand, because he’s been tending the fire occasionally. He imagines leaning down as if to poke the flames, then changing course and turning suddenly, raising his arm and bringing the poker down as fast and as hard as he can and spilling her brains. Would she look up in time to realize what he was doing? What would her face look like? He would have to make the first blow count. He wonders if a poker would do it, if it would be heavy enough. Would he have enough force in his arm? How many times would he have to hit her, to be sure? Perhaps something heavier …
Henry realizes he’s clenching his hands into fists underneath the blanket. He blinks his eyes rapidly, as if to dispel the fantasy, which has run away with him. Of course he wouldn’t do that. Even if there was no one here watching, he still wouldn’t do it. Thoughts are not actions. They aren’t the same thing at all. But he can understand the impulse. So he has no difficulty believing that David might have murdered his wife.
He catches his own wife staring back at him in the dark. For a moment, he wonders nervously if she can read his thoughts.
But then he has a thought, and before he fully considers it he voices it out loud. ‘Maybe Candice knew David. Maybe she was writing a book about him.’ He leans towards David. ‘You say the case was in all the papers.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ David says dismissively.
‘Is it? Maybe she knew something about the case and was going to put it in a book, and you found out she was going to be here and you came up here to put a stop to it.’
‘That’s nonsense!’ Gwen says indignantly. ‘Then how do you explain Dana’s death? Why on earth would he kill her? That’s ridiculous.’
‘No, it isn’t. Because here’s my theory: Matthew argued with Dana and pushed her down the stairs. David killed Candice because she was writing an exposé about him. The two are unconnected – pure coincidence.’
‘Who do you think you are?’ Beverly snipes. ‘Hercule Poirot?’
Henry gives his wife a dirty glance.
Lauren says slowly, ‘I did notice Candice staring at David at dinner last night. She was paying attention to Matthew and Dana, and David – nobody else. You had your back to her, David, but she was definitely staring at you.’
‘Maybe it’s time for another drink?’ Ian says into the charged silence that follows.
When Bradley doesn’t move from his seat, Ian gets up and pulls the bar trolley closer himself. It’s hard to see in the dim light. He picks up the oil lamp from the coffee table and holds it aloft over the trolley. ‘There’s still plenty here,’ he says.
Ian pours and hands out the drinks, sits down again in his place nestled next to Lauren, and says thoughtfully, ‘I have a story to tell, too. It’s not much, really. No dark secrets. I haven’t been accused of murdering anyone. I’ve never been arrested. I’ve never been to a war zone and seen people slaughtered. I had a pretty normal childhood growing up in Iowa with two parents and my brothers.’ He goes quiet for a moment. ‘Except – when I was thirteen, my younger brother died. He was ten. That was tough.’
Gwen asks, ‘What happened?’
‘He drowned. In a local pond.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Gwen says.
He nods, and looks down at the drink in his hand. ‘My mother was beside herself. He’d gone to the pond by himself. He wasn’t allowed to go on his own, but the rest of us were all off doing something else, and he went anyway. He was like that. Wilful, hard to manage. Didn’t do what he was told – always did what he wanted, to hell with the consequences. When he didn’t turn up for supper, we went looking for him. It wasn’t that unusual, we were always coming home late for supper.’ He hesitates a moment, takes a gulp of his drink, then says, ‘I was the one who found him.’
Lauren reaches out and takes his hand, pulls it into her lap. He’d already told her this.
‘My parents never really got over it. It pretty much shattered them. So I guess that’s a blip in my otherwise normal childhood.’
‘That’s tragic,’ Riley says, with genuine sympathy.
‘It was a long time ago,’ Ian says, and reaches for his drink.
David is observing Ian carefully. He’s been observing all of them, while trying to appear as if he isn’t. There was something about the way Ian told the story about his brother that bothers him.
David’s used to interviewing clients who are pretty damned good at lying. Usually he can tell. The way the eyes drift up and to the left. The hesitations. The fleeting facial expressions. There’s just enough light from the oil lamp to see Ian’s face. And if he’d been asked to give an opinion on whether Ian was telling the truth about his brother, he would have said no.
He knows it’s not always possible to tell if someone’s lying. He’s been proven wrong before. And he’s tired, stressed, and the circumstances are highly unusual – for all of them. But something about Ian just now – a man he has so far found to be warm, open, and uncomplicated – has put him on notice.
Chapter Twenty-five
THERE’S A STRANGE, compelling sort of intimacy in this room, with the oil lamp flickering and the fire crackling, all of them sitting around together wrapped in blankets because they’re afraid to go to their rooms. It’s seductive.
But Lauren says quietly, ‘I’m afraid I don’t have any dark secrets either.’
That’s not exactly true. She has survived a dysfunctional family and an awful, short-lived stint in a foster home, but she has survived. She has made something of herself. She doesn’t have to share that with anyone if she doesn’t want to. ‘Of course there have been some things in my life that have been difficult, which I won’t share with you. Family problems, the usual. I don’t think anybody comes out of a family unscathed.’ She smiles wanly. ‘But I certainly haven’t got anything to hide.’
‘Nothing?’ Riley prods.
Lauren studies Riley, who is looking at her as if she doesn’t believe her. Riley seems to have something against her. Fair enough. Lauren was a bit hard on her a little while ago. She pretty much told her she thought there was something seriously wrong with her. At least now they know what it is, and why. Still, she’s not going to take any shit from Riley.
‘Why is that so hard to believe?’ Lauren asks her point-blank.
Riley shrugs, looks away.
Lauren decides to let it go.
But Henry asks, ‘Then what’s with the sleeping pills?’
Lauren is taken aback. ‘I have trouble sleeping. I always have. So I take sleeping pills.’
‘It’s true,’ Ian says, nodding beside her.
Then, surprisingly, Riley turns to Gwen and says, ‘If it’s true confession time, why don’t you tell everyone your deep dark secret?’
Startled, Lauren watches Gwen give Riley a hard look. But Riley has drunk down her glass of wine very quickly and seems to be shedding her inhibitions and possibly her good sense. She’s a sloppy drunk, Lauren’s noticed. She’s suddenly very curious about what’s going to happen next. She wonders what Riley has on Gwen. She’d like to know.
‘Piss off, Riley,’ Gwen says.
Her heart is fluttering anxiously. She doesn’t want to be put on the spot. Gwen doesn’t want to share her past with anyone. She doesn’t want to spill it all in front of this group of strangers. Not in front of David. Definitely not like this.
But she wonders how it would feel to unburden herself, to confess to someone other than Riley. Perhaps it would be liberating, perhaps she would be able to forgive herself then. Riley would no longer have this hold over her. Maybe they would no longer be friends.
She looks across at David, his handsome face inscrutable. She wants to tell him; she wants to see how he’ll react. She looks at him and doesn’t even know what kind of man she’s looking at. He could be a man who killed his wife – with sufficient presence of mind to successfully cover his tracks. Henry suggested that he might have killed Candice. She doesn’t know. She wishes they had never come here to this horrible, godforsaken place, wishes she had never met David, who has her in turmoil, or any of these other people, either.
‘Are you okay?’ David asks her.