A high double bed with a curved headboard nestled against the opposite wall; its sheets and blankets were rumpled, scattered with ornately embroidered cushions. Clothing was strewn over the furniture, and books were piled everywhere, but something in my peripheral vision made me turn slowly, and I found myself gazing at row upon row of eerie faces, all staring unblinkingly back at me.
They were like dolls, but animals. Furry heads with colored-glass eyes, their necks disappearing into the collars of waistcoats and ball gowns. A fox, a leopard, a badger, a walrus—there must have been two dozen of them at least, and every single one made the hairs on my arms stand on end. How did Nina sleep with all these unearthly creatures watching her?
“My dad brings them back for me,” Nina said casually, “when he goes traveling. He goes diving sometimes, or climbing mountains. When I’m older, I’m going to go with him.”
I turned my back on the nightmarish faces. “What about your mum?” I wasn’t sure myself whether I was asking if she went on her own travels or if she went with him.
Nina shrugged. “She’d rather stay here. She says it’s a precious gift, this house. She doesn’t like to go away even for one night.”
“Huh.” I strolled from one of the four tall, arched windows to the next, pretending to admire the views of fields and drainage channels and the walled back garden. Really, I was buying time, puzzling through my feelings about this strange house and the intriguing, lonely-seeming girl behind me. No school friends, an overprotective mother, a sometimes-absent father—I could see why she might want a companion.
“Beth?”
I swung around. “Yes?”
“Do you believe in fate?”
I frowned, thinking of my parents and my brother; thinking of the lorry that had just happened to be crossing the junction when they shot through the red light.
“No,” I said shortly.
But Nina scrambled up from her bed and came to stand directly in front of me, and she caught hold of one of my hands.
“I do. Mum says everything happens for a reason, and I think you came into our lives for a reason. I really do think we’re going to be best friends.”
I couldn’t help but return her smile. “Yeah, well, that sounds good to me.” I glanced at the alarm clock on her bedside table. “But, um—can I have a bath before dinner? I feel a bit . . .” I picked up a lank strand of hair and dropped it again.
Nina laughed. “I’ll show you where your bathroom is.”
I followed her back down the spiral staircase with a cautious, unfamiliar sense of optimism unfurling inside me. Perhaps it was true—perhaps Nina and I might end up being best friends after all.
Sadie
January 2019
Wendy is as good as her word, and the Raven Hall invitation is delivered to Sadie’s flat the next day, along with an incredibly chic old-fashioned suitcase with Sadie Langton printed on the luggage label. Sadie studies the front of the heavily embossed card: You are cordially invited to play a Game at Raven Hall. She flips it over to read the details: Chauffeur to collect you 5:00 p.m. Drinks in the drawing room from 7:00 p.m. Dinner and the Game to commence 7:30 p.m. in the dining hall. Beneath this is a handwritten line in looping blue ink: Thank you so much for agreeing to join us—it will be a weekend to remember!
Sadie carries the case through to her tiny sitting room, and she blinks around, looking for a clear surface to lay it down on. The coffee table is covered in paperwork—lists of auditions, bank statements, budget plans, job adverts, a half-written letter . . . She plucks a couple of empty mugs out of the way and sets the suitcase on top of the layers of paper.
She’s hoping the case contains clothes, and she’s not disappointed. There’s a choice of three vintage evening dresses, each in a different shade of cream or off-white, for the dinner on the Saturday night. A cream woolen skirt suit and a blouse, for wearing at breakfast on the Sunday morning. Two pairs of ivory shoes, one with high heels, the other low. A string of lustrous pearls in a velvet-lined box. A silver brooch shaped like a bird in flight. And, to top it all off, a beautiful white faux-fur coat. She examines each item in turn before laying them out on the sofa behind her.
Underneath all that is a folder of instructions, which begins with a character description for Sadie’s part in the game. She will be Miss Lamb, “newly arrived in the area and seeking employment at Raven Hall.” The mystery central to the game won’t be revealed until the guests sit down to dinner, the folder tells her. Miss Lamb’s preliminary alibi is enclosed in a separate envelope, but Sadie is instructed not to open this envelope until after she’s arrived at Raven Hall, just before she goes down to the drawing room for the predinner drinks.
Sadie hesitates. She’s never been good at obeying rules, and this tendency has lost her two jobs in the past year alone, and on each occasion, she vowed to herself that she would turn over a new leaf. A memory of her mother’s pained expression flashes into her mind—“Not again, Sadie. What did you do this time?”
Reluctantly, Sadie sets the alibi envelope to one side. She still feels perfectly justified in what she did, as it happens. She’d hated pestering her customers at the department store to take out the store’s credit card, and her refusal to try to improve her take-up figures led to sharp words in the manager’s office, followed eventually by her being told not to bother coming back. And then, the corner-shop job—all that expired food she was supposed to throw into the bins when there was nothing really wrong with it . . . When the owner realized she was leaving some of it out by the back door for hard-up locals to help themselves to, she was instantly fired.
Sadie sighs.
But on the other hand, this murder mystery weekend isn’t an ordinary, rule-bound job, is it? At its heart, it’s just a game, and she’s pretty sure the other guests will cheat too . . .
She squeezes her eyes shut in a silent apology to her mother, and then she snatches up the envelope and tears it open.
A small square card informs her: Miss Lamb, you spent the morning alone in your bedroom, writing letters. You took a walk around the garden with Colonel Otter before lunch. At some point between two and three o’clock in the afternoon, you visited Lord Nightingale in his study. You can’t remember the exact time, but you were in there for less than five minutes.
Sadie smiles to herself. This is going to be fun.
She tries on each of the dresses in turn, twirling in front of the full-length mirror by her front door to assess their fit. Most of Sadie’s own clothes are secondhand—she loves hunting down bargains in charity shops—so she has an idea of what these vintage items might be worth, and she feels flattered to be trusted with them. They’re all beautiful, but the ivory silk dress is the best; it’s so smooth against her skin, she could close her eyes and forget she’s wearing it. The pearl necklace adds the final touch of sophistication. Rather more upmarket than the mermaid costume, she thinks wryly.