An Unwanted Guest(19)

They reach the room and Riley closes the door behind her. Gwen looks up at her warily, waiting for her to say something. When she doesn’t, Gwen reaches for some clothes from her overnight bag. She would like a shower, but that seems out of the question. The water will be freezing.

‘There’s something I need to say,’ Riley says at last, her voice serious, as she pulls a top on over her head and flips her long hair over her shoulders.

Here it comes, Gwen thinks.

‘That attorney, David Paley.’

‘What about him?’ Gwen’s voice comes out more sharply than she intended.

‘Did you sleep with him?’

‘Actually, yes, I did.’ She turns and glares at Riley. ‘Why, is that a problem? I’m a grown-up. I don’t recall ever having a problem with any of your flings.’ She zips up her jeans with an angry snap, and reaches for a thick sweater. She adds, ‘God knows there were enough of them.’

‘But you don’t know anything about him.’

‘Yes I do. He’s David Paley, a defence attorney from New York City. And a very nice man.’ She can’t help adding, ‘And we’re good together.’

‘Gwen, sit down for a minute,’ Riley says, sitting down on her bed.

Gwen slumps down tiredly on the bed across from Riley and starts pulling on warm socks. She refuses to look at her, to show that she is listening. She doesn’t want to listen. Riley should mind her own business. How quickly things have changed this weekend. She was supposed to be taking care of Riley, but somehow Riley is trying to re-establish herself in the role of her protector. Gwen doesn’t like it.

‘I don’t know what it is, but something about him is bothering me,’ Riley says, clearly tense.

Gwen looks up at her and says, in a voice that shows she means it, ‘Riley – I don’t want to hear it.’

Riley bites her tongue and finishes getting dressed in silence.

David returns to his room briefly to dress. His mind is racing. So much has happened in such a short time. Meeting Gwen. Now this awful accident. That looks like it might not be an accident.

He’s learned to trust his instincts after all these years as a criminal lawyer. And he knows it’s not actually that easy to die from a fall down a flight of stairs. Unless the neck is broken. And he’s pretty sure Dana’s neck was not broken. He thinks the cause of death was the blow to the head. And to die from a blow to the head from falling down the stairs, you have to fall in a particular way. You have to strike your head hard against the newel post, for instance. But it seems to him that she struck her head hard against the edge of the bottom step in a peculiar way.

It doesn’t look like an accident at all. It looks to him like murder.

Matthew, simply as the dead woman’s fiancé, is the most obvious suspect. David considers Matthew’s reaction. Either it was completely genuine, or Matthew is a very good actor. David knows better than to underestimate anyone. He knows that people are complicated; life is complicated.

His own life is complicated. He’d intended to stay away from Gwen once he learned that her friend Riley had been a journalist with the New York Times. He didn’t need the trouble. But then she’d sought him out in the library – and it was the most pleasant evening he’s spent in years. It seemed so natural, so right, when she came upstairs with him. He unlocked the door and closed it behind them, and then it was inevitable. Somehow they’d found the bed. He’d felt himself come alive after years of being alone. He somehow sensed that she felt the same way.

He’s been so lonely since his wife died.





Saturday, 6:55 AM


Beverly follows her husband to the staircase. They’ve hastily thrown on some warm clothes and are on their way to the dining room. Her heart races in time with her quick footsteps on the stairs. Despite her deep pity for the dead woman, she almost feels like they have been saved. This crisis has sidelined their own troubles. It’s as if they’ve both been pulled back from the brink they’d faced last night. It’s awful to think so, but she’s hoping that it will prevent them from focusing again on their marriage in the cold, empty light of day. She does not want to go there, now that she knows just how precarious her position is.

And then, when they are home again, with all this drama and tragedy behind them, they will slip into old patterns, avoiding what’s important, carrying on the way they should. The way they must. She’s a little surprised at how, even in the face of something as calamitous as a young woman’s unexpected death, she still considers her own interests first. But then, she didn’t really know her. She suspects Henry is grateful to have something to distract them from themselves this weekend, too, rather than spending it arguing with his wife and blowing his comfortable existence apart.

They arrive at the landing and she recoils when she sees the body still lying at the bottom of the stairs, covered by the sheet. She hadn’t expected it to be there. Why haven’t they moved her, taken her away somewhere, where they don’t have to see her? She shudders involuntarily. They make their appalled way down and step around the corpse, deliberately looking elsewhere, and hurry to the dining room.

When she and Henry enter the dining room, everyone turns towards them. Lauren is standing by the coffee, pouring herself a cup from a carafe. Beside her is her boyfriend, Ian, who for once isn’t smiling. Gwen is standing by herself, but Riley is hovering nearby. Beverly doesn’t see Matthew anywhere. The woman writer, Candice, is off in a corner by herself, drinking coffee and observing everyone with a sharp eye. She’s not hiding behind a magazine this morning. The attorney stands quietly away from everyone else, looking troubled and sipping coffee.