One by One(58)

“I think she’s in her room,” I say. “I’ll go and get her.”

“Not alone you won’t,” Danny growls, and he follows me upstairs like a watchdog as I make my painful, limping way to knock at Liz’s door.

“Wh-who is it?” I hear through the wood. She sounds as scared as I feel.

“It’s me, Erin,” I say. “And Danny. We—we need to talk about this Liz. About what happened. We need to try to figure out what to do next. Can you come out?”

There is a scraping noise, and the door opens, very slowly, until Liz is standing there, white-faced and hollow-eyed. She looks terrified, like there is nothing in the world she would less rather do than go downstairs and face her fellow guests—and I can’t blame her. I feel the same way. But we have to do it.

By the time we get downstairs, Miranda has built up the fire and Rik has poured everyone another round of very generous whiskeys. I want to say something about the advisability of adding more alcohol to this mix, but since I was the one who suggested a drink in the first place, I don’t feel like I have the right to object.

“So, what happened?” Rik says again as he hands Liz a glass. His voice teeters on the edge of what sounds like aggression, but I think it’s actually fear. “Don’t tell me she just died in her sleep.”

“She didn’t,” I say, very quietly, but they all fall instantly silent. “She had something called petechial hemorrhaging. Do you know what that means?”

There are headshakes all around the circle, apart from Carl, who nods.

“Little red dots, right? Yeah, I watch CSI. Shoot me.”

“Exactly. Little red dots where blood vessels have broken in the skin. It usually means someone has died of some form of asphyxiation—choking or hanging. In this case, given there weren’t any marks around her neck, I think Ani was probably smothered in her sleep.”

“Oh my God.” It’s a long groan from Miranda. She puts her hands over her face.

“She—she knew something.” It’s Liz. She speaks very low, and I have to shush the others to hear what she’s saying. “She came to my room last night, to try to persuade me not to sleep alone. When I asked why she was still awake, she said she had something on her mind, something she’d seen—I begged her to tell me—” She breaks off, her voice cracking. It’s virtually the longest speech I’ve ever heard her make, and she looks like she’s shrinking as all the eyes of the room turn to her.

“Oh, bloody hell.” Danny’s voice is angry, and he stands up, as if he can’t contain his feelings. “What did Erin fucking say? If you know something tell someone.”

“I know!” Liz says, her voice like a sob. “I begged her to say something, I really did—but she said she wasn’t sure—”

“Tiger.” Miranda is shaking Tiger now, gently. “Tiger, did Ani say anything to you last night, before she fell asleep?”

“I was asleep.” Tiger’s voice is broken, and very hoarse. It’s hard to understand what she’s saying, the words are cracked and fractured. I make out, “I’m so sorry… asleep… took a sleeping pill…”

“Wait, you take sleeping pills?” I say. I glance at Danny, who raises an eyebrow back, and I know he is thinking, as I am, of the crushed pills in Elliot’s coffee. Tiger gives a huge sob.

“Not normally, but I couldn’t sleep, I haven’t been able to since I got here. It started the f-first day. Eva said it was the altitude. She gave me some of her pills.”

“It’s true,” Miranda says. She glances round the circle, looking for support. “It was after breakfast that first morning, I remember the conversation. Rik, you heard her, didn’t you?”

“I’m sorry,” Rik says with a shrug. His voice is defensive. “I’m sure you’re right, but I don’t remember.”

“Everyone was there,” Miranda persists. “It was right before we went into the meeting room. Eva said to Tiger, you look like you haven’t slept, and Tiger said, I actually didn’t. And Eva said, it’s the altitude. Remind me to give you some of my sleeping pills. Carl was there too, and Liz. And Topher.”

“I don’t remember either. I expect I was too busy thinking about the presentation,” Topher says, rather brusquely. “What are you trying to say?”

He looks ruffled, like he thinks Miranda is trying to pin something on him. But I know why Miranda is pushing this. She knows that Tiger is the number one suspect for Ani’s death. Tiger was in the room when Ani was smothered, and she slept through it. Which is pretty unlikely—unless you know that she was taking sleeping pills. Miranda is trying to show that everyone knew that fact. That anyone could have taken advantage of Tiger’s drugged state to sneak in and kill Ani while Tiger slept. I admire her for it, in a way—she’s standing by her colleague in the face of some pretty horrible evidence.

But there is still the question of the locked door.

“Who got to Ani’s room first?” I ask.

“I did,” Topher says. He is standing propped against the mantelpiece, now he folds his arms. “But it was locked. You saw that.” He nods at Danny, who shrugs with corroboration.

“I tried the door, yeah. It was locked.”