Miles looked at him in desperation. ‘Mrs Harlow…’
He skewered Miles in his gaze. ‘You were all locked in! How could this have happened?’ It was a purely rhetorical question. He was clearly angry with himself for not being there. He slammed the door behind him and pushed past Miles into the room. He paced for a moment before pulling out the chair next to the vanity and sitting down.
He leaned forward, the bags under his eyes telling of the night he’d had.
‘Forensics…’ He stopped, battling with himself as to whether he should share the information. He sighed deeply and continued. ‘Forensics found a kitchen knife…’
Miles’s head snapped up towards him.
‘Do you know something about the knife, Mr Weiss?’
Miles nodded slowly. ‘A week or so ago, after Mrs Harlow had changed the beds, she told us she’d found a kitchen knife under my mother’s mattress. We didn’t know what to do with it… We didn’t want Mrs Harlow to get into trouble. We assumed Mother kept it there for protection…’ He stalled, looking to Randolf for answers. ‘She didn’t use it on Mrs Harlow, did she?’
Randolf shook his head. ‘It’s too early to say anything about Mrs Harlow’s remains. We found the knife lodged between the mechanism used to pull back the pool cover. It wasn’t the electrics housed in the box that were the problem…’
‘It was the gears.’ Miles finished.
‘Exactly. Preliminary testing shows three sets of prints, Mrs Harlow’s, Jeannie Weiss’s and yours. There is another thing… Officers searched the rooms again this morning and found a spare set of room keys in your mother’s bedroom.’
‘Well, yes, it’s no secret that Mrs Harlow and my mother held the keys to the house,’ Miles said matter-of-factly.
‘Yes… but Constable Richardson was in possession of Mrs Harlow’s set. We were not made aware that they were copies and not the originals. That would have been good to know,’ he said through clenched teeth. ‘Even if Mrs Weiss did use her keys to get in, how did she do it while my officer was stationed there?’
‘And how did Mrs Harlow not wake up?’ Asked Miles.
‘That I can answer. There were crushed up sleeping pills in Mrs Harlow’s water on the bedside table. We found the same pills in Jeannie’s bathroom cabinet. But Richardson never left her post, and when she did, she rotated her shift with another officer. The hallway was never left unattended.’
‘Could she see the secret passage?’ I asked.
‘I-I believe so…’ he said uncertainly. ‘But why would it matter? Everyone was locked in their rooms…’
‘I suppose so,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘Why are you sharing this information with us, Detective Randolf?’ I asked.
He raked his fingers through his curly black hair before looking back up at me. ‘Because every death in your family could be chalked up to “unfortunate accidents”– except Quentin, of course. That tells me his death wasn’t premeditated like the others. He definitely caught the killer by surprise. We need to catch whoever is responsible, and quickly. I’ve seen things like this before, but never to this extent. If I don’t make an arrest, time goes on, and any evidence we’ve missed gets washed away. We need to move fast.’
‘What do you want us to do?’ I asked.
‘I want you to go for Christmas dinner at Weiss Manor,’ he said gravely.
I almost laughed, except it was still a little too soon to be laughing, even for me. But Jeannie was a psychopath and I wasn’t going to be setting foot in that house with the kids.
‘We will be there,’ Randolf said, ‘if anything happens. You will all be wearing wires.’
‘Is a wire going to help us if she decides to cut us all up with a kitchen knife?’ I said, deadpan.
‘It won’t come to that. She won’t do anything so drastic. But if you speak with her, maybe she will slip up. I can’t even get near her for questioning without that vampire Artie Peverill threatening me with legal action. Please… try to elicit a confession. Record your interaction. There might be something that she reveals, something we have missed.’
Miles stared at a stain in the tufted rug. ‘Okay, we’ll do it,’ he said quietly.
I glared at him with my mouth open. ‘No, Miles, the kids?—’
‘We won’t let her hurt them. Detective Randolf is right. We can’t let her get away with this. And trust me, I know my mother, she can and will get away with anything.’
26
TINSEL, TRAUMA AND ELEVENDEADRELATIVES
24thDecember 2025
