She nodded. ‘As I said, I’ve only just had ten minutes to flick through the pages, but the main names that keep coming up are standing around us right now. This book is going to be dynamite.’
I sounded a note of caution. ‘Assuming she goes ahead with it. She told me this is just the first draft and she might modify it, depending on the responses she gets from her guests this weekend.’
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Alice looking across at us, so I clinked my glass against Mary’s and headed off.
While sipping my beer and helping myself to the delicious nibbles, I circulated among the guests, keen to see to what extent they were participating in the game and even keener to see how they were reacting to the contents of the cards they’d been handed. The first couple I came to were Maggie McBride and Rocco. Her cleavage was unmistakable and the striped blue and red tights that he was wearing were equally spectacular. I wandered over and toasted them with my beer mug, doing my best to get into character.
‘Good evening. I am Don Daniele, the Magistrate, and this ismy finest spy, Oscar. He can sniff out traitorous wretches at any distance. Tell me, what do you think of the Doge and his wife?’
Maggie McBride wasn’t in the mood for play-acting. She slid her pearl-encrusted mask up onto the top of her head and glared at me. ‘I’m this close to turning around and getting back on a plane to the States right now. Alice just handed me my card with my character notes on it, and there’s nothing funny about what it says. Here, see for yourself.’ She reached into her corsage, retrieved a small card, the size of a playing card, and handed it to me. It was still warm.
I read it carefully. There were only a few lines.
You are Donna Margherita.
You used to be a courtesan and you managed to land yourself a rich husband.
You poisoned your husband so as to inherit his fabulous wealth.
The only person who knows what you did is the Doge’s wife, Donna Alicia.
You hate her and fear her in equal proportions.
Nothing would make you happier than to see her dead.
I handed back the card. As far as I could remember from what I’d read on the Internet, Maggie’s husband had been thirty years older than her, and his death at the age of eighty-three hadn’t come as a surprise to anybody. I certainly hadn’t seen any mention of foul play. Was this just Alice spicing up the character of Donna Margherita for tonight’s event, or was there more to it than that? I decided to do my best to calm Maggie down – for now.
‘Alice told me last night that her character was going to be universally detested by everybody in the game. I wouldn’t take itpersonally, if I were you. I imagine her idea is for everybody to have a motive to commit murder, and so to make it more difficult for the participants to guess who the killer is.’
Alongside her, Rocco added a few reassuring words of his own. ‘Maggie,carissima, that’s what I’ve been telling you. It’s nothing personal. It’s just a game.’
She snorted, swallowed the contents of her glass and for a moment, it looked as though she was going to hurl it to the ground, but she restrained herself and allowed Rocco to remove it from her hand and replace it with a full glass of champagne from a passing tray.
I left her fuming and moved across to another couple a bit further away. It took a moment or two for me to realise who they were beneath their masks and costumes, but I soon worked out that this had to be Alastair Groves, Alice’s former agent, and his wife Sandra. She greeted me with a haughty curtsy and I was mildly surprised to see that she was entering into the spirit of the game. From what I’d seen of her so far, she hadn’t struck me as having any desire to be here. Her husband, on the other hand, didn’t even attempt to join in. He barely acknowledged my arrival and pointedly ignored Oscar, who looked up to me as much as to say,What’s his problem?I concentrated my attention on Sandra Groves and gave her my Renaissance-man introduction.
‘Good evening, Donna Sandra, I am Don Daniele, the Magistrate, and this is my faithful assistant, Oscar.’
She fanned herself with an elaborate paper fan decorated with wildflowers. ‘Good evening, Don Daniele. I’m pleased to see you.’ Her tone was at odds with her words, but at least she had responded, which was more than could be said for her husband. ‘You’re the detective, aren’t you?’
I nodded. ‘That’s correct. Unlike everybody else, I haven’t been given a card telling me who I am, who I hate, or giving meany clues as to the identity of the murderer. I imagine you and your husband both received a card?’
I saw her head jerk around towards her husband for a second. With the mask covering her face, I couldn’t tell what she was thinking, but, from what I’d seen earlier, I had little doubt that the contents of his card had caused him the same seismic jolt that had rocked Maggie McBride. What, I wondered, was the skeleton in his cupboard?
Sandra Groves turned back towards me and answered, but her dislike for the island, her hostess and the game was all too evident in her voice as she did so. ‘Yes, but this whole charade strikes me as so terribly juvenile, don’t you think so, Alastair?’
In response, he gave a sullen growl, not dissimilar to the sort of noise Oscar makes when he thinks there might be a squirrel lurking close by. Fortunately, at that moment, I spotted the unmistakable figure of Jack Sloane in the process of helping himself to more champagne, and I excused myself and walked over to see him. His mask was up on the top of his head, but he had squeezed himself into a voluminous yellow tunic and tights and, as a result, he bore a distinct resemblance toSesame Street’s Big Bird. Given his already fairly grumpy behaviour, I didn’t bother with the Renaissance stuff.
‘Good evening, Mr Sloane. Are you looking forward to the murder mystery?’
‘Murder mystery my…’ The sentence disintegrated into an unprintable litany of invective, and I acted surprised.
‘Surely it’ll be fun.’
He glared at me – and at the world in general. ‘Fun? If I’d known what that little bitch was planning, I would never have come.’
Still trying to appear clueless, I queried his choice of vocabulary. ‘When you say, “that little bitch”, are you talking about Alice?’
‘Who the hell else would I be talking about? You know what she’s done? Do you… do you?’ I was glad I was wearing my mask, because the alcohol on his breath risked burning the paint off it as he leant belligerently in my direction. ‘She’s given me a card on which it says I’m a rapist. I never raped nobody. Any woman says that, she’s lying.’ The fury in his eyes was tempered by an expression I recognised only too well: it was fear. Fear of being found out, maybe? Fear of a distant memory being dug up and flung at him? Beneath the insults and the bluster, I felt sure that Jack Sloane was a worried man. I produced a few comments along the lines of it only being a game, and for him not to take things personally, before I headed off. I noticed that Oscar didn’t hang about either.
