Lily sniffles. “Myself and Willow did. We were looking for the next clue—I thought it might have been in the pool house and, well—” she chokes, pushing her face into her palms.
Hovering awkwardly this entire time, Jay reaches out for her and Mavis does too, both wrapping an arm around her to lead the way towards the kitchen. Bran moves closer to his brother, who takes over speaking with DS Starling about this morning.
“Clue?” He raises an eyebrow and his moustache moves.
“Yes, we were hosting a murder mystery this weekend. Corbin is—was throwing it. We only started last night.”
“I’ll need a list of all the guests here this weekend. Any contact information too.”
“We don’t actually have our phones.” I say, probably a matter that didn’t need to be voiced, but surely the murder mystery weekend is over now.
“We’d actually like permission to take everyone’s phones. We can come back with the paperwork, but it’d be easier and quicker if everyone hands them over.” DS Starling directs at Merle, but his attention returns to me. “What’s your name?”
“Robin. Robin Osbourne.”
“Relationship to the deceased?”
I hesitate.
“Are we really doing this in the hallway?” Wren asks, not fully blocking me, but pulls me further into his side. He seems apprehensive about him too.
“Of course not. We can go sit down. I’ll take your statement first, Miss Osbourne.”
Another detective appears from the dining room and he introduces himself as DC Goldie. His features are hard and worn from experience of hard graft, which surprises me, but who am I to judge an officer?
Wren tries to protest but I slip my hand onto his chest, trying to reassure him with a smile, but I can already tell he’s not falling for it.
“Sure. That’s fine. Shall we go to the library?” It’s far enough away from Phin that it shouldn’t wake him.
Leaving everyone standing in the lobby, Goldie closes the door behind him and I lead them to the high back armchairs near the dark fireplace. The library doesn't offer me any comfort like it did yesterday, it’s too silent and stale. Both men stretch out their legs and DS Starling crosses his ankle over his knee, before propping his notepad in his lap.
“So, Miss Osbourne. How did you know the deceased?”
Well, we’re diving straight in.I know I shouldn’t lie, they’re bound to find out. I honestly can’t believe I slept through them arriving. My palms itch and I rub them against my dress.
I know this isn’t going to sound good. In crime fiction, the lead suspect is always the partner. Bloody hell, I wrote my own murder mystery where it turned out to be the wife. “We used to date.” I finally exhale.
His brow lifts and his moustache twitches. Honestly, he could be attractive in a rugged way if he lost the thing.
“You’re his ex-girlfriend?”
“Oneof his ex girlfriends. Probably not the latest either.” Did the realtor fall into the category of girlfriend?
He taps his pen against his pad, yet to write anything. “How did you feel about him being here with his fiancée? Mr Redfern–Merle, provided us with a guest list.”
“Indifferent. It’s none of my business. We hadn’t spoken since we broke up over six months ago.”
“Quite quick to have gotten engaged don’t you think?”
I try so hard to mask my nerves and portray how unaffected I am by his relationship with Aya. Yes, I had a huge freak out and felt numb at his senseless death. But did I care he’d moved on and proposed to someone in a shorter time than we were even together? Honestly, no. I just felt free to be away from him. “Probably, but I guess sometimes you just know. Right?” I think of the two of them last night at the dinner party, and how unengaged he was with her.
He writes something down. “Do you think he was seeing her when you two were dating?”
I shrug. “To my knowledge no, but there’s a lot that happened at the time of our relationship that I didn’t know about. You’d be best to ask his fianceé.”
He writes something down again. “Unfortunately Miss Drakunov-West is no longer at the hotel. We were told that she booked a taxi early this morning and is travelling back to London.”
The fact that Cardinal’s last name was Drakunov-West, seemed incredibly prestigious, but what piqued my interest is that Aya must have decided after the dinner party to go home. After playing the first victim, she must have decided it wasn’t worth staying and left. Or,they had gotten into an argument over something last night and that's how he ended up barging his way into my room.
