An Unwanted Guest by Shari Lapena
TWENTY-FOUR
Gwen has listened to both sides of David’s story with a feeling of horror. She is much colder inside her blanket now than she was before.
It sounds worse than she expected. She thought at first that maybe they’d arrested him simply because he was the husband, and had quickly realized their mistake. But this sounds so inconclusive. Unsatisfactory. There hadn’t been enough evidence to send him to trial—but does she believe him? Riley is right about one thing—he would have had the best possible defense lawyer.
It’s very disturbing, the admission of the missing hour between his arriving home and calling 911. And he’s a criminal defense attorney. He would know what to do—how to destroy evidence, or get rid of it. She doesn’t know what to believe.
* * *
• • •
Henry squirms uncomfortably in his seat. His breathing is shallow. This entire situation is becoming more and more surreal. All these revelations are bizarre—Riley with her stories of being held hostage, of having a gun held to her head, of severed limbs in the streets—no wonder she’s so peculiar. And this thing about David has given him a nasty jolt—my God, did he murder his wife?
Henry suspects he is looking at it from a slightly different perspective than the others. He looks at his wife, seated a short distance away, and allows his gaze to rest on her. He doesn’t doubt that David killed his wife. Because he can understand it. He can understand the impulse to want to kill your wife. To just want to end things, and to be able to move on, without all the carping. He would like to reach over to the hearth and grab the iron poker—it’s an arm’s length away—and strike his unsuspecting wife over the head with it. He knows just how it would feel, how the poker would feel in his hand, because he’s been tending the fire occasionally. He imagines leaning down as if to poke the flames, then changing course and turning suddenly, raising his arm and bringing the poker down as fast and as hard as he can and spilling her brains. Would she look up in time to realize what he was doing? What would her face look like? He would have to make the first blow count. He wonders if a poker would do it, if it would be heavy enough. Would he have enough force in his arm? How many times would he have to hit her, to be sure? Perhaps something heavier . . .
Henry realizes he’s clenching his hands into fists underneath the blanket. He blinks his eyes rapidly, as if to dispel the fantasy, which has run away with him. Of course he wouldn’t do that. Even if there was no one here watching, he still wouldn’t do it. Thoughts are not actions. They aren’t the same thing at all. But he can understand the impulse. So he has no difficulty believing that David might have murdered his wife.
He catches his own wife staring back at him in the dark. For a moment, he wonders nervously if she can read his thoughts.
But then he has a thought, and before he fully considers it he voices it out loud. “Maybe Candice knew David. Maybe she was writing a book about him.” He leans toward David. “You say the case was in all the papers.”
“That’s ridiculous,” David says dismissively.
“Is it? Maybe she knew something about the case and was going to put it in a book, and you found out she was going to be here and you came up here to put a stop to it.”
“That’s nonsense!” Gwen says indignantly. “Then how do you explain Dana’s death? Why on earth would he kill her? That’s ridiculous.”
“No, it isn’t. Because here’s my theory: Matthew argued with Dana and pushed her down the stairs. David killed Candice because she was writing an exposé about him. The two are unconnected—pure coincidence.”
“Who do you think you are?” Beverly snipes. “Hercule Poirot?”
Henry gives his wife a dirty glance.
Lauren says slowly, “I did notice Candice staring at David at dinner last night. She was paying attention to Matthew and Dana, and David—nobody else. You had your back to her, David, but she was definitely staring at you.”
* * *
• • •
“Maybe it’s time for another drink?” Ian says into the charged silence that follows.
When Bradley doesn’t move from his seat, Ian gets up and pulls the bar cart closer himself. It’s hard to see in the dim light. He picks up the oil lamp from the coffee table and holds it aloft over the bar cart. “There’s still plenty here,” he says.
Ian pours and hands out the drinks, sits down again in his place nestled next to Lauren, and says thoughtfully, “I have a story to tell too. It’s not much, really. No dark secrets. I haven’t been accused of murdering anyone. I’ve never been arrested. I’ve never been to a war zone and seen people slaughtered. I had a pretty normal childhood growing up in Iowa with two parents and my brothers.” He goes quiet for a moment. “Except—when I was thirteen, my younger brother died. He was ten. That was tough.”
Gwen asks, “What happened?”
“He drowned. In a local pond.”
“I’m so sorry,” Gwen says.
He nods, and looks down at the drink in his hand. “My mother was beside herself. He’d gone to the pond by himself. He wasn’t allowed to go on his own, but the rest of us were all off doing something else, and he went anyway. He was like that. Willful, hard to manage. Didn’t do what he was told—always did what he wanted, to hell with the consequences. When he didn’t turn up for supper, we went looking for him. It wasn’t that unusual, we were always coming home late for supper.” He hesitates a moment, takes a gulp of his drink, then says, “I was the one who found him.”
Lauren reaches out and takes his hand, pulls it into her lap. He’d already told her this.
“My parents never really got over it. It pretty much shattered them. So I guess that’s a blip in my otherwise normal childhood.”
“That’s tragic,” Riley says, with genuine sympathy.
“It was a long time ago,” Ian says, and reaches for his drink.
* * *
• • •
David is observing Ian carefully. He’s been observing all of them, while trying to appear as if he isn’t. There was something about the way Ian told the story about his brother that bothers him.
David’s used to interviewing clients who are pretty damned good at lying. Usually he can tell. The way the eyes drift up and to the left. The hesitations. The fleeting facial expressions. There’s just enough light from the oil lamp to see Ian’s face. And if he’d been asked to give an opinion on whether Ian was telling the truth about his brother, he would have said no.
He knows it’s not always possible to tell if someone’s lying. He’s been proved wrong before. And he’s tired, stressed, and the circumstances are highly unusual—for all of them. But something about Ian just now—a man he has so far found to be warm, open, and uncomplicated—has put him on notice.
TWENTY-FIVE
There’s a strange, compelling sort of intimacy in this room, with the oil lamp flickering and the fire crackling, all of them sitting around together wrapped in blankets because they’re afraid to go to their rooms. It’s seductive.
But Lauren says quietly, “I’m afraid I don’t have any dark secrets either.”
That’s not exactly true. She has survived a dysfunctional family and an awful, short-lived stint in a foster home, but she has survived. She has made something of herself. She doesn’t have to share that with anyone if she doesn’t want to. “Of course there have been some things in my life that have been difficult, which I won’t share with you. Family problems, the usual. I don’t think anybody comes out of a family unscathed.” She smiles wanly. “But I certainly haven’t got anything to hide.”
“Nothing?” Riley prods.
Lauren studies Riley, who is looking at her as if she doesn’t believe her. Riley seems to have something against her. Fair enough. Lauren was a bit hard on her a little while ago. She pretty much told her she thought there was something seriously wrong with her. At least now the
“Why is that so hard to believe?” Lauren asks her point-blank.
Riley shrugs, looks away.
Lauren decides to let it go.
But Henry asks, “Then what’s with the sleeping pills?”
Lauren is taken aback. “I have trouble sleeping. I always have. So I take sleeping pills.”
“It’s true,” Ian says, nodding beside her.
Then, surprisingly, Riley turns to Gwen and says, “If it’s true confession time, why don’t you tell everyone your deep dark secret?”
Startled, Lauren watches Gwen give Riley a hard look. But Riley has drunk down her glass of wine very quickly and seems to be shedding her inhibitions and possibly her good sense. She’s a sloppy drunk, Lauren’s noticed. She’s suddenly very curious about what’s going to happen next. She wonders what Riley has on Gwen. She’d like to know.
* * *
• • •
“Piss off, Riley,” Gwen says.
Her heart is fluttering anxiously. She doesn’t want to be put on the spot. Gwen doesn’t want to share her past with anyone. She doesn’t want to spill it all in front of this group of strangers. Not in front of David. Definitely not like this.
But she wonders how it would feel to unburden herself, to confess to someone other than Riley. Perhaps it would be liberating, perhaps she would be able to forgive herself then. Riley would no longer have this hold over her. Maybe they would no longer be friends.
She looks across at David, his handsome face inscrutable. She wants to tell him; she wants to see how he’ll react. She looks at him and doesn’t even know what kind of man she’s looking at. He could be a man who killed his wife—with sufficient presence of mind to successfully cover his tracks. Henry suggested that he might have killed Candice. She doesn’t know. She wishes they had never come here to this horrible, godforsaken place, wishes she had never met David, who has her in turmoil, or any of these other people either.
“Are you okay?” David asks her.
His concern is so tempting, but she must guard against it. She feels herself go suddenly cold, emotionless. “I’m fine.”
She knows her voice sounds harsh, as if she’s pushing him away. She wants to push all of these horrible people away—especially Matthew, playing incessantly with his gun. But, she tells herself, it must be very disorienting to suddenly, violently, lose someone who knows you better than anyone else, someone you’ve counted on to anchor your world.
Sunday, 1:10 a.m.
David slumps back against his seat, exhausted, stinging from Gwen’s rebuke. Matthew’s fidgeting is putting everyone on edge.
David says abruptly, “Matthew, put the gun down, it’s making everybody nervous.”
Matthew’s hands go still, but he doesn’t put the gun down. Instead he says, “You can all sit here and wait. I’m going to go after this sonofabitch.” He gets up suddenly from his chair. “Where’s that flashlight?”
“You can’t,” David tells him sternly. “You can’t go anywhere on your own, even with the gun. It’s too dangerous.”
“What do I care?” Matthew looks with contempt at the rest of them. “Are you going to give me the flashlight or not?”
“It’s almost dead,” David reminds him, as Matthew snatches it up.
“Don’t do this,” David says. This is what he feared, the group splitting up. He thinks they should stick together. He doesn’t want Matthew going off on his own—nobody wants a jumpy, overwrought man running around with a gun in his hand. His little flock is coming apart. There might be someone out there, waiting for one of them to break ranks and run into the dark to be his next victim. Or the killer might be right here within arm’s reach.
Should he just let Matthew go?
Maybe he will be killed out there, and then they will know it isn’t one of them. He’s tempted to use Matthew as bait, David realizes with a sickening feeling.
“Does anyone want to come with me?” Matthew asks.
David wrestles with himself—should he go, too, leaving the rest? He glances at the others, watching Matthew nervously. No one else answers either.
“Fine, I’ll go myself.”
“But—” Gwen says, “how do you think you’ll find him? We’ve been all over this hotel. Stay here, with us. In the morning, we’ll all go together out to the road.” She pauses and adds, “Please.”
He gives her a last, dismissive look, turns away toward the staircase, and is slowly swallowed up by the darkness.
* * *
• • •
Beverly watches anxiously as the group remaining falls into a fraught silence. There are nine of them left sitting around the fireplace: Gwen and David sitting across from one another; Lauren and Ian on one of the sofas; she and Henry sitting in armchairs across from each other; Riley, who has left the sofa where she’d been sitting with Gwen and moved to the hearth; and James and Bradley sitting together close by.
Beverly wonders if Matthew has just gone to his death.
Suddenly David gets up, mutters an expletive, and follows Matthew into the inky blackness.
Riley says, “What an idiot.”
Beverly wishes fervently that David would come back. She wants to get out of here alive. She wants to survive the night. She can’t bear that he has deserted them.
* * *
• • •
For Matthew, the loss of Dana has been completely destabilizing.
He walks quickly up the dark staircase and arrives on the third floor of the old hotel, holding the fading flashlight, which casts a faint light on the floral carpet.
He pauses in the corridor. How cold and dark it is up here, he thinks. It’s as cold as a morgue. He hears a sound below him. He looks back over his shoulder toward the staircase behind him, fading to black. He switches off the feeble flashlight and immediately can’t see a thing. He stands perfectly still and listens carefully, tilting his head. Then he hears David, calling his name. It sounds like he’s on the second floor, below him.
Matthew doesn’t answer. David will only want him to go back to the others. But Matthew doesn’t feel like part of this little group. He doesn’t have to follow their rules. And he has a gun. His heart pounding, Matthew makes his way quietly along the hallway to his right, silently trying all the doorknobs as he goes. His hands are sweaty. All the doors are locked, of course. Coming back down the hall toward the stairs, he peers into the dark sitting room. He stands still for a moment. There is the faintest light coming in from the windows; it’s slightly less dark than the corridor. But all he can pick out are the ghostly shapes of the furniture—chairs and sofas, empty and sinister-seeming. Then he hears someone coming up the stairs to the third floor. He steps quickly into the sitting room and stands behind the wall as still as a sentry. He tightens his grip on the gun. It’s David—he can hear him quietly calling his name. Matthew waits, while David searches this side of the staircase—passing by the sitting room, peering in, seeing nothing—and then walks slowly down the hall on the other side of the stairs. After a short while, Matthew decides David must have gone down the servants’ staircase.
Matthew follows in his footsteps, to the other end of the hall. The door to the housekeeping closet is unlocked and opens beneath his hand. He steps inside, turning the weak flashlight on briefly. He turns it off again. Continuing down the hall, he reaches the back staircase and pushes the door open and finds himself on the narrow landing. The door closes behind him, and he stands motionless, listening. Satisfied that David is no longer on the back stairs, he switches the flashlight back on. He ventures slowly down the staircase to the second-floor landing, all senses on alert.
He turns the flashlight off again and cautiously opens the doorway onto the second floor. He doesn’t hear David calling him anymore; he’s probably given up and gone back
He peers down the second-floor hall, listening. It’s so dark that without the flashlight on he can’t tell if anyone else is here. He walks quietly down the corridor, peeking into the housekeeping closet and the sitting room, then returns to the back staircase and finds himself once again on the first floor. The servants’ staircase opens into the dark hallway outside the kitchen. He makes his way silently along the hallway at the back of the hotel and turns, finding himself outside the library. He steps inside. The faintest sliver of moonlight falls now through the French doors. For a moment he just stares around the room.
He spies a large book open on the coffee table. He switches the flashlight on, and sees a picture of a nineteenth-century ship locked in the ice. He wonders who was reading it. He sweeps the flashlight around the room and turns it off again. Losing interest, he pauses at the doorway. If he goes right, he knows he will find another sitting room and wind up back in the lobby. He doesn’t want that. Instead, he turns to his left, and moves back along the rear of the hotel. This time he recognizes the door to the woodshed. He hesitates, then pushes open the door.
TWENTY-SIX
Riley is glad that David is gone. She thinks he’s reckless, but she’s glad he’s gone. Maybe he’ll get himself killed.
She hears the muffled sound of a door closing somewhere in the hotel and her nerves jump.
“What was that?” she says, frightened.
Henry answers nervously, “It’s probably just Matthew, or David.”
Straining to hear what’s happening outside their little circle, all she can hear is the wind drumming against the windows. Whether the storm subsides tomorrow or not, they must try to make their way—no matter how slowly, or with how much difficulty—out to the main road and try to get help.