Jinx finally picked up the third time Alice rang.
‘Alice!’ she shouted into the phone, causing Alice to wince and pull the phone away from her ear. ‘Happy New Year, Happy New Year,’ she sang in a silly voice. ‘You’re a dark horse, aren’t you? You said you were going to have an early one,’ she slurred. ‘Don’t tell me you let Barney have his wicked way. I’m sure he fancies you—’
‘Where are you?’ Alice asked, cutting her off.
Jinx laughed. ‘You want to come and join us? I’m just at Ricardo’s. We’re playing drinking Jenga. Everyone’s a bit smashed, to be honest.’
Alice regretted calling Jinx now, but she’d been so shocked by what Detective Rigby had just told her that she’d simply had to tell someone. She hadn’t considered the fact that Jinx would still be out partying.
‘No, it’s not that. Jinx. Listen. I’ve had a call from the police.’
‘What?’ Jinx still had a laugh in her voice.
‘The police,’ Alice said loudly.
Jinx’s voice changed. ‘What did you say?’
‘A Detective Rigby just rang.’
‘Hang on …’
Alice gripped the phone as she listened to Jinx leaving the kitchen and shutting the door. The voices in the background were suddenly muffled.
‘Did you say police?’
‘Yes. This man … a detective. He rang. Asking questions about Enya. He wanted to know about her next of kin …’ Alice found her voice catching as she thought about Enya’s parents. Intelligent, lovely people who were probably celebrating the new year with friends, or with other family members, not knowing that already this year might be the most awful of their lives. And did Enya have brothers, sisters, cousins, nieces and nephews? If Alice was this shaken up with only a small connection to Enya, how were those people closest to her going to feel?
‘What? What do you mean?’
‘Jinx, she’s dead.’
It was such a relief to tell Jinx the shocking news, but saying it out loud herself made a sudden sob escape. This couldn’t be happening. Not to poor, sweet Enya.
‘Oh my God.’ Jinx sounded suddenly very sober.
‘I’m going to the Messents’ now.’
‘Are you OK, Alice?’
‘No, not really.’
‘I’ll be right there.’
‘Thank you,’ Alice whispered, relieved that she could rely on her best friend.
Alice dressed quickly in tweed trousers and a cashmere jumper, her shearling coat and fur hat, but just as she was leaving, Agatha started barking, refusing to be left behind.
‘Come on then,’ Alice told her little dog. ‘But I’m warning you. It’ll be cold.’
At this time on New Year’s morning there was no chance of a cab and really no point in calling for one, especially as it was snowing heavily. Out on the streets, there was hardly anyone around, but occasionally she’d hear raucous laughter as a door opened and a group of revellers spilled into the night. Otherwise, it was unnaturally still in these pre-dawn hours, her footsteps muffled in the snow. Agatha trotted dutifully by her side, her head down, as determined as Alice.
And all the while, Alice couldn’t help picturing Enya and her lovely grey eyes and long blonde hair and intelligent smile. How could she possibly be dead? And more to the point, how could it have happened? The detective hadn’t said accident, but rather had described what had happened to Enya as an ‘incident’. Alice, a stickler for language, knew that in circumstances like these, there was an awfully big difference.
As if to confirm her worst fears, as she rounded the corner into Oxley Square, she saw two police cars parked at an angle and yellow police tape across the front of the Messents’ porch. An officer was guarding the front door. Alice hurried towards her but suddenly Agatha yanked on her lead and shot down an alley at the side of the house.
‘Agatha, what are you doing? Come back,’ Alice said, her voice sounding strained and too loud at the same time. But Agatha was pulling most insistently, and she found herselfhurtling past bins and drainpipes, until she came to the end of the alley, where a closed gate led into a large walled garden, pristine beneath a blanket of snow.
Looking through the gate, Agatha started whimpering and Alice saw why. Jacques was standing outside a basement service door in a gully at the back of the house in a square of orange light, smoking a cigarette, peering up through the curtain of snowflakes.
Agatha stopped and turned to give Alice a haughty look, but Jacques, spotting them now, hurried over to unlock the gate.
‘Here, come in, quietly,’ he said. ‘I’ve been told to keep this locked. Oh, Miss B, I can’t tell you how good it is to see a friendly face.’ He led them back down the gully towards the basement door.
‘Jacques, what on earth happened? A detective called me. Rigby? He said Enya’s …’
But she couldn’t say the word. Not again. Not to someone else who’d known her. But she didn’t need to. Jacques nodded grimly and ground out his cigarette.
‘I thought you’d given up?’ she said.
‘I only ever have the one. But come on. Come inside,’ he said, taking Alice’s arm. ‘It’s freezing out here.’
He led her through the back door and into a storage room piled high with caterer’s crates, and Agatha pulled on her lead, nosing into an old-fashioned boot room on the left. Alice could see a couple of Barbour jackets hanging on the brass hooks and some pristine Hunter wellies on the worn bench below. To the right was a bigger room filled with two industrial-sized washing machines and two dryers. Alice shook off her coat and hat, both covered in snow, and hooked them on a peg.
Jacques led her on, past two giant wine fridges, into an industrial-sized kitchen. Alice presumed that there must be a more homely domestic kitchen for the Messents upstairs, because this one was rigged up for catering.
There were two induction ovens and two separate gas hobs, all with steel extractor fans above them, as well as state-of-the-art air fryers, several kitchen mixers, and a walk-in fridge and freezer. But any traces of food had long since been cleared away and the surfaces were gleaming.
With Agatha’s nails skittering across the stone-flagged floor, Alice followed Jacques into a little office area separated from the rest of the kitchen by a glass divide. The walls were a stylish dark blue and there was a desk and some chairs. She suspected that this must have been where Enya had spent some of her time as housekeeper. There was a filing cabinet and a calendar on the wall, plus a laptop and several phones.
Jacques told Alice to sit down, but she was too jumpy to. Instead, she leant back against the wall, watching Jacques as he animatedly recounted what had happened earlier.
‘I know there were lots of people here, but I didn’t see any of them. Trudi, one of the service staff, who kept coming back for more trays of canapés, said there must have been two hundred or more in the ballroom. There was music and dancing, then at nine o’clock Camille Messent made a speech about her refugee charity. She called for a minute’s silence to honour everyone killed in the war. But then everyone heard a terrible thud upstairs. Alex Messent went up to investigate and found Enya in his study. Dead.’
He shuddered and looked at Alice. ‘I’d only seen her fifteen minutes before.’
‘And how was she?’
‘Totally normal. I didn’t know her that well, but we shared a joke. She seemed fine.’
‘So, what happened?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know why she was up there. Everyone else was either in the ballroom or here in the kitchen with me. It’s strange because I know the study is out of bounds for the staff.’
‘Out of bounds?’
‘And always locked. I haven’t been here long, but from what I can gather, the Messents seem to be quite paranoid about security. I suppose it’s because they have such valuable art.’
Alice bit her lip, thinking, her eyes wandering to the door. Agatha had been there a moment ago, but now the door was open a crack and she’d gone.
‘Hang on. Agatha?’ she called, looking through the doorway to the kitchen and then the other way. ‘Oh God, where’s she gone?’
‘Agatha?’ Jacques called, joining Alice in the doorway in time for them both to see the small dog disappearing up a flight of stairs, her lead trailing behind her.
‘Oh no,’ Alice exclaimed, looking in horror at Jacques.
‘Quick. Go grab her,’ Jacques said. ‘The police up there said they didn’t want to be disturbed.’
Alice raced up the stairs, bursting out into a second kitchen — the family one, this time — startling several people already gathered there.
‘Have you seen a—’
One of them pointed along the corridor and Alice took off. ‘Agatha,’ she hissed, spotting her beloved now dashing for the main staircase – the one with the glass sides.
A police officer stood resolutely on the half landing as the dog scampered towards him.
‘Quick, grab her,’ Alice cried.
But as the officer lunged for Agatha, she gave him the slip and scampered on up towards the first floor. The officer put out his arm to stop Alice doing the same, but she copied Agatha’s manoeuvre, flattening herself against the wall, slipping past in hot pursuit.
‘Madam, come back,’ he yelled after her.
But Alice was too fixed on catching up with Agatha to listen.
‘Whose bloody dog is this?’ a woman called out, as Alice bolted up the last of the stairs.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, dashing past another police officer, after Agatha who’d just done the same.
Chasing Agatha down a long corridor, she arrived outside an open doorway out of breath, only to see that her little dog had finally been apprehended and was now upside-down in the arms of a man who looked rather like he’d unexpectedly just caught a rugby ball.