LILY WAKES TO THE SOUND of keening. At first, she thinks it’s her own, screaming out from her bad dream. She’d been trapped in ice this time, and Mum had been trying to reach her.
Then she hears it again. A loud, mournful groan rising from the floor below.
It’s still dark. She could still be in a dream. One of those recursive nightmares where she dreams she wakes up, over and over again.
‘Nooooo, please, no.’ Loud and urgent, the moan roams the house.
This isn’t a dream.
Lily fumbles for the light and scrambles out of bed, sleep dropping its shroud from around her. Her corset is barely laced up when she runs across the cold floor. The sound keeps coming, from downstairs. Lights crash on, making her blink. Other doors open and slam, footsteps match hers as she hurries down the staircase.
She slows when she sees Tom at the bottom of the stairs, his hand over his mouth. Holly and Rachel are next to him, Holly buried in Rachel’s arms. Rachel glances over Holly’s head and catches Lily’s eye. Tears are rolling down her face.
Lily walks past them, then she sees him.
Ronnie kneels on a black square. ‘No, please, no,’ he says, rocking backwards and forwards, holding something.
Lily can’t understand what she’s seeing. Images snap into focus: Ronnie’s hands covered in blood. Blood smeared down the corridor from the entrance to the library. An arm slipping from his lap. Philippa’s head lolling back. Her eyes open and unseeing.
A knife sticks out of her, her back a macabre knife block.
Lily finds herself moving forward and crouching next to Ronnie. He turns away from her slightly as if not wanting comfort. Holding Philippa’s body tighter, he rocks harder. ‘Get an ambulance!’ he shouts, craning round to look at everyone. ‘Why are you all standing there?’
‘I think she’s gone, Ronnie,’ Lily says, gently.
He shakes his head, and then shakes Philippa. Lily looks away from Philippa’s lolling head. ‘No. She wouldn’t leave me,’ he says. ‘She knows I can’t cope without her.’
Lily slowly reaches past Ronnie for Philippa’s wrist. She presses two fingers into the underside, in the vulnerable spot between tendons. ‘There’s no pulse, Ronnie,’ she says.
Ronnie’s curls over his wife’s body. His keening returns, echoing up to the minstrels’ gallery. Lily remembers where she heard that sound before. It came from her, when she found Mum. Hearing Ronnie cry in the same way salts the scab off old wounds.
‘What are we going to do?’ Sara asks. Lily looks up. Sara stands over them, her eyes wide, as if needing to be open as much as possible to take it in. A human reaction at last.
Next to Sara, Tom’s mouth keeps opening and closing, as if trying to speak but can’t.
‘No way can she have done that to herself,’ Holly says.
The silence is fully loaded. Lily looks round the hallway. Everyone is here – Ronnie, Sara, Gray, Rachel, Holly, Tom, Mrs Castle and Lily herself. Whoever stabbed Philippa could be in this house.
‘It’s the carving knife,’ Gray says, his voice so quiet. ‘The one Philippa used to cut the turkey.’ His eyes are dulled by what they’re seeing, clouded silver pieces.
‘Call an ambulance,’ Ronnie cries again.
‘Too late for that, mate,’ Sara says. She bends and awkwardly pats him on the shoulder.
‘Shut the fuck up, Sara!’ Ronnie shouts.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll call them,’ Lily says to him. She has spun round the inner tube of grief many times, and knows Ronnie will keep circling back to the safest, darkest place: denial.
Ronnie nods at Lily. ‘Thank you.’ He then bends close and whispers into Philippa’s ear. ‘Get up, sweetheart. Time to go back to bed.’ He is clinging on to hope like ivy to a haunted house. Any moment now, he must be thinking, Philippa will dust herself off, rise up, and do something really annoying and everything will be back to normal.
But nothing will seem normal to Ronnie again.
Lily gets up, motions to Tom to take her place next to his brother.
Tom nods. Then he puts on his therapist face and sits by Ronnie’s side. ‘Don’t worry,’ he says. ‘We’ll look after her.’
Ronnie keeps whispering in Philippa’s ear. The love in his voice sticks a pin in Lily’s heart.
Lily walks into the kitchen where Mrs Castle is filling the kettle, her hand shaking. ‘We have to call the police,’ Lily says.
‘You can’t,’ Mrs Castle replies. Her voice hitches, as if she’s trying not to cry.
‘Philippa’s dead and someone killed her,’ Lily says. ‘We need to get help.’
‘Not by phone, you won’t. The snowstorm’s brought the lines down.’
‘What storm?’ Lily says. She looks out into the garden. The light from the kitchen shows how much snow must have fallen overnight. It’s a third of the way up the rotting door, and still falling. The top layer of snow is whipped by the wind into white gauze petticoats.
‘I tried to get through to the police as soon as I saw her. Poor love. She was only asking about what to do in an emergency the other night.’
‘Didn’t anyone think of this happening?’ Lily asks.
‘Someone getting murder for Christmas instead of a present? Funnily enough, no, we didn’t,’ Mrs Castle replies. She then covers her mouth as if trying to shovel the words back in.
‘We? Did you plan the Christmas Game with Aunt Lil?’ Lily asks.
Mrs Castle shakes her head. ‘Liliana insisted on writing the clues and rules by herself. You know what she’s like. Isabelle and me, we were only involved in logistics. No one was supposed to get hurt.’
‘Well, they have. We’ll have to drive to the police ourselves.’
‘If things don’t get any worse,’ Mrs Castle says.
‘How can it get worse?’
‘Never ask that question,’ Mrs Castle replies. ‘Fate has a tendency to answer.’