Twelve Days Page 6

  I could see parts of his red jacket, his shoulder and arm, the heels of his boots. His head was haloed with a brown stain, and his limbs, positioned awkwardly, were broken.

  And there indeed was his left hand, the wrist exposed, a sparkling object on his pinkie finger. Suzanne’s ring. I wondered how she would feel about him dying with her ring on his finger. But she probably didn’t even know he was wearing it.

  Unless she was the one who had been in his room.

  Some probable scenarios played out in my head. He had invited her to his room, shown her the ring, declared his eternal love for her. She had laughed, dismissed him, and he had threatened suicide. He had stood on the balcony and then an act of God or nature had intervened. He had slipped, plunged over, clutching the railing as it snapped off. He had tumbled down, smashing onto the rock. Suzanne had watched in horror, fled the room, terrified, and not said a word.

  Or: he had threatened suicide and had hurled himself off the balcony, breaking the railing as he fell. She had fled, hiding her horrible secret.

  Or…

  No, that was too far-fetched.

  I could not see her as a murderer. She had no motive. The snow flurried across Glen’s body, hiding the blood. The spatter from his head wound had even stained his hand leaving a brownish mark. I felt an illogical need to reach him and clean it off. I wondered who would do him this service eventually. The snow flurried across Glen’s body, and his body would soon be buried, so I hunted around and found two bricks, placed them at the edge of the chasm so that I would know where the body was.

  Stamping my feet in the cold, of all people, I found Suzanne waiting for me in the hallway. ‘Thank God you’re okay, Rafe. What were you doing outside?’

  Why would she be so interested in what I had found outside? I unpeeled the scarf and balaclava and worked my frozen lips. ‘How okay can I feel when someone has just fallen to his death?’

  I saw frailty in her now. And this was not acting. A sudden compassion for the girl in this larger-than-life actress’s body welled up in me before suspicion took over. If she had been in his room, then only three possibilities remained. Accident. Suicide. Murder. And by keeping silent, she was implicated in whichever one it was.

  She placed her hand on my arm to keep me here in the hallway a moment longer. ‘What can we do?’

  I spoke in a whisper. ‘If Reverend James is not going to take responsibility for Glen’s death, someone has to. Aren’t you curious as to how Glen died?’

  That moment of vulnerability was gone and the same old Suzanne was back. She took her hand away and shrank into herself again. ‘Why are you asking me?’

  I felt colder than I had outside. ‘What were you doing last night when this all happened? Did you hear the banging doors?’

  A flash of fear crossed her eyes. ‘I was fast asleep. Emily woke me, said something was going on.’

  She unfolded her arms, combed her hair with her finger – both signs if I could read them. You can tell the truth from someone’s gestures, unless that person has been schooled in the art of lying. But her eyes told me everything. She knew more than she was telling me. I decided to push it. ‘You know something more about this.’

  Her hands were shaking. ‘I’m not responsible here. I didn’t– Why do people always think… Rafe, please.’

  I stared into her eyes and she stared back. They were as green and unfathomable as I remembered them.

  ‘Rafe, please,’ she said. ‘You’re the only sane person around. Please get us out of here. Rafe, I…’

  Reverend James walked into the hallway and her plea died in her throat. ‘You two okay?’

  Supper was a comforting ritual. Setting places, sitting at the table, routine. As if this was all normal. Chicken soup and hot rolls.

  ‘Compliments to the chef!’ said Reverend James.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Alison. ‘Emily added her twelve secret ingredients. Linda made the rolls.’

  ‘A blessing on the meal.’

  We watched the darkness close in as we ate.

  They wanted to avoid the subject, but I brought them back. I was not going to let them slip into denial. ‘We have a legal responsibility to report a dead body.’

  Alison and Linda looked down. The men turned their eyes to Reverend James. He was sole authority here. He stirred his soup, ignored my question.

  ‘Reverend James, I’m worried about the body out there. And us carrying on as if it isn’t.’

  He gave me a withering look.

  Mike gave a quick look at Reverend James that told me that they had already discussed this subject in private. ‘Actually, it’s the best place for it.’

  I gave him a puzzled look. ‘How?’

  He dipped his bread roll in the soup and took a bite before answering. ‘On Everest, there are at least two hundred dead bodies just lying in the ice.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘They can’t carry them back. When I climbed up, there was a marker in one cave climbers used to tell them they were near the top. Mr Green Boots we called him. Just a frozen corpse lying there with green boots sticking out.’

  Alison put her spoon down. ‘Not while we’re eating, please, Mike.’

  Mike gave her a wounded look then opened his palms. ‘But what I’m saying,’ he said, ‘is that it’s the best place to preserve a dead body until the police get here.’

  ‘We haven’t even checked if he’s dead,’ said Suzanne. ‘I have this terrible thought that he’s alive, frozen, can’t escape.’ She was biting her lip, and hadn’t touched her soup. Alison was holding her stomach and not eating anything either. Emily hadn’t seemed to have lost her appetite and was sipping the hot soup slowly, all the while watching this exchange. Reverend James too watched silently, his eyes flitting to me, to Mike, to Suzanne.

  ‘C-can a b-body freeze and still be al-live?’ asked Danny.

  Mike nodded. ‘Yes, but not for long. Once an Everest climber stopped in a cave to rest and his body froze. He couldn’t move. Other climbers thought he was dead and passed by. But then someone heard him moan, realised he was still alive and rescued him.’

  Suzanne’s eyes widened as she put down her spoon. ‘That’s terrible, Mike. Is it possible?’

  I shook my head. ‘Glen fell twenty metres onto hard rock. His head was crushed. No one could survive that.’

  We sat in silence. No one dared to eat for a few minutes.

  ‘Poor Glen,’ said Alison, still clutching her stomach.

  ‘He died instantly,’ said Reverend James. ‘He’s in peace now.’

  I refrained from banging my fist on the table. Instead, I took it out on the bread roll, crumbling it into little pieces. ‘Again, Reverend, how can you say that? Just to make us feel better?’

  Reverend James placed a hand on his Bible, which was never far from him. Damn! I had just precipitated another sermon.

  ‘We need not concern ourselves with the body, which is just flesh and earthly temple of the soul. At death, the soul leaves the body. Meditate on this.’ He paused for effect. ‘For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven.’

  The Reverend was truly sealed off from this world, in a reality of his own, one walled in with Biblical quotes and plastered with smug self-righteousness. His neat answers were not rational, more to prop up his authority. Or else he was smudging things because he had something to hide.

  After supper, Emily joined me by the window and we watched snow spatter against the pane.

  ‘Any further thoughts?’ she said. ‘Suspicions?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Me too. I have something to tell you. But not here.’

  I checked to see where everyone was. They were huddled around the fire. ‘Come to my room, we can talk there. You wait here and sneak out a few minutes after I go, okay?’ I walked quickly out of
the room, making sure no one at the fire saw me, and then marched up to my room. I turned up the heat. Two minutes later, Emily creaked open my door. ‘It’s a better room than mine. But it’s freezing.’

  ‘Here.’ I threw her my coat, and then bolted the door.

  But as I turned she was in my arms. We held each other, as if we would fall if we didn’t. Then she pushed me back so she could look into my eyes, still holding me at the waist. ‘Good to see you again, Rafe. Really good.’

  I brushed her hair out of her eyes with my fingers. ‘You were a child last time I saw you. You were sixteen. You still look sixteen!’

  ‘And you were always the rebel. The doubting Thomas of The Twelve. Are you still?’

  I laughed. ‘If God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him. Of course. Maybe an anarchist now. Or a post-anarchist. Life is a proliferation of possibilities.’

  She squeezed me tight at the waist, held me to her. ‘Don’t go all philosophical on me, Rafe. I’m just a nurse. The world is the world. That’s my philosophy.’

  ‘It worked out for you, Em. You’re happily married. Rich husband. Children.’

  She shook her head. ‘Terrible things happened to me after you left.’

  I looked into her green eyes again.

  She let me go and we stood apart. ‘Once I left the Church, I picked up my life, married. But I never forgave you for abandoning me. We were supposed to be blood siblings, but you never kept in contact. I wanted to tell you about my marriage, ask you about your life. You’re still single, I hear.’

  I laughed again. ‘In a serial kind of way.’

  She bit her lower lip. ‘I always thought you would marry Suzanne.’

  ‘Marriage is a prison I always managed to avoid.’

  Emily raised her eyebrows. ‘I see you staring at her in the mirror the whole time. Still under her spell.’

  I shook my head. Took her hand again and warmed it with mine. ‘To be honest, I think she knows more than she’s letting on.’

  Her eyes were wide. ‘What?’

  ‘Whoever I saw with him, in his room, knows what happened.’

  ‘It’s terrible,’ she said.

  ‘I have my suspicions. But nothing concrete. I spoke with Suzanne briefly before supper. She’s acting guilty as hell.’

  Emily pressed my fingers together. ‘Still pursuing her, eh?’

  I sighed. ‘As a detective, yes.’

  She made circles with her fingers and brought them to her eyes, to look like binoculars. ‘Doing “research”. Sure.’

  ‘Seriously, she’s terrified of something. And Reverend James and Stephen know more than they’re letting on. How can Reverend James believe God let a balcony collapse to kill Glen? That it’s part of His plan, which just happens to coincide with the second day of Christmas when St Stephen was buried in rocks?’

  Emily rested her head on my shoulder. ‘It’s such bullshit. Exactly why I left his nutty Church of the Joyful Resurrection. Everything that happened – and some bad things happened in that church after you left, let me tell you – was “meant to be” and we were “not to question God’s will”. No question of how to try to put things right, or understand what was wrong. It was all God. Or Satan. Such crap.’

  I brushed her hair away from her face again. ‘So are you going to tell me now?’

  She pulled my hand from her hair, grabbed it tight.

  ‘Last night in Glen’s room. You and Glen alluded to some secret. What was he going on about?’

  She squeezed both of my hands. Sighed. Looked down. ‘There’s a lot.’

  ‘Try me.’

  She looked back to make sure the door was locked. ‘I’m sure the woman you saw was Linda,’ she said.

  I wrinkled my brow. ‘Linda? Not Suzanne?’

  She held my hands even tighter. ‘Glen and Linda were having an affair.’

  It took a few minutes to take in. ‘Glen? Linda?’ I tried to imagine that ice queen, pallid skin, cold eyes, having passion for anything, anybody. ‘You’re absolutely kidding. The preacher’s wife and Glen?’

  Emily now wrapped both her pinkies around mine. The sign of truth. Double truth. Blood siblings. ‘It was hushed up. But things still got very ugly and Glen left. I wondered how it would be, bringing Glen back into The Twelve. I knew they would have to at least meet to sort it out.’

  I shook my head. Tried to remember the exchanges between Linda and Glen and Reverend James on the first day. I hadn’t noticed anything. ‘Last night, the people I saw were arguing. If it was Linda, it does make some sort of sense.’ And here was the dangerous question. ‘Do you think it had anything to do with his death a few hours later?’

  Emily lowered her voice, barely audible above the wind rattling the window panes. ‘No doubt.’

  3

  Three French hens

  That evening, the wind howled, the snow fell and on that second day of Christmas, the Feast of St Stephen, the 26th of December, the nine remaining members of The Twelve huddled in the living room, their faces yellowed in the reflection of the leaping fire. The message was, according to God, to stay put, remain calm, and weather the storm. We had no way of contacting the outside world, so the police had no clue we were trapped. And here we were, playing silly games.

  Old emotions bubbled up in me. She still held power over me. No matter how I denied it, Suzanne still burned inside my soul. I had spent my life pining and mourning, aching for her; no, not for her, for an idealised image of her. I had seen her everywhere and had fallen in love with a dozen copies of her. She had formed the shape of my desire and I was here to purge that. Suzanne had constructed herself with a series of stock images and the world, and I along with it, had fallen in love with a chimera.

  She caught me staring at her in the mirror and I looked away. The fear in her eyes was unmistakable.

  Reverend James held out a glass bowl, and one by one we placed our tightly folded pieces of paper holding our confessions. I had to admit it was a brilliant strategy, asking us to entrust our deepest darkest secrets to him. It was a matter of pure faith, because he could unfold them and read them. But he didn’t. He held the bowl up to the chandelier and asked us to close our eyes and silently ask God for absolution. He waited until all eyes were closed. ‘Emily. Rafe.’

  I obliged. So did Emily. When I opened my eyes again, Reverend James had placed the bowl on the low coffee table by the fire. ‘Amen.’

  He lifted the bowl once more, and I watched him pour its contents straight into the fire. Some papers unfurled as they browned and crisped and lit up orange.

  ‘May the Lord forgive us our trespasses, wash you all of our sins, and forgive those who trespass against us.’

  Nothing new here – this was a sound psychological strategy used by therapists to detach patients from guilt, obsession, habit. But it turned Reverend James’ flock into dependent, penitent sinners.

  ‘What did you write?’ whispered Emily, nudging me in the ribs. ‘Yours must have been a long list.’

  I grabbed her fingers to stop her doing it again. ‘Not as long as yours.’

  ‘I’d give anything to know what people wrote.’

  I had watched each one place their folded piece of paper in the bowl. ‘I doubt anyone would confess their real sins,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t be so sure.’

  And then Reverend James launched into another sermon. I tuned out and stared at Linda, fascinated by what Emily had told me. Linda sat tight-lipped as the papers burned. Now, every gesture of hers lit up with significance.

  I had written a tongue-in-cheek ‘confession’. I didn’t believe in a God who kept a score of our sins and sent us to hell forever and ever to be tortured if we didn’t repent of them. The universe did not work that way.

  But now this confession scenario had taken on more significance. Was Reverend James trying to force out the truth here? Or hide the truth by focussing on others’ sins?

  ‘“Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not in
herit the kingdom of God?”’ Reverend James proclaimed with eyes closed (as he did when quoting the sacred scriptures).

  It was an idle game at this stage. Whether Glen had been murdered or had ended his own life was an open question, but I for one suspected foul play. The obvious suspect was Reverend James himself. He finds his wife with Glen – again – calls on the wrath of God, God unleashes a lightning bolt which flings Glen onto the rocks. Adulterer!

  Or Reverend James catches them at it, corners Glen on the balcony, and in his blind fury pushes him. Glen clutches the railing, it breaks, and he tumbles over the edge.

  My gaze lingered on Linda and another scenario played out in my mind: Glen says he does not love her and refuses to rescue her from her unhappy marriage with this fanatical clergyman. She pushes Glen off the balcony, watches grim-mouthed as he plummets to his death.

  Somehow I could not believe any of the scenarios was true.

  Stephen stared into the fire, sweat beading across his forehead. Maybe he punished Glen for his apostasy…

  I shook my head, releasing these grim fantasies. According to the principle of Occam’s razor, the simplest explanation is most likely to be the correct one. It was an accident, plain and simple.

  But such an accident! It was no surprise that Reverend James could apply moral lessons. Adulterers were stoned to death in the Bible. No wonder this man of God saw this as fate, no, as moral retribution from above.