I Know What You Did Last Wednesday (2 page)

“Here we are, ladies and gentlemen,” the captain announced from somewhere behind his beard. “I wish you all a very pleasant stay on Crocodile Island. I do indeed! I’ll be coming back for you in a couple of days. My name is Captain Randle, by the way. Horatio Randle. It’s been a pleasure having you lovely people on my boat. You remember me, now!”

“Aren’t you coming with us?” Eric demanded.

“No, sir. I’m not invited,” Captain Randle replied. “I live on the mainland. But I’ll be back to collect you in a couple of days. I’ll see you then!”

We disembarked. The boat pulled out and headed back the way it had come. The eight of us were left on the island, wondering what was going to happen next.

“So where’s old Rory?” Brenda asked.

“Maybe we should walk up to the house,” Sylvie suggested. She was the only one of them who didn’t have a full-time job. She had told Tim that she was a housewife, and was carrying three photographs of her husband and three more of her house.

“Bit of a cheek,” Eric muttered. From the look of him, walking wasn’t something he did often.

“Best foot forward!” Janet said cheerily. Apparently she worked as a hairdresser, and her own hair was dancing in the wind. As indeed was Libby.

We walked. Sylvie might have called it a house but I would have said it was a castle that Rory had bought for himself on his island retreat. It was built out of grey brick: a grand, sprawling building with towers and battlements and even gargoyles gazing wickedly out of the corners. We reached the front door. It was solid oak, as thick as a tree and half as welcoming.

“I wonder if we should knock?” Tim asked.

“To hell with that!” Eric pushed and the door swung open.

We found ourselves in a great hall with a black and white floor, animal heads on the walls and a roaring fire in the hearth. A grandfather clock chimed four times. I looked at my watch – it was actually ten past three. I was already beginning to feel uneasy. Apart from the crackle of the logs and the ticking of the clock, the house was silent. It felt empty. No Rory, no Mrs Rory, no butler, no cook. Just us.

“Hello?” Libby called out. “Is there anyone at home?”

“It-doesn’t-look-as-if-there’s-anyone-here,” Mark said. At least, I think that’s what he said. Speaking was something else that he did very fast. Whole sentences came out of his mouth as a single word.

“This is ridiculous,” Eric snapped. “I suggest we split up and try and find Rory. Maybe he’s asleep upstairs.”

So we all went our separate ways. Mark and Eric headed off through different doors. Libby Goldman went into the kitchen. Tim and I went upstairs. It was only now that we were inside it that I realized just how big this house was. It had five staircases, doors everywhere and so many corridors that we could have been walking through a maze. And if it looked like a castle from the outside, inside it was like a museum. There was more furniture than you’d find in a department store. Antique chairs and sofas stood next to cupboards and sideboards and tables of every shape and size. There were so many oil paintings that you could hardly see the walls. Rory also seemed to have a fondness for ancient weapons – I had only been in the place a few minutes but already I had seen crossbows and muskets and flintlock pistols mounted on wooden plaques. On the first floor there was a stuffed bear holding an Elizabethan gun … a blunderbuss. The stairs and upper landing were covered in thick, red carpet which muffled every sound. In the distance I could hear Janet calling out Rory’s name but it was difficult to say if she was near or far away. Suddenly we were lost and very much on our own.

We reached a corner where there was a suit of dull silver armour standing guard; a knight with a shield but no sword.

“I don’t like it,” I said.

“I think it’s a very nice suit of armour,” Tim replied.

“I’m not talking about the armour, Tim,” I said. “I’m talking about the whole island. Why isn’t there anyone here to meet us? And why did your friend send that old fishing boat to pick us up?”

Tim smiled. “Relax, kid,” he said. “The house is a bit quiet, that’s all. But my sixth sense would tell me if there was something wrong, and right now I’m feeling fine…”

Just then there was a high-pitched scream from another part of the second floor. It was Brenda. She screamed and screamed again.

“How lovely!” Tim exclaimed. “Brenda’s singing for us! I think that’s Mozart, isn’t it?”

“It’s not Mozart, Tim,” I shouted, beginning to run towards the sound. “She’s screaming for help! Come on!”

We ran down the corridor and round the corner. That was when we saw Brenda, standing in front of an open bedroom door. She had stopped screaming now but her face was white and her hands were tearing at her hair. At the same time, Libby and Sylvie appeared, coming up the stairs. And Eric was also there, pushing his way forward to see what the fuss was about.

Tim and I reached the doorway. I looked inside.

The room had a red carpet. It took me a couple of seconds to realize that the room had once had a yellow carpet. It was covered in blood. There was more blood on the walls and on the bed. There was even blood on the blood.

And there was McDougal. I’m afraid it was the end of the story for Rory. The sword that had killed him was lying next to him and I guess it must have been taken from the suit of armour.

Brenda screamed again and pulled out a handful of her own hair.

Eric stood back, gasping.

Libby burst into tears.

And Tim, of course, fainted.

There were just the eight of us, trapped on Crocodile Island. And I had to admit, our reunion hadn’t got off to a very good start.

“It was horrible,” Tim groaned. “It was horrible. Rory McPoodle … he was in pieces!”

“I don’t want to hear about it, Tim,” I said. Actually, it was too late. He’d already told me twenty times.

“Why would anyone
do
that?” he demanded. “What sort of person would do that?”

“I’m not sure,” I muttered. “How about a dangerous lunatic?”

Tim nodded. “You could be right,” he said.

We were sitting in our bedroom. We knew it was the bedroom that McDougal had prepared for us because it had Tim’s name on the door. There were seven bedrooms on the same floor, each one of them labelled for the arriving guests. This room was square, with a high ceiling and a window with a low balcony looking out over a sea that was already grey and choppy as the sun set and the evening drew in. There was a four-poster bed, a heavy tapestry and the sort of wallpaper that could give you bad dreams. There was also something else I’d noticed and it worried me.

“Look at this, Tim,” I said. I pointed at the bedside table. “There’s a telephone socket here – but no telephone. What does that tell you?”

“The last person who slept in this room stole the telephone?”

“Not exactly. I think the telephone has been taken to stop us making any calls.”

“Why would anyone do that?”

“To stop us reporting the death of Rory McDougal to the police.”

Tim considered. “You mean … someone knew we were coming…” he began.

“Exactly. And they also knew we’d be stuck here. At least until the boat came back.”

It was a nasty thought. I was beginning to have lots of nasty thoughts, and the worst one was this: someone had killed Rory McDougal, but had it happened before we arrived on the island? Or had he been killed by one of the people from the boat? As soon as we had arrived at the house, we had all split up. For at least ten minutes nobody had known where anybody else was, which meant that any one of us could have found Rory and killed him before the others arrived.

Along with Tim and myself, there were now six people on the island … six and several halves if you counted Rory. Eric Draper, Janet Rhodes, Sylvie Binns, Mark Tyler, Brenda Blake and Libby Goldman. Tim hadn’t seen any of them in ten years and knew hardly anything about them. Could one of them be a crazed killer? Could one of them have planned this whole thing?

I looked at my watch. It was ten to seven. We left the room and went back downstairs.

Eric Draper had called a meeting in the dining-room at seven o’clock. I don’t know who had put him in charge but I guessed he had decided himself.

“He was head boy at school,” Tim told me. “He was always telling everyone what to do. Even the teachers used to do what he said.”

“What was Rory McDougal like as a boy?”

“Well … he was young.”

“That’s very helpful, Tim. I mean … was he popular?”

“Yes. Except he once had a big row with Libby Goldman. He tried to kiss her in biology class and she attacked him with a bicycle pump.”

“But she wouldn’t kill him just because of that, would she?”

“You should have seen where she put the bicycle pump!”

In fact Libby was alone in the dining-room when we arrived for the meeting. She was sitting in a chair at the end of a black, polished table that ran almost the full length of the room. Portraits of bearded men in different shades of tartan looked down from the walls. A chandelier hung from the ceiling.

She looked up as we came in. Her eyes were red. Either she had been crying or she had bad hay fever – and I hadn’t noticed any hay on Crocodile Island. She was smoking a cigarette – or trying to. Her hands were shaking so much she had trouble getting it into her mouth.

“What are we going to do?” she wailed. “It’s so horrible! I knew I shouldn’t have accepted Rory’s invitation!”

“Why did you?” I asked. “If you didn’t like him…”

“Well … he’s interesting. He’s rich. I thought he might appear on my television programme –
Libby’s Lounge
.”

“I watch that!” Tim exclaimed.

“But it’s a children’s programme,” Libby said.

Tim blushed. “Well … I mean … I’ve seen it. A bit of it.”

“I’ve never heard of it,” I muttered.

Libby’s eyes went redder.

Then three of the others came in: Janet Rhodes, Mark Tyler and Brenda Blake.

“I’ve been trying to call the mainland on my mobile phone,” Janet announced. “But I can’t get a signal.”

“I can’t get a signal either,” agreed Mark, speaking as quickly as ever. He sort of shimmered in front of me and suddenly he was sitting down.

“There is no signal on this island.”

“And no phone in my room,” Janet said.

“No phone in any room!” The singer was looking pale and scared. Of course, she was the one who had found the body. Looking at her, I saw that it would be a few months before she sang in a concert hall. She probably wouldn’t have the strength to sing in the bath.

Somewhere a clock struck seven and Eric Draper waddled into the room. “Are we all here?” he asked.

“I’m here!” Tim called out, as helpful as ever.

“I think there’s one missing,” I said.

Eric Draper did a quick head count. At least everyone in the room still had their heads. “Sylvie isn’t here yet,” he said. He scowled. You could tell he was the sort of man who expected everyone to do exactly what he said. “We’ll have to wait for her.”

“She was always late for everything,” Janet muttered. She had slumped into a chair next to Libby. “I don’t know how she managed to come first in chemistry. She was always late for class.”

“I saw her in her room a few moments ago,” Mark said. “She was sitting on the bed. She looked upset.”

“I’m upset!” Eric said. “We’re all upset! Well, let’s begin without her.” He cleared his throat as if we were the jury and he was about to begin his summing up. “We are clearly in a very awkward situation here. We’ve been invited to this island, only to discover that our host, Rory McDougal, has been murdered. We can’t call the police because it would seem that there are no telephones and none of our mobiles can get a signal. Unless we can find a boat to get back to the mainland, we’re stuck here until Captain Randle – or whatever his name was – arrives to pick us up. The only good news is that there’s plenty of food in the house. I’ve looked in the kitchen. This is a comfortable house. We should be fine here.”

“Unless the killer strikes again,” I said.

Everyone looked at me. “What makes you think he’ll do that?” Eric demanded.

“It’s a possibility,” I said. “And anyway, ‘he’ could be a ‘she’.”

I noticed Libby shivered when I said that – but to be frank she’d been shivering a lot recently.

“Did Rory invite you here too?” Mark asked.

“Not exactly. He invited Tim, and Tim couldn’t leave me on my own at home. So I came along for the ride.”

Eric scowled for a second time. Scowling suited him. “I wouldn’t have said this place was suitable for children,” he said.

“Murder isn’t suitable for children,” I agreed. “But I’m stuck here with you and it seems to me that we’ve all been set up. No phones! That has to be on purpose. All the rooms were prepared for us, with our names on the doors. And now, like you say, we’re stuck here. Suppose the killer is here too?”

“That’s not possible,” Brenda whispered. But she didn’t sound like she believed herself.

“Maybe Rory wasn’t murdered,” Tim suggested. “Maybe it was an accident.”

“You mean someone accidentally chopped him to pieces?” I asked.

Janet glanced at the door. She was looking nervous. A hairdresser having a bad hair day. “Perhaps we should go and find Sylvie,” she suggested.

Nobody said anything. Then, as one, we hurried out of the room.

We went back upstairs. Sylvie’s room was halfway down the corridor, two doors away from our own. It was closed. Tim knocked. There was no reply. “She could have fallen asleep,” he said.

“Just open the door, Tim,” I suggested.

He opened it. Sylvie’s room was a similar size to ours but with more modern furniture, an abstract painting on the wall and two single beds. Her case was standing beside the wall, unopened. As my eyes travelled towards her, I noticed a twist of something silver lying in the middle of the yellow carpet. But I didn’t have time to mention it.

Sylvie was lying on her back, one hand flung out. When I had first seen her I had thought her small and silent. Now she was smaller and dreadfully still. I felt Mark push past me, entering the room.