Angela Clarke is a bestselling novelist and a screenwriter. She is the author of the crime thrillers On My Life (Hachette, 2019), Trust Me (HarperCollins, 2017), Watch Me (HarperCollins, 2016), and Follow Me (HarperCollins, 2015). She also wrote the humorous memoir Confessions of a Fashionista (Penguin Random House, 2013). A sufferer of Hypermobility Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (hEDS), Angela is passionate about bringing marginalised voices into the industry.
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Miriam Pye wasn’t particularly keen on her cousin Edward, but she still didn’t wish to find him lying dead under the Christmas tree. He was sprawled out, a shiny gold bauble hanging above his head in a macabre approximation of a halo. Several wrapped presents, which had been ostentatiously piled up for this morning’s festivities, had been kicked and strewn. One gift, intended for a younger member of the family, squirted bright Play-Doh from its split Rudolph paper. The large spruce Edward had ordered be cut from the estate and decorated for the holidays had been knocked to a concerning angle. It was obvious, even to the untrained eye of Miriam; there’d been a struggle. A string of decorative pearls from the tree had been looped round Edward’s neck, over his clip-on velvet bow-tie, and presumably his airway. She doubted even Edward – a veteran mansplainer who claimed to be an expert at whatever task he encountered – could strangle himself from behind.
The advice of an anti-anxiety podcast a friend had sent her after her marriage collapsed popped into Miriam’s head: list five things you could see. It helped reassure your mind it was safe. Miriam was in the drawing room of Critchley Court. Under the (faux) lavish Rococo ceiling her great-great-grandfather had installed in 1932. There were the two large golden-yellow fleur-de-lis sofas, and matching wingback chairs in the familiar central horseshoe shape. The personalised advent calendars that had doubled as Edward’s showy invitations to Christmas at Critchley Court were lined along the ornate marble-topped console table that ran down the side of the room, leading the eye to the Christmas tree and what was underneath. Miriam jumped at the tick of the domed carriage clock on the mantelpiece. Had it always matched her heartbeat? Five things, Miriam. Focus. One. There are the booted feet of her dead cousin. Two. There’s the large picture window overlooking the driveway – locked from the inside. Three. There is no one else in this room. Four. There’s Edward’s distinctive nineteenth century wrought iron key, hanging from the string looped over the internal door handle. Five. There’s the only other key in existence, cold and rough in her palm, which she has just used to unlock the door from the outside. The key she’s had since housekeeper Ms Laverwick entrusted it to her last night. Miriam acknowledged her calming mental health exercise had fought a brave tussle, but ultimately met its match in the face of discovering a murdered body, in a locked room, when she had the sole other key.
Yesterday, Miriam’s Christmas Eve train had been predictably packed and late, meaning she’d arrived only minutes before dinner, and the rigmarole of Edward’s Christmas traditions had been well underway. She’d joined the other nine adult members of her extended family at the table, just in time to endure the fireworks. Edward, whose frustration that, as the current heir of Critchley Court’s fifty-five-acre estate, he was beholden to host all the Morgan-Wests annually for Christmas was only matched by his sadistic zeal in punishing everyone else for not having the good fortune of being the eldest male, was on peak awful form. Before the amuse-bouche had been bouched, he’d outed old-school, stuffy Great Uncle Roddy as having a secret gay paramour (which actually made most of the family more disposed to like Roddy). Then he’d accused a dignified and silent Ms Laverwick – who had been with the family for decades without reproach – of stealing from him. And finally revealed he, Edward, had been dating the lost love of cousin Andrew’s life; the girl who had brutally dumped him at the altar five years ago. Over the entrées, Edward had a pop at Miriam’s own failed marriage. After the initial stab of panic and prick of hot tears – this was the first Christmas since they’d separated – Miriam consoled herself that her ex had had the sense to decline Edward’s twisted invitation to join them at Critchley Court. She was only here because at forty-three, with no children, all her friends were busy with their own families, and she’d promised her mother she’d sneak in the Greggs’ mince pies she liked.
Today, Miriam was all set to nip in after her morning power walk and add her own small but tastefully wrapped gifts to those under the tree, well before the rest of the family had departed the breakfast room. She was still in her sixteen-hour fast window. But all thoughts of the number of Ms Laverwick’s roast potatoes she would delightfully consume at lunch were now gone. Her reusable tote from the village bookshop bumped forlornly against the hip of her size twelve bum-sculpting leggings. She supposed she was shaking – probably the shock. It was understandably exciting to have so many presents for the younger members in the party, but she knew already Edward would have had the majority wrapped for himself. He liked to say: “Another for the host with the most!”, a rather self-serving statement if ever there was one. But then Edward was the great-great-grandson of a man so aggressively aspirational the family still euphemistically referred to the 1930s family fortune as being built on ‘hygiene products’. The inherited distaste about the foundations of the Staffordshire country pile being built on toilet rolls also explained why their snobby ancestor had hyphenated his middle name to double barrel their now-surname. Mum always said the Morgan-West men were all as bad as each other, and it was a shame Miriam’s silly great-great-grandfather hadn’t had the sense to let the women inherit.
It was the thought of her mum, and the sound of breakfast chatter and clatter overspilling from the dining room behind, that spurred Miriam into action. Swiftly stepping back, she pulled the double doors to the drawing room closed, and turned the key in the lock again. With a big smile and open arms, she intercepted the toddling twins of her cousin Emma, and the questioning faces of their mother and father, resplendent in matching M&S Christmas robin jumpers. Miriam halted the frontal quartet that led the rest of the assorted three Morgan-Wests (and guests), and Ms Laverwick in their approach.
(C) Angela Clarke 2024