“There are more than you would think,” Yash added.
Stevie didn’t like how that conversation had gone down. David was smart. David could program. David studied international relations here and had volunteered for a voting rights organization at home, but he didn’t quite have a thing like the rest of them did. And he joked about it, but she saw him shift a little in the chair. The smile was thin. She was about to say something about all the volunteer work he had done over the summer, but there was a sound in the hallway. Someone was coming into the house.
Everyone at the table straightened up.
“Jules,” Sooz said, pushing back her chair.
A minute later, a man entered the dining room. Well, other people entered rooms—Julian Reynolds changed their spatial orientation. All chairs, eyes, and energies magnetically pointed toward him.
His hair was the color of beach sand, with an elegant soft gray on the sides. He was immaculately dressed in gray pants and a royal-blue shirt that he must have known brought out the color of his eyes. Stevie had read the phrase “piercing blue eyes” many times and never knew why eyes would be described that way. Eyes are notoriously round and squishy and would burst like a water balloon if deployed as a weapon. Julian’s were blue like pool water, and just as clear. They invited you to dive in and examine their depths. You were in the wordless, intimate conversation that comes with making such strong eye contact with a stranger. You were hooked.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said, gracefully removing his camel-colored coat. “I had surgery this evening.”
Debbie hustled over to disappear the coat, and all the Nine got up to greet their friend.
“You know Isabelle, Ange’s niece,” Sebastian said. “And these are her American friends.”
He said all of this like they’d been friends for life—as if he’d been waiting for the moment where he could introduce them.
“Can I bring you a plate of food?” Debbie asked. “It’s still warm. Sausage and mash, and some soup?”
“I had a sandwich on the train, thank you,” he said. “But a pudding would be lovely, and some coffee. I have some things I’d like to discuss.”
“Why don’t we go through to the sitting room?” Sebastian said. “We’ll have coffee in there by the fire.”
Everyone made their way out of the dining room and into the main hall.
“I think they want to talk,” Janelle said in a quiet voice. “We’re going to go upstairs.”
“I think that’s the move,” David added.
Everyone in Stevie’s contingent made their way toward the staircase, though Stevie wanted to go in and find out what was going on. Luckily, Izzy wanted the same.
“Stevie,” Izzy said, “could you come? I think it would be helpful.”
Nate gave Stevie a pointed look before turning and heading upstairs.
“Did he just say he had surgery?” Stevie asked before they stepped into the sitting room.
“Oh. He’s an MP. When they have public hours that constituents can come in and talk—that’s called surgery.”
Nothing made any sense here.
It was dark now. The fire had been replenished with wood. Sebastian drew the heavy curtains against the night as Debbie came in with a tray of coffee and tea and a pudding for Julian. She set it down on an ottoman.
“That’s all for tonight, Debs,” Sebastian said. “Thanks so much for pitching in.”
“Is one of these soya or oat milk?” Sooz asked, looking at the tiny jugs on the coffee tray.
“That one with the roses on it is plant-based,” Sebastian said, reaching forward to pass it to Sooz. There were only so many times that someone could say the words plant-based before they lost all meaning.
“I’ve been in touch with the police,” Julian said, pouring himself a coffee. “I spoke to them on the way here. I’ve got some information. CCTV shows Ange leaving her house right around ten that evening. She used her Oyster card and took the Tube to Waterloo. She tapped out of the station at ten fifty-five. There’s footage of her leaving the station, but it was raining and she put up an umbrella, so it becomes hard to follow her.”
“What about her phone?” Stevie asked. “They can check where it pinged.”
Julian made a noise that suggested this had not been fruitful.
“The last ping they had was about an hour after that, and fairly close by.”
“So she left her house and went to Waterloo,” Theo said. “She left the station. On her own?”
“Yes, on her own.”
“And nobody saw her hurt,” Peter said.
“Exactly,” Sooz said. “No news is good news in many ways? Ange has gone off on an errand or mission, or maybe she just needed some time to herself. People do.”
She reached over and patted Izzy’s arm.
“I’ll keep working on it,” Julian said. “I’m scheduled to speak to someone again later this evening.”
He drained the rest of his coffee.
Stevie watched Julian for a moment. Despite the liquid ease with which he moved, there was a twitchiness to his movements. Under the shadows of his long eyelashes, the blue-sky eyes clouded with storms.
Unlike everyone else, he was not pretending all was well.
21
A FEW MINUTES LATER, AFTER MAKING HER FAREWELL, STEVIE ascended the creaking steps of Merryweather’s grand staircase on her own, the ticking grandfather clock beneath her, and the eyes of the Holt-Careys of the past boring down on her. The ceilings in here were tall enough that pictures were not at eye height—everything was up.
She had a choice now. Which room to go to? She could knock on Janelle’s door, get this over with. It was nine o’clock, and Quinn still hadn’t called. She had to do this soon. She started walking in that direction, but everything began to swim in her head. Angela and the lock. The text about the button. Samantha Gravis. The power outage and the tree down on the road. The rules of the game and the statements about where everyone was that night.
Too many things. She needed to think. She would talk to Janelle in a minute. She returned to her room and paced around, staring at the silver-lilac walls, the painting of a horse, the detailing on the side of the wardrobe. A moment later, there was a soft knock and David stuck his head in.
“Hey,” he said, coming in and shutting the door quietly behind him.
“Did they seem really . . . calm to you?” Stevie asked. “No one was talking about Angela.”
“They’re English,” David said, sitting on the bed. “That keep calm and carry on thing is real. You know. Don’t talk about stuff that’s bad. Talk about tennis! That’s how they are.”
“It’s more than that,” she said. “There was something weird about the whole conversation, about all of this. They let us come here with Izzy . . . something is off with all of it, and I can’t figure out what it is. It feels . . . claustrophobic.”
“I think it’s just a weird situation,” David said. “And being foreign. Things feel different. You feel out of place a lot.”
“But Angela is gone,” Stevie said.
“What if she doesn’t want to be found? If she thinks one of her friends is a killer, then . . .”