Stevie sniffed. Her nose was running in the cold. She felt dirty and scrappy in her well-worn travel clothes, and her red vinyl coat was too thin. It was good to be cold, though. It kept her sharp.
The six were already there when they arrived, sitting on the benches by the empty lines of the Eye. The last passengers disembarked.
“Thank you for coming,” Izzy said. “I know this is a bit unusual, but my aunt loved riding this, and since we have a family connection . . .”
“It’s a lovely gesture,” Theo said. She sounded congested, like she had been crying a lot.
“Stevie,” Sooz said. “I thought you were all leaving today.”
“I missed my flight,” Stevie answered. “Izzy gave me a place to stay, and I wanted to . . . you know.”
“It’s good of you,” Yash said.
“And we brought a hamper,” Peter said, holding up a small basket with some bottles and glasses. “Something for a toast.”
Izzy stepped up to the person manning the platform and explained who they were. After a moment’s discussion, they were all shown to a pod. The door was sealed, and the wheel began to rotate. Stevie looked at the massive spokes. The river fell away, dark and forbidding, and London gleamed around them. Peter and Julian opened the bottles and distributed glasses of whisky to those who wanted alcohol and sparkling elderflower drink to those who did not. Yash had brought a portable speaker and started to play music—some Britpop, of course. Some Blur. Stevie knew the sound of them by now. This was a slow, pensive song called “Best Days.”
As the wheel crested, the six put their arms around each other’s shoulders, even inviting Izzy and Stevie into the huddle. This was awkward, but Stevie slipped in between Sooz and Julian.
“We love you, Ange,” Sooz said. “We’re so sorry.”
“We love you,” Sebastian echoed.
It went around—Julian, Peter, Theo, Yash, Izzy. Stevie tucked her head down.
Just as the pod reached the peak, it slowed, then stopped completely. It wobbled when the wind hit it.
“To Ange,” Sebastian said, raising his glass. “A historian. A writer. A thinker. A drinker.”
“To Ange,” everyone echoed. Stevie lifted her fancy Sprite shyly.
Of course, the Nine, or the Six, had made this into an event. But as the quiet settled over the group and the wind knocked against the pod and Stevie realized just how high up they were inside a metal-and-glass bubble on a windy major river . . . she knew it was time. She looked to Izzy, who was wiping tears from her face with the back of her hand, smearing mascara and black eyeliner in all directions.
She cleared her throat.
“Actually,” Izzy said, which is a strange way to begin anything. “We wanted to bring everyone up here to have a chat. Because . . . Stevie has something she wanted to say. If you wouldn’t mind sitting down.”
In that moment, Stevie missed her friends so profoundly that she could have cried. Janelle, Vi, and Nate were in the sky, moving toward home. And David was here, but he might as well have been on Mars.
She couldn’t think about that now. This was the thing she had to do. She wished she could do it from the stability of the bench in the middle of the pod, but she had to stand at the head of it, where it shook the most, but where everyone could see her.
“I wanted to talk about the button,” Stevie said. “The one Angela mentioned in her text.”
“Yes,” Yash said, tucking himself inside his gray cashmere coat in the chill. “What was that all about?”
“It was a message,” Stevie replied. “A message to a friend. She was trying to tell one of you something. I could only figure out what the message meant because I happened to be there on the night she sent the message. People get ideas from things around them. They use examples they know, that make sense to them. And, you know, Angela knew history. She knew all about Henry the Eighth and his wives. When we visited her that night, Angela told us a story about the execution of Anne Boleyn. She was telling us in a lot of detail how Anne was set up to die, and how the king ordered a special, fancy executioner from France. This guy used a sword, not an axe . . .”
The word axe was the moment the mood in the pod shifted. Stevie could feel it. Everyone got a little more attentive, more brittle.
“。 . . so the victim’s head had to be in a certain position to do the job in one blow. He used a trick. He would call out to an imaginary assistant to bring the sword, the victim would turn their head in that direction to listen for the sword coming—but the guy already had the sword. Now the neck was in the right position, and he would swing. She said, ‘A little bit of fakery does so much.’ She gave herself the idea. Make a little bit of fakery. Get someone to turn their head. Angela had grown tired of waiting, tired of not knowing what she knew. She’d just found out that she started talking about the murders when she was on painkillers . . .”
All the pretense was gone. Now they all knew what this was.
“。 . . and she decided enough was enough. She wanted an answer. She decided to call her assistant to bring her sword. She put something out there. Anne Boleyn gave her part of the idea; her cat gave her the rest. Her cat steals buttons. He tried to take one off my coat while we were there. What if there was a piece of evidence? What’s a good piece of evidence? Something small that might come off clothing. She’d just seen that happen. A button. She texts that she has the button. It’s just a stab in the dark. If this doesn’t work, it doesn’t matter. Who cares? It’s nothing. It’s a typo in a text. But if it does . . .”
She turned to look at the assembled.
“And it does,” Stevie said. “Seven minutes later, someone called her. And right after that, Angela put on her coat and left the house to meet this person. The fact that she went tells us something. I don’t think she thought she was going to meet the murderer. I think she thought the person she was meeting with had the same suspicions that she did. But she was going to meet the person who killed Samantha Gravis, Rosie, and Noel. She was going to meet the person who unlocked the woodshed. She was going to meet the person who had the key that night in 1995 and was desperate to keep a secret.”
She turned to Sebastian, who blanched and leaned back.
“I didn’t . . .”
“No,” Stevie said. “There was something interesting in the witness statements about that night, something that seemed completely insignificant at first. But if you read them back and focused on only one thing, it was instantly obvious what happened. Someone had a key. So where were the keys? Down your pants, apparently. But remember when you tried to get the cabinet open to get the whisky? The cabinet didn’t open. It wasn’t because you were drunk. It was because you didn’t have the right keys. But then you got the cabinet open. And when did that happen?”
Stevie turned to the man who was leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, a curious look on his face.
“When you switched them,” she said to Peter.
June 23, 1995
11:00 p.m.
IT HAD STARTED WITH THE GIRL THEY MET AT THE PUB. THE CANADIAN. The American. Samantha. That was her name. Peter should have realized she was American. She had that head of curly hair—big American hair. Big American smile. That American confidence. Julian met her first, because he was Julian. There was nothing monogamous about Julian. He flapped those long lashes at everyone, flashing those ice-blue eyes, giving that look that seemed so shy. Everyone fell for it. He and the American were all over each other within minutes.