A Meditation On Murder

It was all very strange and incongruous to Richard’s mind. As for the hotel’s guests, Richard could see that they’d apparently all vanished into thin air, although—now he was looking—he could see a clump of them down on the beach looking back at him.

Camille came over from the house and Richard went to meet her.

‘Okay,’ Camille said. ‘I’ve sent Rianka—the wife—to her room and I’ve said I’ll go to her as soon as I can. As for the other witnesses, they’re off getting changed into their normal clothes. I’ve then told them to meet by the ambulance so we can take samples.’

‘Good work. Thank you.’

‘But what did Julia say? Is she the murderer?’

‘Oh yes. She’s made a full confession.’

Camille looked at Richard and shifted her weight onto one hip, a suspicious look slipping into her eyes.

‘And yet …?’

‘I don’t know, it’s just she didn’t really make a very good fist at explaining the murder.’

‘She didn’t?’

‘No. For example, she didn’t say she had any reason to want to kill the deceased. In fact, she said how much she liked him. And she claimed she not only hadn’t seen the knife before that she used to kill him, but she had no idea where it even came from.’

‘But she’s the murderer, of course she’d say that. She’s lying.’

‘I know. But seeing as she’s already confessed to killing him, why bother to lie that she doesn’t know what her motive was, what her means were or what her opportunity was?’

Camille could see the logic of what Richard was saying.

‘And she’s also left-handed,’ Richard said.

‘She is?’

‘Or so she says.’

‘Maybe she’s trying to trick you.’

‘Maybe.’

Camille knew her boss well. ‘You don’t think she did it, do you?’

‘I don’t know what I think—but it’s definitely not stacking up. Not yet. Not if she can’t provide us with a decent means, motive and opportunity. And there’s something else as well.’ Richard paused a moment, and then turned back to face the Japanese tea house. ‘It’s this tea house. Because Julia also said Aslan locked her and the others inside it before they started their meditation.’

‘So?’

Richard looked at his partner. ‘Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?’

Camille refused to be drawn, so Richard explained for her.

‘Because who in their right mind would allow themselves to be locked inside a room with four other potential witnesses before committing murder?’

Camille considered this a moment and then said, ‘Oh. I see what you mean.’

‘Precisely. Why not kill him in the dead of night? Or when he’s on his own?’

Richard looked over at the Meditation Space again.

‘If you ask me, there’s something about that tea house that’s important. Something we haven’t realised yet. Either because of how it’s made—or where it’s located—but the victim had to be killed inside it in broad daylight in front of a load of other potential witnesses. Why?’

Chapter Two

While Fidel processed the scene, Camille oversaw the paramedics taking the blood samples from the four remaining witnesses, and Richard watched all the activity from the shade of a nearby palm tree. This, in fact, meant standing nowhere near the palm tree in question that was actually shading him, but Richard had long ago learnt that a palm tree’s vertical trunk was too narrow to offer any shade from the blistering tropical sunshine. Instead, his technique was to follow the shade of the thin trunk along the ground until he found the much larger clump of shade that was thrown by the bush of fronds at the top of the tree.

Which is why, at this precise moment, if anyone had been looking, they’d have seen Richard standing in the middle of an entirely sun-bleached lawn apparently in his own personal shaft of darkness. But he wanted to take a moment to watch the four remaining witnesses interact with Camille. After all, they’d just been locked inside a room where a vicious murder had been carried out. How were they bearing up?

To this end, Richard had already got the witnesses’ check-in details from The Retreat’s receptionist.

He could see that Camille was currently talking to a woman he now knew was called Saskia Filbee. The photocopy of her passport had her down as forty-two years old. And according to the hotel’s registration card she lived in Walthamstow and worked as a temporary secretary in London. Like the other witnesses, she’d now changed back into her normal clothes and Richard could see that she’d chosen to put on a sensible A-line dress in dark blue. And he could also see from the way that Saskia listened to Camille with her head cocked slightly to one side that this was someone who was happy being told what to do.

He saw Saskia nod her head and go over to one of the paramedics. Yes, Richard thought to himself, Saskia was a sensible secretary. And she would of course volunteer to give her blood sample to the paramedics first.

Richard shuffled the registration forms in his hand and came up with Paul Sellars and Ann Sellars next. According to their passports, Ann was forty-five years old and had been born in Birmingham. Her registration said she was a housewife and, now that she’d changed into her normal clothes, Richard could see that while she was somewhat plump, she seemed to fizz with the energy of a middle-aged woman who, rather than despair at how she’d ‘let herself go’, had instead decided to embrace this fact.

Gold flashed at the thick necklace around Ann’s neck, her wrists were similarly festooned with glitz, and she seemed to be wearing electric-blue trousers and gold slippers straight out of an Arabian nightmare, a violently fuchsia blouse, and the whole ensemble was finished off with a silk shawl that she wore draped over her shoulders and which seemed to have been constructed from every colour in the world that didn’t actually occur in nature. On it, neon swirls of blue fought with psychedelic greens; and both lost out to attacks of fluorescent yellow.

Richard could see from the way that Ann was now talking to Camille—with almost windmill gesticulations as she pointed from the house to the Meditation Space and back again at the paramedics—that Ann clearly had a personality as colourful and slapdash as her clothes.

He watched as a man wearing tan chinos, brown deck shoes and a white short-sleeved shirt joined Ann. Richard could see from the papers in his hand that this was Paul Sellars, Ann’s fifty-two-year-old husband. He was a pharmacist at an independent chemist’s in Nottingham, where he and Ann lived. And as Paul calmed Ann down, Richard could see that everything Ann was, her husband wasn’t.

For starters, he was rake thin. And almost entirely bald. But it was more than that. It was his manner that was so different. Richard could see that Paul was smooth, conciliatory. In charge. Just a few words into whatever he was saying, Ann quietened down and looked at her husband as though waiting for instruction. And instruction was clearly what he was giving her because, as he pointed off to the paramedics, Ann seemed finally to understand what was expected of her and she went over to give her samples meekly.

Richard saw Camille thank Paul for his timely intervention and Richard then saw him smile briefly and nod once. Paul was clearly a quietly capable person.

Which left only one witness, Ben Jenkins, who Richard had briefly spoken to when he’d first arrived at the murder scene. He could see from Ben’s photocopied passport that he was fifty, had been born in Leeds, but he now listed his home address as Vilamoura, Portugal.

As Richard looked up, it took him a moment to find Ben, but then he saw him standing off to one side in the shade of the ambulance. He wasn’t that tall, and now that he’d been allowed to get back into his normal clothes, Richard could see that Ben wore what looked like white leather shoes, stone-washed blue jeans and a long-sleeved shirt in vertical pink and blue stripes that was tucked tightly into a thin belt that cinched him tight at the waist.

Richard thought he recognised the type. Ben had done extremely well in life and was now trying to use expensive clothes and accessories to draw attention away from his increasing girth and decreasing attraction. Looking down at the forms again, Richard saw that Ben had listed his occupation on the hotel form as ‘Property Developer’.

Richard found it interesting how Ben was off to one side. Alone. In fact, as Richard watched him, he found himself noting that Ben seemed to be watching Camille and the others, just as Richard was watching Ben.

Richard made a mental note to keep an eye on Ben Jenkins.

Once the witnesses had finished with the paramedics, Camille moved them to the shade of the verandah and Richard joined them all—but not before he’d sent Camille off to check up on the victim’s wife, Rianka.

‘Thank you for all agreeing to talk to me,’ Richard said to the four witnesses. ‘I know this must have been a very trying time for you all.’

‘That poor man!’ Ann said, throwing her hand to her heaving chest. ‘What do you think he’d done to that girl to make her do that to him? Is she deranged? That’s all I can think. Mentally deficient somehow!’

‘For god’s sake,’ Paul drawled in a patrician manner, ‘be quiet, woman.’

‘Of course, Paul. Sorry.’

Ann pulled her mouth into a contrite mou as if to demonstrate how she wouldn’t be saying another word—not another peep!—and Richard took a moment to look at Paul. There was so little to him, really. His face was almost skeletally thin, his skin was sallow, what hair he did have was grey and wispy and combed over his bald pate, and yet he seemed to have complete mastery of his otherwise far more punchy wife.

But there was something else Richard could sense between husband and wife, and that was a look of subservience in Ann’s eyes. Why should such a larger-than-life woman like Ann be intimidated by a skeletal squit like Paul? But then, Richard reminded himself, all relationships between men and women were essentially a mystery to him.

He put these thoughts to one side. It was time to get on.

‘I’d first like to thank you all for your help so far. But before we take your formal statements, can I just try and establish the order of events? What happened this morning?’

‘Be happy to,’ Paul purred, comfortable to take centre stage. ‘It was a terrible business, wasn’t it? Just terrible. But I’ve been thinking it over, and I think I’ve got it.’

Paul looked to the other witnesses for their assent. Saskia was looking too quiet and withdrawn to mind who told their story—but Richard could see that Ben was twinkling, clearly amused at how Paul thought he was master of the situation.

‘If you would?’ Richard said.

So Paul told Richard how they’d all had to get up at sunrise, which was why it was called the Sunrise Healing. But before they got to the Meditation Space, they’d been expected to stretch on the beach and swim in the sea as a way of preparing their bodies for the treatment, which was hardly a chore, because, as Paul put it, when someone tells you to go for a swim in a sea that’s warm as a bath and teeming with tropical fish, you don’t really need a second invitation.

Richard quietly shuddered at the thought. Didn’t Paul know that thousands of people around the world drowned from swimming in the sea every year?

Paul went on to say that Aslan then came out of the house with a tray of tea things, and called them over. That’s when they put on their white robes.

This detail got Richard’s attention. ‘How do you mean, your robes?’

‘The robes we were wearing when you first met us. We’d been swimming before, so all we had on was our swim things.’

‘I see,’ Richard said. ‘And where did you get your robes from?’

Paul explained that there were little huts all over The Retreat that contained tightly wrapped rolls of fresh cotton robes, and they got their robes that morning from the hut on the beach.

‘Then tell me, did anyone see Julia put her robe on?’ Richard asked.

Ben chortled. ‘Are you trying to work out how she got the murder weapon into the room?’

Richard met Ben’s eyes properly for the first time, and felt a spike of recognition. Closer up, Richard could see that Ben had a chubby face, dark hair—and, with his plum-my northern accent, he gave off the impression of being a jolly farmer. Even if this jolly farmer clearly bought all of his clothes from Harrods. But for all of Ben’s apparent bonhomie, Richard knew you could measure a man by his eyes. How watchful they were. And Ben’s eyes were very watchful.

‘That’s right,’ Richard said. ‘So did any of you see her carrying a knife at all this morning?’

‘There’s no way she had a knife on her,’ Ben said, ‘because I’m telling you, when that girl got out of the sea this morning, all she was wearing was a bikini—and it was barely three pieces of string. There’s no way she had a fifty pence piece hidden about her person, let alone a bloody great carving knife.’

‘He’s right, you know,’ Paul added. ‘You see, it was me who handed out the robes to everyone this morning. You know, after our swim. And there certainly wasn’t anything like a knife wrapped inside the robe I gave to Julia. And seeing as she put it on then and there—and then stayed with us while we all walked to the Meditation Space together—I don’t see where she could have got a knife from.’

‘Then maybe she’d already hidden a knife in the Meditation Space before you arrived?’ Richard asked.

‘I don’t think that’s possible,’ Paul said.

‘Are you sure?’ Richard asked.

‘You’ve been in that room. It’s just an empty box made of paper and wood. And I can guarantee, the only things it contained when we arrived were six prayer mats, six pairs of headphones and some eye masks.’

Richard was puzzled. ‘So you’re all saying that there was no way Julia could have been carrying the knife about her person before she got into the Meditation Space—and there was also nowhere inside the room for her to have hidden the knife before you all arrived?’

The witnesses all agreed that this was indeed exactly what they were saying.

‘In which case,’ Richard asked, ‘just how do you think Julia got the murder weapon into the Meditation Space?’

The witnesses had no idea, and Richard could see their confusion. After all, if Julia came out of the sea in her swimming costume and put on her cotton robe in front of everyone else, it was hard to see how she could have hidden a knife as large as the murder weapon on her person. And Richard had seen the Meditation Space for himself. It was indeed an empty box. Any carving knife hidden inside it beforehand would almost certainly have been noticed by someone. Wouldn’t it?

Richard made a note in his notebook and moved the conversation on. What happened after they’d all got into the Meditation Space?

Paul explained that once they were all inside, Aslan placed the tray of tea in the centre of the floor before inviting everyone to take up a position on their prayer mats in a circle around the tea. Then, once everyone was sitting comfortably, Aslan went and locked the door. Apparently, he had been interrupted a few months before during one of his healing sessions and had asked The Retreat’s handyman to fix a Yale lock to the door.

Richard noted this detail and once again considered how odd it was. After all, he’d investigated many murders before, but he’d never heard of a murder where the killer allowed himself to be locked inside a room with possible witnesses before carrying out the murder. It didn’t make any sense.

Paul explained how, once he’d locked the door, Aslan rejoined the group, sat on his mat and poured everyone a cup of tea. Aslan then told them they all had to drink their cup of tea at the same time.

‘At the same time?’ Richard jumped in.

‘That’s right,’ Paul said, before explaining that it was apparently an old Japanese ritual that dated back to the days of the shoguns. Everyone had to drink their tea at the same time and then turn their cups over to show that they’d finished.

‘Very well,’ Richard said. ‘So you all drank your tea and turned your cups over. What happened next?’

‘Well, then we all put on our eye masks and wireless headphones,’ Paul said. ‘Aslan told us that we then had to lie down, close our eyes, open our minds, and listen to the whale music. This was how we were going to heal ourselves.’

‘Whale music was going to heal you?’

‘It was about losing ourselves in the immensity of the deep. And I was as sceptical as you to start off with. But it’s an odd one, because when you’re lying there—and you can feel all that sunlight on your skin—and you’ve got your eyes closed, and you’re listening to distant whale song, you do start to drift off.’

‘It’s so true!’ Ann said. ‘You go all dreamy.’

‘Dreamy?’ Richard asked a little too keenly, and he saw understanding slip into Ben’s eyes.

‘You think we were all drugged, don’t you?’ Ben said. ‘That’s why you wanted us to give samples to the paramedics.’

The witnesses looked at Richard and he realised he had an explanation to give. ‘It’s a possibility I’m not ruling out. After all, it’s somewhat unusual that a murderer would have the confidence to strike in a confined space in front of so many witnesses. One explanation might be that you were all drugged and the killer wasn’t.’

‘I definitely felt woozy when I woke up,’ Ann said. ‘And so did Paul. He had difficulty waking up in fact. I had to shake him by the shoulders.’

Paul looked at his wife with quiet disdain. Clearly, while he was happy to talk on the behalf of others, he wasn’t so happy when his wife talked on his.

‘So did I,’ Ben said.

‘And me, too,’ Saskia said, speaking for the first time. ‘I couldn’t wake up to start off with, and my head was throbbing. Although I soon forgot about all that when I saw what had happened while I’d been wearing my eye mask.’

‘Of course,’ Richard said, making a note. ‘And what exactly did you see when you took it off?’

Saskia looked at Richard a moment, clearly reliving her horrifying experience and unable to put what she’d seen into words.

‘That woman,’ Paul said. ‘Julia. Whoever she is. Standing over the body. That’s what we all saw. Screaming her head off and holding a carving knife in her hand. It was covered in blood.’

‘And is that the same for all of you?’

The witnesses all agreed that the first they’d known that anything was wrong was when they’d heard a woman’s scream. Then, at different times, they’d all taken their headphones and eye masks off and seen Julia Higgins standing over Aslan’s body, screaming and holding a bloody carving knife.

‘I see,’ Richard said, making a note of this fact. ‘But did any of you see Julia stab the victim?’

The witnesses hadn’t.

‘So you all agree,’ Richard wanted to clarify. ‘The first you saw of Julia, she was standing over the dead body holding a knife, but none of you saw her stab the victim at any time?’ Richard asked.

‘That’s right,’ Paul said for them all.

‘I see,’ Richard said. ‘Then can I ask, are you all sure you were the only people in the room before you put on your eye masks and headphones?’

‘Of course,’ Ben said a touch dismissively. ‘There’s nowhere to hide in that box. I’m telling you, it was just the five of us in there when Aslan locked the door and we all sat down.’

‘Suggesting that it could only have been one of you five who killed him.’

This got all of the witnesses’ attention.

Paul was the first to recover.

‘Yeah, but that’s okay. That other woman. Julia—or whatever her name is. She’s already confessed to the murder. Hasn’t she?’

Richard decided this was a question that did not need answering.

‘Then can you tell me,’ he continued, ‘how long were you all lying down and listening to the sounds of the deep before you started coming round?’

‘Ten minutes,’ Ben said. ‘Fifteen at the most.’

‘Really? That’s quite a precise figure.’

‘I checked my watch when we went into the room. It was a quarter to eight. I reckon we all drank tea for about ten minutes, so that means we lay down and put the headphones on some time before eight. And when we started coming round, I looked at my watch and it wasn’t much past 8.10am.’

‘So you were all wearing eye masks and listening to music on headphones the whole time you were lying down?’

The witnesses all agreed, and Richard took a moment to look at them all again.

Saskia had only spoken once, but Richard could see that she was meeting his gaze evenly, her hands folded neatly on her lap, her back straight. She looked worried—upset, even—but these were quite natural reactions; she didn’t look like she was hiding anything.

As for Ann, she’d followed what she could of the conversation like someone watching a tennis match for the first time—and without any idea of what the rules were. If she was guilty of anything, Richard mused to himself, it wasn’t going to be of having a razor-sharp intellect.

And then there was Paul. Richard still couldn’t quite work out how someone so drab—so ‘middle management’—could have such an apparent hold over his wife. After all, the way Richard saw it, Paul was just one toothbrush moustache away from being the spit of Roger Hargreaves’s Mr Fussy.

Which left only Ben, and Richard continued to be quietly puzzled by him. Why was his manner so off-hand?

This made Richard remember what he had to ask next.

‘Can I ask,’ he said, ‘who here is left-handed?’

The witnesses looked at Richard, surprised, but they were all happy to tell him that they were all right-handed.

Richard took a moment to consider the significance of this fact. After all, it already looked as though the wounds in the victim’s neck and back had to have been inflicted by someone who’d been wielding the knife right-handed. So how come the only person who’d confessed to the murder was the only person in the room who was left-handed?

‘Then one last question, if you don’t mind. Can any of you imagine why Julia—or anyone else for that matter—would have wanted to harm Aslan Kennedy?’

The witnesses said that they had no idea. After all, as they put it, none of them had ever been to Saint-Marie before, they barely knew Aslan.

‘And I only arrived on the island last night,’ Saskia said. ‘The first time I even met Aslan was this morning.’

‘Really?’ Richard said.

‘That’s right,’ she said, but Richard noticed that Saskia had something else on her mind. Something was troubling her.

‘And?’ he asked.

Saskia looked at Richard, unsure, and Richard decided that the dutiful secretary needed to be told what to do.

‘If you have any information that may have a bearing on the case, you’re obliged to mention it.’

‘No, of course,’ she said, suitably chastened. ‘And it may be nothing, but yesterday, after I arrived, I got a bit lost in the hotel and I found myself outside Aslan’s office. Although the door was closed, I could hear voices inside. Raised voices.’

‘What time was this?’

‘About 6pm I think,’ Saskia said.

‘And you’re sure it was Aslan’s office?’

‘Oh yes. But the thing is, the voice I heard belonged to a man, but I don’t think it was Aslan. Anyway, I heard this man say “You’re not going to get away with it!”‘

‘You did?’

‘That’s right. And he was angry. But I heard it quite distinctly. “You’re not going to get away with it!” he said. And a few moments later, the door opened and I saw Aslan flee. He looked seriously distressed.’

‘You didn’t see who he left behind in the office?’

‘No. The whole thing was so strange, I didn’t hang about to find out who the man was who’d been shouting at Aslan.’

Richard considered what Saskia had said before turning to look at Ben and Paul.

‘I don’t suppose either of you were in Aslan’s office yesterday shouting at him at 6pm, were you?’

Paul looked affronted.

‘Certainly not.’