Sophie Hannah - A Game for All the Family

I wish Alex had turned on a lamp instead of the overhead light.

“You’re nowhere near asleep,” he says. “I thought you were tired.”

“I’m shattered.” But I can’t sleep. “Where’s Figgy?”

“Snoring on Ellen’s bedroom floor. I checked on him a minute ago. He’s fine. They’re both fine. Darling?”

“Mm?”

Alex sits down on the bed. “Where did you go today? Not Totnes—I mean afterward.”

I haul myself into a sitting position and tell him about Stephen Donbavand. He listens without interrupting. When I’ve finished, he says, “I don’t get it. He admitted to messing up our garden?”

“Digging a grave in our garden.” It’s important to me to keep stressing this. No one else seems to want to focus on it. Yes, it’s a hole; yes, it’s a mess, but mainly it’s an empty grave, waiting to be filled with the dead body of Lisette Ingrey’s hated sister, Allisande.

“He didn’t exactly admit it,” I tell Alex. “Didn’t say, ‘Yes, it was me, I did it,’ but he didn’t deny it either. And the way he looked and acted was as good as an admission.”

“So why didn’t you go straight to DC Luce?”

“What’s the point? There’s no proof. Stephen Donbavand would deny it, and Luce would believe him.”

“We should still tell him. What can we do without police help?”

Excellent question. To which I don’t know the answer. “That’s what I was lying in the dark trying to figure out,” I say. “It was easier when I believed I wasn’t Allisande Ingrey. More straightforward.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing. Forget it.”

“Justine, explain. You’re scaring me.”

How? What’s your worst fear? That I’m possessed?

“I thought it was a mistake,” I say. “The anonymous caller was calling me Sandie, but I knew that wasn’t me. I’m Justine. I can’t be Justine and Sandie, so whoever it was must have mixed me up with someone else, I assumed—someone who’d been intimidating in the past, someone who was at war with the caller. Whether her name was Allisande Ingrey or an anagram of Allisande Ingrey, or something different altogether, I thought she was, at the very least, an actual person.

“Then I made progress, or so I thought: several clues pointed to her being Anne Donbavand’s sister, and to both of them being characters in Ellen’s story. When Ops told me Anne only had one sister—Sarah—and no connection with any murders, I wasn’t completely convinced. I still thought the Perrine Ingrey stuff might be real, and very well hidden. And then when Ellen as good as told me that the story she was writing was true, and about George’s mother, I knew I had to be right! That was until I met Sarah Parsons, and she told me about the lies Anne told as a child. That’s when I realized that invention, if you’re ruthless and deranged enough, makes anything possible.”

“I’m not sure I know what you mean,” says Alex.

“You can fabricate a past that includes someone who’s out to get you—a fictional sister. You can use it as an excuse to exert unhealthy control over your husband and children: ‘Everyone must do as I say—my children must never leave the house—because this person I’ve made up is trying to kill us all, and only I understand the danger.’ ”

“Hold on. If Allisande Ingrey is an invention, then you’re not her. I mean, we know you’re not anyway, but . . .”

“Do we?” I say. He doesn’t get it. Maybe no one ever will except me. “If Allisande can be proved to be somebody else, then I’m not her. But if she’s nothing more than a figment of Anne Donbavand’s imagination, then she can be anyone Anne wants her to be. See what I mean?”

“No. This makes zero sense to me.”

“She can be me. She is me, because Anne says so, and the only sphere in which Sandie exists at all is one over which Anne has complete control. I have to face facts, Alex. I’ve been trying to find another candidate to be Anne’s fake persona’s fake sister. I even hired a detective! And I’ve found no one. Neither has Ops. There is no one.”

“But . . . so the facts you want to face are Anne’s lies?” Alex says. “Lies aren’t facts.”

“But they can create facts. So can fictions. That’s what’s happened here. There was no mix-up, no mistaken identity, no wrongly targeted anonymous calls. I’m the target—I have been from the start. Anne knew who she was calling. She was calling Lisette’s sister.”

“But you’re not . . .”

“Yes, Alex, I am! I don’t like it any more than you do, but I can’t bury my head in the sand. In some fucked-up, invented world that I never agreed to be part of, I’m the middle sister: older than Perrine and younger than Lisette. I’m Allisande Ingrey.”

Chapter 12

The Legend of Evil Perrine

Bascom Ingrey was able to say no more and collapsed in a shrieking heap on the Persian rug (the same one that the young Allisande had once squirted conditioner all over for fun. No fun was being had anywhere near that rug anymore, that was for certain).

The policeman ran to the telephone.

No one else moved. Everyone was watching Sorrel, expecting her to fall to the floor in a sobbing heap too. “What?” she said, noticing them all watching her for signs of distress. “I will wait for confirmation before I get upset. I hate suffering, and I won’t do it any sooner than I have to.”

A few minutes later, the policeman entered the drawing room again. “I’m afraid it’s true,” he said. “Perrine’s dead body has been found.”

Sorrel covered her face and moaned.

“Good!” said Mrs. Dodd.

“Where?” asked Mrs. Kirbyshire.

“This is the extraordinary thing,” said the policeman. “She was found by Lionel the boatman—you know, the one who has The Kingswear Treasure —”

“He’s got far too many tattoos,” said Mrs. Sennitt-Sasse in a warning tone.

“Yes, well, be that as it may,” said the policeman, who was annoyed to have been interrupted, “even those with tattoos can find dead bodies, and Lionel found one about ten minutes ago. He found Perrine. Said she looked like she’d been strangled—blue in the face, she was—but the really odd thing is this: she was in her bed, all neatly tucked in. And guess where the bed was? You never will, so I’ll tell you: her bed was on the wooden jetty down by where The Kingswear Treasure leaves from to go over to Dartmouth. That’s how come it was Lionel who found her.” The policeman looked at his watch. “I must get down to the jetty right away,” he said.

“Wait!” cried Sorrel Ingrey. “Please, before you go, take all these intruders out of my home, so that I can lock my family in safely again. Don’t leave these strangers here. I believe they might kill us all. Their thirst for revenge knows no bounds.”

“Intruders? But you invited me,” said Mrs. Sennitt- Sasse.

“Don’t be silly, Sorrel,” said Bascom. “Nobody here could have gotten all the way to Lionel’s jetty and back this morning without us noticing.”

“Then they had someone waiting just outside the gates of Speedwell House, ready to take Perrine and the bed,” said Sorrel.

“Don’t worry, Mrs. Ingrey. We will get to the bottom of it, I assure you,” said the policeman.

“I expect you to keep your word on that,” said Sorrel, looking him sharply in the eye. “Remember this: I was ready and willing to hand Perrine over so that justice could be done. Now that Perrine is the one who has been murdered, I expect you to be dedicated and tireless in your search for justice for Perrine. Murdering a murderer is not acceptable. That is why civilized countries do not have the death penalty.”