I looked at his beer and said I’d have the same. I settled myself in the seat across from him, and while he was getting me the beer, I picked up the novel. I should have known better. It wasn’t a novel. It was Homer’s Iliad.
When he returned, he said, “Thank you for saving me from Greek classics.”
“Is it any good?”
He glanced at me quizzically. “Compared to what?”
Right. My usual go-to authors were in no danger of being supplanted by this new writer I’d stumbled onto.
I sipped my beer and wished quite desperately that I was here hanging out in a student pub with a great-looking guy with nothing between us but a battered Penguin paperback. But I wasn’t. “I can’t stop thinking about the other night and poor Pam getting killed.”
His expressive eyes grew sad. “It was awful. I can’t stop thinking about it either.”
“If we all just try and figure out exactly where we were and when, then I feel like we might be able to pinpoint who did this thing.”
He didn’t look very surprised that I was poking my nose into detective business, but then he’d seen me at work before. “It couldn’t have been anyone in that house, Lucy. I’ve been thinking about it. Somebody must have come in from outside. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
I thought the way she’d been laid out like the emblem of the Knights of the Garter made that very unlikely, but for now I didn’t argue with him.
“I heard that you and Charles went to the wine cellar to get more wine.”
He nodded, and I could tell he’d been thinking of little else, as we all had, since the dinner. “That’s right. Alex told me and Charles to go and see about the wine, because Pamela hadn’t come back with it. He gave us a map so we could find it.”
The wine cellar was big enough it needed a map?
“Did you go into the billiards room by any chance? On your way there?”
He nodded. “We had an idea that we might play later. It was Charles who suggested the game after dinner.”
“And there was no one in there?”
“Pamela wasn’t lying on the table dead, if that’s what you mean.”
That was exactly what I had meant. “Okay. Sorry I interrupted.”
“So we went along to the cellar and fetched the wine.”
“Wait, back to the billiard room. Was there anything at all out of order? Anything you noticed?”
He cocked his head to one side. “Lucy, you saw how much we’d all been drinking.”
“Lights on? Lights off?”
He squinted, and I felt like he was in pain, dragging at his drink-fuddled memories. “On. They must have been because I remember looking at the wet bar in the corner and thinking you could always find a drink in that house.”
“Good. Now tell me about the wine cellar.”
He looked at me like I was not the brightest. “It’s a cellar. It has wine in it.”
“Okay, I did a tour one time in France, and these wine cellars go on for miles and there are corridors and corridors of them with boxes stacked up to the ceiling and you could get lost if you didn’t have a map. Is it like that?”
“Well, it’s not as grand as that, but it is a bit of a warren. The wine collection at that estate is at least a hundred years old. It’s dark and cool and is packed with dusty bottles.”
“And nothing seemed out of the ordinary?”
“Not that I noticed.” He sipped from his beer. “But in the state I was in, if I’d have seen an elephant, I’d have wished him a good evening.”
“But if you’d seen Pamela, dead or alive, you’d have remembered that?”
“Of course.”
“And then the two of you went straight back upstairs to the dining room.”
He started to say yes and then stopped himself. “No. Charles needed some air.”
“He needed some air?” What was he, a Victorian lady whose corset was too tight?
Miles looked a little embarrassed. He stared down at his beer and said, “There’s no toilet downstairs on that level.”
Gross. “So when you said he needed air, you mean he was going outside to pee on the bushes?”
“I didn’t hang around, but I suspect so.”
“So he went outside the downstairs door.”
“Yes.”
Well, that was interesting. Or was it? Had he just gone outside, relieved himself and come back in that same door? Had he wandered around outside? From the amount of alcohol those guys had been consuming, I could quite imagine that he might have walked around the garden to try and get his wits back together. Maybe come in the front door even.
“I was in and out, obviously, during the evening, but was there any kind of argument, or did anyone talk about Pamela?”
“Not really, because she was there, but it was definitely like putting the cat among the pigeons.”
“She caused trouble?” And no surprise there. “Did she know them before?”
“Yeah. I was surprised to see her there. I’ve seen her with Alex a few times.” He fingered the Homer, flicking his thumb up and down the pages. I waited. “She made out like it was a great joke. Like she was posing as a waitress when she was really one of us, but something about it felt off. Jeremy looked murderous.” He suddenly glanced up, and those expressive eyes widened. “Figuratively speaking.”
I wondered.
“Because Alex and Pamela were an item?”
“I don’t know what they were. Alex isn’t one to tell you all his business. And he’s not looking to settle down, if you know what I mean.”
Miles could have been describing himself. “You mean he likes to play the field.”
Miles leaned in and dropped his voice. “There are a
