Page 20 of Seven Reasons to Murder Your Dinner Guests

“Actually, he hated being called Matty,” he begins, his hands pressed together as if in prayer. “I went to school with him. Hadn’t seen him in years, but then I bumped into him a few months ago. He wasn’t pleased to see me, mind. Can’t blame him, really.”

“How come?” Tristan’s knees start to ache, so he shifts his weight slightly.

“I wasn’t that nice to him at school. But you should have seen him—thick glasses, a constantly streaming nose,” Gareth says. “It’s no excuse for bullying, though. I know that now.”

“No, it isn’t,” Tristan says, thinking of his own childhood.

“He had the worst-possible start in life. His mother was…evil, the only word for it. God knows what she put him through behind closed doors. But he managed to get away from her, away from all of us. It’s just sad it ended like this.”

“OK, Tristan?” a voice asks.

He looks up to see Vivienne standing over them. Nodding a quick goodbye to Gareth, Tristan gets up and follows her back inside.

Gordon

Gordon watches Tristan return to the table, taking in his pink-rimmed eyes and paler-than-usual complexion.

Elizabeth often accuses him of lacking empathy, so he’s pleased he can ascertain that Tristan is devastated over Matthew’s death.

Yet this in itself is puzzling. He didn’t realize they’d been close; in fact, he can’t recall seeing the two men even speaking to each other at the dinner party or the wine bar three months ago.

Gordon frowns. So many of his observations of human interactions are a mystery to him.

Thank goodness he inhabits the world of science, where hard facts provide a firm foundation.

Anyway, he’s not here to wonder about Tristan’s social skills or sexual orientation.

He’s got bigger fish to fry, as the metaphor goes.

“All right, bud?” Melvin asks, handing both Tristan and Vivienne a fresh glass of champagne.

That’s five each they’ve had. Gordon is still nursing his first. True, champagne isn’t as calorific as red wine, but its light and bubbly nature makes it easy to drink to excess, and Gordon must keep his wits about him this afternoon.

Clearly, Janet has no concerns of this nature, Gordon thinks as she has a large gulp of champagne and then takes a huge bite out of her burger.

Surreptitiously glancing down her body, Gordon sees how her derriere is practically swallowing the small stool.

Honestly, she must have gained two stone in three months, and her skin has that unhealthy sheen that one often sees on those who partake in alcohol a little—or a lot—too regularly.

“He’s fine,” Vivienne responds to Melvin. “So what were you saying?”

“Matthew is the fourth banker to die this way in the last six months. The pressure these fellas are under is unbelievable. I shouldn’t tell you this, but we found out that he was taking antidepressants and seeing a counselor every week,” Melvin says gravely.

“He did mention work problems to me when we spoke last time. It’s just such a shame. ”

“Yes, yes, it’s very sad,” says Gordon. “But I think the main point is that Matthew’s number is the second one to come true. We can now safely presume all the numbers are correct.”

“But how could anyone have known Matthew would die this way?” Tristan asks.

“Perhaps he didn’t jump. Perhaps he was pushed,” Vivienne says, pulling out that pesky notebook from her bag.

“You don’t really believe that Stella and Matthew were murdered, do you?” Melvin asks.

“I’ve been looking into it, and yes, I believe that could be one explanation,” Vivienne says. She clears her throat, apparently preparing to launch into a monologue.

“Who cares how it happens,” Janet cuts in, not looking up from her burger. “It’s happening; we just need to accept it now.”

“Well I, for one, won’t be going down without a fight,” says Gordon.

“Another theory could be, rather than warning about murders, the numbers actually pushed them toward their deaths,” Tristan says.

“Are you referring to some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy?” Gordon asks, leaning closer to Vivienne to see what she’s drawn in her notebook. A map of some sort, with lots of X’s. She moves her hand to block it from Gordon’s view.

“That’s interesting, Tristan. I can imagine, given that Matthew suffered from depression, then perhaps being told you only have so long to live might send you spiraling,” Vivienne says, nodding.

“He took matters into his own hands, you might say,” Gordon mutters, more to himself than the others.

“But what about Stella?” Melvin asks. “There’s no suggestion that she jumped in front of the tube train.”

“Isn’t there? She clearly had her own mental health challenges…” Tristan says.

Gordon sighs and shakes his head impatiently. He was continually amazed by the intellectual incompetency of this group. But, he supposes, that’s what their host was banking on.

“One theory I’ve been working on is that perhaps our host has orchestrated a social experiment,” he says.

“Social experiment?” Janet repeats.

“Have you heard of the Stanford Prison Experiment?” he says, speaking slowly and clearly so that the group will keep up.

“Back in 1971, a mock prison was set up, and the participants were assigned roles as wardens and prisoners. Well, they took their positions far too seriously: The wardens were violent and cruel, the prisoners became depressed, and the experiment had to be cut short.”

“What on earth has that got to do with us?” Janet snaps.

“That experiment asked the question: How would a certain situation affect behavior? Perhaps Experiment Serendipity is asking the question: How do people react when they know their death age?” Gordon surmises, then bites his lip. He hadn’t planned to reveal this much of his theory.

“And then kill us all off, one by one?” Vivienne cries. “Talk about unethical! No one would approve an experiment like that, Gordon.”

“Ridiculous,” Janet says.

He takes a deep breath. There’s no point in trying to explain his theory to them any further.

They are simply incapable of understanding.

Vivienne does have a point about ethics.

Such an experiment wouldn’t be allowed by the scientific authorities.

But Gordon believes this experiment is being conducted outside their jurisdiction.

“It could be a psychic,” Janet suddenly pipes up, having now polished off her plate of burger and chips.

“Be serious,” Gordon admonishes.

“I am being serious,” Janet says. “I saw a psychic when I was a teenager. She knew so much without me saying a word, like that I had a younger sister, that my auntie Margaret had recently died. She predicted I’d marry an older man whose name started with the letter W and that I would be a successful businesswoman… ”

“She probably said that to everyone,” Vivienne says with a sniff. “We did a feature about fraudulent psychics. It’s such a big business, they’ll do anything for clues—go through your rubbish, search social media, ask around among friends.”

“Well, like I said, I don’t think it matters anymore,” huffed Janet. “I’m on the countdown now, and I’m going to make the best of things.”

They fall silent for a moment. Then Vivienne shudders.

“I’ve been having disturbing dreams about the dinner party. That table with the vines coming down, the silent waiters and strange pictures on the wall…” she says, her cheeks now pink, probably due to the champagne. She flips a few pages back in her notebook to where Gordon sees some rough sketches.

“I was trying to remember exactly what was on that strange picture on the wall. It had a load of animals dressed as humans and matched our place settings: Mine was an eagle, and I remember Tristan’s showed two dogs fighting,” she says, turning her book around and showing them drawings of an eagle holding up weighing scales and a dog in a shirt raising his fist.

“I’d forgotten about that,” Melvin says. “Mine was a cat smoking a pipe, I think.”

“I had a pig—bloody charming,” Janet snorts, pushing her empty plate away and taking a large glug of her champagne.

Vivienne scrawls in her notebook and looks expectantly at Gordon.

“I believe mine showed a peacock in a top hat, but I’m quite sure it’s not significant…” he says.

But now Melvin is talking to Janet about the steak and Vivienne is flicking through some papers on her knee.

He never let on to the others, but the night of the dinner party had changed things for him.

After Elizabeth found out his little secret, she made him promise to seek counseling.

Gordon recoiled at the thought. There was nothing some jumped-up busybody with an airy-fairy psychology degree could teach him.

But Elizabeth wouldn’t let it go, so he gave her a name and told her he’d booked a weekly counseling session.

Every Saturday morning, he said goodbye to his wife and spent a delightful hour working out at a gym in Richmond.

That was all the self-improvement he needed, thank you very much.

It was the perfect arrangement, until Elizabeth did her own research and discovered that Dr. Leonard McCoy was, in fact, a character in Star Trek and not a psychologist specializing in eating disorders.

He spent the last three months sleeping in the spare room and being ignored by both his wife and daughter, who didn’t know about the argument but just presumed Gordon was in the wrong.

This ostracization had the opposite effect of what Elizabeth might have hoped.

Gordon enjoys the space to think, the lack of interference from his family in his routines.

He is constantly striving to be a prime specimen, both physically and mentally, and has started to wonder if certain elements of his life have been holding him back.