The Party: The thrilling Richard & Judy Book Club Pick 2018

‘That didn’t bother you, then?’ he asks.

‘What?’

‘Not staying at the Priory? With Ben and Serena?’

‘Not at all.’

In my account of the build-up to the party, I omitted a few of the more trivial details. There was simply no need for the police to know Lucy had been offended. Beige Hair keeps looking at me.

‘They had lots of family members staying,’ I say to fill the silence. ‘It was just a logistics thing.’

‘Right.’

I exhale more loudly than I intended, not realising I’ve been holding my breath. It’s ridiculous, really, how nervous they make you feel. Even when you haven’t done anything wrong. It’s like those customs officials at American airports, scowling and rude and suspicious of anything you say.

Beige Hair is looking at me expectantly.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I didn’t quite catch that?’

‘Well, Martin, I was only saying that they seem to have a lot of bedrooms at the Priory. It wouldn’t have been too hard for them to find space, would it? And you’re such close friends, it just seems odd …’

‘I don’t know. You’d have to ask Ben and Serena. Besides, there were security issues.’

‘Of course. The VIP.’

‘Exactly.’

I glance upwards to the ceiling, hoping to find something of interest there. In one corner, there is a hairline crack. A childhood memory comes to me unbidden: my mother washing my hair in the bath as I, hating every second, fixed my gaze on a crack in the yellowing ceiling, willing it to be over.

‘Are you all right?’ asks Beige Hair.

‘Perfectly.’

‘You look a bit upset.’

‘Not at all,’ I repeat. ‘Just wondering how much longer this will take.’

She turns one sheet of paper over, shifting it to the other side of her folder and revealing another page of foolscap beneath, covered with scrawled black handwriting.

‘So you and your wife arrived at the party before the other guests to have a drink with Ben and Serena,’ she recaps. ‘Did you think Mr Fitzmaurice was acting normally?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, did anything strike you as out of character?’

I shrug.

‘Anything on his mind, perhaps?’

‘It was three weeks ago. I don’t understand why you’re raking it all up now …’

‘You must know it takes time to gather together the relevant facts,’ she says. ‘As a journalist, I mean.’

I don’t say anything.

She tries a different tack.

‘How did Lucy think Mr Fitzmaurice seemed?’

‘You’d have to ask her.’

‘Oh, she’s been very helpful with our enquiries,’ Beige Hair says. ‘But I wondered what you thought, Martin.’

She waits.

‘Tell you what,’ I say. ‘Why don’t you tell me what you’d like me to think was on his mind and I’ll tell you whether you’re right or not?’

For the first time, her expression hardens.

‘We don’t have time for guessing games, Mr Gilmour. In case it had escaped your notice, we’ve got a person lying in a critical condition in hospital.’

Mr Gilmour, now. No longer Martin. She stops. A note of irascibility is creeping into her tone and I can see her struggle internally to keep it in check.

‘We just want to establish the facts,’ she says, more gently. ‘So that we can work out exactly what happened and then we can all go home.’ She smiles. ‘Wouldn’t that be nice?’

Grey Suit sniffs his assent, but otherwise stays immobile.

I place the tea back on the table. They have given it to me without a spoon or a stirrer and the sugar has sunk to the bottom like sediment.

‘I thought he seemed entirely himself,’ I say.

Obviously, I am lying.

2 May

Kitchen, Tipworth Priory, 7.30 p.m.

WE DIDN’T SAY ANYTHING as we walked back through to the kitchen. Our champagne flutes were empty. There was a distance between us, solid as concrete. I regretted my comment about not staying over. Stupid of me to say it. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

‘So here, LS, we need your advice,’ Ben said, pointing towards a blank wall at the bottom of a narrow staircase in the back of the house. It must have once been used by servants, I thought, staring at the stripped wooden steps. Although did monks have servants? I wasn’t sure. It didn’t seem a particularly monkish thing to have.

‘Oh. How so?’

‘We want a big piece of art. To lift it a bit, y’know.’

A few years ago, Ben started saying y’know, eliding the two words to form a seamless whole. It was around the time certain politicians started eschewing the glottal stop in order to demonstrate their man-of-the-people credentials. I suppose it was intended to denote a certain informality, a lightness of touch, a sense that, in spite of Ben’s enormous pile of inherited wealth and his aggressively successful hedge fund, he was in truth just an easy-going guy. Someone you could talk to. Someone you could kick a ball around with. Someone of whom one could say, ‘Oh Ben, he’s great. One of us. No airs and graces.’

This reputation was important to Ben. At school, it came to him naturally. Later in life, it was one he cultivated, and I found it less convincing. As a teenager, he had been touchingly sincere. These days, he saw sincerity as a valuable asset and it wasn’t quite the same thing. Admittedly, people who didn’t know him as well as I did gobbled it up. Ben acquired friends with ease. He had never liked being alone. And now, in this vast house, surrounded by sound engineers and gardeners and waiting staff, anticipating the arrival of some three hundred and fifty guests to celebrate his fortieth birthday, he should have been in his element.