On Monday mornings, I send out a story via email: ultra-brief tales of 1,000 words or more, usually in genres including horror, science fiction, and the supernatural. Those stories collectively are called Once Upon A Time. I’ve also published several ebooks and compendium volumes of those stories so far.

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Here's story 225, of 240 so far.

In the Lounge

The colonel expressed disdain with every part of his body, despite standing rigidly and apparently not moving a muscle. A little way across the plush smoking lounge, the elegant socialite also communicated effortlessly despite her own silence, but the message was instead one of allure and amusement.

The private detective saw through all of them. There was the soon-to-be-wealthy heir, who was in line for ownership of the vast house they had all been summoned to for a mysterious dinner party. There was the politician’s wife, and the respected doctor, and the introverted academic, and the haughty elderly widow. And, of course, the household staff, who seemed to have been hired for this occasion alone; the chef, the maid, the butler, and the groundskeeper they had all glimpsed earlier.

The guests had received identical invitations, with promise of fine dining and a pleasant social occasion, with the gentle implication that it would be a very poor idea indeed if they failed to attend. It had all began well enough, several hours before, but now everyone present had deep regrets about ever setting foot in the place.

The doctor lay dead in the conservatory, choked with a length of rope. The maid had been found in the walk-in freezer, her meagre and frankly provocative outfit no match for either the intense cold or the meat hook she was hanging from. The chef had fallen victim to his own cleaver being thrust into his back, but in the master bedroom upstairs. And the butler’s final resting place was the oak-panelled library, apparently dead from blunt trauma to the back of the head. No-one had seen the groundskeeper for hours.

The detective looked around at the surviving guests, gathered together to calm their nerves with tobacco and alcohol and whatever else they had, waiting out the violent storm in the hope that the telephone lines might work again so that the police could be called. Until then, he was the only one — as far as he knew — with a firearm, and with this alone he kept them under watch. The whisky decanter was almost empty, and an artificial calm had descended upon the room.

They had split up earlier when two of the staff had failed to come when summoned, making their grisly discoveries one by one. Elsewhere, other weapons had been found, each incongruous in their surroundings, and all capable of taking a human life.

The candlestick, left perched in the toilet where anyone might retrieve it without being seen. The vial of poison, beside the clock on the mantlepiece. The heavy spanner, racked with the cues in the billiard room. And the lead pipe, seen earlier in the entrance hall in splendid isolation on the seat of the telephone table, but now missing, and perhaps stained with the late butler’s blood.

“Well for god’s sake, get on with it,” the widow spat, and the detective threw a brief glance in her direction without responding, then he cleared his throat.

“At least four people have died here tonight,” he said, “and the killers are here in this very room.”

“Killers, plural?” the socialite asked, her polished veneer flickering for a moment as a look of panic appeared on her face. The detective nodded.

“Each victim was murdered by a different person,” the detective said. “And while we wait out the storm before we can summon the authorities, I’m going to tell you why it was all done.”

He turned his attention to the widow first, seeing with satisfaction that her combative attitude had shrivelled up and vanished. “The chef was your own personal chef up until recently, wasn’t he? A man well-placed to know about the circumstances under which your husband passed away earlier this year — the true circumstances, I mean. And I have a copy of the blackmail letter he sent to you.”

The widow folded her frail arms, radiating a seething defiance, but said nothing.

“Did you tell him you’d hand over the first instalment if he met you in the bedroom? Maybe you even had some money with you. He made the mistake of turning his back on you, just like your husband did.”

“Another waste of space and time, like all men,” the widow said at last, draining what remained in the crystal tumbler of whisky beside her.

“Shocking,” the politician’s wife said from the sofa nearest the fireplace, and the detective slowly turned to face her.

“Very,” he said, “just like using a lead pipe to kill the butler, wouldn’t you say, madam?”

The woman both flushed and paled, looking around the room in a perfectly guilty pantomime of surprise and confusion.

“How dare you imply—“ she began, but the detective took a sudden step in her direction, silencing her immediately.

“The butler’s former master worked for the security services,” the detective continued. “And he inadvertently overheard the results of his employer’s investigation into your husband, and the conclusion. It’s strange that you’re unaccompanied tonight, except when you consider that traitors who feed intelligence to Russia tend to be rounded up pretty quickly once they’re discovered.”

“Damned people should be shot,” the colonel said, and the socialite looked over at him and rolled her eyes. The detective faced the military man now, keeping a good grip of the revolver.

“I’d also say that embezzlement from the army, and selling essential equipment on the black market, is a form of treason, no matter what the courts say, colonel,” he said, and the other man’s face went bright pink. He was a stocky sort of chap, and he clenched his fists, but decided better of making a move. The detective’s voice became icy.

“I’d almost say that your fence, the lovely lady here in the pretty dress, was a fool to get involved in your scheme, but I suspect she’s the brighter of the pair.”

The socialite laughed now, high and clear like a crystal bell, and the colonel threw her a look of disgust.

“The groundskeeper was your adjutant until five years ago,” the detective said, still looking at the colonel. “I’m not sure where you stashed the body, but at least he died knowing he’d already provided all the incriminating records about what you both were up to.”

The colonel turned away to look at the tall windows, with rain lashing against the panes between occasional flashes of lightning. The socialite just continued to smile, sashaying to a nearby upright chair and lowering herself gracefully into it.

“Then we have the good professor here, and by that I mean good with a rope,” the detective said. “Also known as the very jealous and resentful half-brother of the doctor you met earlier, who met his untimely demise before anyone else tonight.”

The academic looked genuinely sorrowful, but he didn’t deny it, and instead just scratched his beard thoughtfully in a way that was surely familiar to any of his students.

“Then the most boring of you,” the detective said, pointing with the revolver to the shifty-looking twenty-six-year-old man with the perfect white teeth and blonde hair, who was due to inherit the mansion before long. “The maid was employed by your family, and her unborn child that’ll now never have a chance to grow up was yours. The walk-in freezer was slightly clever, I’ll admit. Soundproof, and unlikely to attract attention for a while. You’re a sick man.”

“We have rights, you know,” the widow said. “And some of us are rather wealthy, and connected. You can tell the police whatever you want, but you can’t detain us here at gunpoint. And I don’t think the world would miss you very much if you never left this place, either.”

The threat was clear, and the detective had been expecting it. “You’re all so ready to take a life if it suits you, aren’t you? Well, I’m disgusted by your crimes and your secrets and your lies. But I wasn’t finished.”

Multiple pairs of eyes were fixed upon him, even as the socialite began to feel a fluttering sensation in her chest, and the colonel started to cough. The academic swayed on his feet suddenly, putting his hand against the wall to steady himself.

“As for the rest of you,” the detective said, pointing at them one by one before indicating the small glass vial on the mantelpiece behind him, “it was me, here in the lounge, with the poison in the whisky.”

JINX

KESTREL face a new and terrifying enemy: an all-seeing mastermind who already knows exactly who they are, and many of their deepest secrets. Nothing stays hidden forever, and the line between privacy and liberty is razor-thin…

Book 3 in the KESTREL action-thriller series.

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