A Murder at Sorrowfor Manor

Black clouds cried tears of rain and the wind howled miserably on a dreary night in the depths of October. A few hours earlier, the brilliant silver moon had been looking down upon the world, but now she hid shamefully behind those black clouds as the wrath of the heavens unleashed itself.

I couldn’t really blame her as I stared at the corpse before me. It lay in its vast armchair like a puppet with the strings cut with its limbs dangling at odd angles and a ghastly red smile in its throat.

Blood had run down its arm and was dripping from the golden ring on its pinky finger, staining the beautiful rug that lay before the fireplace. Its shirt was untucked, I noted dimly.

The corpse had once been a man, but I didn’t want to think about that. I didn’t want to remember that the man’s name was - had been - Cyril Rosenthal. We’d grown up together, gone to school together. We’d been close in the past, and his invitation to a dinner party at his new home, the infamous Sorrowfor Manor, had not been received unhappily.

More blood gushed from the terrible wound in the cadaver’s throat and a choked gasp escaped my lips.

“Oh shit.”

I jumped and turned around and lifted my hands, balling them into fists.

Fred Buchanan stood in the doorway behind me, his mouth hanging open. The muscles beneath his polo shirt looked deflated and even his stupid little moustache seemed to be drooping at the scene.

My heart leapt. I hadn’t known Fred until a few hours ago, when I stepped through the huge wooden doors of the manor to find him waiting on the other side, but the sight of him pleased me more than I cared to tell him. My whole body was shaking, my hands trembling, my knees threatening to give way under my weight.

Fred looked at me.

“What…”

I shook my head frantically, so hard I could feel curls bouncing on the back of my neck.

“I don’t know! I just walked in and he…he… Who would do that?”

I paused, trying to compose myself, closed my eyes to count to ten, and only realised my mistake when an image of Cyril’s glassy eyes staring accusingly at me flashed through my mind.

I staggered to a corner of the room and threw up against a lovely mahogany bookshelf, stumbling to my knees as I retched. As I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, the question rang in my ears.

Who would do such a thing?

I glanced discreetly over my shoulder at Fred. The colour had drained from his face and he was staring at the corpse as if he could not tear his eyes away. Not him, I decided.

But downstairs sitting on the plush couches or perched on stools were five more guests that Cyril had given invitations to his dinner party, and I knew in my heart I couldn’t trust a single one of them.

Because someone had murdered Cyril Rosenthal.

I turned decisively to Fred. “Go lock the front door.”

He looked at me as if I’d just confessed to killing Cyril with my bare hands. “What? Why?”

“Because there’s a murderer on the loose!” I shouted before realising I should probably keep my voice down. In a quieter tone, I said; “We can’t let whoever did this escape.”

Fred gestured vaguely towards Cyril’s dead body as if unwilling to look at the corpse again now he’d torn his gaze away. “Our host has been killed, and you’re acting as if we’re in some twisted version of Cluedo!”

He paused and smoothed down his polo shirt. “I’m going to go and call the police. If you want to play the wannabe detective, go ahead, but in the meantime there’s a drawing room full of guests who know we came to find out why our host was late coming down. Perhaps you’d like to come up with something to tell them?”

“Why not tell them the truth?” I asked him as he stepped back through the doorway. He halted and looked back at me, his phone already in his hand.

“Like you said, there’s a murderer around. It seems prudent to keep things between the two of us, at least for now.”

He retreated into the hall and part of me was tempted to follow him and listen in on the conversation. Why would he want to keep things ‘between the two of us’? There didn’t seem to be any benefit to that; if the killer was in the drawing room, they knew by now that we had discovered Cyril’s death. If not, then it didn’t matter who we told anyway seeing as they were all innocent.

Skirting the bloodstained carpet and keeping my eyes low, I crossed the room and tried the window. It was closed fast against the rain and locked from the inside, which instantly quashed my hopes that someone had snuck in.

Whoever had killed Cyril Rosenthal was still in Sorrowfor Manor.

I closed my eyes and sighed. What the fuck was going on? Only a day ago, my biggest worry had been what to have for breakfast, and now I was standing just a few feet away from a corpse leaking blood onto a fine Persian rug.

Behind me, a door creaked open.

My heart hammered in my ears. I span around on my heel, lunging for the poker by the fireplace.

In the doorway opposite me, the maid screamed.

One hand wrapped around the hilt of the poker, I stopped. Putting on my most comforting voice, I began to say; “Flora…”

She threw a vase of flowers at me and sprinted into the hallway and down the stairs, still screaming. I swore and followed her. This was not good.

I made it halfway down the corridor before Fred caught up to me.

“Who’s screaming?” He asked with concern in his voice.

“The maid surprised me and I…may have…gone for the fire poker.”

“You did what?!”

“I thought she might be the murderer!”

We reached the bottom of the stairs and I stepped into the drawing room with Fred on my heels. Jack Palmer, the golden-haired giant, and Victor Shaw, the bespectacled banker, were comforting a sobbing Flora.

As I entered, the maid leapt away.

“Sh..She kill..killed him!” She shouted, pointing a trembling finger at me. “She killed Mas…Master Rosenthal!”

Jack had always been a brute when we were at school, and it didn’t seem like he’d changed a bit since then. He stepped towards me, squaring his shoulders.

“I didn’t kill him!” I protested, but even to my ears it seemed weak.

“Flora said you killed Cyril and tried to kill her.” Jack rumbled.

“What happened?” Gabriel Sweet asked from by the bar where he’d been building a tower of shot glasses.

“I…I didn’t mean to threaten Flora. She startled me, and I was already on edge. I thought…I thought…”

“Yeah? What did you think?” Jack sneered at me.

“I thought she was the murderer!”

There was silence in the drawing room for a heartbeat, and then everyone was talking at once.

“Fuck you mean murderer-”

“-joking, right-”

“You mean Cyril really is dead?” That was Veronica Blair, with her waves of black tresses and stormy eyes.

“Yes.” Fred answered from by my shoulder.

“Someone cut his throat and left him there to bleed out.” It took me a moment to realise that I’d said that part, and another moment to realise I was still talking; “Someone in this room. One of you. One of you killed Cyril.”

Rafael Sánchez was staring at me like I was an extraterrestrial that had just landed in his back garden. Victor was cleaning his glasses on the bottom of his shirt. Jack was marching towards me angrily, gesticulating and barking words I couldn’t understand. Veronica was looking from person to person with wide eyes. Flora was still sobbing. 

Fred stepped toward Jack with his hands raised and it took me a second to realise neither of them was going to stop. Gabriel stepped in between them, telling them to back down and cool off.

I watched detachedly with mild interest and wondered who the killer was. Jack had the temper to kill a man. Fred could have been acting upstairs. Veronica had loved Cyril growing up - maybe she’d made a move and been rejected. Rafael was an unknown quantity to me. Gabriel I liked, but that didn’t mean he was innocent. Victor and Cyril had been business partners - there was certainly a motive.

A knock at the door cut through the room, quieting my thoughts and silencing the arguments. Everyone looked around, uncertain, unsure what to do.

The knock came again, echoing through the house. One by one, they all looked at me.

The knock came for a third time, insistent, unable to be ignored. So I went to answer the door.