‘I grew up between here and boarding school in Jindabyne,’ she said in a drone, more focused on pulling the grime-fossilised mouse off the desk with a pop. ‘It’s a family business. Grandad and some buddies built it after the war – they wanted to be away from people, I think. I moved to Queensland in my twenties, only because I picked the warmest place possible. Mum and Dad took over, and then they died, and, well, there’s a certain inevitability around family stuff, because I came back to sell it six years ago and I guess I got snowed in.’

‘Family is gravity,’ I said.

‘Something like that.’

‘Which war did your grandfather fight in? I saw his medal in the library.’

‘Second. And, ha! No. That’s Frank’s medal.’

‘Frank?’

‘F-287 actually, but Grandad just called him Frank. The bird.’

‘The stuffed pigeon?’ I snorted. ‘You’re shitting me.’

‘It’s called a Dickin Medal. They give it to animals.’

I thought of the engraved words – WE ALSO SERVE – and it made sense. The slip of paper was presumably the coded message, flown through enemy lines, wrapped around the bird’s leg. It was an adventure ripe for a Disney film.

Juliette continued. ‘My favourite is the ship’s cat who got one for boosting morale and eating a rat infestation. No joke. Pops loved that bird – he trained a whole flock of them, but Frank was special. He carried a map with all of the machine gun locations, lists of troop numbers, names, co-ordinates, and he saved a lot of lives. Grandad had him stuffed when he came home. It’s a bit weird to put on display, but I like it.’ She tapped the computer screen. ‘Ah. Here it is.’

She was pointing to a green-tinged security camera video playing on screen, which she had paused. I figured the camera must have been somewhere above the front door of the guesthouse, because the angle was tilted up the hill, and the frame included the parking lot, a good chunk of the driveway and the pyramid shadows of a couple of the chalets on the very edge, just out of focus. It didn’t reach far enough to show where the body had been found. There was a time stamp in the bottom left, a few minutes shy of 10 pm. The green tinge was some kind of night-vision filter, I guessed.

‘Which rooms are those?’ I pointed at the chalets.

‘This is the even side: two, four, six and eight.’

Marcelo and Audrey were in Five, so theirs wasn’t on screen. Sofia was in Two, right on the edge of the screen, only a sliver of roof visible. I was supposed to be in Six, but Katherine and Andy had taken it when their room wasn’t ready a day early. I didn’t know which room Lucy was in. ‘Four’s mine,’ I said.

‘I know, Mr Cunningham.’