“Just because I have the sort of mind where I have to try things for myself instead of just accepting—” The door to the drawing room opened and an unmistakably married couple entered, any signs of their previous bickering vanishing like a road in the fog.

“Why hello, Sir Richard.” The man who was presumably called Malcom gave a cheery no-problems-here smile. “Lovely to see you. And new arrivals as well?”

Sir Richard rose with the effortless social grace of the class for whom effortless social grace was the only skill they needed to develop. “Quite so. Liza and Hanna, these are Vivien and Malcom Ackroyd. Vivien and Malcom Ackroyd, these are Liza Blaine and Hanna—sorry, didn’t catch the surname.”

“Also Blaine,” said Hanna. “I took her name.”

“Really?” Sir Richard looked like he was trying to work out how to parse this. “Deuced modern of you. Or possibly deuced old-fashioned. Hard to tell which when you’re both gels. How did you decide which way it went?”

“My original name was Hanna Smellie.”

“Ah.” Sir Richard’s nose wrinkled. “Probably the best decision all round then.”

The Ackroyds made the usual pleased-to-meet-you noises and settled into two of the available chairs. For a moment, the conversation stalled as everybody tried to navigate the complexities of having a polite chat with people you would never under normal circumstances choose to spend time with. But in the end social nicety won out, and the five of them eased into the usual nothing-topics of people who meet on holiday and have nothing in common: the journey, the weather, their various experiences of the stay so far.

Eventually the atmosphere relaxed enough that Liza was almost able to forget how little she actually wanted to be there, and things settled into a natural rhythm. That rhythm being Sir Richard pontificating on whatever topic came into his head, and his various interlocutors making interjections whenever they could. After about fifteen minutes of trying to get a word in edgeways, Malcom Ackroyd—doing a remarkable job of pretending he hadn’t just finished a screaming row with his wife—suggested that they go in to dinner. And although Liza wasn’t especially hungry, it seemed rude to decline the invitation. So, as an almost-functional party of five—or at the very least, a party of five with their resentments deeply buried—they went through to the dining hall.

Chapter Three

The Guests, in the Dining Room, with Dinner

Friday, late evening

There were, Liza was beginning to notice, a lot of signs that the hotel hadn’t been designed as a hotel. The dining room was one such sign—rather than little individual tables where guests could get on with politely ignoring each other, it was laid out more like something you’d get in a stately home: one long table around which everybody gathered, while near-invisible waitstaff faded in and out of the background like servile ghosts.