“Yeah, I—I like being successful. And … fuck, this sounds heteronormative … I like being able to take care of you, of us, but I think once the podcast started taking off and I saw how happy it made you—”

“You make me happy.”

Hanna dropped a kiss on the back of Liza’s head. “And you make me happy. But we can have more than one thing in our life that we’re happy about, and—I don’t know, I guess I didn’t realise what I was missing until you found it.”

“Oh.” Liza wasn’t sure what else to say.

“I’m not …” Hanna continued. “I’m not saying that’s our only problem. Just that it was one. I—I thought it might be good to say it out loud.”

Before Liza could do more than offer Hanna a reassuring pat on the arm, there was a knock at the door.

“I say,”—it was Sir Richard’s voice—”are you in there?”

“Are we?” whispered Hanna, and Liza shrugged.

“This is Mr Burgh,” said another voice which did, in fact, belong to Mr Burgh. “I’m here with Sir Richard, Lady Tabitha, and Reverend Lincoln. None of us are armed; we’re going room to room to see what’s happened.”

Relaxing, Liza called out, “Yes, we’re in here.”

“Both of us,” confirmed Hanna.

“Could have said earlier.” There was a pout in Sir Richard’s voice. “Bit shabby to not answer a chap. Suggests you think he’s a murderer of some sort, what?”

“Just being careful,” replied Liza, not feeling especially inclined to defend herself further. Then she glanced over her shoulder, had a short, wordless conversation with Hanna consisting mostly of eyebrow movements and, once she was sure her wife was on board, added, “We’ll come out and join you.”

The little band continued through the hotel checking on guests. They found Colonel Coleman’s room empty, letting themselves in with Mr Burgh’s master key, and they met Professor Worth wandering the corridors looking shaken.

“Did you hear it?” he asked. “There can’t have been another shooting, surely?”

“‘Fraid so, old bean.” Sir Richard seemed oddly sanguine about the possibility. “Then again, bad luck does tend to run in threes.”

“Are murders really bad luck?” asked Hanna.

The expression on Sir Richard’s face was one of stark perplexity. “Well, they aren’t exactly good luck, are they?”

“I more meant,” said Hanna in her best not-being-sarcastic voice, “aren’t they something people choose to do?”

Sir Richard, seeming to have grown bored of the conversation, hurried on, leaving the rest of the party to trail after him. Since he made straight for the ground floor, Liza concluded that he’d already checked on Ruby and found her absent. Which was concerning, but not exactly surprising.