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Candice feels rather sorry for Henry, who is clearly frustrated at being trapped here. Most of them seem to feel that way. Either longing to get out, like Henry, or hanging listlessly about, like Ian and Lauren.
She’s got plenty to do – as long as her battery holds up – and plenty here to interest her. She wanders over to Dana’s body to have another look. She can feel the others’ eyes on her, disapproving, as she lifts the sheet. This time she looks more carefully at the head injury, and then at the blood on the stair, and her heart beats a little faster at what she sees. Then she wanders back to the fireplace and stands in front of it for a moment, lost in thought, warming her hands. She really can’t afford to let herself be distracted by this. But she suspects that someone murdered that poor girl.
Lauren startles her out of her thoughts by asking, ‘What kind of book are you working on?’
Candice smiles a little evasively. ‘Oh – I don’t like to talk about it. I never talk about what I’m working on until it’s finished,’ she says apologetically. ‘I find it just sucks all the energy out of the project.’
‘Oh,’ Lauren says. ‘I thought writers always liked to talk about what they were working on.’
‘Not me,’ Candice replies.
Gradually the guests begin to leave the lobby, scattering in different directions, subdued by the tragedy that has occurred in their midst. Bradley had brought a couple of oil lamps and some matches and left them on the coffee table, but most of them opt to use the torch app on their iPhones to help them find their way up the dark staircase and around the unlit corridors upstairs. It’s unnervingly dark once you leave the ground floor, where the windows across the front of the hotel let in daylight.
It’s time to get to work. Candice skirts the corpse and trudges up the staircase to her room on the second floor. The corridor is lit only by the rather small windows at each end, and it is dark and gloomy, made even more so by the dark carpet and dull wallpaper. Candice supposes that all the bedrooms have windows – hers certainly does – and that if the curtains are pulled back, there will be enough light for most purposes, but probably not enough to read easily.
Upstairs, it’s colder. The large fire in the lobby makes it undoubtedly the most hospitable place to be, if you are able to ignore the presence of the dead body. But most of the guests seem to have gone back up to their rooms, badly spooked.
Candice finds her room too cold, too gloomy, and too dark for her liking. She returns downstairs carrying her laptop and discovers the library. She searches out Bradley, finds him in the dining room clearing things away, and asks him to build a fire in the library for her. Bradley looks a bit harried and harassed. It must be difficult, Candice thinks, to keep a hotel going while short-staffed during a power failure.
‘I thought I heard you were shovelling the path to the icehouse,’ she says as they walk to the library.
He smiles at her briefly. ‘Yes, but I’ve got Henry helping with that now. It’s tough going but he’s having some luck with the snowblower.’
She follows Bradley into the library. She longs to complain about the awful position the power failure has put her in, but she doesn’t want to burden him any further. And she is aware of how petty it would be, when there’s a young woman dead, and there may be people out there in real jeopardy from this storm.
Still. There is no question the power outage is causing her great inconvenience. She came up here to work, and she can’t work without a functioning laptop. She has only a few hours of battery left at most. She may be reduced to writing with a ballpoint pen, wrapped in a blanket. It’s not what she imagined. She thinks of her mother trapped in her bed, and wonders if her sisters are taking care of her the way they should.
She settles herself into a comfortable armchair by the crackling, spitting fire, thanks Bradley profusely, and asks him to bring her a hot cup of tea when he gets a chance. Then she opens her computer. But it’s a while before she can stop thinking about Dana, and get down to work.
Saturday, 9:15 AM
Gwen had found breakfast in the dining room – which she couldn’t help comparing unfavourably to the delightful breakfast experience promised to her in the Mitchell’s Inn brochure – excruciating. She only managed to eat half a muffin, without tasting it.
David hadn’t approached her, but Riley had been standing beside her oozing a fierce protectiveness. Or maybe it was because he was distracted by what had happened to Dana. Gwen knew he was concerned about Matthew. She didn’t really give a shit what Riley thought, but she hadn’t liked the idea of Riley grabbing her arm if she tried to walk over to David, and creating a scene. Riley was unpredictable. When David left the dining room, Gwen decided she would find him later, when she had the possibility of a little privacy.
She couldn’t help thinking about him. Just a few hours earlier he’d been touching her, loving her.
They’d wandered out to the lobby and watched Henry make a fool of himself on the icy lawn. Then Riley had suggested the two of them explore the hotel together. Gwen showed her the library, then they went into the sitting room next to the library. It was quite charming, with an array of plump chintz sofas and chairs and low tables and an oil portrait of a woman over the fireplace.
‘Shall we stay here?’ Gwen suggested, rubbing her hands along her arms for warmth. But Riley was restless and wanted to keep looking around. They explored the little corridor off the lobby and came to the bar.
‘This is nice,’ Riley says now, glancing around the bar approvingly. ‘I’ll make a fire for us here.’
Of course she can start her own fire, Gwen thinks, watching her. She’s lived in Iraq, and Afghanistan, in the roughest of conditions. She wonders what else Riley can do that Gwen can’t. Drive a car with a manual gearbox. Treat a wound. Protect a source. Negotiate with terrorists. She realizes that Riley has never really shared any of these kinds of details with her; she probably thinks Gwen wouldn’t be able to handle it. Riley is the strangest collection of impressive skills, fierce bravery, and now, a terrible, unpredictable fragility.
Gwen is acutely aware of the bottles behind the bar and worries that Riley will want to get into them, even though it’s just past breakfast. She turns her back on the bar and wanders around the room, perusing the titles of the books shelved along the walls, studying the paintings.
Suddenly Gwen finds herself thinking about the last year of journalism school, when everything changed for her. Riley knows what happened; she was there. She knows why Gwen thinks she doesn’t deserve to be happy. But Gwen knows that if she wants a chance with David, she must confront the past. She must face it and come to terms with it somehow.
They were out one night at a party. There was a lot of drinking – it was the end of the year and everybody was partying hard because they would soon be graduating. Gwen witnessed a terrible crime. She watched three men rape a young woman. And she did nothing. Nothing at all.
