Free Cruel as the Grave by Dean James

too was wearing a scarf. Then her attention turned to the food, and she forgot about being cold.
    After dessert—homemade vanilla ice cream that was so wonderful Maggie had no trouble eating a second helping—Retty steered them all toward a room at the back of the first floor. This room was their entertainment center, Retty explained to a curious Maggie. There was a state-of-the-art sound system and a huge collection of music. Mounted against one wall was a huge television screen, which looked to Maggie more like a small movie screen. Otherwise the room was furnished with leather chairs and small leather sofas scattered casually about, and the dark richness of the leather Maggie found oddly reassuring. This room, at least, looked like a place where someone spent a lot of time.
    Sylvia joined them as they were discussing what movie to watch. She had given Henry his dinner and left him to sleep, she reported as she patted a beeper in her pocket. “If he can’t sleep or if anything bothers him, all he has to do is press a button, and I’ll be right upstairs,” she explained to Maggie and Gerard.
    Helena suggested they should let Maggie or Gerard pick the movie for the night. Gerard waived his choice in favor of his daughter’s, so Maggie contemplated the astounding video collection. There had to be several hundred tapes in the specially designed cabinets in one wall, but finally her eyes rested on one title, “The Lion in Winter.” She hadn’t seen that one in quite a while, and it was one of the Audrey Hepburn movies she hadn’t bought for herself yet. “How about this one?” She handed it to Helena.
    “Oh, we’re all Hepburn fans here,” Helena said, pleased with Maggie’s choice. “You’ll get no argument from me!”
    Everyone else—including Adrian, Maggie noted with pleasure—seemed amenable. Adrian set everything up while the others arranged their seats. She found herself with Helena on a small couch directly in front of the screen, about eight feet back. The others settled themselves in chairs scattered in a loose semicircle behind the couch. Adrian turned off the lights, found his own seat, then clicked the remote control. Maggie snuggled down contentedly in the soft leather to watch one of her favorite movies.
    For two-and-a-quarter hours she sat, barely moving, enthralled with a movie that she could quote in some scenes. Vaguely she was aware that, behind her, some of the others on occasion moved around, but her attention focused upon the screen. Helena beside her seemed just as absorbed in the movie as Maggie; she also never left her seat.
    When the movie ended, Adrian flicked on the lights and set the tape rewinding. Retty had nodded off during the movie. The bright lights woke her up, and rather shamefacedly she rubbed her eyes as she smiled at Maggie.
    Sylvia stretched before announcing that she was going to run upstairs to check on Henry. As she went out the door, Adrian asked them whether anybody would like something to drink. Before he had gone completely around the room, taking requests—Helena having dithered between a Shirley Temple and a Bloody Mary—Sylvia reappeared in the doorway, her face a grotesque caricature of horror.
    She grasped the doorknob for support as her legs threatened to give way. “Somebody’s killed Uncle Henry!”

Chapter Five
    For a long moment Sylvia’s words hung in the air, while all activity in the room froze. Stunned and disbelieving, Maggie glanced quickly around at the rest of the family.
    The faces of her relatives were curiously blank, she noted. Adrian and Claudine were the only two in the group, besides Gerard, who evinced any emotion. Adrian was swallowing convulsively, while Claudine hugged herself and shivered, running her hands up and down her arms, her hands coming to rest on her bare shoulders.
    The expression on Gerard’s face registered unbelieving horror, and Maggie could feel her own face slipping into a mirror image of her father’s as