PART FIVE - DENOUEMENT

One of the first things one learns in judo is how to break your fall. As he lurched head-first downwards, he was tucking his head into his shoulder and lifting his arm to form an arc, and it was his arm and shoulder which took the initial impact. But even the brunt of that was absorbed, as he curled his entire body into a ball and rolled down a couple more steps.

When he was a kid, he'd learnt it as a show off at judo. It had always impressed people then, but it was even more impressive now. As the calves of his legs came in contact with the steps, he straightened his entire body, and his momentum was just right to bring him back up to a standing position halfway down the stairs, with a simple grasp on the banisters to steady himself.

He could stare at the astonished faces looking on, initially in shocked horror at a repetition of the events twenty-five years ago, then their faces had rapidly turned to amusement at the way he had recovered. Except that one of the party below was not looking at him but facing the rear wall of the Hall and appeared to be reeling in something which was too fine to be seen.

"You can stop that now," he said. "It's too late to hide what you've done."

All eyes turned towards the person at the wall, who only belatedly became aware of their scrutiny. No one spoke as the person turned to face the others.

It was Matthew who eventually broke the silence which filled the room. "Mother! What on earth are you doing?"

"Don't ask such silly questions," Emily said. "I'm trying to kill her. It's in all our best interest. Now can someone help me finish her off?"

***

"I came here knowing absolutely nothing about my mother," Sam started, "and quickly realised she was a lovely person who enjoyed sex, and had absolutely no inhibitions about dispensing it freely."

Emily snorted. She was seated at the dining table, flanked by Matthew on one side and Luke on the other. They'd been 'caring' for her since Emily had suggested cutting Sam's throat with a carving knife.

"But I quickly had to face two important questions," Sam continued. "Who was my father, and who murdered my mother?"

There was a gasp from around the table as Sam put the second question.

"I, too, was shocked when Emily told me how she had seen evidence of a tripwire across the stairs after my mother's fall. She convinced me the best way of discovering the murderer was to re-enact the scene, with me taking on the role of my mother.

"Emily said she believed that one of her sons was my father, which seemed to be borne out by their reluctance to give me a DNA sample. But she was being economical with the truth. There was someone else she thought was more likely to be the father, whom she wished to protect."

He couldn't prevent his eyes flicking towards Michael, asleep in his wheelchair, and everyone else followed his gaze.

"A person who," Sam continued, "was posturing to become the next Archbishop of Canterbury, so there had to be no hint of scandal."

Emily again snorted and shook her head, which disconcerted him.

"However," he said, deciding to change tack, "the story really started a long time before - fifty years ago, at Cambridge when Richard, Michael and Emily were at university together. Emily gave me part of the tale yesterday, but she withheld the more personal bits." He stared at Emily and said, "I think it's time to tell us about the actual relationship between you all."

Emily's eyes lit up, just as they had before when she spoke of Cambridge. "It was the 1960s and free love was everywhere. Richard, Michael and I were a threesome - not so much a love triangle as a love sandwich - with me as the filling. For heaven's sake, Matthew, don't look so shocked. After we'd completed our finals, both Richard and Michael proposed to me, and I had to choose. In spite of Michael's superior skills in bed, I chose Richard and we married. Richard got an almost immediate posting here, and we decided to start a family straightaway.

"But twelve months went by without me missing a single period, and I decided that perhaps Richard needed a little help. I asked Michael to assist and Matthew was born almost nine months to the day afterwards."

"Mother!" Matthew was aghast. "You mean all these years you haven't told me who my father really was. That's horrible."

"Calm down Matthew," Mark said. "I suspect that Mother hasn't finished, yet, and she's going to give us all news of our real father."

Emily smiled. "It's true. A year later, when we decided to go for another baby, I immediately involved Michael, and Mark promptly came along. A year after that, Michael helped bring Luke into being."

"But it didn't end with impregnating you, did it Emily?" Sam asked. "I realised when I went to the cathedral yesterday that the flower displays were far older than a few days. Even now, you still see Michael under the cloak of flower arranging, and you've been doing so throughout your married life."

Emily looked at Michael who was still asleep. "I promised Michael I would always protect his reputation, but I guess nothing I say now will harm him. So, yes, we've continued our affair ever since. Do you know why I specifically employed your mother?"

Sam shook his head.

"Because," Emily said, "I was looking for someone to distract Richard from continually pestering me for sex. There were several applicants for the job, but one of your mother's previous employers gave her an excellent reference: they said that she had the morals of a prostitute without the business sense."

She accompanied her words with an offensive smirk. Sam should have been upset; instead, he felt dispassionate.

"I knew Richard would be totally engrossed with her," Emily continued, "but I thought he was sterile so I was astonished when Sally became pregnant. I interrogated the boys, thinking it would be one of them, but although I was surprised to discover they'd all been having some kind of relationship with the ugly bitch, they all denied being the father of her child. To cap it all, Richard changed his will in her favour, cutting out the boys."

"And then my mother told you," Sam said, at last beginning to understand, "that Michael was going to marry her. And you were bitterly jealous."

"You found out!" Emily said, clearly surprised.

"When I went to see Michael," Sam said, "he mistook me for Sally. As I was leaving, he said: 'You will marry me, won't you Sally?' At the time, I thought his mind had been simply wandering."

"Just before my birthday party, Sally said that she'd been having sex with Michael and had told him he was the father of the twins. He dearly wanted to become Archbishop of Canterbury and couldn't afford the scandal, so he'd agreed to marry her. I was absolutely livid."

"Which is why you murdered her," Sam said, "using the trick you just pulled on me."

"Precisely. I was already thinking about it because of Richard's will, but it was the final straw when she manipulated Michael and was going to take him away from me.

Her admission put the room into total silence.

Emily suddenly laughed. "The ironic thing is that it was all a mistake, because afterwards Michael told me Sally had made it all up - he'd never had sex with her and had never discussed marriage with her."

Of course he told you that, Sam thought, but he said, "What is more of a mystery is why you had to try to murder me. In fact, why did you tell me about my mother being murdered, and convince me to stand in for her in this charade? If you hadn't, I'd simply have done my nostalgia trip and then gone home and not bothered you again."

Emily looked confused, as though it was obvious. "Why, it was Richard's will, of course. I had the right to live here with a reasonable annuity until I died, but then Richard specified the estate would be divided equally between his natural children. All of my sons were Michael's, so you were obviously Richard's only child." She had a sudden thought. "You are Richard's child, aren't you?"

All eyes were riveted on Sam as he considered how he should answer - with the truth or a lie. He was not to know that just a few minutes later he would bitterly regret his decision.

"Yes," he said. "I am Richard's child."

Emily nodded. "I knew Michael would never betray me like that with your slut of a mother. Of course, twenty-five years ago, no one could have proved a thing, but now they can, and I'm sure Richard realised that would be the case. Remember, we were at Cambridge in 1962, the year that Crick and Watson were up for the Nobel Prize for finding DNA - and they subsequently got it. Everyone was talking about the possibilities. So, with you being Richard's only natural child, you had to be got out of the way."

"But I didn't know anything about the will," Sam protested. "I never even thought about it. Even if..."

"But you wondered about your father," Emily said. "Whether or not I helped you, you'd have been finding a way to DNA test the boys, and when they proved negative, you'd have been thinking about the only other man in the house. You'd have found Richard's brother and proved you were related, and then you'd be demanding the estate. Especially when you found out about the shares."

"Shares?" Virtually everyone said it together.

"Richard was an excellent theologian; he even embraced the theory of DNA, but technology simply turned him off. When he inherited some IBM shares from his father, he wasn't interested - he didn't even mention them to me or anyone else. They're worth just over four million pounds today." Emily smiled at the open mouths of all around her, but spoke specifically to Sam. "You can see why I tried to buy you off."

"Buy me off?" Sam was puzzled. "When did you do that?"

"I asked you to get some money from the safe. Do you remember? If you'd only stolen the contents of the safe, you could have walked away with ten thousand pounds in your pocket. Then I'd have been sure you would never return. As it was, you were simply too honest for your own good. That's why you have to die."

Sam shook his head at the insanity Emily had concealed within her.

"I'd been expecting you for years, of course," Emily continued, "except I thought there'd be the two of you, and I'd done all my planning around that. I'd decided to let you both stay in the little flat above the coach house, with the defective gas heater. As it was, I had to think on my feet a little. In the end, it seemed a repetition of Sally's demise would be more poetic.

"I also needed to know that you were the same kind of tart as your mother. That would be the final justification I needed to kill you. It all worked like a dream. You let each of my sons screw you within hours of me telling them you were a little slut who'd have sex with anyone."

Which explained, Sam realised, why Emily had originally come up with the idea of him changing sex and becoming her housekeeper. Clearly, in her mind, she now completely believed he was a woman, and had forgotten who he really was. His exposure as a man, which he'd been expecting at any moment, had never come.

"So," Emily spoke to the rest of them, "do you all see why Samantha has to die? With her dead, there'll be no one to question who was really the father of my three sons, and you will all inherit the estate. Let her live, and you can kiss goodbye to everything."

"I'm in," Mark said, standing up and quickly moving to lock the door and pocket the key. "But we have to make it look good. Luke, you'll need to sign the death certificate."

"Oh shit!" Luke said. "It's too dangerous. Any kind of accidental death and the coroner would be involved."

"Then give her a fatal injection," Mark said, "and call it a heart attack. What was used in that hospital to murder those patients?"

"Insulin," Luke said, "I have some in my bag. But we could be found out..."

"Not if we all stick together," Rachel said. "Remember, we've been counting on getting a share in the house. It's even more important now, with the four million in shares."

That's right," Fiona said. "This little slut is cheating us out of our rightful inheritance."

"Matthew," Mark said. "Help me hold her whilst Luke gets his medical bag."

"You want me to kill her?" Matthew asked.

"Oh shit!" Sam thought. It was not meant to be like this. The other members of the denouement were supposed to be shocked and horrified when the murderer was identified, not gang up with her to kill the detective. Even the women were ready to give him the chop. And whilst with his judo, he was an even match for any one of them, he was no Bruce Lee; he couldn't take them all on and win. What the hell was he going to do?

***

"You really want me to kill her?" Matthew repeated.

"It's probably best if you just help me hold her down," Mark said, "whilst Luke injects her."

"If you kill Sam," Matthew said, "then you have to kill me as well. I'm not going to murder anyone, or cover up a murder."

"For fuck's sake," Mark said. "She's going to steal our inheritance."

"And you'd all kill, just for money?" Matthew said. "You all disgust me."

"You obviously have something of your father in you." Sam said, suddenly remembering he hadn't played his master card. "Your mother said he was always outspoken."

"Father was a good man," Matthew said, "and I don't care about my biological..." He paused for a second and then added, "What exactly do you mean?"

"Everyone has assumed," Sam replied, "that in order to prove that Richard was my father, I took a DNA sample from his brother, but I didn't even know about him until now. The proof actually comes from another route entirely - because the DNA shows I am Matthew's half-brother, and our common father is not Bishop Michael. We are both the children of Richard."

"Fuck!" "Shit!" and, from Emily, "We can still kill her.

"But now we're better off than we were before," Fiona's face cleared as she spoke directly to Matthew. "You and Samantha will split the estate between you, rather than you only getting a third if you share it with your brothers."

"But what about us?" Rachel indignantly declared. "We'll end up with nothing."

"Winners and losers," Fiona shouted at her. "We win and you lose."

Rachel turned to Mark. "Do something. We have to kill them all."

Mark looked around, but he knew it was hopeless. He smiled and said, "That was, of course, a rather silly joke we were playing on you, Sam. I hope you'll consider it as such."

"Yes, of course," Luke said, relief flooding his voice. "It was a joke."

"A joke?" Bishop Michael had suddenly come to life. "Apart from Matthew, you were all going to kill this lovely young lady." He turned to Emily. "And I blame you for the way you have brought up my sons. It's all your fault. If only I'd married Sally. She was a lovely girl, and she fucked like rabbit."

With a horrific scream, Emily leapt up from the table and threw herself at Michael, punching him and kicking him, and trying to gouge out his eyes.

***

"I think Father knew that Sally had been murdered," Matthew said later that evening.

After Emily's total breakdown, Mark and Rachel had helped Luke take her to a mental hospital and have her committed. Sam had agreed there was little point in reporting Emily to the police, since she was clearly mad. Where she was going, she would pose no further danger to Sam, Michael or anyone else.

Shortly after that, an ambulance had arrived to take Michael back to his nursing home.

Finally, Fiona had started to rant at Matthew for having sex with Sam, and Matthew had calmly told her he wasn't prepared to live with someone who would commit murder for money, so she could get the fuck out and he never wanted to see her again.

Which left Matthew and Sam on their own, with Matthew pondering over events. "The day after Sally was killed," he continued, "Father quite pointedly asked us all what had caused her to trip, and he stared at us as though one of us knew the answer. He made me feel guilty, and I hadn't done anything."

"Do you think he realised it was Emily?" Sam asked.

"I don't think much got past him, actually. He was incredibly pious, but that didn't mean he didn't have a good sense of judgement. Clearly, he suspected we weren't all his children. It was obviously bitter jealousy which made Mother kill Sally. I'm sure she regretted it later, but you can imagine how having that on your conscience for twenty-five years would prey on your mind."

"Especially knowing that eventually Sally's children would come looking, poking, prying and demanding their fair shares," Sam added. "She must have been on tenterhooks in the months leading up our eighteenth birthday, with our right to find out about our biological parents, and it would get worse as another seven years went by, knowing that finally they would come. You can see why it tipped her mind."

Matthew nodded. "Smart detective work, Miss Marple."

"No way," Sam said, shaking his head. "I should have used the Agatha Christie principle to give me the answer straightaway. Who was the person least likely to have done it? Why, Emily, of course!"

"What I don't understand," Matthew said, "is why you bothered to get a DNA test done on me, when you'd already told me that I couldn't be your father."

"It was something your mother said," Sam replied, "about when she was deciding whether to marry Richard or Michael. She said that Richard was shorter than Michael, but he made up for it in other areas. At the time, I wondered whether it was a roundabout way of saying Richard had a big plonker. After seeing you and knowing that..."

Sam had been about to say that he, too, had a big penis, but realised Matthew still thought he was Samantha. "So I linked a family by putting two big pricks together."

"Talking of big pricks," Matthew said, "do you fancy..."

Sam simply nodded.