10:40 PM.

Predictably, they were arguing.

In fact they were arguing so much that none of them except Mr Jang even noticed the three of them coming down the stairs and not even he realised Irene was carrying a folded document in one hand. She reached the bottom of the stairs and coughed and waited for them to turn to her but they did not.

‘I’m telling you,’ Yeri said, ‘you get one because they’re modern and they’re luxurious, not because you think they’re cool. That just makes you look pathetic and embarrassing, like you’re trying to follow trends. But if get one because you’re up to date and moving with the times, then you look up to date as well. Confusing, I know. It’s a very fine line between one and the other. And sadly, you’ve already crossed it.’

‘Why don’t you just get a McLaren, then?’ said Wheein.

‘C’mon, really? Isn’t it obvious?’

‘No. Or else I wouldn’t have asked.’

Yeri sighed. ‘Look, McLaren’s might look y, like little alien spaceships or whatever, and they might be fast, but the issue is twofold – first, they’re not as fashionable as Ferraris, so you’re better off just buying one of them anyway. And secondly, they’re a terrible, terrible investment. Have you seen how quickly McLarens depreciate nowadays? Nobody’s buying them! I saw one a couple months ago that was selling for sixty thousand dollars. Yeah, exactly. That’s the same face I made. The guy bought it for three hundred brand new, sold it for a fifth of that after less than a year. Ridiculous. So, yeah, just get a Ferrari instead. Well, you shouldn’t, Sooyoung, because it makes you look desperate and cheap…but other people should.’

‘What about a Pagani?’

‘Too gaudy.’

‘Lamborghini?’

‘Too boyish.’

‘Porsche?’

‘Too sensible.’

‘BMW, then?’

‘Too German. And I don’t mean that in a racist way or anything. I like German people. I just, you know…don’t like BMW. They’re too by the books. Not fancy enough.’

‘Who made you a car expert?’

‘Nobody. It’s just common sense, really. Which I suppose explains why none of you seem to realise it. Because you’ve got none.’

‘You really are an to everybody, aren’t you?’

‘How am I being an ? It’s just the truth. Like I said, I’m honest. Brutally honest. But I don’t think I’m rude. You just can’t handle me.’

‘Okay, so here’s my question to you – if you buy a Ferrari, what model Ferrari do you buy?’

‘Why? You getting buyer’s remorse all of a sudden? Finally realising that I’m telling the truth?’

‘No, not at all. I was just curious. Well, go on, then.’

‘I— what?’

Sooyoung and Wheein were both staring at Irene. The rest of this merry band of misfits had piled back into the room and now Yeri turned and saw Irene there and then the document in her hand and she laughed. ‘Oh, this is going to be good,’ she said. ‘Another ing piece of paper. Yippee.’

‘What have you got there?’ Lisa said. The knife was on the table, right beside Wheein’s whiskey. Irene took a moment to observe them all, this gallery of rogues. None of them looked any more suspicious or alarmed than they had at any other point in the evening, not even Wheein, still sat there slouched on the middle sofa, looking almost bored. She held up the document. ‘This,’ she said.

‘Yeah. What is it?’

‘This is the last will and testament of Kim Hongmin. Known better to all of us as Mr Kim.’

‘What?’ Jisoo said. ‘That’s his will?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Where did you find that?’

‘Upstairs, inside his box that kept the Imperial Jade Seal of China.’

‘His what?’

‘His— never mind. One of his artefacts.’

‘You found it inside there.’

‘Yeah. What?’

Yeri laughed again. ‘That just looks like a piece of paper to me,’ she said. ‘Who’s to say you haven’t just scribbled on it with crayon or some and made it up yourself?’

‘I was there,’ Wendy said. ‘I saw her find it. I can vouch for her.’

‘You? Of all people, you?’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘I wouldn’t trust you to make bread out of flour, sweetheart. And you too? Were you there?’

‘Yeah,’ said Seulgi.

‘Your honour, I rest my case.’

Irene ignored her, as did everybody else. She paced the room twice, watching them as she went, looking for a change in character. Nothing came. She held up the will again. ‘It details everything here,’ she said. ‘Every asset, every item, every piece of land, every property, every single won, down to the very last one. There’s a list of names here – people he’s leaving things to, in order. Would you like to know whose names are on this list? Jennie, yours.’

‘Me?’ Jennie said.

‘Yes.’

‘What has he left me?’

‘That’s not the relevant part right now. Jisoo, you’re on there too.’

Jisoo was silent.

‘Do you know who else is on there? Nobody relevant. Of all the people in this room, only two of you are on this list. Which means that two people who probably should be on there are curiously absent – Yeri and Rosie.’

‘Well well well,’ Wheein said, almost laughing. ‘How the turntables.’

Irene glanced at Yeri. For a while she appeared not to have been listening. Only when the rest of them turned to her for an explanation did she sigh and rub her head and say, ‘For Christ’s sake, here we go again with this . What? What do you expect me to say? News flash, genius – I was estranged. He barely talked to me.’

‘He played snakes and ladders with you. He gave you riddles to solve daily.’

‘Wha— how the do you know that?’

‘Am I right?’

‘No, seriously – how do you know that? That’s some real creepy .’

‘So he did.’

Yeri was silent.

‘You can’t have been that estranged if that’s the case.’

‘Look,’ Yeri said, ‘we didn’t get on, alright? Maybe he liked me – I think he did, he said he did, said he saw himself in me, whatever the that means – but I didn’t get along well with him. We were just too different. Yeah he was family, but who gives a ? He kept trying to woo me over. Convert me to his side or something, I dunno. That’s what the dumb games were for, and the riddles, ‘cause he knew I liked learning things and working things out for myself. There, you happy now?’

‘No,’ Irene said.

‘No, I didn’t think you would be. It’s all just Take Take Take with you, isn’t it?’

Seulgi scoffed. ‘You’re starting to sound like me,’ she murmured.

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

Irene waved the will around. ‘That puts you prime and centre as a suspect,’ she said.

‘Uh, no. No it doesn’t, actually. Like…at all. Why the would you think that?’

‘Because—’

‘Here’s another news flash for you – I had no ing idea I wasn’t in his will. I didn’t even know he’d written a will. I mean, at seventy I suppose it makes a lot of sense, but still, I didn’t know. And yeah, I know what you’re gonna say: prove it. Well, I can’t, so you’re just gonna have to take my word for it.’

‘I was—’

‘I mean, look at me. Do I look like a serial murderer to you? And if I did kill my own granduncle, do you really think I’d have it in me to also kill this dude over here? This dude I don’t even know. I’ve never even met him before. And can we please get him out of the way or something? He’s just been lying there for, like, two hours now. And he’s gonna start smelling soon. Not to be insensitive or anything.’

‘I was just about—’

‘So, yeah, go ahead and blame me, tell me Wheein’s innocent, say whatever else you’ve got to say. You know, just when I was starting to warm to you, Irene, you go and do some dumb like this. So, boom, right back you go, in the box with the rest of these jokers.’

‘Can you let me finish?’

Yeri shrugged, a childish petulance to her.

‘I was actually just about to say I don’t think you’re a suspect and I don’t think you did it.’

‘I just told you that I don’t— wait, what? You were? Really?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then why the didn’t you say that, then?’

‘I was— never mind.’ Irene sighed. ‘What I was about to say was – I think I know who did it, and it isn’t you. It isn’t Wheein either.’

‘Well,’ Lisa said, ‘go on, then. Who is it?’

‘It’s you.’

‘What? Me?’

‘No. Not you. You.’

‘Me?’ Mr Jang said.

‘No. Not you either. You.’

‘Me?’ said Rosie.

‘Yes you.’

‘Wait, what? Me?’

‘Yes,’ Irene said. ‘You did it.’

Rosie was silent. Then she laughed. If it was a nervous laugh or a genuine laugh in disbelief Irene couldn’t quite tell. ‘Really?’ she said. ‘We’re going back to this again?’

‘Yes we are.’

‘Oh yeah,’ Yeri said, ‘I’m looking forward to this.’

Irene stepped forward again. She motioned to Wendy and Wendy passed her the sheaf of documents from Mr Kim’s study and she sorted them out and put the will at the back and cleared like a teacher about to give a lesson. Nobody moved. Even Rosie stood there, the look on her face so blank Irene couldn’t read her at all.

‘First of all I’d like to thank Yeri for what she said earlier. For helping me put together the final missing puzzle piece, even if she did it by accident.’

‘What did I do?’ Yeri asked.

‘You said “blonde moment.” That was all I needed.’

‘What?’

‘I found a single blonde hair on the carpet upstairs in Mr Kim’s room. Right by the drawers. At first I thought it was Wheein’s, of course. It would make perfect sense. She sneaks in when the lights are out, stabs Mr Kim, and as she’s leaving a single hair of hers falls onto the carpet. And because it’s dark and she’s not really paying attention, she misses it. The only piece of incriminating evidence. Yet some things didn’t quite add up, and I’ll get to that in a minute. You see, Wheein’s not the only one who’s blonde. You are.’

Rosie laughed. The fear was clear now, much more upfront. She wasn’t crying but Irene thought she might.

Irene held up one of the documents. ‘This is the notice of termination,’ she said. ‘The one I found in Mr Kim’s drawer earlier this evening. No name on it, like I said.’

‘You said it was for Jennie,’ Sooyoung said.

‘No. I said I thought it was for Jennie, because she’d been stealing jewellery from his private collection, but I could never confirm anything. But reading the will here made me realise something – I was wrong. It wasn’t for Jennie at all. If he knew she was stealing from him, and he was about to fire her, why would he write her name in his will? And Jisoo’s, too. But do you know who’s missing from here?’

‘Rosie.’

‘Exactly. It wasn’t Jennie he was going to fire – it was Rosie. But of course, you know this. That’s where the hair was from. It wasn’t from you sneaking in and sticking a knife in his back, because why would it be on the opposite side of the table, by his drawers? It was from you sneaking in and snooping through his belongings and finding that notice. I don’t know when you did it because that’s impossible to figure out, but I’m guessing it was a while ago. Perhaps a couple weeks. A month, maybe?’

‘This is ridiculous,’ Rosie said, the words barely more than a tremble at the back of .

‘You found out he was going to fire you and you knew that couldn’t happen. You said it yourself earlier – a quick slip, but still enough for me to pick up on. When we were interviewing you, you mentioned your family. How they rely on you. Then you trailed off. Didn’t you, Rosie?’

‘Oh,’ Wendy said. ‘Oh, she’s good. She’s so good. How do you pick up all these little details, boss?’

‘Years of practice.’

‘You hear that? Years of practice. The rest of you are just amateurs in comparison.’

‘God,’ Yeri said, ‘can you stop with the creepy worshipping for one minute, please? I’m trying to listen here.’

Irene nodded at nothing in particular. ‘But you didn’t do it alone, did you?’ she said. ‘No, because that wouldn’t make sense. If he was going to fire you, and you weren’t in his will, what good would killing him do you? You wouldn’t get a single cent. But then Mr Jae shows up. You watch him coming and going. You hear him arguing. Maybe you even catch what he’s saying as well, what he’s arguing about, stuff like that. You bite the bullet – you decide to talk to him about Mr Kim. You realise that he’s planning on taking over Mr Jae’s company and kicking him out and you know you can use that as leverage. Don’t you, Rosie?’

Irene turned to her. There was an awful silence in the air that had her on edge because the truth was it was a wild shot in the dark and perhaps she was entirely wrong and the more she thought about it the more she believed it was wrong indeed. That things were too simple to explain away, too easy. It wasn’t until Rosie began crying again that she almost sighed in relief.

‘I didn’t,’ Rosie said. ‘I didn’t. I swear.’

‘Didn’t what?’

‘I didn’t stab him. I promise I didn’t stab him. I would never do anything like that.’

‘So you did talk to Mr Jae?’

‘I— we…look, it’s complicated.’

‘Complicated how?’

She was crying again. Irene took a moment to let her compose herself and then she said, ‘Complicated how?’

‘We got talking,’ she said. ‘He was here about a month ago, just after Mr Kim had started on his Heparin. I don’t know how the conversation ever got onto it in the first place. I can’t even remember. Of course I said no. I didn’t think I had it in me. But Mr Jae said…’

‘Said what?’

‘He said there would be no pain. He wouldn’t ever know. One moment he would be there and the next he’d be dead and that would be the end of it.’

‘Holy ,’ Yeri said. ‘And here I was thinking you were the only innocent person in this room. Guess my intuition was completely ing wrong, wasn’t it? You’re a psychopath.’

‘I never stabbed him,’ Rosie said again. Her entire face was red and tears ran down her cheeks and she had to sniffle to be heard at all and in a brief moment of lucid empathy Irene almost felt bad for her. She said, ‘How much?’

‘What?’

‘How much.’

A pause. Then Rosie said, ‘A billion won.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ Sooyoung said.

‘Look, I didn’t— I mean…I—’

Yeri made a whistling sound with her lips. ‘You know what?’ she said. ‘For a billion won, I can’t say I’d have done different. What? Why are you looking at me like that? Oh for god’s sake, it’s a hypothetical! Learn to use your ears.’

‘A billion won,’ Irene said. ‘A billion won, enough for you and your family for years if you spent it right and invested it. And Mr Jae knew all about investments. That much money was too much to ignore, wasn’t it? Especially with the threat of you being fired very soon. So you plotted with Mr Jae. You knew that now was the best time to do it, with the storm playing havoc on the power lines and so many people here you could shift the blame onto. Motive, plan, execution. I’m willing to bet I know who cut the power lines too. It was Mr Jae, wasn’t it?’

Rosie was silent.

‘Wasn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ she said gently.

‘How did he do it?’

‘What? I don’t know. He just told me he was going to do it before dinner. But when I switched the medicines he hadn’t even cut the power lines.’

‘And your part of the plan was to switch his medicines around.’

‘Yes.’

‘Which you did.’

Silence.

‘Which you did, didn’t you?’

‘Yes,’ Rosie said.

‘You got lucky. The storm cut the power without Mr Jae ever even needing to do it, giving you the perfect alibi. But something went wrong. You ed up when switching the medicines, or maybe he didn’t take them properly, or whatever, but it didn’t kill him. You saw him up there on the balcony just before dinner. That was when Mr Jae cut the power. And this time, you stole a knife from the kitchen, knowing you had easy access to it, crept into his room, stabbed him just to be sure, and then left through the window, just to be doubly certain nobody could see you. Just like that.’

‘What? No, I— I didn’t stab him. I promise.’

‘So how did he end up with a knife in his back, then?’

‘I don’t know. I swear. I don’t know. I only changed the ing vials around.’

‘On Jesus,’ Yeri said.

‘What?’

‘Swear it on Jesus.’

‘I’m not religious.’

‘Even easier, then.’

‘What? I don’t— I mean—’

‘Where’s the knife?’ Lisa said.

‘In your hand.’

‘Not that knife. The one you used to stab him with.’

‘Uh…in his back.’

‘Oh. Right. Yeah.’

‘But I didn’t do it. I didn’t stab him.’

‘But you did switch the medicines?’ Jisoo said.

‘Yes.’

‘You killed him, Rosie. You killed Mr Kim.’

‘No, I didn’t. I promise! I didn’t stab him.’

‘But you tried to. You switched his medicines around, knowing what it would do.’

Rosie was silent again.

‘After everything he’s done for us. Done for you. And you wanted to kill him over, what? Over money?’

‘Please,’ Rosie said. ‘I didn’t mean for any of this to happen to him.’

‘So let me get this straight,’ Yeri said. ‘It was her? And Mr Jae? They’re the guilty ones?’

‘Yeah,’ Lisa said.

‘So it wasn’t Wheein here?’

‘No.’

‘Thank you,’ Wheein said. ‘Finally. See? All it took was a little common sense.’

‘And a world-class detective,’ said Wendy.

‘Why did you do it?’ Jennie asked. She spoke in a tone that sounded like it was her that had been betrayed, as if she couldn’t quite believe it, and now it was Rosie’s turn to scoff. Irene studied her closely. Any and all remorse seemed to immediately drain out of her face and she stopped crying almost instantly.

‘Oh, like you’re one to talk,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘Get off your ing moral high horse. You were stealing his prized collections from right under his nose, so don’t get all high and mighty with me.’

‘I didn’t kill him, Rosie.’

‘Would you, though? If given the chance.’

‘No. What sort of a question is that?’

‘I would,’ Yeri said. They all turned to her and she shrugged. ‘I mean, for a billion won, if I could get away with it? Sure. Why the not? It’s not like he was gonna be living long anyway.’

‘Jesus,’ mumbled Jisoo, ‘you’re sick.’

‘Actually, my granduncle was the sick one. What? C’mon, let’s be real here – he was seventy, on pain meds – morphine, no less – had blood clot compilations so bad he needed to inject himself with this ing Hepatitis every day, and could barely string a sentence together without devolving into some weird horror show-esque riddle about his Qing vases or some and bestowing upon me his infinite wisdom about how reckless and dumb I am and how I should change my ways. And he preferred snakes and ladders to chess. To any other board game, really. That seals the deal.’

‘Heparin,’ Seulgi said.

‘What?’

‘He certainly didn’t inject himself with Hepatitis.’

‘Is that what I said?’

‘Yeah. It’s not Hepatitis. It’s Heparin.’

‘Oh, suddenly you’re a medical expert, are you?’

‘No, but—’

‘Good, then shut up. The grownups are talking.’

‘Grownups?’ Seulgi laughed. ‘You’re like twenty.’

‘So? The body may be young and supple and fleshy, but the mind is old and firm and wise.’

‘God,’ Wheein said, ‘please don’t ever use the word “supple” in a sentence ever again. It gives me the creeps. You sound like a e or something.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Alright,’ Lisa said, still with the knife in hand. ‘What do we do now?’

‘Have another vote?’

‘On what?’

‘I don’t know. I’m just tossing it out there, seeing what people think.’

Irene watched them all again in kind.

‘What do you think, detective?’

‘I’m not a detective.’

‘Alright. What do you think, private investigator? Better?’

Irene hummed. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘we know who did it. But that doesn’t mean we’re out of the woods yet.’

‘Ooh,’ Yeri said. ‘Spooky.’

Irene checked her watch. It read 10:59PM. ‘Seven hours till sunrise,’ she said. ‘Looks like we’ve got a long night ahead of us.’