The Will To Live by Tanya Landman

had connected with a loosely dangling wire, which was now melded to his palm. Not only had he blown all the manor’s light bulbs, he’d blown his own brains, too. By the time we reached him Toulouse was French toast.
    As I bent down to look, Graham screamed, “Don’t touch him!”
    “Why?”
    “Don’t you remember anything about electrical circuitry?”
    I trawled through my memory of various science lessons. Nothing came to light. “Frankly, no.”
    “You ought to pay more attention. If you touch him, the current will pass through you, too. You want to end up like that?”
    Graham fetched the wooden broom that was propped up by the back door and managed to prise apart the Frenchman’s hand and the wire. Then he checked for Toulouse’s non-existent pulse and slowly shook his head. At which point various people, including the four Strudwicks, appeared from inside the house. Rain and wind were temporarily forgotten as they stepped out to stare at Toulouse’s dead body.
    “Oh my goodness!” exclaimed an elderly lady.
    “He’s done for!” gasped another.
    “How?”
    “Electrocuted, by the looks of it.”
    Major Huwes-Guffing said, “The whole place should have been rewired years ago. Lawrence would keep putting it orf.”
    His companion asked, “Why on earth did he come out here? There are plenty of lavatories inside.”
    It was actually a very good question. Which nobody answered. Not directly, anyway.
    Julian looked at Lancelot. “And so your accuser dies. How very convenient.” His voice sliced the silence like a knife.
    His cousin looked shifty. “Whadever do you mean?”
    “Well, we can’t ask him about his sister now, can we?”
    “Are you suggesding thad I…?” Lancelot was all outraged innocence. “This is gedding beyond a joke.”
    “Don’t be ridiculous, Julian,” snarled Lydia. “This was clearly an accident.”
    “For heaven’s sake, let’s be reasonable,” soothed Jennifer. She stared sadly at Toulouse. “We can’t just leave the poor man there. We must bring him inside.”
    Graham and I looked at each other uncomfortably. We both knew that people who die in suspicious circumstances shouldn’t be moved until the police have investigated the scene. But the flood had cut us off from the emergency services and one or two of the Strudwicks were looking dangerously close to violence. Now didn’t seem like a good time to interfere.
    We kept our mouths shut, and this time it was Gethin and Joe who carried the body indoors and stashed it away in a bedroom. Meanwhile the guests trickled back inside, following the Strudwick cousins who seemed reluctant to take their eyes off one another. Lydia glowered at Jennifer. Julian glared at Lancelot. Mutual suspicion prickled between the two sides of the family, stiff and bristly as the broom Graham had used on Toulouse.
    But there were immediate, practical things to distract them. The wind had escalated from gale to hurricane force in the last half-hour. It rattled ancient windows, and found its way through every ill-fitting frame and under every door. The house was groaning and creaking like a ship that had just hit an iceberg. There was a roaring fire in the drawing-room grate but the rest of the house was beginning to feel like a wind tunnel in Antarctica. It was also getting darker by the second.
    “We need to change a fuse or something,” Jennifer said fretfully. A rumble of distant thunder made her forehead contract into deep anxiety lines. “Any idea where the box is, Lydia?”
    “No, afraid not.”
    “Lancelot? Julian? Anyone?”
    It turned out that Graham was the only person present who’d ever paid sufficient attention to the subject of electrical circuitry. Armed with a torch, and with Jennifer and Marmaduke trailing along behind us, Graham first found and then examined the fuse box. To the accompaniment of increasingly loud and frequent thunder claps, he explained to Jennifer that the system was so antiquated, repairing it