I watched Millard's expression as he turned toward us. He'd also been cut out of his parents will in the past. His face became quite pale, almost translucent. I needed to understand what had prompted such a decision.
“What can you tell us about the new will she discussed with you?” Eustacia said bluntly.
“It was also split with an equal portion being given to various charities, but the other fifty percent was allocated to different individuals. Unfortunately, I do not know who Gwendolyn selected. She contacted me the day before she died telling me she'd had enough with all the drama in her family and needed to correct something that'd happened in the past.”
“Have you found the new will?” I asked.
Finnigan shook his head. “We thoroughly checked her bedroom suite, but it's not in there. Neither Millard nor Eustacia had any knowledge of the revised will's location. I assume if it's finished, perhaps she mailed it to me. I'll give it a few more days before I unveil the current will to the rest of the family.”
“Obviously something happened between Gwendolyn and her daughters. If she was changing her will, one or both of them were going to be removed as beneficiaries,” Nana D noted.
“Or they stayed in it and someone new was added,” Finnigan suggested.
“Were Gwendolyn's children aware of this will? Did they know Timothy wasn't going to inherit anything? Or that both daughters would?” I inquired. It was important to understand who was privy to the details of the inheritances.
“Gwendolyn mentioned that she'd never shared the decision with her children. In fact, she'd forgotten the details in the original will when we first spoke as it had been a while and she wasn't highly alert after Charles had passed on. My guess is none of the children knew who would benefit from her death,” Finnigan explained while packing up his briefcase.
“Was anyone else aware she planned to write a new will?” Millard inquired.
“I can't answer that question,” Finnigan replied while putting on his winter coat. “All I can tell you is that something happened last Saturday to result in her need to make an urgent change. I've only told the four of you about the potential existence of a new will. Unless Gwendolyn told the person or persons who would be the new beneficiaries, no one else knows about it either.” He left with Millard who mentioned he had to get to the nursery to inspect some new arrivals. Nana D, Eustacia, and I continued talking as we weren't set to meet with Brad until he returned from running a few errands for Eustacia at ten o'clock.
“This is ludicrous,” Eustacia whined and shook her head repeatedly. “How are we supposed to figure it out?”
Nana D said, “Don't give up, Eustacia. We've only just begun. Kellan will find Gwennie's killer. Let's go over the facts again.”
“I'll do my best, but I have to agree with Eustacia. There are a lot of possibilities. It would help if you could tell me why Millard was left out of your parents' will.” I began to wander around the Great Hall thinking about the dynamics among all the member of the Paddington family.
Eustacia explained that Millard had been groomed to assume responsibility for Paddington Enterprises. He'd earned an MBA at Columbia, worked in the family business for nearly twenty years, and had become a vice-president under his father. When he turned fifty, Millard realized he'd thrown his whole life away to run a large corporation but had no wife or children to love. He resigned from his position and took a job at a gardening center. Their parents were so upset they threatened to stop speaking with him over the embarrassment of the situation. Around the same time, Millard had befriended a young maid at the mansion. The family disapproved of the friendship since the girl was far beneath expected standards for a Paddington.
“It's hard to believe your parents were so old-fashioned. It was the early 1990s, right?” I asked.
Eustacia nodded. “You have to understand, my parents were considered high society, as were their parents before them. Braxton's a small town, people talk. My brother, Charles, and Gwennie had just finished raising their three children. Jennifer had graduated from college, Ophelia and Richard had become engaged, and Timothy had started working at the family business. They were seen as the perfect family. Gwennie was running around New York City with Broadway stars and the rich and famous. Millard threw it all away to grow flowers and trees. Our parents couldn't understand it.”
“They disinherited Millard because he quit his job and had an affair with a maid?” I asked.
“There's more to the story. The maid was young, barely eighteen or nineteen. After a few months, it had become obvious to them she was pregnant. My parents were afraid of a scandal. They sent her away before anyone could find out. I thought I was the only one who'd learned the truth, but…” She seemed lost in thought and stopped speaking.
Eustacia's news shocked me. It wasn't like this took place a century ago. It'd been barely twenty-five years earlier. “What happened to the child? And why didn't Millard try to support the girl?”
“I don't think he or anyone else knew the maid was pregnant. Millard didn't care about the inheritance. He'd already made enough money working at the family company. That's when he traveled the world and focused on gardening,” Eustacia said. It was clear the past had haunted her, but I wasn't certain how it would have anything to do with Gwendolyn's death.
Nana D added, “Millard's been so happy since he left Paddington Enterprises. I know he regretted never having had any children. How did you find out?”
Eustacia explained that she only knew about the baby because her mother had mentioned it on her death bed. Eustacia had never told Millard about the child. She felt guilty about keeping the secret even after their parents had passed away almost two decades earlier. Eustacia wanted to tell her brother many times but had no way to track down the girl or learn what had happened to her. She thought it would be a futile attempt that would only make Millard more upset to discover the truth.
“What was the maid's name?” I asked.
“We called her Hannah. That's all I remember about her,” Eustacia said with a heavy sigh.
Nana D accompanied Eustacia to the restroom to help her splash some water on her face before we met with Brad. If Millard had a secret child, could that child have tried to get revenge on Gwendolyn if he or she discovered their true identity? If Gwendolyn had found out, could she have left money to this child as a way to right her parents' wrong when they'd excluded Millard from their will? It was a good theory, but until I could figure out who the child was, it felt too fuzzy.
Just as the thought popped into my head, Brad entered the Great Hall. I nodded at him, then froze. “Brad, how old are you?” I asked, suddenly feeling alarmed at the potential connection I was about to make. “I, uh, apologize. I didn't mean to be too personal. I was curious. You look so young to have finished nursing school and worked several jobs already.” Phew, epic save.
Brad was silent for a few seconds, then tilted his head. “No, you can ask. I don't mind. I turned twenty-five three weeks ago. Where is Ms. Paddington?”
“Eustacia will be along shortly, I'm sure.” Maybe he'd tell me about his family thinking it was an innocent conversation. “You've got good genes, Brad. I guess you must have inherited them from your parents.”
“My mother always looked young, too. I think it was pretty common on her side of the family,” he said rubbing a few leaves of a nearby shrub looking away from me. “I'm happy to answer any questions you have about the list of Gwendolyn's medications I gave to everyone.”
“How's the search for a job going?” I said, stalling until the others returned to the Great Hall.
“I have two interviews this afternoon. Eustacia set one up for me at Willow Trees, and the other is a private patient. I'm also waiting for a few calls back on apartments that looked promising.” Brad sat on a bench near the pond. He looked tired and distracted by something weighing heavily on his mind.
I heard Eustacia's cane pounding the floor as she entered the room. “Pardon my absence. I
see Brad's come down to meet with us. Have you started already, Kellan?” she asked. When I shook my head, Eustacia continued. “Brad, a few things have come to my attention regarding Gwennie's death. I should like to hear from you exactly what you…”
“If I may interrupt,” he said standing to attention. “I've already been by to discuss it with the sheriff earlier this morning. I was stunned, as a matter of fact. I can't believe someone would intentionally try to kill Mrs. Paddington. I assure you, I had no idea.”
“Surely, you have more to say than that,” Eustacia admonished with a hard glare in his direction. “You were solely responsible for my sister-in-law's medication and gave her those pills moments before she died in the theater. While I'm not directly accusing you of having something to do with her murder, I hope you can understand I need to hear a lot more than 'can't believe someone would intentionally try to kill her' as your only response.”
Brad clasped his hands together. “The police took all of her medications and any glasses, cups, or utensils from her bedroom. I'm sure they plan to test them. If someone tampered with any of the medication I administered, we'll find out quickly. It certainly didn't come from me if that's what you're implying.” He seemed to take offense at her tone and quickly responded by defending himself.
I wish I had a few minutes alone with Eustacia so I could tell her about his age lining up with the baby the Paddington maid had supposedly given birth to. Possibly Millard Paddington's child. When Eustacia and Nana D turned to me, I took control of the conversation.
“Brad, this is definitely an awkward discussion. Please understand we are not accusing you of anything directly, but we need your assistance understanding some of the facts. Gwendolyn was acting strangely the last few weeks. We now know she was slowly being made sicker without proper medication. A lethal dose of cocaine was ingested moments before she died in the theater,” I said pausing to make direct eye contact with him. He stared back with a chilled blank look that made me want to squirm. “You've spent the most time with her, and you gave her the medication she'd forgotten to take with her earlier in the day. Any reasonable person would want to understand what you think could've happened.”
“But I had no reason to want Mrs. Paddington dead. She was my employer and truthfully, a confidante in the last few weeks. I'd been having a few personal issues she helped me deal with. Don't you understand? I have no job and home now. Why would I kill her?” he said in frustration, then threw his hands in the air. “I'm not in the habit of killing my patients despite what anyone has said in the past.”
Nana D interrupted to put her arm around Brad's shoulder as if she were trying to play good cop to Eustacia's or my bad cop. “Brad, you've been a wonderful support to my friend in the last year. Was there anyone other than you that handled her medication, or had you seen anyone in her room that maybe didn't belong there?”
Nana D had a good point in terms of who had opportunity. We needed to know exactly what the sheriff had found during the search of Gwendolyn's bedroom to understand if the cocaine was in all of her pills or just the one dosage she'd taken at the theater. “Let's start with how you managed your patient's medication so we can determine how the cocaine got put into those pills.”
Brad perked up and explained that Gwendolyn took her medication three times each day—morning, afternoon, and evening. Some were gel-based capsules filled with the ground up medication and others were solid tablets. Each dosage contained a combination of pills, but Brad would prepare a weekly pill box separating each day's allotment. If Gwendolyn was going out for the day, she used a travel bottle to hold the next dosage while she'd be gone from the house. “Earlier that morning, she took her regular pills. At the same time as I gave her the morning pills, she took out her travel bottle for the afternoon dosage. It was too early to take that next dosage at brunch, so she planned to take it while attending the theater. I used the pills from the regular pill box that I'd prepared earlier that week and that contained the pills she'd taken a few hours earlier. There was nothing different about them.”
“They couldn't have been tampered with in the early morning batch as nothing happened to her then,” I concluded. If the killer had only switched a few pills in the batch, it would have been too coincidental that Brad had randomly chosen those same exact cocaine-laced pills from the whole supply when he'd brought them to her at the theater that afternoon. That specific tainted dosage had to have been swapped after the travel bottle was prepared that morning. “When did you give her the travel bottle? And where was it from the point you gave it to her to the point you brought it to the theater?”
“I watched her put the filled travel bottle on her night table in the bedroom. It was sitting there while she showered and dressed. I suppose it was partially unattended while she was in the bathroom, but I was in my own room by then. At some point, she must have put the bottle in her purse and gone downstairs to the dining room to eat brunch with everyone. I don't know what happened during brunch until she sent Bertha to find me again,” Brad explained.
“While we were eating brunch, we talked about going out for dinner with the whole family after the show ended. That's when she called Brad downstairs to ask him to have two travel dosages ready before she left for the theater,” Eustacia noted. “Gwennie wanted us to all show up together for the first performance at the family theater. Jennifer and Millard were both at the house that morning. Ophelia and the kids, too. Richard was already out of town and couldn't make the King Lear performance. Timothy was nowhere to be found.”
“I was there, too,” Nana D interjected while snapping her fingers. “Brad said he would add the second dosage to her pills and put it back in her purse on the Edwardian console table in the hallway while everyone got ready to leave. He indicated he'd be done in less than fifteen minutes.”
“Correct. So, I took the bottle out of her purse and placed it on the table next to her coat. I left it there while I went upstairs to get the pill box so I could get the second dosage of all her medications,” Brad said. “In retrospect, I should've taken the bottle with me, but I wasn't thinking straight.”
“We sat for five minutes, then everyone went to the Great Hall to prepare to leave,” Eustacia added before clearing her throat. “We were all in and out of that hallway using the restroom, getting our coats, and talking to each other. Anyone could've accessed the bottle to switch the pills.”
“Jennifer left for the longest amount of time. Remember, someone joked about her always causing delays,” Nana D mentioned.
While I wanted to explore Jennifer's extended absence, I had another important question. “I still don't understand how Gwendolyn left without the pills. Brad, you said you left the bottle on the table next to her purse when you went upstairs to get the additional pills. Then you returned and brought the additional dosage back down, right?” I questioned.
“When I got back to the hallway, her coat, purse, and pill bottle were gone,” Brad said before biting his lip. “I thought we had a miscommunication… that she no longer needed the second travel dosage of medication.”
“So, you knew something odd was going on that morning?” I suggested.
“Not really. I figured she changed her mind. It'd happened other times where she previously decided not to take an extra dosage of medication at the last minute.”
“Didn't you try to find her to ask her?” Nana D said with an annoyed look.
“I asked Bertha where everyone went, but while I was upstairs, they'd left for Paddington's Play House,” Brad explained. “I should've tracked her down, but I guess I made a mistake.”
A potentially life-changing one. “What did you do then?” I asked.
“I put the extra dosage of pills back in the regular pill box, went for a long walk around the property, and did some laundry. Then I got Mrs. Danby's call that Mrs. Paddington wasn't feeling well and needed her pills. I was confused, so I went back downstairs to see if she'd accidentally left them somewhere else in the dinin
g room. There they were on the table. I asked Bertha who said she'd found them on the floor under the table when she was cleaning. She assumed it was an older bottle and planned to give it to me later that day.” When Bertha told him how she'd found them, Brad assumed they'd accidentally fallen to the floor and that Gwendolyn must've thought he'd already put them back in her purse before she'd left. “Timothy was also in the kitchen talking to Bertha. He offered to bring the pills to his mother, but it was my job. I didn't think much of it at the time and rushed to the Play House to drop off the pills.”
Nana D squeezed the bridge of her nose. “Someone must have changed the first travel dosage of pills after Brad had filled them that morning but before everyone left for Paddington's Play House.”
“Would Gwendolyn have left without validating she had all her pills?” I asked.
Eustacia responded, “I can see it happening. Gwennie was behaving oddly that morning. If she was changing her will, she might not have been paying full attention and didn't verify whether he'd already added the second dosage to her travel bottle. In the rush, she probably grabbed everything she saw and left assuming Brad had added the second dosage into the bottle and put it back in her purse.”
Nana D added, “I vaguely remember hearing something fall to floor when I returned from the bathroom, but I didn't think anything of it at the time. I thought it had come from another room.”
“I'm not sure we'll be able to figure out who slipped into the hallway or bedroom and switched the medication that morning. At least we know when it happened, but unfortunately everyone had access. I'm sure it's even possible someone else was able to sneak in and swap them,” I said trying to figure out if there was any way to narrow down the list of suspects. “In theory, with no one watching, it only takes a minute to remove a few pills and drop in the cocaine-laced ones.”
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