by Elle Adams
At his name, she blinked hard and looked away. “No.”
“I know he was cheating, too,” I said. “If he offered the same potion to the other contenders, I need to know. It’s only fair.”
“I don’t know.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “He approached me with the potion and gave it to me for free. That’s all.”
“Why’d he do that?” For free? A likely story. Why she’d feel compelled to defend him, though, I hadn’t a clue.
She shrugged one shoulder. “He knew I wanted to win.”
There must be more to it than that, surely. “Did he offer it to any of the others?”
“He might have, but I didn’t see.”
I’d have to ask the others individually, and at the moment, we were the only people left in the arena except for Mum and Chloe. The latter came hurrying over when I beckoned to her.
“Chloe,” I said. “Please escort Persephone Henbane to another room for questioning.”
“What?” Persephone flinched. “I didn’t kill him. Malcolm, I mean. I really didn’t.”
“We need you to answer a few questions, right, Chloe?”
“Right.” She beckoned for Persephone to follow her, while I went into the lobby and found Piper waiting with Ramsey.
“Robin,” he said. “Piper said someone was cheating.”
“Persephone Henbane drank a potion which enabled her to understand her familiar.” I gestured towards her bowed head as Chloe led her into one of the waiting rooms. “Allegedly, Malcolm gave it to her before he died. As a favour.”
“I see,” he said. “You think that’s why someone killed him?”
“Might be.” Why he’d shown up at my office was another matter entirely, but if he made a habit of giving away free potions to help people cheat, it explained why he always ranked in the top eight but never won.
The question was, what was he gaining out of the cheating if he wasn’t winning prizes?
Ramsey watched Chloe shut the door on Persephone, trapping her in the waiting room. “Her aunt isn’t going to be happy.”
“Is it really that surprising that one of the Henbanes was cheating?” I asked. “If this is serial behaviour on Malcolm’s part, though, it’s not a stretch to imagine he might have annoyed someone enough for them to want him dead.”
Was Persephone the killer? Surely not, given that he’d helped her, but if he’d made the same offer to others, then they might not have been pleased to end up eliminated. I was still missing a few pieces of this puzzle, though.
Why did he come to my office? Was he there to confess… or to warn me?
11
Ramsey went to search the bins around the town hall for the potion bottle Persephone had been drinking from, while Piper raised a brow at the sound of her loud protests from behind the closed door. “She’s not happy.”
“Did you see Tiffany in the audience?”
“I thought I did,” she said. “But she slipped away before I could get close enough to find her.”
“Also, have you seen Aunt Shannon?” I asked. “She wasn’t around either.”
“No, I haven’t,” she said. “Wait, wasn’t she near your office during the break-in?”
“Precisely why I’d like to know where she is.” I looked over to the back door as Mum entered the lobby. “Persephone is in that room over there waiting to be questioned. Ramsey’s looking for the potion bottle she threw out.”
“She did cheat, then?” Mum asked.
“Yes, but she got the potion from Malcolm,” I said. “Before he died. And she doesn’t know if he made the same offer to any of the other contenders.”
“In other words, everyone’s a suspect again,” said Piper. “Should I feel insulted that he didn’t make the offer to me?”
“Maybe he knew you were reporting to me behind the scenes,” I said. “I wonder if he approached Rowan.”
“Or Vanessa.”
Mum’s eyes narrowed. “You can try asking her, but I doubt he did. Not if he knows that she can already understand her familiar.”
“True,” I said. “Still, I can’t help wondering what he hoped to achieve by giving those potions away for free.”
“Not much of a business model,” said Piper.
“Tell me about it.” I shook my head. “Maybe he had one particular candidate he wanted to win… there he is.”
Ramsey reentered the lobby, holding a grimy-looking bottle in his hand. “I found this, but it’s not the only one. My team reported finding at least three similar bottles in the bins around the centre of Wildwood Heath.”
“So this was widespread,” I said. “Other contenders used the same potion.”
“Everyone’s a suspect, like I said,” Piper said.
“Nevertheless, if Persephone is disqualified, that means we have only three remaining candidates for the final round,” Mum said. “I’ll have to adapt the contest accordingly if we can’t divide them into pairs.”
“Unless we pick someone from the last round…” With Malcolm dead, though, I doubted anyone would want to volunteer, except perhaps Piper. “I guess there isn’t a fair way to do that.”
“No, there isn’t,” Mum said. “Where is Persephone Henbane?”
“In the waiting room, with Chloe supervising her.” I could hear the faint sound of sobbing on the other side of the door. “Ramsey wants to question her first, right?”
I had the feeling she’d already told me everything she planned to, but I’d rather she didn’t go wandering off when I hadn’t ruled out her involvement in the murders yet. There was the rest of her coven to consider, too, and it seemed odd that she’d accepted a free potion from a stranger rather than asking for their help instead.
“Who isn’t a suspect?” Piper asked. “Except for me and Rowan?”
“Patrick,” I said. “He told me that he saw Persephone drinking the potion, but I don’t think he did anything dodgy himself. There’s also Vanessa…”
“I saw her outside,” Ramsey said. “I’m going to talk to Persephone first.”
“I’ll find Vanessa.” I turned to Mum. “How are we going to decide who else to question about the potions? Or should we save the questioning until after the contest?”
“We’ll speak to the other finalists first,” she said decisively. “The rest can wait until afterwards, unless we have substantial evidence. We can’t let the contest go off the rails at this stage.”
“Malcolm was murdered, though,” I said. “What if a dissatisfied client was the person who did it?”
“The only way to find out is to talk to everyone,” said Piper. “Let’s snag Vanessa to start off with.”
I led the way out of the town hall, spotting Vanessa pacing along the road with her familiar on her shoulder. At a guess, nobody else wanted to talk to her.
When I approached her, she said, “What?”
“Persephone got kicked out for cheating,” I said bluntly. “That means the final round will have a few changes.”
She barely blinked. “And?”
“Where’s your mother?”
“Who wants to know? I don’t see why that’s any of your business.”
“Considering the last time I saw her was next to Malcolm’s dead body outside my office,” I said, “then I’d say it is my business. What’s she up to?”
“You think she put a curse on your contenders?” She rolled her eyes. “Not likely.”
I didn’t think it was Aunt Shannon, not this time, but there was something ugly at work behind the scenes that went beyond a few potions. I had a hard time believing Vanessa had known nothing at all.
“Forget that, then,” I said. “Did Malcolm offer you a free potion?”
“A what?” She blinked. “Wow, you’re really stretching to find a reason to kick me out.”
“Persephone Henbane was given a potion by Malcolm that enabled her to understand her familiar,” I said. “I know you don’t need one of those, but we found evidence that she wasn’t the only one wh
o took him up on the offer. Did you hear him make the offer to anyone else?”
“No, because I wasn’t staying at the inn,” she said. “I do live here, in case you’ve forgotten. And he wouldn’t have had a reason to offer anything to me. You’ll have to try harder if you want me gone.”
Without another word, she turned and walked away, her familiar flitting behind her.
“Do you want me to go after her?” asked Piper.
“No need,” I said. “Malcolm probably knew there was no point in making the offer to Vanessa.”
Whether we liked each other or not didn’t even come into it. She wasn’t a worthy target.
“Maybe, but she might have seen him talking to one of the others.”
“They’ll be questioned separately regardless,” I said. “I just need to talk to the finalists… and Roxy is the only one we haven’t already questioned.”
“She’s over there.” Piper pointed across the street towards the coffee shop, where Roxy stood, feeding something to her raven. “Want to do this now?”
“No time to waste.” I strode over to Roxy, who greeted me with a nod.
“Head Witch,” she said.
“Hey,” I said. “I thought you ought to know that Persephone Henbane was just disqualified for cheating.”
“Cheating?” She raised her brows. “What did she do?”
“She drank a potion which enabled her to understand her familiar’s speech,” I said. “It turns out Malcolm gave it to her, and she wasn’t the only contender he made the offer to. Did he offer you the same?”
I’d thought she was playing by the rules, but I found it hard to believe that she didn’t know about his unscrupulous behind-the-scenes dealings.
“Yes,” she said. “He made me the offer.”
“And?” I pressed. “Did you accept?”
“No.” Her answer was sure, confident, but when Tansy climbed onto my shoulder to get a closer look at her raven, he ruffled his feathers in a discomfited manner.
“Has he done this before?” I asked. “You two have both entered quite a few contests together. He’s never ranked higher than the top eight, but I assume this isn’t his first time manipulating the results.”
She gave her raven a stroke. “He’s made me the same offer before, but I’ve never accepted.”
“You didn’t turn him in?”
She lowered her gaze. “I always thought he’d get caught.”
She’d managed to win the last three contests without his help, but the fact that she’d let him get away unpunished didn’t sit right with me.
“Did you see him make the offer to anyone else?” asked Piper.
“No,” she said. “I think he approached each person individually.”
“Makes sense,” I said. “Is that why his familiar sometimes attacked the other animals?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “We’ve never really spoken much.”
“My brother might want to question you anyway,” I warned. “He’s talking to Persephone right now. We found evidence that several other contenders accepted help from Malcolm, so we need to find out who they were.”
“I’ll be sure to let you know if I find out,” said Roxy. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”
For the first time, her composure appeared somewhat shaken as Piper and I left her behind and returned to the town hall.
“She didn’t accept his offer,” said Piper. “I thought not. She’s good enough that she doesn’t need to cheat.”
“She’s known about this for years, though.”
Malcolm’s record went back so far that I had to wonder why he hadn’t been caught yet. Had the person who’d killed him been intending to dispense justice in their own way? Maybe, but a dissatisfied former client was only one possibility. The killer’s trail might still lead us back to Aunt Shannon.
Ramsey was waiting in the town hall’s entryway when we returned. “Did you talk to the other finalists?”
“Vanessa wasn’t offered the potion,” I said. “Roxy was, but she refused. This seems to be a habit of his, though.”
“And she never reported him,” Piper added. “She’s over at the café if you want to call her in.”
“I’m not sure there’s anything else she didn’t already tell us,” I said. “I think she was concerned about drawing the attention of the killer if she said too much.”
“Aren’t we all?” Piper said. “I mean, I assume I’m not the only person concerned about someone slipping a cursed pen into my pocket.”
“No, you aren’t.” Chloe closed the door on the waiting room and came to join us. “Head Witch, what do you need me to do now?”
“Gather the other contenders.” I nodded to Ramsey. “Or rather, suspects. I’m not sure how you want to organise the questioning. It might be easier if you ask each person if they were offered the potion and then invite them to come for a private chat if they have more information.”
“Not when they’re scattered around the middle of town,” he said.
“You can ask the rest of your team to round everyone up, can’t you?” I asked. “They can’t have wandered that far.”
“I can help,” said Piper. “I think I can convince the other contenders to admit if they were offered the potion.”
Ramsey’s expression turned conflicted. “You don’t work for the police.”
“I’ll do the same,” I put in. “Come on, we need to get this sorted before the final round, right? We have less than half an hour.”
“More like fifteen minutes.” He exhaled in a sigh. “All right, fine. Tell anyone who has information on the potion to wait in the spare room.”
Chloe insisted on tailing me outside, but I didn’t mind having backup when I went in search of the other contenders. Piper, Ramsey, and the rest of his team split up to do the same, with the result that we soon assembled a small group of people consisting of a mixture of those who’d been eliminated in the preliminary round of the contest and those who’d been knocked out of the running earlier that day. Some denied having been approached by Malcolm outright, but enough people admitted to speaking to him that the others gradually gained the nerve to make a confession. By the time my brother and I met back at the town hall, we had more than two dozen people crowded into the spare room.
I addressed the assembled contenders. “Were you all approached by Malcolm, who made you the offer of a potion to help give you an edge in the contest?”
Heads nodded, and everyone looked uncomfortable.
“How many of you have more information about the offer he gave you?” I asked. “Did he offer you the potion for free?”
More nods. Yet for all his industriousness, Malcolm seemingly hadn’t told anyone his reasons for helping the others cheat.
“Who’s entered a contest alongside Malcolm before?” I asked. “Raise your hands.”
A few hands went up.
“How many of you were aware of Malcolm’s habit of giving away potions to contenders?”
A couple of hands went down, but most stayed up. So Roxy was far from the only person who’d kept his secret.
“Those of you with your hands up are to go with Ramsey for further questioning,” I said. “You aren’t being arrested, but we’re trying to get to the bottom of what Malcolm was doing before he died.”
As I joined Ramsey to help with the individual questionings, we received similar answers from each person he spoke to. Most had been offered the potion, if not during this contest, then during a previous one. He’d also targeted lots of first-time entrants judging by the number of people who’d come forward who hadn’t been involved in previous contests.
During a gap between the questionings, Ramsey checked the time. “The others will be on their way back to the arena now.”
“I know,” I said. “Is it bad that I don’t really care who wins? Roxy and Patrick both got the offer from Malcolm and never reported him, and Vanessa is… Vanessa.”
“I can send you a report
later,” he said. “That’s what I did for Grandma whenever she had to deal with people cheating in contests she supervised.”
“It’s happened before?”
“Nobody has died until now,” he said hastily. “But cheating… yes, it’s more common than you’d think. So is contenders refusing to tell tales on one another.”
“They’re not making it easy to find out who killed him.”
“I’m not so sure the person who killed Malcolm was in the circle of people he gave those potions to,” said Ramsey. “And if they were, then that wasn’t their only motive. He wouldn’t have had time to offer Anne the potion before she died, would he? So why kill her as well as him?”
“Good question.” I’d nearly forgotten her and that ridiculous chicken, who I assumed was still hiding in a bush back at the witches’ headquarters. “I wish I’d been in my office when Malcolm tried to break in. Then I might have caught him out before he died.”
“Not necessarily,” he said. “He wouldn’t have chosen to confide in you if you weren’t overseeing the contest.”
I frowned. “You think he was going to turn himself in?”
Which would still implicate a dissatisfied customer as the killer, but that still left Anne’s death as a complete mystery. She’d arrived late to the contest, and I was pretty sure she and Malcolm hadn’t spoken a word to one another.
“There’s a fair possibility,” said Ramsey. “That said, I don’t typically use hunches to make my decisions. I look at the facts and motives.”
“We have plenty of possible motives,” I said. “But we need to take another look at the facts. How did Malcolm hide all these potions without being found out? Someone must have been covering for him. That or he found a really secure hiding spot.”
His brow furrowed. “You make a fair point. We searched all the dorms at both inns, and we didn’t find any other potions. None of those pens, either.”
My thoughts went back to Malcolm’s cat. “Has Jarvis said anything else? I’m sure he knows more than he told us about why Malcolm came to my office.”
“I might be able to understand his speech, but I can’t make him talk,” he said. “We’re keeping him at the police station for now, since it’s safer than letting him roam around. Is that chicken still at your office?”