‘I want to go over the events of the last few days with everybody here together. Now, as you all know, Cruella Crime died of cyanide poisoning here on Christmas night. We’ve found some evidence of how that was done, but nothing conclusive about who did it. In terms of opportunity, it could have been any one of you.’
Part of Emily’s job was to notice people’s reactions as Luke spoke. At this point she saw curiosity on most faces, with a tinge of relief on some. But Wanda’s mouth twisted in a complacent smirk.
Luke continued, ‘Naturally, we looked first at the people who obviously had something against the victim – Dustin, Ian, and Olivia.’ He turned to face the three of them, and Emily noted the heightened tension in their posture. Dustin scowled furiously, while Ian and Olivia sat alert as cats poised to flee.
‘Ian, you showed the most overt hostility to Cruella, and it didn’t take long to find out why. You were married to her briefly a number of years ago.’
‘For my sins,’ Ian muttered, and Olivia covered his hand with her free one.
‘Not only did you have a messy divorce, but she blamed Olivia for your breakup.’ Ian frowned and opened his mouth, but Luke held up a palm. ‘I’m going to have to ask you all not to talk unless I specifically ask you a question. Now, you two both claim that accusation was false, and whether it was or not doesn’t enter into this investigation. The point is, Cruella persecuted both of you professionally and caused considerable damage to your careers. Either one of you separately, or both of you together, would have had a plenty good motive of revenge for doing her in.’
The two clung to each other, pale and wide-eyed. ‘The only problem with that theory was you had no way of knowing she was going to show up here. The digital trail you both left suggested you did everything you could to keep away from Cruella and forget she even existed. Whereas the way this murder was done, it was pretty certain it had to have been planned in advance. The murderer had no way of obtaining the cyanide after he or she got here, since you were all iced in. So I tentatively ruled the two of you out.’
Ian and Olivia sagged against the back of the loveseat and exchanged a look full of something that might have been hope. Emily fervently prayed some good would come out of all this in the form of a new start for that long-suffering couple.
‘Next up was Dustin,’ Luke went on, shifting to face him. ‘It turned out Cruella had been blackmailing you.’ When Dustin looked fit to explode, Luke held up a palm again. ‘No need to go into why except to say your career was on the line. The point is, you had one heck of a strong motive for getting rid of her. And in your case, the difficulty about the planning ahead didn’t apply. You’d told the whole world via Facebook that you were heading down here for the holidays. You knew Cruella was watching you online – you could easily have done that on purpose to lure her to follow you.’
‘Lure her!’ Dustin spluttered. ‘You’re out of your freaking head!’
Luke continued as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘And poison, being a coward’s weapon, seemed like the way you’d go. However, I couldn’t find any evidence of you procuring poison. And we soon found out we had another suspect whose motive for killing Cruella was almost as strong as yours.’
He turned to Hilary. ‘Years ago, one of Cruella’s books more or less ruined your life – tacitly accused you of murder and drove you out of England.’
Devon spun in his seat to face his partner. ‘Hilary! You never told me they’d found out about that.’
‘Hush, Dev. I didn’t want to worry you. There was nothing in it.’
‘We questioned you, but we had the same problem with you as with Ian and Olivia. You didn’t know till the day before that Cruella was here, and the freeze was on by then. Unless you keep potassium cyanide lying around the house – which is possible, but only barely – you’d have had no chance to obtain it.’
Hilary whispered to Devon, ‘You see?’
Devon subsided into his seat.
‘That pretty much exhausted the obvious suspects in Cruella’s case,’ Luke went on. ‘But we did also have to consider the possibility that the poison was actually meant for Emily. The amaretto did belong to her, after all. That would let Ian, Olivia, and Hilary out altogether – none of them had any reason to harm Emily. But it did make us take another look at you, Dustin.’ Luke whirled to face him again.
‘Turns out you were a student of Emily’s years ago, and she gave you one of the failing grades that got you kicked out of Reed. Some people might call that a motive for revenge. And in this case, you knew you’d be spending the week with Emily and could easily have brought the poison with you.’
‘But—’ Dustin spluttered. ‘I told you! I don’t care about flunking out. I was grateful to those profs for giving me a way out of a place I never wanted to be.’
‘You did say that, yes. People say all sorts of things.’ Luke gave him a hard stare worthy of Paddington Bear before moving on.
‘But we hadn’t yet ruled out the idea that Cruella was in fact the intended victim. And in poking around on Cruella’s computer, I came across another possibility for her murderer. Or you might say two.’
He turned to Oscar, who was sitting next to Ian and Olivia, across the room from Wanda. ‘I found an innocent little file with some information about Oscar Lansing. Including the fact that Wanda Wilkins’ – he stepped back to have them both in his sights – ‘just happens to be your mom.’
A subdued uproar shook the room. Clearly everyone found this news as incredible as Emily herself had at first. Devon leaned over and stage-whispered to her, ‘The unacknowledged child trope! I knew this was a Christie novel!’
Oscar’s already pale face turned pasty white. His eyes darted toward Wanda. ‘I didn’t say a word – honestly I didn’t.’ His tone was that of a small boy attempting to evade a spanking – or worse.
Wanda simply smiled. ‘No big deal, sweetie. After all, our relationship is hardly a motive for murder.’
‘That was my first thought,’ Luke said. ‘Even though Oscar was born out of wedlock, these days that’s nothing to write home about. If Cruella tried to blackmail the pair of you with that, you would’ve laughed in her face.’ Oscar relaxed slightly, and Wanda’s smirk intensified.
‘But then I started to wonder: if it was no big deal, why were you keeping it secret in the first place? What did the two of you have to gain from that – or to lose if the secret came out?’
He let that question hang in the air for half a minute. Oscar merely looked baffled, but Wanda’s smirk became fixed and brittle.
‘First I thought maybe you were after Emily’s fortune. Oscar and Emily hit it off right from the start – what if Wanda had the bright idea of marrying her son off to an heiress in order to set him and herself up for life?’
Wanda’s sagging flesh jiggled with silent laughter, while Oscar became indignant. ‘I would never do such a thing! I mean, not deceitfully. Not that I’m not terribly fond of you, Emily, but – well, we’re friends, aren’t we? Anyway, I knew you and Luke were an item from the first day we met.’
Emily spoke for the first time since Luke had begun. ‘I never believed it of you for a moment.’ She gave Oscar a reassuring smile, and he leaned back in his chair.
‘Emily pretty much convinced me of that, too. But the clincher came from a different quarter.’ Luke turned his attention away from Oscar and Wanda and made a slow circuit of the room, coming to rest by the bar shelf. ‘We discovered a couple of things that made us start to look at the murder in a different light. For one thing, the lab results showed the cyanide had been added to the amaretto bottle, not the glass. The amaretto that was meant for Emily alone.’
He let that sink in for a moment as shocked faces turned toward Emily. ‘We also found the vial that had contained the poison right outside this window.’ He gestured behind him. ‘So it was pretty clear the cyanide had been added earlier in the evening, before anybody knew Cruella was going to drink it at all. That meant Emily had to be the int
ended victim.’
He strode back to the middle of the room. ‘Now, that made nonsense of the Wanda-and-Oscar-as-fortune-hunters theory. If they were going to kill Emily to get her money, they’d have to do it after Oscar and Emily were married, not before. But we didn’t let go of that theory, since it was the only one we had.
‘But there was another wrinkle we didn’t take into account. Someone who hoped to inherit as a spouse would have to wait till after the wedding to kill the bride. But someone who thought he had a chance of inheriting as next of kin could kill at any time – and he’d have a much better chance if he did it before the heiress married someone else.’
‘Next of kin?’ Oscar spluttered. ‘Who are you talking about now? Mother and I aren’t related to Emily.’
Emily gazed at him with deep compassion and regret. If she’d had her way, she would have broken the information from the old files to him gently, and in private. But Luke had insisted that for the confrontation to work, Oscar had to be openly shocked by the revelation of his paternity.
‘We found out who your father is, Oscar,’ she said softly.
‘My father?’ He looked from her to Wanda, who made a failed attempt to look nonchalant. Her façade of control was crumbling like old plaster. ‘What do you mean?’
Luke turned to the box and took out a sheaf of documents – copies of the contents of the folder Jamie had found. ‘According to these papers, your father was Ernest Worthing.’
Though she already knew it, those words turned a knife in Emily’s heart. But Oscar looked merely baffled.
‘Ernest Worthing? But that’s a character from a play. The Importance of Being Earnest, by – Oscar Wilde.’ His voice faded out on the final words. ‘Oscar Wilde. I see.’
‘Ernest Worthing was my father,’ Emily said. ‘Worthing is my maiden name.’ She gave a pale smile. ‘So it’s a good thing you weren’t trying to marry me – because I’m your half-sister.’
Oscar stared at her open-mouthed, then blinked and turned to Wanda. ‘Mother? Is this true?’
She didn’t speak, but the pain and anger in her eyes belied the wooden smirk still pasted on her mouth.
Luke took back the reins of the conversation. ‘So you see, Oscar, your mother had a pretty good motive for wanting Emily out of the way – getting you, and consequently herself, provided for, for life. Plus, as a chemistry teacher, she would’ve had no problem getting hold of potassium cyanide.’
He turned to face Wanda. ‘I had a very interesting day yesterday. I went down to Corvallis. Had a look at your high school chemistry lab. Colleague of yours obligingly showed me around. Turns out you’ve got quite a little stash of chemicals out in that storage shed. Including a nice big jar of potassium cyanide – with signs of being recently disturbed.’
Wanda’s eyes darted from Luke to Oscar to Emily, but she didn’t speak.
‘And in case the cyanide didn’t work – which, of course, it didn’t – you had your ace in the hole.’
He set down the papers and removed a small jar from the box. ‘As you all know, Emily got very sick on Wednesday night. What you may not all know is that she was poisoned. Between Katie and Dr Griffiths and the lab, we managed to track down what did it.’ He showed the jar around the room. ‘A nice, innocuous-looking jar of honey.’ He turned the label to face him and read, ‘Oregon Coast Blackberry Honey. Tasty and wholesome.’
He nailed Wanda with his eyes. ‘Only it isn’t really, is it? This honey came from a hive in your yard in Corvallis. A hive – as I discovered when I visited there yesterday – that had recently been raided for honey. And a yard in which the only flowering plants are rhododendrons. And here’s a little-known fact – little known, that is, unless you happen to be a chemistry teacher – honey made by bees that feed on rhododendrons is poisonous. Poisonous enough for a tiny taste of it to send Emily to the hospital.’
Wanda’s façade crumbled to dust, revealing her true face – the face of a cornered beast, fangs bared in fury. She sprang forward before Pete could stop her, grabbed the honey jar from Luke’s hand, and lobbed it with unbelievable force through the open window and out into the yard.
‘You’ll never pin this on me!’ she shrieked. ‘You can go begging for your precious proof now!’
Pete caught up with her and pulled her arms behind her back, holding her securely as she writhed and kicked. Luke skewered her with his eyes. ‘Oh, did I say it was that jar of honey? Just a little ruse on my part. The real jar is safe in the evidence room. Along with your beekeeper’s outfit, a piece of the honeycomb from your yard, and the jar of potassium cyanide from the storage room at your school.’
Emily was astonished to see Wanda actually foaming at the mouth. She turned toward Emily, and involuntarily Emily cowered in her chair, although Pete’s hold on Wanda was firm.
‘You!’ Wanda spat. ‘You were all Ernest would ever talk about. His precious, perfect Emily, the image of her sainted mother. He would have married me if it hadn’t been for you, making him feel guilty every time he looked at you. My Oscar would have had a decent life, and when that old battleaxe Beatrice died, all this would have come to him. It’s his birthright, and you stole it, you bitch. You deserve to die. I should have slit your throat – no chance of failure that way. Covered your precious library in your polluted Worthing blood.’
Emily didn’t know whether to be more shocked by Wanda’s venom or by the revelation that her father had cared for her, Emily, so deeply – he certainly never showed it to her face. But she kept her voice as level as she could.
‘I stole nothing, Wanda. You have to remember, I had no idea Oscar existed until a month ago, and none whatsoever that he was my half-brother until yesterday. If you had only told me, I would have been happy to share. All Beatrice’s wealth is much more than I need or even feel comfortable possessing. I’ve already given a lot of it away.’
She turned to Oscar, who was curled up in a ball as far from his mother as he could get. ‘I’m still happy to share with you, Oscar. None of this is your fault, I know.’
Oscar shook his head, rocking himself like a baby. It would take time for him to recover enough from the revelation of his mother’s true nature to be able to absorb anything positive that might come of knowing he was a Worthing after all.
Luke nodded to Pete, and he dragged the gibbering woman into the hall, where Heather was waiting to help him take her away. Once the front door had closed behind them and the sound of the departing engine wafted through the broken window, Luke turned to the others in the room.
‘I’m sorry we had to put you through all that, folks. Fact is, though we have a lot of evidence against Wanda, it’s all circumstantial. I couldn’t be sure a jury would convict her without a confession. And this seemed like the best way to get one.’ He nodded from Emily to Oscar. ‘Better see what you can do with him. Poor guy. He’s gained a sister and a dead father, but lost the only family he ever knew he had.’
TWENTY-FIVE
Emily helped Oscar to his room and did her best to soothe him, but he was so far beyond comfort that in the end all she could do was to call Sam Griffiths and have her bring a sedative to settle him for the night, since Emily’s bottle of Ambien was still at the lab. ‘He’ll be better in the morning,’ Sam predicted.
Emily closed Oscar’s bedroom door behind her and sank down with her back against it, staring without seeing at the closed door of the Austen room across the hall. Would either she or Oscar ever find their way past the circumstances of this revelation to enjoy their newfound relationship?
Once again she replayed yesterday’s conversation with Jamie in her mind. Could it really be only yesterday? She was living in a whole new world now – one that included a half-brother.
‘The “L” was for Lansing,’ Jamie had said.
‘Lansing? Are you sure?’
‘Says so right here.’ He handed her the folder. Lansing was typed quite clearly on the label.
Emily held the folder unopened for a m
oment, a strange premonition staying her hand. The original folder back at the house had seemed too old for its contents to relate to Oscar directly; they must somehow relate to Wanda. What sort of dealings could Wanda possibly have had with Beatrice? And why?
Only one way to answer that question. She forced herself to open the folder and take out the first document.
It was a letter from Wanda Lansing to Beatrice Runcible, dated January 1977.
Dear Mrs Runcible,
It may interest you to hear you have a great-nephew you probably didn’t know about.
That first sentence chilled Emily’s blood. The whole story suddenly unfolded before her like an ancient map. Here there be dragons. She steeled herself and read on.
Your nephew Ernest Worthing taught with me at North Medford High in 1975–76, and we got to be good friends. He got me pregnant that winter and promised to marry me when the school year was out. But after our son was born in August, Ernest took a job in another city and deserted his son and me. He didn’t leave a forwarding address or a single penny for our support. Since then he’s managed to become invisible, at least to me; though I bet you know where he is, since he depends on you to clothe his precious kids.
Emily’s hands shook, rattling the paper she held. She’d known her father was undisciplined and irresponsible, and to hear that he’d had an affair after her mother’s death was no great surprise. But to father a child and then desert it – that was beyond the pale. His not wanting to marry Wanda she could easily understand, and she could even be grateful for it on her own account – to think of Wanda as a stepmother! – but he should have made some provision for his son.
The letter went on.
I went back to teaching last fall, after a few weeks off, but I’m telling you, raising a baby and paying for full-time child care on a teacher’s salary is no picnic. Ernest was always talking about how well off you are and how you provide for his other kids, Jeff and Emily.
She couldn’t even spell Geoff’s name properly. Well, to be fair, she’d probably never seen it written, only heard it from Ernest’s lips.
Cyanide with Christie Page 21