by Ellen Jane
I would never have screamed for fifty minutes straight. That’s just asking to drop leaves.
Feeling a little giddy that her magic had somehow been strong enough to allow the flowers to keep talking even days later—not to mention extending to the rest of the garden—Heather tried to follow along the conversation, but she just couldn’t keep up.
“Why was she yelling?”
They’re a bit fanatical down at the Manor, the rose answered in a hushed voice. Love the lady of the house a little too much, I think.
Not that we don’t love you.
Of course we love you—you’re great—but they really love Patricia.
“They were crying over Patricia?”
More like Patricia was crying, and then they were yelling loud enough it woke up the snapdragons.
Oh, let me tell you, they do not like to be woken up before the sunrise.
Very feisty flowers. Plants shouldn’t have teeth; it’s just not right.
“Why was Patricia crying?”
Heather’s temple began to throb with the beginning of a headache. Why would Patricia be upset? It wasn’t as though she knew Tracy or would be affected in any way if she were to be arrested. Besides, Patricia may have helped the case. If anything, she should be elated that she would soon be able to lay claim to helping solve the mystery, or however she ended up spinning it in her favour.
Why, then, would she be sitting alone, in the middle of the night, in a house that had been locked off as a crime scene, crying to herself?
Nothing about this case made sense anymore. Why had the murderer used both poison and a weapon? Surely it was safest to just use one, and they’d already determined that the poison was clearly the less risky option, since it meant the killer didn’t even need to be in the room. Except Sinéad had said Dragonshade was only fatal in large doses, and if incorrectly administered, it only gave the temporary appearance of death. Perhaps they had wanted to leave nothing to chance.
But in that case, now that Heather thought about it, why use the poison at all? Unless…
She froze. What if the poison and the stabbing were unconnected? Which meant that either there were two killers working independently or the poison hadn’t been intended to kill at all.
She ran back down the stairs, barrelling into the wall and pushing off to grab her phone from where it was charging on the kitchen table.
Sinéad answered after two rings, her voice soft with sleep. “Heather?”
“Sinéad, the poison and the stabbing, they’re not the same person!”
There was a pause. “How do you know?”
“I don’t, not for sure, but think about it. Why use two methods with such obvious flaws? The stabbing was far too public and risky, particularly if the killer was already making a poison attempt, and the poison had its problems, as well. They’re both completely different approaches to the murder. So we either have two killers or the poison wasn’t meant to kill him at all.”
Sinéad’s voice turned sharp. “You think it was in an intentionally low dose? Why, though? For what purpose?”
“I don’t know, but listen. Patricia is in her house right now, crying.”
Sinéad made a muffled sound of frustration. “I’ll meet you there in ten.”
Heather rushed to get ready, bundling up against the cold night with a thick scarf and gloves and locking the dogs carefully inside. The streets were empty when she made it out into the night, and she kept to the shadows as she shuffled as quickly as possible to the Cornwell Manor.
Before long, the imposing iron gates loomed out of the darkness. Sinéad stood in the corner, tucked out of the wind. When Heather slipped in beside her, Sinéad huddled in close, running a gloved hand along Heather’s numb cheek.
“You’re freezing,” she hissed.
“Of course I’m freezing,” Heather shot back. “My entire body has become one with the snow. Can we hurry up and go inside?”
Sinéad snorted. “One more thing,” she said, her tone turning serious. “Remember the thief?”
Heather looked at her in alarm and nodded.
“He said the woman on the phone spoke ‘proper’.”
They stared at each other. Heather’s thoughts were racing.
“You think Patricia paid to have my house robbed.”
“I think she paid to get that notebook she saw you writing in at her house,” Sinéad said. “Which means she thought you had something that put her in danger.”
“The poison,” Heather breathed, and then another piece of the puzzle clicked into place. Her eyes widened. “Didn’t you say she wanted the spell on the painting to communicate love and apology? What if the story about torn dresses was just a cover up? What if she really wanted to apologise for something else—something that hadn’t happened yet?”
They didn’t say anything more, quickly slipping through the gate and up the drive. There was a single light on in the lounge, and when they tried the front door, it was unlocked.
“She’s definitely lacking basic recent-murder safety awareness,” Sinéad muttered.
“I doubt she’s thinking straight.”
The sound of violent sobbing broke through their whispered conversation, and they shared a look.
“Do we tread carefully?” Sinéad asked. “Or just run in there, guns blazing and all that?”
“My vote is for walking in there, proverbial guns cautious but available,” Heather muttered, peeking around the doorway.
Sinéad smirked. “Done.”
They rounded the corner and found Patricia sitting at the seat of the piano, her head in her hands, crying. She looked up the second they made a noise and stared at them, unseeing, for several moments before realisation crossed her features.
“Must you be here every time I’m falling apart?” she snapped, wiping her eyes with the corner of her blouse.
Heather frowned. “This is the first time we’ve seen you falling apart.”
“Yes, precisely.” Patricia made an irritated noise at the back of her throat and stood up. “What do you want now?”
“Why did you put that spell on my painting?” Sinéad’s voice was cold, ringing out in the quiet room.
Patricia froze. Long moments passed as she stared at the two of them. Finally, she collapsed down onto the seat and dropped her head back into her hands.
“I wasn’t trying to frame you,” she mumbled.
Heather’s eyes widened, and Sinéad took a step back.
“I knew that the police would clear you quickly, as soon as they found the charm and tracked it back to that shop,” Patricia continued, talking to her feet. “It was why he couldn’t just put the Dragonshade in his own cup. Your arrest was meant to deflect suspicion long enough for us to disappear.”
“Us?” Heather asked.
“Jacob and I,” Patricia said, a little sharper, and she looked up at them now. “The Dragonshade was only meant to make him appear dead, so that his family didn’t come after us, but we couldn’t risk the police investigating me and blocking our escape. We had such a small window of opportunity to get away. I was going to pay the people at the morgue an exorbitant amount to pretend they burned the body. The fake ashes were ready to go, and no one was to be any the wiser. But then someone—” she broke off, “someone actually—” With a howl, she began sobbing again.
“Oh my god,” Sinéad said, eyes wide. “You were doing a Romeo and Juliet, just without the histrionics.”
Patricia continued to sob.
“All the money he brought with him,” Heather murmured, remembering Ms Watley’s discovery. “He wasn’t running away from a killer at all; he was running from his family. Why couldn’t you just marry him in public? Didn’t they approve of you?”
Patricia shot her a nasty look. “Not everyone has the convenience of being able to frolic with whomever they like,” she said, lifting her nose into the air.
“Careful now,” Sinéad said, narrowing her eyes. “Just because you’re not a murd
erer doesn’t mean you’re on my ‘nice’ list.”
Patricia glared at Sinéad, but then her shoulders slumped, the arrogance melting away. “His mother was making him marry someone else.”
“Does anyone else know about the two of you?” Heather asked.
Patricia shook her head. “Not a soul. We couldn’t risk telling anyone.”
Heather’s phone buzzed, and she reluctantly tore her thoughts away from the conversation to answer it.
“Hello?”
“Miss Millington?” the stern voice enquired.
It was familiar, and after a moment Heather recognised it as Ms Watley’s.
“Yes? Is everything all right?”
“I just thought you might want to know there’s been an incident at the inn.”
Now that Heather listened, she could hear the faint sound of sirens.
“Oh my god, is everyone all right?”
“Not to worry; everyone is safe. It was a very small fire. However, the arsonist was selective about what they burned; only my nephew’s possessions were targeted.”
Heather looked up to see Sinéad watching her, one eyebrow raised in question. She could only manage to gape back.
“Someone’s burned the Earl’s things,” she said, her voice numb with shock.
Patricia’s face paled, and a whimper escaped the back of her throat.
“No,” she whispered, the syllable cracked and broken.
“Did they burn everything?” Heather asked, turning away.
“I’m not certain. I’ll look and get back in touch.”
“We’re just at the manor if you need us to come and look at anything. We can be there in minutes.”
They hung up, and Heather turned back to the others. Why would someone burn the Earl’s possessions? Either someone was still angry enough to risk being caught messing with a police investigation or there had been something there that exposed them as the killer.
She wondered if Patricia had anything left of the Earl’s, or if their relationship had been so secret that it was all gone in one fell swoop. She had an awful feeling it was the latter, and looking at her now, as Patricia stared at the opposite wall with vacant, glassy eyes, Heather thought that, for the first time, she might actually feel sorry for her.
Chapter Nine
After an emotional night, where they at least managed to get Patricia to leave the murder-room for the sun room out the back, Heather slipped away shortly after dawn.
“I’m just going to go and let the dogs out and get us some breakfast,” she whispered to Sinéad, who was perched on the edge of a delicate writing desk and looked approximately three romantic anecdotes away from a breakdown.
“We were so in love,” Patricia whimpered, on cue, and Sinéad twitched.
“Don’t be long,” she said, her eyes burning into Heather, full of the promise of wrath if she left her here alone any longer than need be.
At around two in the morning, they’d all agreed to give the police a few hours to discover what they could about the fire at the inn so that Sinéad and Heather could hopefully pry that information out of them in conversation. Then, they would hand over the rest of the story and clear Sinéad’s name for good.
Patricia had given them enough proof to corroborate her story, even if she changed her mind and tried to run, but Heather somehow didn’t think she would. She had spent the last few days grieving, terrified that whoever had gone after the Earl was also after her, but now that her fear and guilt had passed, she was coming out the other side into anger.
It was a relief to know that there was nothing now to link Sinéad to the murder. Heather had been talking with her at the time of the stabbing, all the way on the other side of the room, and dozens of witnesses could confirm she had been nowhere near the Earl, even if she did have a motive. For the first time since the investigation had begun, Heather began to relax.
She let the dogs outside, double-locked the gate, and headed back to the manor with a plate of her hair-colour-changing biscuits. She didn’t have any ordinary ones, and she hoped the silly magic would lighten the mood at least a little.
It felt as though it had been ages since she’d walked through the town without rushing to investigate something, and it was a relief to see such a quiet, peaceful picture. Children were racing everywhere, pelting each other with snowballs, and people hurried in and out of the shops with brightly coloured parcels in their hands, smiling and greeting her with warmth.
They might not have been able to track down the killer, but at least they had cleared Sinéad’s name; that had been the goal. It filled Heather with a sense of pride, knowing that they had achieved something she would never have thought to manage on her own. Despite everything she had thought of the sorcerer at the start, they made a good team.
She flushed a little at the thought and continued with a smile on her face.
When she arrived, she came around the back of the house, since the side entrance was closer to the sun room. She barely managed to stifle a groan as Barbara rounded the corner.
“Heather!” Barbara said with a broad smile. “I’m so pleased to see you’re taking me up on my suggestion.”
“Actually—” Heather began, but Barbara kept going as if she didn’t notice.
“And you’ve brought biscuits! How wonderful. Did you enjoy the shortbread? It’s an old family recipe. I’d love to branch out—diversify a bit, you know how it is—but it’s just so divine I can’t help myself every year.”
Heather managed something that sounded like a grunt in response and ducked down the passageway as quickly as she could, Barbara close behind her, still raving about the shortbread recipe.
“Barbara’s here,” she announced as she entered, trying to communicate several sentences of warning with her eyes.
Patricia sat up in alarm and wiped her eyes, while Sinéad bit her lip to hold back a laugh.
“And you brought biscuits,” Sinéad said brightly, rising to her feet and moving across the room as Barbara entered. “What a wonderful morning.”
She came to stand beside Heather, who hovered just inside the door, and whispered, “This should be interesting.”
At this point, Barbara seemed to notice Patricia had been crying, and she ran over and began to soothe her with loud, oblivious platitudes.
“Oh, you poor thing. The stress has gotten to you, hasn’t it?”
“Not at all,” Patricia said, standing up and walking away.
She saw the plate of biscuits in Heather’s hand and came over, clearly glad for a distraction. She paused, hand hovering over the plate, and eyed Heather with narrowed eyes.
“Did you do anything funny to these?”
Heather huffed. “It’s just a fun little spell,” she said, feeling a strong urge to tell Patricia where to shove them all. “It changes your hair colour, that’s all.”
Patricia sniffed, a hint of curiosity in her eyes, and selected one before taking a cautious bite. Her eyes widened in surprise.
“This is quite good.”
Heather’s eyebrows shot up as Patricia’s hair turned bright blue, and she stifled a laugh. Patricia spun around to look in the mirror behind her, and her face froze momentarily. Then, she laughed, a clear, high note of something genuine that Heather had never heard from her before.
“That’s quite—” She broke off, her face crumpling. “Jacob would have loved these. He was never allowed to wear anything too bright.” She caught herself and stopped speaking.
Barbara rolled her eyes. She looked strangely alone, from her place on the other side of the room. “He was never good enough for you, Patricia,” she said, the soothing tones in her voice usurped for a moment by irritation.
She crossed her arms, and Heather’s eyes were drawn to a strange mark on her hand. She frowned, looking at the pink, shiny skin of a recent burn and trying to think what it was that niggled at the back of her mind. Then, someone gasped behind her, and she spun around to see Sinéad being dragged backwa
rds by a tiny woman with a fierce pixie-cut.
“I can’t believe you!” the woman snapped. “You won’t return my calls, you won’t read my texts, and you’re standing here in the very room where you murdered a man and pretending everything is fine.”
Sinéad stumbled backwards and caught herself on the door, pulling her arm back out of the woman’s grasp.
“What are you—” she began, dodging when the woman tried to grab her again. “Tracy? Have you been following me?”
“Of course I’ve been following you,” Tracy snapped, hovering in the doorway when she realised that all eyes were on her. “I’ve been trying to get you to come down to the station for days! Ever since I saw the spell you put on that painting! I cannot believe you did this.” She looked close to tears, as if overwhelmed at the thought of what Sinéad had done.
Sinéad stared at her. “You genuinely believe I killed Jacob. Over what? A payment disagreement? You must be mad.” She shook her head in disbelief. “Even when we had evidence that you’d been sneaking around, I never assumed you actually did it. If you had stopped to question anything, you might have realised that the so-called evidence against me was cleared.”
“You spelled the painting! What was I meant to think?”
“Why were you even at the party?” Sinéad shot back. “It looks really suspicious, Tracy. Surely you know that.”
A sheepish expression crossed her face. “I was trying to talk to Jacob without his secretary blocking me all the time. He hasn’t paid me for two months.”
Silence descended on the room. Sinéad pinched the bridge of her nose, and Heather thought she could see her counting to ten.
“But I didn’t do anything!” Tracy interrupted, all in a rush. “I saw your painting, and when I looked at it I felt this rush of… of something, like I wanted to do something really badly, and then the next thing I knew, I’d grabbed a vial of some powder from behind the music stand and slipped it into his drink!”
Heather eyes widened; at least now they knew who the spell had chosen.
“And I went to tell the police,” Tracy insisted, “but I didn’t want them to blame me for the poison, so I knew I had to get you to confess first.”