Vera shrugged.
“I don’t have anything to hide,” Vera said, but the way she said it sounded almost like a threat. “I told Mrs. Carter that Oliver and Harriet were in a relationship, and that you knew about it, Grace. And she paid me handsomely for it. But I didn’t have anything to do with killing Harriet Forbes.”
She showed them to the door. “Go ahead, tell the police. But you’ll only be creating more problems and more suspicion for your family.”
Grace knew that was true.
She believed Oliver would never have killed Harriet.
But as she climbed into Theodore’s carriage, she realized she wasn’t so sure about Aunt Clove.
Grace’s mind sorted theories that night at the orchestra concert in Festival Hall. She tested them, rolling them around like marbles, as she slid back into the half-waking dream world of the fairgrounds. Being there felt like putting on a coat of mist and champagne bubbles.
Lillie sat beside her, wearing a midnight satin dress and a glittering neck of jewels. Grace was re-wearing the rose-colored mousseline dress, but she didn’t care because it made her feel so effortlessly lovely.
She was irritated to realize how much she wished Theo could see her in it.
Frannie was there too, swathed in sea-foam tulle, her hair glittering with pins. She was on Copper’s arm, his red hair slicked back and his suit looking sharp and expensive. They ignored Grace entirely andgave Lillie an only slightly warmer reception. Earnest seemed annoyed by this and made up for it by showering Lillie with attention. He reached for her hand as the violins swelled.
Grace clasped her own palms in her lap.
She watched the orchestra responding to the conductor’s effervescent direction, the musicians moving in choreographed tandem like wind over grasslands, or what Grace imagined the waves of a sea might look like.
As the evening went on, she felt like her heart might explode in her chest. The musicians played as though their instruments had souls that could be brought to life beneath their touch. She felt that quickening again of being near to the pulsing heart of being alive, and rose to her feet, applauding. Perhaps she felt it even more keenly because she had witnessed death, and this felt like the opposite of decay: explosions of color and sound ripping through cobwebs of sadness.
“Shall we walk?” Earnest asked after the final encore. The evening outside was a perfect spring temperature, a cool breeze rustling the tree branches and the light fabric draped along Grace’s arm.
Festival Hall and the four major Palaces around it were illuminated with incandescent bulbs, so that each became slashes of ivory marble against the velvet sky. The fountains erupted from the Grand Basin in sprays of mist and light. Above it, the moon was a crisp slice.
They walked past Jerusalem’s walled gates and eventually turned off into the cool quiet of the Japanese Pavilion, with Earnest leading the way. They passed a bazaar with hand fans and silks for sale and a teahouse offering green tea and tea cakes, instead choosing to wander dreamily across a bridge set near a waterfall. There was a replica of a temple from Kyoto alongside two-hundred-year-old imported bonsai trees, their twisted limbs set among cool stone lanterns. Grace relished the quiet stillness that stood in such contrast to the rest of thefairgrounds. She caught the look on Lillie’s face that meant she was pondering, and she pulled her back from the group.
“What are you thinking? About Oliver?”
“I think we find Penelope Forbes next. Ask her about the meeting with Harriet,” Lillie said.
“Maybe she knows something about the man who threatened Harriet at the restaurant, too,” Grace said.
And Grace still planned to have a talk with her dear aunt Clove.
“You’re writing about all of this for that gossip rag, are you?” Earnest asked Grace, looping back toward them. He lit a cigarette, shielding it from the breeze as it sparked.
“A little ironic, that,” Copper said through the side of his mouth, stopping to light his own cigarette with a sardonic grin.
“Ironic? How do you mean?” Grace asked.
“Well, the autopsy showed it was strychnine that killed Harriet, wasn’t it?” Earnest said.
“Yes,” Lillie said.
“And strychnine is often used as a rat poison, right?”
“Right…” Grace said.
“And do you know who just happens to be a former insect extermination salesman? A firsthand seller of rat poison?”
Grace stilled. “Who?” she asked.
Copper grinned, taking a deep drag of his cigarette. “The publisher of theFair’s Fare. Your very own Sam Whitcomb.”
