“Well done on figuring this out and getting a confession out of the old lady. Are you sure you aren’t interested in becoming a police detective? The work is hard and the pay is shite, but we could work together.”
I smiled. “I think I’ll leave all the dead bodies to you, if you don’t mind. Besides, I wouldn’t have gotten this far if it wasn’t for you answering all my odd questions, and Morrie and Quoth and Heathcliff being their usual selves.”
“Speaking of a team effort, what have you got to tell me about the guys?” Jo’s eyes twinkled with mischief.
“Morrie said something, didn’t he?”
“He might’ve let a few details slip.” Jo elbowed me in the ribs. “Go on, spill.”
“Um, don’t you have a scene to investigate?”
“Oh, right, that.” Jo held up her bag. “First, I hunt for evidence to convict this nice old lady. Then we talk about the handcuffs.”
Another whiff of rot wafted past my nose, worse than before. I gagged. “Can you smell that?” I sniffed again.Yup, definitely rot.
“Don’t try and change the subject—” Jo’s face wrinkled. “You’re right. There’s definitely something putrid in here. In fact, it smells distinctly like a dead body.”
A dead body… oh no.
Mrs. Winstone must’ve seen us from the living room.“You two, stop snooping in my house!” she cried out.
Suspicion flickered in Jo’s eyes. I spun around, searching the hallway for something Mrs. Winstone didn’t want us to see. My gaze landed on the linen cupboard. I leaned close to the doorframe and sniffed.
“Oooh,” I pinched my nose. “That smell isdefinitelycoming from here.”
Mrs. Winstone leapt to her feet. “No. Don’t open that—”
I flung the door open. Something heavy slid from the gloom and tumbled across the floor. A cold arm flopped against my boots.
Even though he was older now and one side of his head was smashed in, I recognized the features from Mrs. Winstone’s photograph. I was looking at the dead body of her husband, the famous historian Harold Winstone.
Chapter Thirty-Two
“Guys,” I banged the shop door open so hard it hit the bookshelf on the other side, rattling one of Quoth’s rat trophies off its tiny wall hook. “You won’t believe what just happened. Mrs. Winstone admitted to killing Ginny Button and hurting herself in order to frame Dorothy Ingram. And she had the body of her husband Harold stuffed in her linen cupboard. She’s just turned herself in to the police. But she says she didn’t kill Mrs. Scarlett so we—”
I stopped short. Heathcliff and Morrie stood in the middle of the hallway, staring at something on the floor. Heathcliff held a squabbling Grimalkin in his arms.
“What’s going on?”
“Nature has triumphed where we have failed,” Morrie declared. Quoth and I rushed over, and I followed his gaze down to the tiny shape on the carpet.
It was the little white mouse with the brown spot on his leg. The Terror of Argleton. Only it wouldn’t be terrorizing anyone again. It lay on its back, tiny feet turned toward the ceiling, completely dead.
I slapped Quoth on the shoulder. “Took you long enough.”
“Don’t look at me,” Quoth said. “I came inside and found him like this.”
“Grimalkin didn’t do it either,” Heathcliff growled as the cat slashed at his eyeballs. He dropped her and she lunged for the mouse. He shoved her away again. “I don’t want her to touch that animal. It looks like it’s been poisoned.”
Poisoned. A nagging feeling tugged at my mind, a connection between the mouse and the murders. It was the same sensation I’d had when I picked up Ginny’s necklace. I bent down and peered closely at the mouse. I caught a faint whiff of something in the air.
Garlic.
Grimalkin shoved her way past me and tapped the mouse with her paw. I scooped her up and stumbled away. “Heathcliff’s right. Don’t touch it, girl. None of you touch it.”
“Hallelujah,” Heathcliff muttered. “I’m right. Someone acknowledges my genius.”
I tossed Grimalkin into the Children’s room and slammed the door shut. Next, I went to Heathcliff’s desk and pulled out a plastic sleeve – we kept a stack of them for protecting Quoth’s art prints. I held it over the mouse and scooped the tiny body inside.
