Nick steps closer to Hannah, his eyes narrowed.
“How did Wendy know you’d overheard?” he says.
“I... I told her.”
“Why?”
“I was just trying, you know, to help her—because I felt so sorry for her. I said I’d keep it to myself, and she promised to have my back when no one else could be bothered. I had no idea she’d try to kill me, for god’s sake.”
She’s clearly floundering, out of her depth on this one.
“Jesus, Hannah,” Nick says. “Wendy betrayed my brother. You didn’t thinkIshould know?”
“I didn’t want to interfere. It didn’t seem like any of my business.”
“None of your business?” Nick yells, his face reddening. “Aren’t I your damn business?”
Her expression morphs from flustered to wounded, and she turns on her heels and flees the room.
I take off, too, pursuing her down the wide front hall and then along the corridor that runs past the den. When I catch up to her, she’s almost at the side door leading from the house, and she stops abruptly, clearly realizing she has to either venture out into the darkness or talk to me.
“What the hell do you want?” she demands angrily.
“Tell me what you know about foxgloves.”
She purses her pillowy lips, bare now of her usual lipstick and gloss. I can see her sense of superiority surging back. “Seriously?You’re asking me about flowers at a time like this?”
“Yes,now. If you know what’s good for you.”
“Okay,okay. I know they’re poisonous. Claire told me when she gave me a tour.”
“But you pretended you didn’t know that when I spoke to you in the carriage house.”
“I was just messing with you. You’ve been a total bitch to me from day one, and you know it.”
“Did you pick foxgloves from the garden by the cottage on the morning Claire died?”
“What?No.”
“Prove it.”
“I wasn’t out flower picking. Ask Nick. Or askMarcus. He had me meet him outside that morning so I could hear how furious he was about me marrying his brother, and then when I was done listening to him spew, I played tennis with Nick and hung by the pool.”
Then who...?
My god. I’ve had it all wrong. It was Wendy who was threatened by Claire. And it must have been Wendy who picked the foxgloves and made the tea. Wendy who poisoned Claire.
If I’m remembering right, Blake went for a drive that morning, so Wendy had the carriage house kitchen to herself. That would have allowed her time to cut the flowers, dry the leaves in the oven there, and make the tea without beingseen. And she would have had the house kitchen to herself, as well, in order to make the substitution. She was the one who told me Bonnie wouldn’t be in until late.
And thebook. The one on poisons. Wendy had been standing near that shelf when I’d run into her in the study.
But one thing doesn’t add up. Why would she place a foxglove in my drawer? Why would she try to provoke me when she had no reason to believe I was onto her? And then it hits me.
“Youput the foxglove in my drawer, didn’t you?” I say to Hannah.
She lifts a shoulder, as if in agreement, and I swear to god, she stifles a grin. “If you don’t mind, I need to get to my room and pack my bag,” she says. “This family is nutso. Someone tried tomurderme, and no one gives a shit.”
“Why, Hannah? Why did you leave the foxglove?”
