“We kind of overheard you guys… before. We’d already been standing there for about a minute or two,” Anwar awkwardly explained.
“How does Perdita’s name relate to anything?” Fola asked, unruffled—outwardly, at least—by the fact that these two knew about this earth-shattering secret Perdita had been carrying.
Anwar looked at their drained, confused faces in clear shock. “Seriously, guys… Leontes? Perdita?The Winter’s Tale?” he said.
When he only got back more confused expressions, he sighed. “Wow, you are all useless.” Then he looked at Bilal. “Not you.”
“Useless?” Fola scoffed. “As if you can save the world with a book, or worse,poetry.”
Anwar raised an eyebrow. “Actually, I think youcansave the world that way,” he replied. “But as I was saying… in Shakespeare’sThe Winter’s Tale, Leontes, the king, has a secret daughter named Perdita. It was always right there in front of you, like he was hoping you’d find out.”
Bilal was looking at Anwar as if all of his literary nonsense was the hottest thing he had ever heard. “Father did mention once that his mother and father were Shakespeare fanatics, hence his own name, I guess,” Bilal added.
Perdita didn’t feel any better knowing her father had been dangling this over her all along.
“And does this Leontes character fromThe Winter’s Talehave any enemies, or any friends who betray him?” Fola asked in a mocking tone.
“Well, he did indeed make a lot of enemies, but in terms of betrayals, I suppose King Leonteswasbetrayed by his closest advisor, the character Camillo.”
Fola rolled her eyes. “As nice and poetic as your name theory is and all, most of us got to keep the first names we were given at birth,” Fola said, which was true. Fola had been adopted from an orphanage in Nigeria, and had been named Folake by her birth parents, though she rarely ever liked anyone calling her by that name.
Romeo chimed in. “I was actually named after the city I was adopted from, Rome, in Italy. My biological parents didn’t name me before they gave me up—that’s what Dad told me, anyway.”
“The only names our father gave the rest of us were our middle names and our surname. But in any case, I just don’t think it makes sense to base any theory as to who might have murdered our dad on a play,” Fola said.
“Maybe the play isn’t entirely relevant, nor are your names, but I still think there is something puzzling here,” Evie replied quickly. “It’s like I can see several of the pieces clearly mapped out but can’t quite make them fit.”
“Puzzles are what I’m good at,” Fola said. “Maybe if you hand me the pieces I can put them together. Do you still have access to those notes?”
Evie shook her head. “Not anymore. I got busted using the computer by one of the maids and so the power was shut off.”
There was a weird tension then as Fola gave Evie a look of disbelief, and as someone who had been on the receiving end of many of Fola’s glares today, Perdita was glad it wasn’t directed at her this time.
Still, Evie didn’t seem intimidated in the slightest.
“I guess it’s best to leave it up to the people who know best, then,” Fola said, her expression taut as she looked on at Evie. “You know, the police,” she clarified.
“I guess so,” Evie said. “I estimate that there are around twenty-five people left in the drawing room. Twenty-five suspects to whittle down.”
The tolling of the bell came again. Evie turned around and peered into the drawing room doors several feet away. “Around twenty-one now,” she said with only some certainty. It was harder to see through the slowly frosting glass panes in the doors. “This probably means they are closing ranks; we should know who the prime suspect is soon.”
4:59P.M.—THE BUTTON MANOR
The evening was fast descending on them all.
Evie Gray was sitting in the kitchen alone waiting for her mother to return for her dinner duties, glad to be away from the intensity of the drawing room, where people were still anxiously anticipating their fates.
They were all on edge, waiting for the police to make their arrest. A task that was taking much longer than Evie thought it should’ve. It was as if the police were stalling.
The tense conversation from the garden still weighed on her. Evie had wanted to pry more, to ask more questions, gather more intel, but they’d all left pretty abruptly before she could.
She thought about the last thing Fola had said.I guess it’s best to leave it up to the people who know best, then.Fola was right. Itwasbest to leave the solving of this case up to the people who knew best. And who better to figure out this mess than Evie? Evie, who had grown up in the shadows of their world and knew the Manor inside and out, and by extension the Buttons.
She flipped through the notes she had been taking all day in her pocket-sized notebook—her questions and observations about the now-dead Mr. Button and his infamous heirs. She had pages and pages dedicated to the misdeeds of the Button family.
The family known for their money, their talents, their image of perfection. The family famed for their ruthless pursuit of genius; their willingness to do anything to achieve it. The family who had everything in the world. And yet, who had taken so much from her…
Toomuch.
