Henry’s gaze fixed on her now. “The truth is… Mr. Button was going to fire me today. He told me so last night during the party. He was going to end my contract.”
“Why would he do that?” Romeo asked, his face so pale it seemed green.
“He… he said he could no longer trust me. He caught me trying to access some funds from the estate and… well, he told me he’d be terminating my contract this morning. I pleaded,beggedhim to let me keep this job. I am much too old to find employment elsewhere, especially with a bad reference. But he said no. So I snapped and I… I stabbed him and left him there in his office on the ship.”
“Why didn’t you confess earlier?” Evie demanded, feeling all of her theories crumbling beneath her, replaced by a nonsensical reality.
“I’m a coward,” Henry replied, looking at them all. “And what cowards do is they wait in corners, observing. They bear witness. They don’t intervene until it’s much too late.” His voice trembled. “I am so, so terribly sorry, children. I am so sorry for everything.”
“But the murder weapon… You said you stabbed him?” Evie said.
“Yes, Mr. Button, he was a very… cultured man. He kept all sorts ofartifacts that he’d brought back with him from countries he’d visited. In that office he kept a weapon known as a Jambiya knife, a Yemeni weapon fashioned in part from rhinoceros horns. I used that and then threw it into the ocean.”
Evie knew of the Jambiya knife.A thick, blunt curved weapon.
It was all so convenient…
Before Evie could interrogate Henry any further, Chief Waxler was now speaking.
“We should head back to the station,” he said in a weary voice.
One of the officers nodded. “Henry Xu, you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided…”
Evie watched soundlessly as the secretary was removed, led through the boarded-up front doors. He looked back at them briefly and Evie saw his features twist into an unexpected expression.
Relief…
She’d thought she would be relieved when she finally knew the truth about what happened to Mr. Button last night, but she wasn’t. Instead, she felt a little unwell.
Henry, though, seemed almost… assured, as though he was comforted by his own arrest.
It made no sense; Henry couldn’t have been the one to have killed Mr. Button because Evie had been talking to Henry way past the time Mr. Button had been murdered. She’d been trying to speak with Mr. Button all night, confront him about what had happened in Italy with Adelina. Henry had been her last solace. He’d told her that he was sure Mr. Button would make an appearance soon, and then he went back to watching the display in the sky above as he had been doing before.
Henry couldn’t have been the one to kill Mr. Button, she was certain of it.
Just as she was certain that one of Mr. Button’s heirs had killed him. She was so,socertain it had to be one of them…
Her thoughts trailed off then as she glanced sideways at the siblings now, all wearing similarly devastated expressions.
Or perhaps…, she thought.
It was not just one.
THE NIGHT BEFORE
THE HAMPTONS
“Bilal, you can’t be serious,” Fola said, looking at the very serious face of her older brother.
“If Dad wants to die so much, I can do it,” Bilal said.
A stillness settled over Olympus.
“If Dad wants to what?” another voice called out. They all turned to find an anxious-looking Perdita in the doorway next to Romeo, who looked just as concerned.
“We got your text,” Perdita said to Octavius. “Are you okay?”
“No, he isn’t. Dad asked Octavius to kill him,” Bilal said bluntly.
