Phyllis looked at Richard as she said this, and Nova glanced at the man, too, expecting to see him blush at Phyllis’s compliment. But her words seemed to have had the opposite effect, as his face had gone deathly pale. Why was he looking so—
“Oh my God, it was you!”
Richard’s eyes flicked between them all, but before he could do anything, Ash and Dan both jumped forward and grabbed him by the arms.
“Get off me!” Richard shouted, finding his voice. “This is outrageous!”
“I can’t believe it took me so long to see it,” Phyllis said. “I was blinded by my own silly vanity, too flattered by your attention toremember Miss Marple’s number one rule: always believe the worst in people. You did the same thing to Eve Watkins, didn’t you? Twinkled your blue eyes and flashed her that charming smile so she wouldn’t question your motives. All because she was, like me, a lonely older woman who you thought you could manipulate to get your hands on her money.”
“I’ve never heard such nonsense!” Richard said, struggling to get out of the boys’ grip.
“You must have spent months wooing Eve: being a good friend, a comforting ear and a shoulder to cry on. It all looked so innocent from the outside: as Michael himself said, you were a wonderful neighbor. But all the time, you were trying to make a grief-stricken woman fall in love with you.”
“Oh, you scoundrel,” Arthur said with a growl.
“On the way to Eve’s wake, you told me that Michael and Cynthia had been putting pressure on Eve to sell her house, but it was you who was putting pressure on her, wasn’t it? You were trying to convince Eve to sell the house and give you the money.”
“Oh my God, that’s why the solicitor told my mum about Dad’s debts!” Michael said with a gasp of realization. “Mum must have told him she was thinking of putting the house on the market, and the solicitor wrote back saying that the house was no longer hers to sell.”
“Richard must have overheard you and your mum arguing about the solicitor’s letter and discovered that instead of sitting on a small fortune, Eve was penniless,” Phyllis said. “And this made you furious, didn’t it, Richard? All that time and effort you’d put into making her fall for you had all been for nothing. And in a fit of rage, you went round and murdered her.”
“I didn’t mean to kill her!” Richard shouted, and his shoulders sagged. “After I heard Michael leave, I went round to ask her aboutthe letter, but Eve was so upset she ended up screaming at me too. She started hitting me and I defended myself, but I never meant for her to fall.”
There was a moment of stunned silence as they all took in what he’d just said.
“Then why didn’t you go to the police and tell them what had happened?” Arthur asked.
“Because I knew how it would look. After my first wife died in a freak accident—”
“My God, it’s not the first time you’ve done this,” Michael said. “You absolute bastard!”
He lunged clumsily at Richard, his fist connecting with the man’s shoulder. Richard yelped and jerked backward, and in the moment of chaos, he managed to slip free from Ash and Dan and started to run toward the road. A second later, Dan set off after him at a sprint. He caught up with Richard at the gates, just as the police car containing Lauren was about to drive off.
“Perfect, the police can take the two criminals at once,” Phyllis said, and when Nova looked back, she saw a satisfied smile on the woman’s face.
“Are you okay?” Nova asked Michael, who was leaning on a gravestone looking like he might be about to pass out.
“I can’t believe Richard killed her. I encouraged Mum to spend time with him; I thought their friendship would be good for her. And all along he was a trickster trying to scam her.”
“It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book, I’m afraid,” Arthur said. “In one of Esi’s romance n—”
“Not now, Arthur,” Nova interrupted.
“Ah yes, you’re right, sorry,” he said with an embarrassed smile.
Behind them, Nova heard voices, and she turned round to see thecongregation had all spilled out of the church, and in their midst, Craig’s family were glaring across at her.
“I should probably get out of here,” she said.
“Where will you go?” Arthur asked.
“I don’t know. Not to Craig’s parents’ house, that’s for sure.”
“You’re welcome to come and stay with me for a while, if you like?”
Nova smiled at him. “Thanks, but I really, really want to see Mum, so maybe I’ll head to the airport?”
“That sounds like a grand plan. I’m not sure Bessie will get us all the way to Heathrow, but I can give you a lift to the station if you like?”
