Page 84 of The Six Murders of Daphne St Clair

She sounded certain but there was a waver in her voice, a little bubble of hesitation. Because now there were no more chances to fix the relationship, no more chances to get it right. And any more understanding or reflection on who her mother had been would have to come from Diane alone.

Daphne had once joked to Ruth that when she died, she wanted a headstone that read “Mother. Fucker.” But in the end, she was cremated, and her ashes were scattered on the beach near her old apartment, just beyond the building where Ruth’s father died. No one knew if that was what Daphne would have wanted, although Ruth suspected she might have preferred her ashes being scattered on Fifth Avenue.

Ruth didn’t attend of course. It was only Daphne’s daughters and a couple of her grandchildren, including Harper. And James. After decades apart, he had finally come back to say goodbye. Diane told her later that they had tried to throw the ashes into the waves, but a sudden wind had thrown them back into the family’s faces, leaving them sputtering and gagging. It seemed like a fitting tribute to Daphne.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

The day after the funeral, Ruth woke up to an email from Harper, Daphne’s youngest granddaughter:The day before she died, Grandma asked me to record a message for her. She said to send it to you after her funeral.There was an audio file attached to the message.

Ruth had spent so many hours listening to the flat cadences of Daphne’s voice, every word abruptly snapped off at the end. But it still surprised her to hear a new recording now, a fresh message from a mind and a mouth that were now just ashes on a beach.

“I’ve asked Harper to record this message so we can have a one-sided conversation. She’s actually quite good at this stuff so do me a favor and give her a summer job in a couple years. I think she’s got a future in it. But here we are. I know it’ll be a lot easier to talk turkey when you don’t have a pesky journalist interrupting you.”

Ruth sat back on her pillows, frowning at the ceiling. She was still in bed, still in her pajamas, listening to this strange rant. It was so Daphne, to get all her little digs in now, when there was no way to respond to her.

“I’ve got a lot of things to tell you, so listen up. The first is about my will. I’ve left half of my estate to Harper. My daughters have squandered enough money and she’s the only grandchild I like. But I didn’t want to leave her everything and ruin her. So, I’m leaving you the other half. My lawyer will be in touch soon although it may take a little longer to release the funds because of my legal. . .situation. It’s a good chunk even though I’d had a lot of fun spending it over the years. You’ll be able to keep doing this podcast without wasting your life writing lists for morons on the Internet. Just remember, for women, money is freedom. Don’t let anyone try to tell you otherwise.”

Ruth paused the recording and slid down her sheets, her chest throbbing and her head spinning. How could this be real? This had all started with her being denied an inheritance from her father and now she was getting an inheritance from the woman who she believed killed him? It was essentially blood money. But she was already making money off Daphne St Clair, why draw the line here? Maybe Daphne felt this was reparation for the damage she’d done to Ruth’s life.

The recording continued.

“Finally, I wanted to talk to you about your father,”Daphne said.

Ruth froze, clutching the laptop so hard her hands ached. This was it. Her deathbed confession. All the pain would be worth it. Ruth was about to be set free.

“I didn’t kill him. I was just yanking your chain,”Daphne said with a laugh. Ruth flinched as if Daphne had hit her, her whole body tensing with shock. Daphne had been messing with her? The cruelty of that decision left her breathless, but Daphne kept talking.

“But I know a lot more about killers than you do. Look at the murder weapon. Someone found his insulin and injected him. So that’s someone who knows he has diabetes, knows he takes insulin, and knows where to find it. That’s not a casual date or visitor to his apartment; that’s someone who knows him. A rich, older man found dead of an insulin overdose doesn’t strike me as a crime of passion. If someone gets all het up, they might bash a person with a brick or push him down a flight of stairs, not meddle with his blood sugar. No, this was ice-cold. It was also probably a woman. Women want a job done with as little mess as possible; take out the trash, kill a person, it’s all the same really.

“So the answer’s pretty obvious, if you think about it. Because if you ask me, the cops were looking at the wrong daughter. But maybe they knew that all along too. Because it must have been a dark day for your half-sister when your father found you. She wouldn’t have taken kindly to giving half a fortune away to a girl born out of an affair, a girl her father was now parading around as one of the family. Money, revenge, moral outrage, she had every reason to act before your dad changed his will. I guess she hated him a teeny bit more than she hated you or else she would have whacked you instead. But there you have it, you’ve got a killer in the family. Most people do.”

No. Ruth paused the recording. It couldn’t be true. Lucy couldn’t have murdered her own father. Ruth shook her head angrily. Daphne was lying. . . wasn’t she? But the more Ruth sat with it, the more she realized that Lucy had never accepted her entrance into the family, that Ruth’s very existence proved that her father had cheated on her beloved mother. If Richard had told her that fateful Sunday that he was leaving half his fortune to Ruth, Lucy would have been furious. This wasn’t a story of a seductive black widow, this was a story of greed and revenge, of petty sibling rivalries and dysfunctional families.

Ruth clasped her hands to her eyes, pressing so tight that she could see stars explode across her eyelids. Ruth had been so dazzled by her Daphne theory, the clean way everything fit into place, that she missed the truth, a shabby little creature crouched in the corner.

“I’m sorry, I know you wanted it to be me. You don’t have any hard evidence to prove it was her. And that family has a lot of power in this town and likely a lot of cops in their back pocket, so there’s nothing you can do about it,”Daphne’s voice intoned, as if she was sentencing Ruth to a lifetime of regret.

Ruth sighed. She couldn’t even lay out her case against Lucy on the podcast, she would almost certainly get slapped with a lawsuit. After all, the world was full of rich assholes willing to sue journalists into bankruptcy and the Montgomerys definitely had a few on the payroll.

“You just have to accept that your sister is the kind of person who was never going to settle for half a fortune when she could have the lot. You were too focused on having a daddy while someone else just wanted the dough. Ruth, you played by the rules and she didn’t, and she came out on top. There’s a lesson in there for you, but I’m not here to gloat.”

The recording stopped but Ruth continued to sit in bed, frozen for a very long time. It had been a momentous message: the promise of an inheritance and a number of revelations about who killed her father. It was like something out of a Brontënovel, not the kind of thing that happened to a podcast host in 2022.

Ruth had a vision of Lucy Montgomery waking up right now in her luxury penthouse in the Seacrest Building, the home that used to be her father’s. She was lying in an all-white bedroom with a view of the glittering blue ocean spread out below her. Lucy would wander around her home drinking a latte, casually treading on the patch of carpet where her father had lain, dying, after she had plunged a needle into his neck. Did she think of him there? Confused and betrayed by his own daughter? Maybe he barely crossed her mind now that she’d gotten everything she ever wanted from him. . . which was everything he ever had.

Ruth could see Lucy now, staring vacantly ahead as she pounded on her Peloton bike, the Nineties pop songs and generic encouragements of an unseeing fitness instructor blotting out the violence of her thoughts. Was she thinking about Ruth? Almost certainly. It was terrible luck to be a murderer with a true crime journalist for a sister, especially one with the number-one podcast in the country. It had clearly consumed Lucy’s thoughts, made her see Ruth as even more of a threat than before.

Ruth could see her going about her day: showering, getting dressed in a cream designer ensemble, taking an elevator down to her expensive sports car. She would drive to work, listening to the kind of vacant narcissistic pop music that featured on theSelling Sunsetsoundtrack, her cranberry-slicked mouth singing along to every capitalistic refrain. Ruth saw her walking into work at the Sunshine Development headquarters, her five-inch heels clicking on the marble floors, her long blonde ponytail hanging down her back like a noose.

Chapter Forty

An hour later, Ruth received another email from Harper, with three more audio files attached. The message said:She said to wait an hour before I sent this email, so you’d have time for it all to sink in.Ruth swallowed and pressed play.

“Hello again. I know, I know, I’m like a bad rash, I keep coming back. But listen, when you told me about your father, you said to me ‘your life is almost over; you could help.’ And you’re right. Ruth, we had our moments, but I’m pleased with the work you’ve done, and well, maybe, I see a little bit of myself in you. Life dealt you a raw hand and I’d like to help tip the scales in your favor. So, here’s the twist. I’m going to record two audio messages. One confessing to your father’s murder and one denying it. You can use whichever one you like, I don’t mind. It’s simple really, you can go with the truth and that will be fine. It’s a great podcast regardless. But you’ll still have a target on your back from your sister, her family, and the cops. Or you can use the confession and give the podcast an explosive finale. Ruth Robinson: the journalist who solved her own father’s murder? Think of the books, the articles, your own TV show if you fancied it. That would set you up for your life. But of course, you’d have a secret. And you’d have to accept that your sister would never face justice. So, it’s whatever you decide, Ruth. I made a lot of tough decisions in my life; that’s part of being an adult. Now it’s time for you to become master of your own fate. Thanks again for all the laughs. It’s been a hell of a ride.”

Ruth stared at the other two audio files, not bothering to click on them. She knew what they contained. The truth and a false confession. Was this a final test from Daphne? Or just a gift? With Daphne St Clair, the answer was always: both.

Slowly, mechanically, Ruth pulled on a tank top and cut-offs and stepped into her sandals. Then she left her apartment and started walking, looking at the world with unseeing eyes as she thought about everything. The cars rushed by her, leaving trails of hot wind in their wake, but Ruth felt nothing but the cracked sidewalk beneath her feet as she walked.

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