Page 57 of The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year
“Well, Sir Jasper is alive, so you must have done something right,” Maggie tried, but the doctor shook his head.
“I didn’t come here for this.”
“Why did you come here?” Ethan’s question sounded innocent enough, but Dr. Charles sat up straighter—alert.
“For Christmas,” he said simply, then he climbed to his feet and dragged himself from the room, and Maggie and Ethan shared a look, not really sure what just happened.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Maggie
As they started down the long main hall, neither Maggie nor Ethan knew where to find the duke and duchess, but as it turned out, they only had to follow the voices.
“Just when I think we’ve looked everywhere I remember another— Oh. Hello.” The Duchess of Stratford had seemed like the most elegant woman in the world that first night, ageless in a way that naturally pretty women with money often are, suspended somewhere between thirty-five and fifty-five, frozen in time. But now she just looked tired.
“Still no sign of Eleanor?” Maggie couldn’t help but feel guilty. This woman was Eleanor’s niece. Of course the stress would be taking a toll. “Don’t worry. We’ll find her.”
“I should hope so,” the duke said. “Do you have any idea how long it takes to settle an estate when they can’t find the body?” He gave the loutish huff and exaggerated nod of a fool who thinks he’s a genius and Maggie just stood there, wondering if she’d misheard him.
“David, why don’t you and Mr. Wyatt go check behind that one?” Victoria said, and the duke turned to Ethan.
“Help me move that armoire?” He sounded like a little boy with a brand-new tree house.
“Sure!” Ethan sounded like a little boy who wanted to go play in it.
Maggie watched the two of them head for a large armoire that sat against the wall twenty feet away.
“Ignore him.” Victoria waved her hand, as if she’d been saying those words her whole marriage.“Ms. Chase, you may not believe it, but I like you—”
“You do?” Maggie did not, in fact, believe it.
“—so please do me the courtesy of asking what you’d really like to know.”
Oh. Okay. Maggie could do direct. Probably. “Are you trying to kill your aunt?”
“No.” The word was crisp and clean like a hundred-pound note that had never been in someone’s wallet. “Furthermore...” The duchess ticked off the following on her fingers: “I don’t know where my aunt is. I don’t know how she got out of the room. I don’t know what happened to Sir Jasper. And if someone is trying to kill her, I don’t know who or why.”
There wasn’t a doubt in Maggie’s mind that Victoria, the Duchess of Stratford, was a world-class liar. There also wasn’t a doubt she was telling the truth. Probably because she wasn’t the type of person who would deny she’d committed a crime; she was the type who would laugh and sayprove it.
Twenty feet away, David and Ethan had the armoire away from the wall and were inspecting the wood floors underneath. “This isn’t it!” the duke called and they started moving the armoire back into place as his wife stood watching, a little too silent and too still.
“She never gave us presents.” The words were so soft that Maggie barely heard them.
“Excuse me?”
“For Christmas. Birthdays. She never gave us presents.” Victoria gave a dry laugh. A subtle shake of her head. “She gave usclues. Which led to more clues and, eventually, to one of a million little hiding places. Behind paintings and—”
“Under armoires?” Maggie guessed. The duchess gave her a look that was almost like respect.
“If we found them, we got a prize. If we didn’t, well...”
“Let me guess, you’re the girl who always won?”
“No.” Victoria looked Maggie dead in the eye. “I’m the girl who stopped playing.”
The duchess actually lookedlike that little girl then—a child who resented being asked to outsmart a grown woman and tried to win the only way she could, by refusing to even try.
“My aunt plays games, Ms. Chase. And shealwayskeeps score. The truth of the matter is, I can’t image a better way to earn Eleanor Ashley’s respect than to try to kill her. Honestly, I’m mad I didn’t think of it first.”
