Page 99 of The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year
“So she summoned the best minds... The most brilliant detectives... The most elite—”
“Us,” Maggie cut Ethan off. “She invited us. And Sir Jasper.” She smiled at the man by the fire. “And Inspector Dobson.” She gave him a deferential nod. “To join you all for Christmas.”
“Why?” Kitty looked up from her knitting.
“I don’t know,” Maggie admitted. The truth was, she’d been asking herself the same question for days. “Maybe because most of us were strangers. Maybe because she trusted people who think like her. Eleanor’s detectives were always outsiders, seeing things with fresh eyes. I think that’s what she wanted from us. But whatever her reasons, she summoned her detectives—”
“And her suspects—” Ethan put in.
“And laid out a series of clues that only people devoted to her would see and follow. She didn’t tell us what was happening. No.” Maggie felt the pieces falling into place in her mind. “She let us figure it out for ourselves. And then sometime in the night... she vanished. She might have been wrong, after all. Maybe it was bad luck...”
“But bad luck didn’t poison that tea tray,” Ethan said. “Now the question is, who did?” He looked carefully around the room but his gaze landed on Rupert. “The ungrateful nephew with the sticky fingers?”
“Now see here!” Rupert started. “I don’t know what you think you know—”
“Us?” Ethan looked at Maggie.
“Oh, we don’t know anything,” she told him.
“True. But Eleanor... Oh, Eleanor kneweverything.” Ethan was just a little bit dramatic as he carefully took the lid from Eleanor’s present and retrieved a large manila folder. “For example, did you know that, according to London’s premiere forensic accounting firm, two point six million dollars has gone missing from Eleanor’s accounts in the past year alone?” Then he leaned close to Rupert and stage-whispered, “Don’t answer that. That would be cheating.” He looked at the others. “He already knows.”
“Rupert!” Kitty exclaimed.
“I didn’t kill her! I didn’t even try.” Rupert was looking up at Maggie and Ethan, a sick pallorto his skin and a desperate, pleading tone to his voice. “I swear, I never touched a hair on her head.”
“Oh, we know you didn’t kill her,” Ethan went on.
“You do?” Rupert actually sounded surprised.
“Of course!” Maggie said brightly. “You, Kitty, and Nanny Davis all have alibis for when the shots were fired in the maze and, besides, why would you poison the tea tray when you’d already arranged to have Dr. Charles declare Eleanor incompetent so you could take over her affairs?”
“That’s preposterous!” Rupert bellowed just as Kitty exclaimed, “Rupert!”
But Ethan was undisturbed. He just looked at a very sleepy, very bored Dr. Charles and asked, “Was that the plan, Doctor?”
“Absolutely it was,” Dr. Charles said.
“I’d lean into that if I were you,” Ethan whispered to Rupert. “It’s a lot better than murder.”
At which point Rupert had the good sense to shut up. Kitty’s hands started flying again, needles thwacking together as Ethan looked over the other suspects in the room. “So if it wasn’t the greedy nephew, maybe it was Eleanor’s niece, the greedy duchess?”
Maggie waited for outrage, but all Victoria did was laugh. “Why would I do that? I am, as you say, a duchess.”
“The duchess of a bankrupt dukedom,” Ethan exclaimed, but Maggie lowered her voice.
“I think it’s duchy.”
“That can’t be right,” he whispered. “Dutch-y? That sounds like a pastry you can only buy in Amsterdam. I think it’s dukedom. Maybe—”
“It’s both!” the duke snapped and Ethan gave Maggie a look likehow about that?
Maggie fought a grin as Ethan pulleda stack of papers out of the box and started riffling through them like he was about to deal a hand of cards.
“You had already come to Eleanor for money, hadn’t you, Your Grace?” Maggie asked as Ethan laid the cards on the table. IOU after IOU. “Dozens of times. What happened?” Maggie honestly wanted to know. “Did she cut you off?”
The duke and duchess didn’t say a word, but then again, they didn’t have to. The answer was all over their faces.
“Unlike Rupert and Kitty,” Ethan pointed out, “the two of you were off by yourselves when the shots were fired.”
