Page 91 of Wolfsbane Hall
“The boys, Irene, and Archibald,” Celestine said as a confirmation.
Babette played with the lace of her skirt. “Earlier, I dusted the knife, shirts, and crossbow for prints, and it pulled all three of the Ashbrook brothers’ prints…which isn’t surprising, since Vivian was playing with the knife at the beginning of the show, and James and Everett touched it after.” Babette paused, thoughts flowing through her brown irises. “So the real question is: Are we dealing with one murderer or multiple?”
Celestine curled her lower lip into her mouth. “Do you have the evidence?” Celestine hadn’t kept it. She’d tracked it in her head but hadn’t gathered it and stored it to look at it again.
“Yes.”
“Then let’s go over it again.”
Babette jumped up to get the evidence. Celestine tried to follow, but as she tried to stand, she still felt impossibly weak, so with a frustrated huff, she remained seated. She needed to save her energy, because she knew that, at some point, she would need to use all that she had left to run.
Babette motioned for her to sit and wait. Then she ran through different parts of the house and brought everything back, placing it in front of Celestine so she could see it all.
When she was finished, she had gathered the knife, two bloody shirts, one in green and one in blue—apparently, Babette had found the second bloody shirt earlier in the night—Archibald’s tie, James’s gun, and the crossbow.
“Should we dust for prints again?”
Celestine shook her head. “No, I trust your work. You are good at your job.”
Babette’s face lit up, but she tried to shake off her reaction, not wanting Celestine to see how much her words meant.
“But…” A thought sparked inside of Celestine.
At the beginning of the night, Everett had said,“It wasn’tme this time.”And Walter had said,“Not again,”when he died. And the entire night was about the Ashbrooks’ secrets: secret murders, money problems, fraud, and corporate accidents.
All pieces of evidence pointed to a different family member.
The tie: Archibald
The knife: Vivian, Everett, and James
The shirt: Dean
The gum: James
The lipstick: Irene
The only people who didn’t have evidence pointing toward them were the cast, Jon, and Walter.
Perhaps Jon was only truly here for the food. Celestine laughed. Of course, he would be. Jon and Walter seemed to be the only members of the family who cared about the others. And Celestine didn’t believe they had anything to do with the murder. But everyone else?
Did they all do it, likeMurder on the Orient Express? After all, that was Dean’s favorite Agatha Christie book.
But it didn’t make sense.
She was missing something.
Celestine’s brow furrowed as she remembered Babette’s briefcase. The girl had been hiding it all night. “Babette, what was in your briefcase?”
“A lot of things. Love letters between your character and Everett. Proof that James was responsible for a train accident, information about the deaths of all of Dean’s former fiancées. It was full of blackmail. My character was blackmailing the entire family.”
Celestine rubbed her temples and thought.
Did the answer lie in their secrets? Why had both Babette’s and Celestine’s characters been so central to the secrets? It wasn’t just to punish the Ashbrooks. Dean was more clever than that. His every action always had multiple purposes.
So, why all the secrets? Celestine went through them all again, and she landed once again on Marguerite. The entire night revolved around her and the murders of every Ashbrook bride.
For the first time in the whole night, Celestine wished Margot hadn’t been exorcised from her brain.
