His brows rose, and a slight smile graced his lips. “And good day to you as well, Lady Amy.”
She’d been up half the night going over her notes and moving small pieces of paper around that consisted of her suspects and the clues they’d uncovered. She’d checked her research notes and books, nodding each time as her ideas were confirmed. Once she’d put together all the parts of the puzzle, she’d sat back and stared at her results with horror.
Unbelievable.
As soon as the sun was up and the hour considered decent, she’d sent Lacey with a note to William to arrive as quickly as possible.
She grinned and pulled him into the drawing room. “Sir Holstein.”
“What? The investigator? He’s now on the list? I think you’ve gone a bit far this time.”
“No. No.” She began to walk in a circle, waving her arm in
excitement. “The memory in the back of my mind that kept troubling me. When Sir Holstein first arrived here for his initial interview, he mentioned what a good friend he was to Lord Carlisle. My father also said so in his missive to me.” She turned and looked at him.
The silence was thick as he absorbed what she had just said. William nodded. “Go on.”
As she opened her mouth to speak, William sucked in a deep breath. “Are you suggesting …?”
She waved him silent. “At the time we thought nothing of Sir Holstein eating bad food. It does happen. But last night when I went over all the information we’ve gathered the last few weeks, I had an epiphany. I checked my medical research books and looked up symptoms of arsenic poisoning.”
“Poisoning!”
“Yes. And all of his symptoms when he arrived here looking so dreadful fit.” She stopped pacing and looked at him. “If you remember—you were here—Sir Holstein mentioned that he’d been to their house several times for dinner.”
William collapsed into the settee behind him. “You think Lady Carlisle poisoned Sir Holstein?”
Amy took in a deep breath. “Yes. In order to remove him from the investigation.”
“And us? I assume you’re blaming her for the carriage wheel as well? I hardly think she would take leave of the Assembly Room with saw in hand and cut the wheels.”
Amy took the seat alongside him. “She would have hired someone. I doubt ’tis hard to find a man who could use the blunt to wait until the drivers were busy with their visit, cut the wheels, and move along.”
William ran his fingers through his hair. “We need to stop and consider this.” He stared straight ahead for a minute. “If your theory is correct, what you are saying is Lady Carlisle killed St. Vincent, then attempted to do away with Sir Holstein and us because we were investigating the murder.”
“Yes.”
“But what about the police? She can’t do away with the entire force. They are investigating the murder, and, I might add, better than we had originally thought.”
These, of course, were all issues she’d thought about the night before. ’Twas hard to think badly of someone you knew well, and who was so upstanding in the community. “Lady Carlisle is married to the man who will soon be named ambassador to France. Her husband has strong and powerful connections, right up to the Queen. I’m not saying he could pay someone to remain silent, but he could certainly put enough pressure on government higher-ups to close the case and declare it ‘unsolved.’”
“And then whisk his wife off to France,” William added.
Amy nodded. “Precisely. It’s not as if Mr. St. Vincent’s only living relative, Mr. Harris, would raise a fuss and be heartbroken if they never found the murderer. In fact, he would probably be glad he was no longer under consideration.”
William shook his head. “Those are some serious accusations you are making here, Amy. Dangerous ones. If you are correct, and Lady Carlisle has been the culprit all along, we are in her sights. Lord Carlisle might be able to drag her off to France with no one the wiser, using his connections, but we have no reason to look away. She would know this.”
“Hence the wagon wheel.”
“But might I remind you, we are not dead.”
“Yet.” Amy gulped.
William rose and began to pace. The carpet would be threadbare by the time this case was solved. “All right, let’s go back a bit here. My brain is still trying to take this all in and make sense of it. When you came to your conclusion, did you by any chance stumble upon a motive? We can’t assume she was also in love with St. Vincent and was angry that he was marrying you, as we did with Miss Hemphill.”
Amy hopped up and strode across the room and picked up a book. She flipped through the pages until she came to where she’d marked it earlier with a slip of paper. She began to read:
“A feeling of euphoria overcomes the body after an ingestion of opium. One feels happy, relaxed, and in a state of somnolence.” She looked up at William. “Remember seeing Lady Carlisle like that at the club meeting?”