Chapter TWENTY-THREE
‘Evelyn or Joyce.’
I looked at Mark.
‘Is something wrong?’
asked Sylvia, looking worried.
‘No, no. Everything’s absolutely fine. We’re just so delighted you’re getting better.’
Mark patted her hand.
‘We’ll leave you now to get a good night’s sleep.’
Sylvia smiled.
‘A bride should glow on her wedding day. So it’s a good job I bought a brand new blusher,’
she added, her eyes twinkling.
‘She’s making jokes,’
I said as we went downstairs.
‘That’s a really good sign.’
‘It is, isn’t it?’
He frowned.
‘It was Evelyn who “found” the medication.’
‘So it was. Maybe she had it all along, then. And just pretended to find it.’
We found Evelyn in the kitchen, wrapped in her dressing gown making hot chocolate.
‘Good idea.’
I smiled at her.
‘Mark? Would you like a hot chocolate?’
‘I’ll have another whisky and soda, I think. But you go ahead.’
He paused. Then he said.
‘Well done for spotting Sylvia’s meds under that table, Evelyn.’
‘Oh, yes.’
She smiled and carried on stirring the hot chocolate.
‘Thank goodness we found them. I know the paramedics arrived fairly soon after, but timing can be everything with these things, can’t it?’
I nodded in agreement.
‘The funny thing is, I was sure I looked under that table earlier. I suppose I mustn’t have looked hard enough.’
‘No, I . . . I suppose you mustn’t have.’
She stopped stirring.
‘Actually, I said that very thing to Joyce when she spotted something lying under the table and it turned out to be the medication. I said how strange we hadn’t noticed them before.’
I glanced at Mark.
‘Hold on, so it was Joyce who first spotted the medication under the table?’
‘Yes.’
Evelyn nodded eagerly.
‘And when I bent to retrieve it, I realised straight away what it was. The black box!’
Calmly, Mark asked.
‘Do you know where Joyce is, Evelyn?’
‘Oh, yes. She said she’d be along shortly. I’m making her some hot chocolate.’
‘Thanks, Evelyn.’
I smiled and indicated to Mark that we should leave the kitchen and intercept Joyce so we could speak to her alone.
She was coming down the stairs as we entered the hall.
‘What a relief that Sylvia’s all right now,’
she said, her hand pressed to her heart.
‘I was terrified we might have lost her.’
‘We think someone deliberately hid her medication, actually wanting to cause her harm,’
said Mark softly.
‘What?’
Her face fell.
‘Deliberately? No, surely not.’
Her pace had slowed and a tell-tale redness was rising up from her neck.
‘Joyce, do you own a silver heart-shaped box?’
I asked her softly, meeting her at the bottom of the staircase.
‘With a mermaid on the lid?’
‘What?’
She swallowed, looking distressed.
‘Well, yes. Yes, I do. It belonged to my sister. She gave it to me just before she died. But what’s that got to do with Sylvia’s medication going missing?’
‘Because we know the meds were hidden in that box,’
said Mark.
‘You left a syringe inside it.’
‘Did I?’
She looked appalled.
Then she realised her mistake and she crumpled in front of our eyes.