Arrabella
Peter “Paz” Doyle was found deceased in his Liverpool home fifteen years ago.
A football mate discovered his body. According to the news reports, Doyle had been increasingly ill several days before he went into cardiac arrest. He’d visited a doctor, complaining of shortness of breath, weakness, and confusion.
He told his physician he believed his wife was poisoning him.
The doctor dismissed it—Doyle was notorious for exaggeration, and for berating and gaslighting his spouse.
His wife was nowhere to be found. She failed to arrive at her job as an administrative assistant in retail. Investigators learned she’d fled the country around the time of his death. Foxglove plants grew in her small garden, and dried foxgloves leaves were found in her kitchen cupboard.
The wife was later located near Porto, Portugal.
Neighbors testified that the Doyle couple fought loudly and often, and Doyle allegedly both physically and psychologically abused her.
Neighbors also testified the couple had threatened each other’s lives.
She was charged with murder, but acquitted at trial, just as Avi Galev said.
Her defense had very effectively raised reasonable doubt.
There was also evidence of other people in Paz Doyle’s orbit—all with strong potential motive and access to foxglove leaves or other forms of digitalis.
He was in serious gambling debt, and he’d borrowed from notorious loan sharks, plus he dabbled in petty, organized crime.
Arrabella rubs her mouth as she stares at her monitor.
She doesn’t like to be reminded of gambling addictions.
Her ex has the same problem. She understands—it’s complicated.
But she also doesn’t want to feel any sympathy for Poppy, so she pushes this from her mind, along with the fact that Paz Doyle abused her.
She clicks on the photo of Paz Doyle’s wife. Enlarges it. Her pulse quickens.
Mrs. Doyle is clearly Poppy Buchanan.
After her acquittal, she vanished from media radar. Arrabella can find only one tiny follow-up mention—Paz Doyle’s wife applied to legally change her name after leaving town.
Arrabella leans back in her chair and blows out a long breath as she stretches her arms over her head.
“Poppy Buchanan” was once Mrs. Helen Doyle. A killer—because police and media still believe she poisoned her husband, even if she wasn’t convicted. Her lawyers were that good. She never did time for a heinous crime.
And now she’s working under an alias, entrusted with the well-being of one of the UK’s wealthiest widows, who happens to tend a “poison garden” of toxic plants in her own Scottish glasshouse adjacent to her castle.
Poppy has access to that greenhouse. She has access, possibly, to foxglove—and she knows how to use it.
Angus’s heart stopped suddenly after Poppy’s arrival. There was digitalis in his system. Arrabella finally has her ammunition. Now that she’s located and read these articles herself, she doesn’t need to reveal to Patrick that she hired a PI.
Poppy Buchanan is about to be blasted out of the Lillithsphere.