Chapter Twenty-Three #2
She laughed again, still shaking her head in reproach. She began to walk away, but Grace stopped her.
Grace thought quickly, reaching for another card to play.
“And yet, we don’t think you were trying to poison Harriet. We think you were trying to poison Earnest. After all, it was his drink that was poisoned, not hers.”
“Earnest?” For the first time, Frannie’s composure faltered. She paused. “Someone was trying to poison my brother?”
“The murderer put strychnine in Earnest’s drink, and then he gave it to Harriet by accident.”
“But I would never… Earnest is my…” she trailed off. But her face paled. As though in that moment, she had realized something. There was a faint twitch by her eye. She reached up to touch it.
“What is it?” Theo asked sharply. “You’ve put something together just now, haven’t you?”
Frannie swallowed. She looked dizzy.
“What does strychnine look like?” she asked, her voice faint.
Grace pulled out her makeup compact. Hidden inside was a small bag of crushed white powder.
“Like this,” she said.
Frannie took it from her. Stroked the bag with a finger that betrayed the slightest tremble. She was silent for a tense moment.
“It wasn’t me,” she said fiercely. “I would never, ever hurt my brother. He’s all I have left.”
“But you know who did it,” Theodore said. “Don’t you?”
Frannie exhaled, looking at the bag. “I saw this once. They use it for running, did you know that? He was trying to get Earnest to use it for rowing. I saw it but I didn’t realize until now that it’s what strychnine looks like.”
“Who, Frannie?” Grace asked.
Frannie closed her eyes. She whispered, “Copper.”
Theodore frowned. “But why would Copper want to kill your brother?”
“Why does anyone kill?” Frannie asked bitterly.
She tightened her grip on the bag of strychnine.
“To get to our money somehow. Now that my parents are gone, we’re all that’s left.
” Her face looked pained. “Copper must have been courting me and planning to marry me for my inheritance, especially with my brother out of the way.” Her mouth turned down into a sad, resigned grimace. “Well, I’ll be damned if that happens.”
Grace glanced over her shoulders at the sound of approaching footsteps.
“Here he comes,” Grace said.
“Quick,” Frannie said, scowling. “Hide. I’ll get a confession out of him. Just you wait and see.”
She pushed them into the shadows and smoothed her face into a mask. Then, when she had composed herself, she turned and welcomed Copper with a smile.
He strode toward her, leaning down to greet her with a kiss.
She managed to turn her face at the last moment.
And it was at precisely then that Grace realized that Frannie was still holding the little white bag.
“Were you talking to someone?” Copper asked, glancing over her shoulder.
Frannie shook her head and laughed. There was a coldness in it that he didn’t seem to notice.
“No. It must be the echoes from the party.” She glanced over the edge of the balcony toward the waterways and lagoons beneath them. “Has the president arrived yet?”
“He was just coming in,” Copper said. “Lillie said you wanted to see me?”
“I just needed a moment alone,” Frannie said, smiling sadly. “With you.”
He took her hand, then seemed to realize what was in it.
He stilled.
For a long moment, he was quiet.
“Why do you have that bag, Frannie?” he asked slowly. Grace could just see his face, limned in the light. He almost looked frightened.
The organ pipes began to ring out in the distance from within Festival Hall.
“That night of Harriet’s murder, you put this in my brother’s drink,” she said. “Why?”
A look of disbelief crossed Copper’s face.
“Is it possible you were the one to kill Harriet?” she asked. “Even accidentally?”
The athlete stepped toward her menacingly. His face twisted into something cruel. “You’re not going to try to pin this on me, are you, Frannie? I’d stop looking, if I were you. If you don’t, you’re not going to like what you find.”
“What are you saying?” she asked.
“What do I gain out of Harriet’s death?” Copper shook his head, his smile dark and glittering. “I thought you were ruthless,” he said. “And then I met your brother.”
He turned his head as Earnest stepped out from behind him.
Grace bit back a sound. Theodore grabbed Grace by the waist and held her to him. She could feel his heart beating hard beneath his shirt.
“Don’t. Move,” he whispered on the barest hint of breath into her ear.
She nodded, her hand pressed to her mouth.
Earnest walked toward where Frannie and Copper were standing.
“Frannie,” Earnest said. “You look cold.”
But it was his voice that sent a chill down Grace’s spine. She shivered and Theo pulled her closer to him.
“What is this, Earnest?” Frannie asked. She stole a glance over her shoulder, where Grace and Theodore were hiding. Her voice was shaking. “Did you know Copper was going to kill Harriet?”
“Whose idea do you think it was in the first place?” Copper said roughly.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“I never wanted you to know about this,” Earnest said, sounding apologetic. He frowned. “Did you come up with these accusations all on your own?”
“Earnest, no,” Frannie said desperately. “What are you saying? You couldn’t possibly have done this. What reason would you have?”
“Why do you think, darling sister? It was the only way I could see to save our family from ruin.”
“From ruin?” Frannie asked faintly. “Surely you don’t mean that.”
“I can assure you that I do. Our beloved late father squandered our entire fortune.”
The breath that came from Frannie was like a candle being blown out. “What?”
Earnest sighed. “When Mother and Father died, there was almost no money left. I met with Father’s attorney to discuss the state of our affairs only to discover they were in shambles.
Our house has been mortgaged and mortgaged again.
Unless I did something drastic, we were about to lose it and everything else we had. ”
Frannie blanched. “But… what does killing Harriet have to do with any of that?” she whispered.
Grace leaned forward. Theodore’s fingers tensed on her waist.
“I invested everything we had left into the flying competition, and then borrowed more. The aeronautics prize would have been enough to get us back on our feet again. I tried to sabotage everyone else to make sure we would win, but then the bloody machine exploded on me. Perhaps it had been an engineering failure. Perhaps someone had sabotaged me back. I’ll probably never know the truth. ”
Frannie was holding her head in her hands as though she were faint, and breathing quickly.
“You borrowed money?” Frannie asked. “From whom?”
“A schoolmate of ours whose family had also fallen on hard times. He understood what it was like, to have to keep up appearances when the family fortune was gone. I told him I could win. We pooled the last of our finances to enter the competition. Think, Frannie—it was more than the prize money. There would have been opportunities to take the plane on the road for paid exhibitions. We were dreaming big.”
“Instead it blew up,” Frannie said. “And now we truly have nothing?”
Earnest raked his hand through his hair.
“The truth was going to come out. My co-investor sought out Harriet the night that I crashed. He’d been keeping tabs on me throughout the Fair and had seen us all out together.
Sylvestor was desperate that night and he told Harriet that I owed him a lot of money.
She was supposed to pass on the threat.”
“Which she did, through me,” Copper said. “She had wanted to talk about money and whether Earnest was in trouble. He’d promised her that he would invest in her failing theater.”
“And she was worried that I was as broke as Sylvestor claimed. But she was too close to our circle—one word from her, and then the whole thing would come crashing down.”
“So you killed her?” Frannie asked coldly.
“I didn’t jump to that plan right away,” Earnest said. “Killing Harriet Forbes wouldn’t do anything to help restore our fortunes, after all. But there was another way. A narrow, delicate way. The only way out.”
“And that way was the Carter family,” Copper said.
Earnest scowled. “Cripes, don’t look at me that way, Frannie.
Killing Harriet accomplished the only things that would save us.
Save you. It kept her mouth shut from spilling that we were frauds and utterly broke.
And if Oliver Carter could take the fall for her murder—it was perfect.
He would no longer be able to inherit the massive Carter fortune.
And because of the scandal, no one would want to marry Lillie. ”
“Except for you,” Frannie whispered.
“Except for me. Waiting in the wings to comfort her. To look past the scandal and marry her anyway, bringing together their good money and my good family name. It was the solution that solved everything.”
Frannie was aghast. “But—this isn’t what we do, Earnest,” she said, frantic. “We follow the rules. Everyone else bends them but we don’t. They’re there to keep society functioning.” She stumbled backward, landing on the balustrade.
Copper snorted. “That’s sweet, Frances. But a little naive. Everyone twists the rules. Those who don’t get run over and left behind.”
“Do you think I wanted to be put in this situation?” Earnest said sharply. “I never wanted to become the man of the house in my twenties, or to shoulder the immense burden of our parents’ mistakes and ruined fortunes. But this was the hand I was dealt. This was the only way I could see to save us.”
Anger surged through Grace like molten gold. She could feel it burning in her veins. Earnest had played all of them for fools. He had come up with a malicious plan to save his family that in turn ruined hers. Her beloved cousins. Destroyed by this man’s pride and greed.
“So Copper got you the strychnine and put it in the glass?” Frannie asked slowly. She turned to Copper. “You were willing to risk being caught for murder for us?”