Chapter 15
The next morning, I sat on the bench in the cemetery.
Isabella lounged on the ground next to her gravestone, wiggling her fingers over Duchess’s head and letting the feline reach for them.
With a little shriek, Isabella recoiled as the cat leapt higher than expected and nearly swiped her hand.
I bit my lip to keep from smiling as she tossed her head and laughed at the near miss.
I’d come to the cemetery, going over Isabella’s journal entry by entry with her, to no avail. “Are you sure you can’t remember anything from that day? Is there anything prior to that day that could be useful?”
Isabella sat up, pulling Duchess into her lap. “Yes, I’ve been sitting on a vital piece of information that will come out any minute.” She rolled her eyes. “I can’t remember anything.”
I flipped through the diary. “There has to be something,” I insisted.
Some avenue I hadn’t explored. Some explanation why someone might want to possess Frank and end Isabella’s life.
Her gaze turned suspicious. Duchess squirmed in her hands and clawed her way out of Isabella’s grasp, twisting until she climbed up and perched on Isabella’s shoulder, like a parrot. “Why are we doing this? What aren’t you telling me?”
I ignored Duchess’s adorable antics and took a deep breath. “It was Frank that bit you.”
Her eyes widened to the size of the cat next to her. “Frank? Come now, he doesn’t hate me that much,” she said jokingly. “Besides, I created his potion, and you said that Lydia delivered it.”
“Whatever potion Lydia delivered, it wasn’t wolfsbane. He was possessed by someone.”
“Lydia switched the potions?” Her brows drew together. “Why would she do that? And Frank, who could be despicable enough to use him like that?”
“I’m sorry.” I shifted on the bench. “That must be hard to hear, considering your feelings for him.”
Her head reared back so suddenly Duchess arched and leapt off her shoulder, disappearing behind a headstone. “My feelings? For Frank?”
I nodded. “I saw the line in your diary about your infatuation with him.”
“What line?”
I opened the journal and flipped to the passage and held it up so she could see. “This.”
She leaned close to take in the words I’d first read in Isabella’s room during her vigil. “And you think C refers to Frank?” She broke into a fit of giggles.
“Well, you made potions for him and his last name starts with C,” I said defensively. It was uncanny how conversations with Isabella often reminded me of talking to one of my sisters.
She shook her head, wiping a tear from her eye, and sighed. “I suppose I’m dead, so it’s of little consequence if I tell you.” A small final chuckle escaped her. “Mr. C stood for Charles Bingley.”
“Charles?”
“Yes. We’d dated a few years ago in college. But we broke up. Upon his arrival at Austen Heights, I resolved to win him back. I provided him with remedies. This served as my pretext for meeting. I’d managed to talk him into joining me for dinner. I was determined to turn it into something more.”
My mind reeled as I stared at her. “Was Lydia aware of this?”
“I told her a week before my death when we met up at your shop to collect some of her brews.” She glanced down, embarrassed. “I even bought one of your family’s love potions.”
“You intended to use it at the dinner.”
“It was only to remind him of what we once had,” she said a bit desperately. “Once it wore off, he could make his own choices. I-I just wanted to give us another chance.”
Charles Bingley. Lydia. Possession potion.
A sickness gathered in my stomach. No, I must be wrong.
I wanted to be wrong. But all the pieces had come together in my mind.
I shut the diary with trembling hands and returned it to my bag.
“Thank you, Isabella,” I said in a calm voice.
The books in my bag rustled as I rose on shaky legs.
“Mary, are you okay? You look pale.”
I tried to force a smile but failed. “I need to go home.”
She gasped. “You know who it is, don’t you? It is Lydia, isn’t it?”
But I couldn’t stay. “I must go and check something, I have to…”
And with that, I rushed from the cemetery, hurrying home.
I walked into the shop, trying to calm the painful pounding of my heart.
The tables remained largely unoccupied, save a couple of patrons in the corner.
I heard a noise coming from the kitchen.
I slipped into the back to find Lydia there.
Flour covered most of her chestnut brown hair and was smeared over half of her face.
Her movements, sharp and rough, pounded the dough with a rolling pin, as if she had to beat it into submission.
“Lydia?”
Her eyes flashed to me, then refocused on her cooking. “No time to talk,” she muttered, snapping up a mixing bowl. “I’m baking pies for tomorrow’s bake-off. Where’s the sugar?” She grabbed a jar of a white powder-like substance.
I eyed the perilous stacks of pies that extended almost to the ceiling. How long had she been at this? “I think you may have enough,” I offered.
“Don’t distract me. I’m concentrating,” she said.
“Is that why you are about to add salt instead of sugar?”
She froze, the scoop in her hand, before replacing it in the container with a huff.
I eased over to the counter and lifted the jar of sugar and handed it to her.
It was very much like my youngest sister to stress bake when a problem bothered her.
The easiest way to get her to talk was to join her in her cooking mania.
“Like I said. I’m busy so—”
I gently removed the phone from my pocket and placed it on the counter. “Why did you send me this text?”
She frowned, pouring too much sugar into the bowl. “I understand you wish Frank to be innocent, but you need to let go of this childish fantasy that he didn’t kill Isabella.”
I set my bag on the floor and moved to the sink, rolling up my sleeves. “But Frank didn’t kill Isabella. And we both know who did, don’t we?”
A trace of fear flashed in her eyes, and she mixed the ingredients of the bowl faster. “I have no idea what you’re referring to.”
“I was lost until you sent me this.” After wiping my hands on a towel, I pushed the phone across the flour covered counter. “Why did you send it?”
“I-I wanted you to understand that your actions are pointless. That he—”
“Frank was about to turn himself in for a crime that he didn’t do.” I gripped the dough she’d been pressing too thin and folded it, taking up the rolling pin.
Lydia’s expression sparked with relief and her frantic mixing slowed. “He was? You didn’t stop him, did you? Don’t you see that everything would be resolved and she…”
“She?”
“It doesn’t matter.” She waved a flour covered hand. “Frank needs to confess. After all, he’s the monster, the one that’s illegal. If he hadn’t been around, none of this would have happened.”
I stopped rolling to look at her in disbelief. “He intended to admit to a killing he did not commit, Lydia.”
“He did do it, Mary.”
Now it was my turn to press the dough a tad too thin. “Somebody else was in control of him.”
She paled. “What makes you say that?”
I met her gaze, and an emotion flickered in her expression as she picked up the bowl and started stirring again. She knew how I knew. She’d practically given me the answer.
The bell on the door to the store dinged, signaling a customer had entered. Lydia set the bowl down and spun on her heel, wiping her hands on her flour ridden clothes. “I’ll get it.” She stalked out into the shop.
A shrill scream rent the air. “Oh, my heavens! A ghost!”
My heart leapt. Had Isabella somehow appeared? Or had someone other than me seen Duchess? I raced out into the shop area. Duchess sat at the counter staring at the older woman who clutched her chest, but the woman’s gaze wasn’t on the cat. It was on Lydia.
With a sigh, Lydia smeared more flour over her face, trying to clear it. “Ms. Bates, it’s me.”
“Oh. My dear, you frightened me out of my skin.” Ms. Bates sucked in several deep breaths while Mrs. Long, who stood next to her, rolled her eyes and patted the woman’s back.
“It’s beyond me why I imagined you to be a ghost. I don’t even believe in ghosts.
” She let out a nervous laugh. “What about you, Mary?”
Ms. Bates always made the most awkward attempts to include me in conversations. I glanced at Duchess, who sat on the counter, still intently examining the older woman as if she’d lost her marbles. “Not one bit.”
“Yes. Good, good,” Mrs. Long muttered, shifting to see past both of us into the kitchen area.
“We simply wanted to check how things were progressing for the bake-off tomorrow. You know the time is drawing near, and I just wished to ensure everything was going well for you and your dear mother, who is our dearest friend in the world.”
Ms. Bates nodded sincerely.
Mrs. Long’s eyes held a mischievous gleam. This was the annual bake-off. While Ms. Bates clearly was here to participate in a gossip session, Mrs. Long likely came to assess the competition.
“They’re going great,” Lydia said flatly.
Ms. Bates nodded, producing another nervous giggle.
“Oh good. I don’t suppose your mother’s home?” Mrs. Long asked.
I glanced at Lydia, who didn’t meet my gaze.
“She’s out, right now.” Lydia’s words were slow and measured.
“That’s unjust, you understand. Allowing her to be a judge this year.
” Mrs. Long sniffed. “She’ll never select my prized pie, no matter how good it is.
She wouldn’t dare allow me bragging rights, although she can’t vote for her own!
” She sighed. “Well, don’t bother mentioning we stopped by.
I’m sure she’s too obsessed with her own concerns over the upcoming event to care. ”
I watched the woman without seeing her, an idea sparking in my mind. “Have a good day, Mrs. Long, Ms. Bates,” I said as they turned and bustled out the door.
Lydia’s hands covered her face, and to my surprise, it was she who resumed our interrupted conversation. “What do you want to do, Mary? You wouldn’t dare implicate your own family—”
“I love Frank. And he’s innocent and you know it. Tell me. What did you do with the wolfsbane potion the day Isabella gave it to you?”
“I put it in my purse.”
“Did you ever leave your purse unattended?”
“I placed it behind the counter when I used the bathroom,” Lydia whispered in a small voice.
“Why did you send me the text?” I said softly.
She moved her head from side to side, tears leaking between her palms. “Isabella’s dead and she was my friend. I-I hadn’t realized… why would she do this?”
“You know we can’t let her get away with this.”
Finally, she lowered her hands, and she nodded. “But what can we do?”
What could we do? Lydia and I exchanged glances, then turned toward the kitchen’s pie stacks.
“I have an idea. I need your help to make a potion.” After taking a slow breath, I looked at her. “Will you help me?”
Lydia’s face, streaked with flour, held a defiant determination. “I’ll help you.”
“Good, wait right here. I need to ask Mrs. Long a question.”