Chapter 33 Saturday, 13 June 2026 #4
‘I didn’t know he’d killed Madison. Or that she’d kept blackmailing him, after the first time.
But when we got up there, he went instantly into defence mode.
He tried to blame me for ruining his life – because I was careless with the photos.
As if it was perfectly fine to be fucking a seventeen-year-old, as if the single problem with our bedroom shoot, with the whole affair, was that the photos got out.
Photos that no one linked to him, mind you. Except Madison.’
Hannah was desperate to know how Madison had figured it out, but that was hardly the most important detail right now. She bit down on the inside of her cheek.
‘There must have been a dozen pictures in that envelope,’ Gemma said, clocking Hannah’s confusion. ‘Paul was in at least two of them, head on. Madison knew it was him from the start, but she only sent a select few to The Upper Edge.’
Hannah sat back in her seat. ‘Because she had her own agenda – breaking up Elle and Theo.’
‘Guess so.’ With one fingertip, Gemma traced the rim of her glass.
‘Anyway, I asked him to meet me on the roof. I’d seen the No Admittance sign coming out of my interview in the Caraway Room, so naturally I’d gone up to peek.
It was private up there, no one would hear our conversation.
And when I saw you and Theo disappear from the hallway behind reception, I went exploring.
Once I found that secret stairwell, I slipped Paul a note with instructions for how to get to the roof unnoticed. ’
Hannah grimaced. It was her tryst with Theo that had given Gemma the access she needed to get Mr Harris alone.
‘I was terrified to see him again, after all this time, but he looked awful. Puffy eyes, beer belly – you could tell he’d turned into a drinker.
He wasn’t the cute young teacher I’d fallen for, and that gave me a much-needed dose of courage.
But right away, he lit into me. It was hard to tell who he hated more – me or Madison.
He said she’d taken a sick kind of joy from making his life miserable.
She was the reason his novel still hadn’t found a publisher, the reason he was still single, the reason he was still at Prescott, not some bestselling author with a teaching post at Vassar or Bard. ’
Hannah’s stomach clenched. She’d had a similar thought the night of the gala, then dismissed it. She’d been so close to putting it all together, but she’d let Elle get into her head. Fuck.
‘But he refused to take responsibility for his own role in his fate – railing against Madison, then tracing it all back to my “carelessness”. Forget the fact that he was sleeping with a high school student, that he took those photos. It was all “woe is me, my life is ruined”, and never “guess I’m paying for my sins”, you know? ’
Hannah’s heart slammed against her ribcage. ‘What an egotistical asshole.’
‘Precisely. We’d been talking for five minutes, maybe ten, when it hit me that he’d done it. Killed Madison, hoping everyone would assume it had been the work of one of her former classmates. That’s when I knew I was in danger.’
‘You thought he was going to kill you too?’
‘I knew he was. He was talking about her latest offensive, how she’d sabotaged his relationship with some big deal literary agent, and I could see it in his eyes. He knew that I knew. And he wasn’t going to let me leave that roof.’
Hannah’s mouth was dry. She gripped the stem of her empty wine glass. ‘So, you pushed him?’
Gemma shook her head. ‘I’ll get to that. First, I tried to convince him that no one would believe me if I told the truth. The detectives were fixated on that emerald green tux jacket; everyone was talking about it. I knew they’d zeroed in on Oliver.’
A theory Hannah had helped lock into place.
‘But it was Mr Harris wearing the jacket,’ she said slowly.
‘Of course. When Oliver came up to me just minutes after Madison’s murder, he’d taken his jacket off.
Mr Harris must have slipped it on before following Madison down the hall, knowing that if anyone glimpsed him in the dark, they would assume they were seeing Oliver. ’
‘That tracks,’ Gemma said.
‘And the remote in the pocket.’ Hannah continued. ‘Mr Harris left it there on purpose, knowing it was so small Oliver probably wouldn’t notice it, but when the detectives searched the jacket, it would lead to his arrest.’
Gemma nodded. ‘He set it all up. And he got lucky. If it wasn’t for me, the Lenox Club wouldn’t even have a smart lighting system.’
Hannah’s eyebrows arched.
‘Fall of senior year, Edward Beaumont and I started up a collab. He was at Yale, and he wasn’t sure if Beaumont Capital was his future.
He didn’t give a shit about me, but he wanted to learn about smart home tech, and my parents’ company was booming.
Edward saw dollar signs, all he’s ever cared about, and I thought I could get my parents’ attention for once, impress them with my entrepreneurial spirit.
They loaned me five K and gave me their blessing.
Anyway, when Richard caught wind of our project, he shamed Edward into dropping it.
He pulled out, no explanation, and I lost the whole five grand. My parents were furious.’
‘You said this was fall of senior year?’
Gemma nodded. ‘Things fell apart right before Thanksgiving.’
So that’s why Gemma had reacted so strangely when Hannah had told her about running into Edward at the Après-Thanksgiving party at the club.
Not because she’d been involved with Edward – at least not romantically.
Because he’d screwed her over. It was a minor mystery, but after all this time, the truth still felt satisfying.
‘Anyway, years later, after Richard’s death, Edward hired my family’s company to make some modernisations around the club.’
‘Residual guilt?’
‘Probably. But Phipps Co. only did the lighting before Bash intervened. That little fucker cancelled plans for any further modernisations. And he insisted on a remote for the lights, of course, no app. He couldn’t stand the idea of the Lenox Club moving into the twenty-first century.’
‘Hence no cameras in the club. The no-devices policy. No key cards.’
‘Exactly. Nothing that would have made it easier for the detectives to track Madison’s killer. But see, Paul knew all that. The gala wasn’t Prescott’s first event at the club. He’d probably been there a dozen times, over the years. He would have known the complete lack of tech would be a shield.’
‘And he probably also knew about the lighting. Where the remote was stored. The Lenox Club was the perfect stage for his revenge scheme.’
Gemma nodded. ‘Clearly, he did his research. But up on the roof, once he saw I’d figured it out, he came at me. He was as furious with me as he’d been with Madison, and he’d let his anger cloud his judgement. He knew he’d said too much.’
‘What happened, after he came at you?’
Gemma dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘We struggled, near the edge. He slammed me up against the wall, I still have a massive bruise on my hip. For a moment there, I thought it was over.’ She looked stricken, replaying the memory.
Then a smile played across her lips. ‘Thank god he was so out of shape.’
She picked up her glass, drained the dregs of her cocktail. ‘It was him or me, Hannah. And I wasn’t about to let him destroy my life a second time.’
Hannah leaned in and dropped her voice. ‘You have to go to the police. Tell them it was self-defence. He was trying to kill you.’
‘Absolutely not.’ Gemma stood, pulled out the handle of her pink rollaboard.
‘The bruise. It’s still visible on your hip?’
‘Which proves what exactly? That I’m clumsy?’
Thin tendrils of panic bloomed in Hannah’s chest. She’d pointed the finger at Oliver. He’d been charged with not one but two murders he hadn’t committed because of her. It was her responsibility to fix this.
‘Then don’t tell them about the roof,’ she said in a rush. ‘You can say you spoke to Mr Harris earlier in the night. And he confessed to Madison’s murder.’
Gemma pulled out her phone and shot off a quick text. Then she started for the door, Hannah on her heels.
‘I considered that, okay? But why would he confess to me for no reason?’
‘You’ll think of something. We’ll go together. We’ll—’