Isadora Locke had not, as it turned out, fled to some sun-bleached Mediterranean refuge or a chalet in the alpine provinces. She had gone to ground in a rented cottage on the outskirts of a village called Thornwick, a place so small that it appeared on no tourist maps and so quiet that the arrival of an unmarked police car at dusk drew curtains twitching in every window. Clara Vance had found her through a chain of credit card transactions—a cash withdrawal in the capital, a train ticket to the eastern provinces, a series of small purchases at a village grocery that specialised in organic produce and discretion.
The cottage was stone-built and ivy-covered, set back from a lane that saw more sheep than vehicles. Smoke rose from its chimney in a thin grey column, and a single light burned in the downstairs window. Clara parked the car and walked up the path through a garden that had been left to its own devices, the lavender bushes sprawling unpruned, the rosehips bright against the winter grey.
Isadora Locke opened the door before Clara could knock. She was younger than Clara had expected—mid-forties perhaps, with dark hair pulled back in a hasty knot and the wary, hollow-eyed look of someone who had not slept well in weeks. She wore a fisherman's sweater over jeans, and her hands, when she crossed her arms over her chest, were trembling slightly.
"You're the detective," she said. "The one who arrested Sebastian."
"News travels."
"In my world, news is survival." Isadora stepped back and gestured Clara inside. "I knew you'd come eventually. I've been watching the reports. The Fairfax case, the Locke Inquiry, Helena. I know what you think. I know what everyone thinks. But I didn't kill anyone."
The cottage interior was sparse but warm—a fire crackling in the hearth, a stack of books on the floor beside a worn armchair, a single suitcase open on the kitchen table. Isadora had been living out of that suitcase for two weeks, and it showed in the tidiness of desperation, the neat piles of clothing and documents that could be packed at a moment's notice.
"I'm not here to accuse you," Clara said, taking a seat by the fire. "I'm here to understand. You were Edmund Fairfax's mistress. You were a partner at Locke & Calder. You handled the transactions that Helena Sinclair believed were bribes. And then you fled the country after a woman in lavender warned you that the scandal was about to break. I need you to tell me what happened."
Isadora sank into the armchair, her hands still trembling. "Where do you want me to start?"
"Start with Edmund. How did it begin?"
A long pause. The fire spat and crackled. "Edmund was a client first. The firm had handled his campaign's legal work for years—compliance, donations, the boring machinery of political finance. I was assigned to his account because I was good at it, and because I was a woman, and the senior partners thought a woman would be less threatening to the donor class. Edmund liked me. He liked that I was smart. He liked that I didn't challenge him."
"Did you know he was married?"
"Of course. Everyone knew. Margaret was a fixture at his events—quiet, elegant, invisible. I told myself I wasn't doing anything wrong because the marriage was clearly a formality. That's what Edmund told me, anyway. He said she understood. He said she had her own life." Isadora's laugh was bitter. "I believed him. I wanted to believe him."
"When did the developers become involved?"
Isadora's expression hardened. "About four years ago. A consortium approached the firm—Aldous Thwaites and his associates. They had acquired options on land across several districts, but the existing electoral boundaries made unified development difficult. They needed the boundaries redrawn. And they knew Edmund was leading the redistricting effort."
"So they bribed him."
"'Bribe' is a complicated word. They made campaign contributions, which is legal. They offered future board positions, which is legal. They promised support for his leadership ambitions, which is legal. Everything was structured to be technically permissible. That was my job—to ensure that the transactions passed scrutiny if anyone ever looked." Isadora's voice dropped. "But Helena looked. And she saw what I had spent years pretending not to see. The map was bought. Every line, every district, every erased community—it was all paid for."
Clara leaned forward. "Did Edmund know? Did he understand what he was doing?"
"He understood perfectly. He just didn't care. Edmund believed that power was its own justification. He used to say that maps were just lines on paper, and lines could be moved. When I tried to raise concerns—once, only once—he laughed and said I was being naïve. He said everyone did it. He said the only crime was getting caught."
"And when Helena started her investigation?"
Isadora's face tightened. "Edmund panicked. Not publicly—he never showed weakness in public. But privately, he was terrified. He knew what Helena would find. He knew the Ethics Committee was involved. He asked me to help contain the damage."
"How?"
"He wanted me to discredit Helena. To find something in her past, some scandal or mistake, that would make her evidence seem unreliable. I refused. I told him I would not destroy an innocent woman to protect his career. That was the beginning of the end between us."
Clara studied her. Isadora Locke was either telling the truth or performing remorse with exceptional skill. "If you refused to help him, why did you flee? What were you afraid of?"
Isadora rose and walked to the window. Beyond it, the winter dark had settled over the village. "The night of the gala, before Edmund collapsed, I received a message. A note, slipped under the door of my hotel room. It said: 'The Locke Inquiry is going public. You are in danger. Leave Veridia tonight.' It was unsigned."
"And you followed its advice."
"Not immediately. I went to the gala. I thought I could confront Edmund, demand to know what was happening. But before I could reach him, he collapsed." Isadora turned, her face pale. "I saw Margaret that night, in the cloakroom. She was wearing lavender silk. She looked at me, and I knew—I knew she had sent the note. She was trying to save me. Not because she cared about me, but because she knew what was coming. She knew Edmund was dying. And she wanted me out of the way before the investigation began."
"Did she say anything to you?"
"Only one thing. She said, 'He took everything from both of us. Don't let him take anything more.' And then she walked back into the ballroom, and ten minutes later her husband was on the floor."
Clara absorbed this. The narrative was consistent with Genevieve's account and the fragmentary evidence from the gala. Margaret Fairfax had orchestrated her husband's death with the same patient precision she had applied to her garden. And she had tried to protect Isadora Locke—not out of kindness, but out of a shared understanding of what Edmund had stolen from them both.
"Who killed Helena?" Clara asked. "Do you know?"
Isadora's face closed. "I have suspicions. But I can't prove them."
"Suspect, then. Give me a name."
Another long silence. The fire crackled. Finally, Isadora spoke. "Rosamund Thorne."
The name Clara had been circling for days. "Why Rosamund?"
"Because she was the one who connected everything. Rosamund had been my mentor at the firm—she helped me make partner, she guided my career. But she also had ties to Sebastian Vane. They were close, closer than colleagues should be. And she was the one who introduced Edmund to the developers in the first place. I didn't know that until later, but when I started digging after Helena's death, I found the paper trail. Rosamund Thorne brokered the deal. She took a commission. And when Helena got close to exposing it, Rosamund was the one who panicked."
"The Law Society dinner," Clara said. "The night Helena died. Rosamund was there. She was seated at Sebastian Vane's table. She wore a navy-blue suit."
Isadora's eyes widened. "Then you already know."
"I need more than coincidence. I need evidence linking Rosamund to Helena's death. Did Helena ever mention meeting with Rosamund?"
"She did. Helena called me, about a week before she died. She said she had found an unexpected ally in the Daughters of Themis—someone who was willing to help her expose the corruption. She didn't give me a name, but she said this person had access to Edmund's private files and was going to help her retrieve something from his safe."
The pendant, Clara thought. Or something else entirely. "Did she say what she was retrieving?"
"No. Just that it was the final piece of evidence she needed. Something that would prove the direct link between the developers' payments and Edmund's decisions." Isadora's voice cracked. "She was so hopeful. She thought she was about to win. And then she was dead."
Clara stood, her mind racing. Rosamund Thorne had presented herself to Helena as an ally, a fellow Daughter of Themis who wanted to see justice done. But she had actually been the architect of the conspiracy—the one who had connected the developers to Edmund, the one who had taken a commission, the one who had the most to lose if the truth came out. And she had been at the Law Society dinner, seated beside Sebastian Vane, on the night Helena died.
"Did Rosamund know you were going to flee?" Clara asked.
"No. I didn't tell anyone. I just left."
"Then she doesn't know where you are. That's good. Stay here. Don't contact anyone. I'll arrange for an officer to watch the cottage."
Isadora nodded, her relief palpable. "What are you going to do?"
"Confront Rosamund Thorne. And hope that she makes a mistake."
Clara drove back through the dark, the roads winding through villages that were shutting their doors against the night. She called the station and asked for everything they had on Rosamund Thorne—financial records, phone logs, travel history, the bespoke suit that matched the fibres under Helena's fingernails.
It was time to close the net.
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