The formal interview with Margaret Fairfax was scheduled for ten o'clock on a Thursday morning, in the same grey room where Julian Croft had sat weeks earlier. Clara had chosen the time deliberately—late enough that Margaret would have spent a restless night anticipating the summons, early enough that the day's press cycle had not yet begun. The media had been camped outside the Fairfax estate since the news of Helena's body broke, and Clara had no intention of giving them a photograph of the Lavender Widow being led into the station in handcuffs.
Margaret arrived alone, without a solicitor. She wore a dress of dove-grey wool, simple and unadorned, and she walked through the station's rear entrance with the same poised composure she had displayed at the hospital, at the estate, at every encounter Clara had witnessed. The only change was in her eyes: they were darker now, the surface calm underlaid with something deeper—acceptance, perhaps, or the stillness that comes after a long-awaited storm.
She declined the offer of tea. She sat with her hands folded on the table, her ankles crossed, her posture as perfect as a dancer's. Clara took the seat opposite and activated the recording equipment.
"Interview commencing at ten-oh-four," Clara said. "Present are Detective Inspector Clara Vance and Lady Margaret Fairfax. Lady Fairfax, you have been advised of your rights and you have declined legal representation. Is that correct?"
"It is," Margaret said. "I don't need a solicitor. I've read enough law to know my rights."
"Then you know that you are being interviewed under caution in connection with the murder of your husband, Lord Edmund Fairfax. You are not obliged to say anything, but anything you do say may be given in evidence."
Margaret inclined her head. "I understand."
Clara opened the folder before her. It contained the toxicology reports, the photographs of the monkshood, the gardening book with its two sets of handwriting, and the letter from Grenville College—the original sin, as Rosamund had called it. Clara placed the letter on the table first.
"Let's start with this. A letter you wrote thirty years ago, withdrawing your article from the Grenville College Law Review so that your future husband could publish it under his own name. Do you recognise it?"
Margaret's gaze rested on the letter. Her expression did not change, but something in the air around her seemed to tighten. "Yes. I wrote it. I remember the day I signed it. Edmund told me it was a formality. He said the Law Review wouldn't accept the article if it had my name on it—something about the editor not publishing student work from women. He said if I wanted the ideas to be heard, I had to let him present them."
"And you believed him?"
"I was twenty-two years old. I was in love. And I had been told my entire life that a woman's ideas were only valuable if a man was willing to carry them." Margaret's voice was steady. "So yes, I believed him. I believed him for twenty-five years."
"Until you killed him."
The words hung in the air. Margaret did not flinch. "Detective Inspector, I did not kill my husband. I grew flowers in my garden. Beautiful flowers. If those flowers contained toxic compounds, that is a matter of botany, not criminal intent."
"Your gardener, Tobias Finch, has given a statement. He says you were the only person who tended the monkshood. He says you instructed him never to touch those particular plants—that they were 'your special project.'"
"Tobias is seventy-two and arthritic. I didn't want him straining himself on the heavy soil. That's not evidence of murder, Inspector. That's evidence of consideration."
Clara pushed the gardening book across the table. "This book was found in your garden shed. It contains detailed annotations on the cultivation and extraction of aconitine. The handwriting matches yours. The pages are dog-eared. The margins are filled with notes on dosage, on the symptoms of low-level poisoning, on the exact methods of preparing a tincture that could mimic heart disease."
Margaret glanced at the book with an expression of mild interest. "I've always been a thorough gardener. I like to understand the plants I grow. Monkshood is a fascinating species—its history, its medicinal uses, its toxicity. I read about it extensively. I read about many things. If reading were a crime, half the libraries in Veridia would be in prison."
"The forensic chemist who analysed your garden equipment found traces of aconitine on a mortar and pestle in your shed. The same mortar and pestle you used to prepare herbal remedies for your husband."
"Edmund suffered from neuralgia. For years. I made him tinctures from various plants—lavender, valerian, feverfew. I may have experimented with monkshood in very dilute concentrations. It has a long history in homeopathic medicine. I never intended to harm him."
"Homeopathic medicine," Clara repeated. "The toxicology reports show that your husband had been ingesting aconitine for at least eighteen months. The doses were carefully calibrated—too small to kill immediately, but cumulative. His symptoms were misdiagnosed as angina, as stress, as the natural decline of a man in his sixties. That's not homeopathy. That's a calculated poisoning."
Margaret met her gaze. "If someone was poisoning my husband, it was not me. Perhaps it was one of his political enemies. There were many. Perhaps it was Julian Croft—he had motive enough. Perhaps it was Isadora Locke, who fled the country rather than face questioning. Or perhaps it was someone who knew about the developers, about the bribes, about the Locke Inquiry. Someone who wanted him silenced before he could implicate them."
"The Locke Inquiry," Clara said, seizing the opening. "You knew about it?"
"Of course. Helena told me everything. She was my sister. We may have been estranged, but when she began investigating Edmund's redistricting, she came to me. She wanted my help. She wanted access to Edmund's safe."
"And did you help her?"
Margaret's composure faltered, just for a moment. "I tried to warn her. I told her she was in danger. I told her the people she was investigating were ruthless. But she wouldn't stop. She was always like that—relentless, fearless, unwilling to compromise. She thought the truth would protect her. She was wrong."
"You went to the estate the night of the gala," Clara said. "You knew Helena was going to break into Edmund's safe. You knew she was going to find that letter. You sent the letter to Rosamund Thorne after Helena died. Why?"
"Because I wanted the world to know what Edmund had done. What he had been doing for thirty years. The letter was evidence of his original sin—the first theft, the one that made all the others possible. I sent it to Rosamund because she was the only one of the Daughters who still had the power to make it public." Margaret's voice hardened. "Helena died for that letter. I was not going to let her death be meaningless."
Clara leaned back. The confession was not a confession of murder, but it was a confession of something—complicity, perhaps, or a cold, determined pursuit of posthumous justice. Margaret Fairfax had not pulled the trigger, but she had loaded the gun and aimed it at her husband's legacy.
"Where were you on the night Helena died?"
"At the estate. Alone. Edmund was at a constituency dinner. I stayed home—I often did, when he didn't need me on his arm. I read. I gardened. I went to bed early. There are no witnesses, Inspector. I live a very quiet life."
"Helena's phone records show that she called the estate that night. A call lasting seven minutes. The last call she ever made, except to Rosamund Thorne."
Margaret's expression flickered. "She called to tell me she had the letter. She was exultant. She said she was going to take it to the press the next morning. I told her to be careful. I told her to go somewhere safe. She said she was meeting someone first—an ally, someone who had helped her get into the safe. She didn't tell me who."
"An ally," Clara repeated. "Sebastian Vane?"
"I don't know. She never named her sources. She was careful about that." Margaret's voice dropped. "I have spent weeks asking myself the same question. Who did she trust enough to meet alone, at night, in a city she knew was hostile to her? Who betrayed her?"
Clara watched Margaret closely. The grief in her voice was real—Clara had interviewed enough bereaved relatives to know the difference between performed sorrow and genuine anguish. But Margaret Fairfax was a woman of many layers, and Clara could not shake the suspicion that even her grief was being deployed for a purpose.
"I'm going to ask you directly," Clara said. "Did you kill your husband?"
"No."
"Did you poison him, over a period of months, using aconitine extracted from the monkshood in your garden?"
"No."
"Did you know that he was being poisoned?"
A pause. The longest pause of the interview. Margaret's hands, which had been still throughout, tightened slightly. "I suspected. He was unwell. The doctors couldn't explain it. I began to wonder. But I didn't know for certain until the toxicology report came back."
"And you didn't think to mention your suspicions to his physicians? To the police? To anyone?"
"I am a woman, Detective Inspector. I have spent my entire life being told that my suspicions were hysteria, my concerns were overreactions, and my intelligence was a decoration rather than a tool. Why would I expect anyone to believe me?"
The words were not defensive but factual, delivered with the calm precision of someone stating an observable truth. Clara felt, despite herself, a flicker of something that might have been respect.
The interview continued for another hour. Clara circled back to the same questions, probing for inconsistencies, looking for the crack in Margaret's composure. But Margaret Fairfax had spent twenty-five years constructing a persona of perfect, impenetrable grace, and that persona held. She did not confess. She did not falter. She answered every question with the same patient, sorrowful poise.
When the recording was deactivated and the interview concluded, Margaret rose from her chair. "Am I under arrest, Detective Inspector?"
"Not yet," Clara said. "But you will remain under investigation. Don't leave the city."
Margaret smiled—the same smile Clara had seen in a hundred photographs, gentle and opaque. "Where would I go? The garden needs tending."
She walked out of the interview room with the measured, unhurried stride of a woman who had never been in a hurry and never would be. Clara watched her go, the grey wool dress disappearing into the corridor, and felt the familiar prickle at the back of her neck.
The evidence was damning but circumstantial. The motive was overwhelming but not, in itself, proof. Margaret had the knowledge, the means, and the opportunity. But the confession Clara needed was still locked somewhere behind that serene facade.
At the station, the media had gotten wind of the interview. By the time Clara emerged from the incident room, the front pages were already being printed. "THE LAVENDER WIDOW SPEAKS" read one headline. Another, more lurid, proclaimed: "POISON GARDEN WIFE: 'I AM INNOCENT.'"
Clara called the forensic unit. "Any progress on the fibre match to Sebastian Vane?"
"We've confirmed the fibres are from his tailor, but he's got a dozen suits from the same fabric. It narrows the field, but it's not a smoking gun. We need more."
"Then find more." Clara hung up and stared at the evidence board on her wall. Photographs of Edmund Fairfax, Margaret, Helena, Isadora, Sebastian, Rosamund. Lines of connection drawn in marker, criss-crossing like the electoral map that had started it all.
Sebastian Vane had the most to lose from Helena's investigation. He had the alibi of the Law Society dinner, but Rosamund had called him during the dinner, and he had said he would "handle it." The fibre evidence placed him—or someone in his suit—at the scene of Helena's death. But Clara could not shake the feeling that she was still missing something. A final piece. A name.
She pulled out her phone and called Genevieve Vane. "Your brother," Clara said. "Did he know about the original sin? The letter Margaret signed?"
Genevieve was silent for a moment. "If he did, he never told me. But Sebastian was always interested in power—who had it, who wanted it, who could be controlled by the threat of losing it. If he knew that Edmund's entire career was built on a stolen article, he would have used it. He would have held it over Edmund's head for years."
"That's what I thought." Clara thanked her and hung up.
The letter. The original sin. The foundation of Edmund's career, stolen from the woman he married. Sebastian Vane had known about it—Clara was certain now. He had used it to control Edmund, to ensure his cooperation with the Ethics Committee's whitewash. And when Helena found the letter and threatened to expose everything, Sebastian had panicked.
But he hadn't struck the blow himself. The alibi was too solid. Someone else had wielded the weapon. Someone in a navy-blue suit. Someone Helena had trusted.
Clara looked at the evidence board again, her eyes moving from face to face. And then she stopped. She looked at the photograph of Rosamund Thorne—tall, angular, sharp-featured—and remembered the detail she had overlooked.
Rosamund had been at the Law Society dinner. Rosamund had been seated at Sebastian's table. Rosamund had called Sebastian when Helena told her about the break-in. But Rosamund had also admitted to Clara that she had "stepped out to take a phone call" during the main course. Ten minutes, she had said. Ten minutes was enough time to drive from the Gilded Acacia to the canal and back. Barely.
Clara called the station's traffic division. "I need CCTV footage from the area around the Gilded Acacia on the night of the Law Society dinner. Focus on the time between eight and nine-thirty. I'm looking for a woman in a navy-blue suit, driving a vehicle registered to Rosamund Thorne."
She hung up and waited. The net was tightening, but it was tightening around more than one quarry. Somewhere in the city, Sebastian Vane was still in custody, protected by his expensive solicitor and his ironclad alibi. And somewhere else, Rosamund Thorne was in her glass office, believing she had escaped suspicion.
But Clara had learned, over the long weeks of this case, that the women of the Daughters of Themis were never what they seemed. They were patient, they were careful, and they had spent decades learning how to survive in a world that wanted to erase them.
One of them had killed Helena Sinclair. And Clara was going to find out which one.
No comments yet. Be the first to comment!