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“You figured it all out.” Miss Charming didn’t bother with her British accent even though the men were present. “Wow. You’re like Jessica Fletcher.”
“I am in shock,” said Eddie. “Andrews, you and I were most likely the last to see him alive.”
“Mallery must have returned to Wattlesbrook right after dinner,
and then joined us in the drawing room as cool as anything,” Colonel Andrews said. “Perhaps he’d only intended to give him a talking-to?”
“Gave him a talking-to, all right,” Eddie said.
“I guess Mary saw him with Mr. Wattlesbrook,” said Charlotte.
“She played our garden ghost, you know,” said Colonel Andrews. “I told the lads I’d need a helper for my charade, and Mallery suggested Mary. He said she’d do anything for him.”
That’s proving true, Charlotte thought.
If she were in an Agatha Christie novel, she supposed, this would be when the story would end, with the murderer caught. But she still had three more days in Austenland. Speculation and chatter continued, and Charlotte’s head felt too muddled to be indoors. As soon as she could, she slipped outside.
It was dark already, the sky firmly black. The air was pleasantly cool, but she shivered.
I wonder if I’m going to have a nervous breakdown, she thought calmly.
“Charlotte?” Eddie called.
“I just need some fresh air,” she said without turning. She wasn’t surprised he’d followed. It felt right. “I don’t want four walls around me. I thought I was going to die in that secret room.”
She held out her hand without thinking, and he took it. They walked to the side of the house, out of sight of the road where the police would shortly be coming. She didn’t want to see anyone right then, except Eddie.
They leaned against the house and looked at the stars.
“So you really did find a body in that room,” he said.
“I guess I did.”
“Here you’ve been, a spider in the corner, observing, weaving Charlotte’s web of mystery.”
“Or stumbling around, confused and pathetic.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t believe—” he started to say, then snorted with a laugh. “It is kind of ridiculous.”
“Yeah.” She snorted too.
He laughed again.
Then the dam broke. Charlotte leaned over and laughed so hard her stomach strained, laughed till she wept, then the weeping took over, and she cry-laughed and laugh-cried. Eddie held on to her, and she put her head on his shoulder and ached with crying and laughing.
“He was trying to kill me for real,” she said. “He really was.”
“That must be surreal.”
“It is. That’s just the word for it. Maybe I’m going crazy?”
“Going?”
“Oh man, he lied to me, lied a lot.”
“Mallery lied to all of us.”
“Not Mallery—I mean, James, my ex. Mallery just wanted to kill me, which should top the list of relationship enders, but what James did feels even worse. Still, the whole attempted murder is not going to help me much long-term, is it? I mean, my ability to trust in men has got to be permanently damaged, right? Eddie, tell me truthfully, are all men—” She stopped.
