Page 35 of Potion Sickness

“Everyone has done something to everyone in this town,” Englebert says. “It’s how we entertain ourselves.”

“She was the one to set the stage,” I say. “She could’ve switched the goblets on purpose, to throw off the trail.”

“That’s a possibility,” Hannah says. “Good instinct.”

“She is the investigator here,” Gabe says.

“I’m not convinced,” Pru says. “Who else do we have?”

“Tiffany.” I don’t have to explain this one, but I do it anyway. “She’s Pru’s understudy. She’s told me several times, unprompted, that ‘things happen’ to people in this play.”

“She also has a mouth,” Hannah says. “Tiffany’s been announcing her grievances at full volume to anyone who will listen since she could talk. Would a person about to do a crime all but tell you she’s about to do the crime?”

“Sometimes that’s exactly who does the crime,” Pru says. “In my professional experience, people love to incriminate themselves. Regularly. Under oath.”

“But Annabel didn’t sense whatever was in your cup in her reading of Damien,” I say. “Even if Tiffany dosed your cup, she didn’t put Damien on the floor.”

“Then either she’s not our poisoner,” Gabe says, “or she’s a poisoner, and there’s another one.”

“There’s a thought,” Englebert says. “We have been assuming one villain because there was one body on my stage, but the evidence has been telling us two stories from the start. The working in Prudence’s cup did not fell Damien. The thing that felled Damien was never in a cup at all, at least not one of our cups. There are different weapons, different methods, and I would stake my whiskers on different hands, and we keep trying to fold them into one.”

Pu draws a line down the middle of her page and writes a heading on each side.

“Okay. Let’s try that theory out. We have two crimes. Crime one, somebody dosed my cup at the props table during the run, for reasons that are presumably about the play, because I can’t think of anything else in my life that anyone would care about beside the play. Crime two, somebody has been feeding Damien potions for days or weeks, somewhere that isn’t the theater, and something finally set him over the edge.”

“Or he’s been feeding himself,” Gabe says. “Annabel said that fits too. A man his age, in his business, buying a little help from multiple sources.”

“His ‘vitamins’,” I say, with air quotes.

“Which brings us to Skye,” Pru says, and looks at me.

“Hm,” I say. “She has motive against you, I suppose. But not Damien. He’s chased you around in front of her. I heard Tiffany pour poison in her ear about it. If a twenty-something wanted her problem to be out of the picture⁠—”

“Then crime one is Skye,” Hannah says slowly, “and crime two is still open.”

“Or crime one is Tiffany and Skye is nothing but a girl with bad taste in men. I can build it either way, and that’s the problem. Maybe we do have different hands, but every idea we have is ambidextrous.”

“Then we need facts, not ideas,” Pru says. “What would settle it?”

“Evidence,” I say. “We need to find whatever Damien’s actually been taking. We need to find his ‘vitamin’ bottles. Annabel could read them in a minute.”

“They’re likely at home, with him, and Skye is holding his hand around the clock,” Gabe says, “in front of his mother. If she’s crime two, she’s guarding the evidence, and if she’s innocent, she’s a grieving kid you’d be accusing at her boyfriend’s sickbed.”

“Annabel checks on him twice a day,” Hannah says. “She’s already in the house.”

“I’m not asking Annabel to search a patient’s girlfriend’s bag. She’d say no, and she’d be right to. We’ll find another way. I’m doing interviews for the blog before rehearsal tomorrow. Maybe I’ll uncover something.”

Englebert stands, stretches, and resettles. “Marigold will interview. Prudence will drink nothing she hasn’t poured herself. Gabriel will learn Act Three. And I… I will watch from the wings, when I’m able. When I’m not on stage. I am small. I am easily ignored when sitting still. It is one advantage I have that all of you lack.”

“You’ve never sat still for an hour in your life,” I say. “And I wouldn’t exactly call you small.”

“I sat for the entirety of Nicholas Nickleby. Eight and a half hours. I wept twice and moved never.”

“Nobody can confirm that.”

“You will just have to believe me.”

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