Free Lucy and the Valentine Verdict by Rae Davies

mentioned her jealousy over Mrs. Peabody having an affair
with Mr. Blore, along with a possible need to kill the other woman
before she revealed Lady York’s indiscretion to Sir Arthur, along
with her bringing a deadly plant into the house as their supporting
evidence, but I guessed it had more to do with our hostess’s bossy
personality than any link to motive or means.
    Mandrake, despite the butler-always-did-it
adage, got no votes, and neither did Miss Claythorne.
    Ms. Brent, however, got one.
    “She’s killed once,” Dr. Armstrong
explained. “There is no reason not to believe that she won’t kill
again. And she had access to the monkshood and Mrs. Peabody not
long before the poor woman fell.”
    I gave him points for sticking to character
so well with the “poor woman.” But it didn’t change the fact that
he was wrong, because I alone, it seemed, knew who the killer
was.
    I leapt to my feet. Well, I tried to. I’d
forgotten that I’d sat on the butt-eating couch. Peter, always the
gentleman, held out a hand and tugged me to a stand.
    “It was,” I announced, holding up the
obligatory right hand, finger pointed at the sky. “Dr. Armstrong.
How, you might ask do I know this?” I glanced around the room,
debating whether I should add a twirl of my finger over my upper
lip. In a salute to Poirot, of course. Not that Poirot was as
flashy as my reveal promised to be, but it was just a salute. After
catching Miss Claythorne and Emily Brent’s horrified faces,
however, I decided against it.
    I took a step back to regain my bearings and
then dug in my pocket to pull out Mrs. Peabody’s card, the one with
the supplement bottle drawn on it. “This!” I said. “Was his motive.
He, Dr. ARM STRONG...” I pointed to the flexed arm on the card.
“...was the creator of the supplement that Mrs. Peabody planned to
ruin with her column. He couldn’t let her do it before the sale he
had planned went through. So, he poisoned her. It wasn’t hard. He
carried his medical bag with him wherever he went. One quick slip
of the hand, a capsule tilted over her glass, and boom she was
down.” I looked around the group. “Did that kill her? Who knows?
She might have still been alive when he ordered us all out of the
room and then, once alone, finished her off. It certainly gave him
time to destroy any evidence that would point back to him.”
    I waited, soaking up the stunned silence,
brought on, no doubt, by my genius.
    Lady York cleared her throat. “You came to
this conclusion after seeing that?” She pointed to the card with
the medicine bottle drawn on it.
    I glanced at the clue, which I still held
out, prominently exposing the fact that I had access to something
no one else had.
    “Where did you say you found it?” she
asked.
    I chewed on my lip and tried not to look at
Mrs. Peabody.
    “Because that card was supposed to have been
found under the body, and...” Lady York flipped pages on her own
notebook. “Yes, Maid Ann was out of the room at the time.” She
looked up, expectant.
    Mrs. Peabody objected. “No one told me to
leave it under my body.”
    Lady York motioned for me to flip the card
over. Place under body when fall was clearly written on its
back.
    Mrs. Peabody waved her hand in the air.
“What’s it matter? So I didn’t leave it under my body. I obviously
left it somewhere that Maid Ann found it, and she solved the crime.
She did, right?”
    I held my breath.
    Lady York sucked in one of her own, an
annoyed one. “I didn’t say that. Actually...” she turned in a
circle, looking at each of us. “The person who named the killer
is...”
    She waited, letting the drama build.
    “Mr. Blore!”
    Mr. Blore beamed. His wife snorted, and
everyone else in the room just looked confused. Except Peter. He
looked concerned, most likely that I was going to say or do
something inappropriate or even... stupid .
    I, however, was above that. I had been
robbed. I knew it and everyone else in the room, with the