The Unexpected Wife - Jess Michaels Page 0,75
always been wielded as a weapon in her life. And the idea that it might happen again terrified her.
“We didn’t come here for foolishness,” she managed to choke out, and hated how her voice shook like her hands. She looked around, uncertain where she had set her evidence when she entered the room and her whole world had felt like it was burning.
“On the sideboard,” Pippa said softly.
Celeste smiled in thanks to her friend and crossed back. They had bound the two books with a ribbon and wrapped them in cloth, and now she unwrapped them before she turned back with one in each hand.
“When Mr. Gregory and I visited Lady Lena’s Salon the other day, Lena and I had a conversation about Erasmus’s death. She suggested I read up on some varieties of poison in this book.” She shook the copy Lena had sent toward Owen.
He stepped forward and her heart fluttered. Yet somehow she stayed cool as he took the book. “Harrison’s Poisons and Potions,” he said, and then held her gaze. “You spoke to Lena about this?”
She shrugged. “Not out of betrayal to your case, I assure you.”
“I didn’t assume it was,” he said, and his brow wrinkled. “Celeste, I am happy to know you have friends in this world that you can discuss such painful topics. But I’m not sure what the book means to our investigation. We have already determined that Montgomery died of poisoning.”
“How?” Pippa asked.
Owen glanced at Gilmore. “When the duke and I arrived to confront Montgomery, we found him dead on the parlor floor. A label from a bottle was clutched in his hand and it said arsenic.”
Gilmore shifted. “Terrible thing.”
“But why couldn’t that be suicide?” Celeste pressed.
Pippa snorted. “Ras would never do that. He thought too highly of himself.”
“I tended to agree, having read some of his writings. A man who was so selfish certainly would have written a suicide note absolving himself of his sins and demanding sympathy,” Owen said. “Plus the contents of the decanter had been shattered on the ground, a mess made that told me Montgomery had either struggled with the person who poisoned him or realized that he’d been injured and began to react as he died.”
Celeste flinched. “Did you read much about arsenic poisoning?”
“I’d encountered an arsenic murder a few years ago,” Owen said. “With a similar outcome. A woman had been poisoning her husband bit by bit. The family suspected it and she admitted it immediately.”
“But that was a poisoning bit by bit and the book contains the description of how one would die from arsenic poisoning in a large dose,” Celeste said. “It would have been messy.”
“Death is always messy, Mrs. Montgomery,” Gilmore said with a frown.
“But this death would have been very messy,” Pippa insisted. “You can read the description yourself.”
Gilmore took the copy of the book from Owen and read it silently. His eyes widened. “I see.”
“Why do you have two copies of the book?” Owen said, picking up the other one.
Pippa shifted and reached for Celeste’s hand. They stood together a moment as Owen flipped the pages to the description of arsenic and its uses and results. He glanced up. “Who wrote this? Who wrote He deserved it?”
“Abigail,” Pippa whispered when Celeste couldn’t. “Or at least it was written in her copy of the book.”
Gilmore slammed the copy he held down on the table, his eyes dark with stormy emotions. “Bollocks! Abigail might be the most irritating woman in this city, but she couldn’t kill a man. She wouldn’t.”
“We don’t believe it either,” Celeste assured him, though she was surprised to find an ally in the duke, since one might have assumed his disdain for Abigail would allow him to believe her capable of more, not less. “But Owen feels differently.”
“And how was this evidence supposed to change my mind?” Owen asked through what sounded like tightly clenched teeth.
Celeste worried her hands before her. “Don’t you think it odd that Abigail would keep such damning evidence right in her personal library? That she would have no issue with Pippa asking to borrow the book at a future time? That she would write a message like that at all?”
“She is too clever,” Gilmore said with determination.
Pippa nodded. “I agree.”
Owen shook his head. “So you three are using the evidence as evidence against the evidence?”
Celeste pursed her lips. “We’re using common sense. The alternative is like something out of a bad play!”
Owen held her gaze for a moment, then turned to the