CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

A thin layer of dust hangs over the now unused study. Already, Frederick's existence has begun to decay. I wonder bleakly if anyone will enter this room after I've done with it, or whether it—and everything else about Frederick will be left to disappear.

I open his computer and log in again. I'm not entirely sure what I'm looking for. I'm not entirely sure if I'm looking for anything at all or if I'm only occupying my hands and mind so I don't have to think about the terrible possibility that Sophie could be the person who killed Frederick Jensen.

I log into his spam folder—the hidden one where he saves his emails to Veronica—and scroll through them again. There's only one thread, but perhaps he's found a way to hide communications with Hugo here that might tell me what happened between them.

I don't find anything. For a minute, I just stare at the screen without saying anything. A sense of dread has fallen over me, and the hair on the back of my neck stands up even though I'm the only person in the room.

I leave the hidden spam folder and look at Miscellaneous. I dismissed that folder the first time I looked at it because it didn't contain any correspondence, but now I wonder if I unintentionally missed the proof I needed to solve this case with certainty.

"Call it a hunch," I whisper, echoing Sean's sentiment that first sends me to this computer. I am not superstitious, but I wonder if possibly Sean's own instincts led both of us here truly and we just looked in the wrong corner of the room.

I open miscellaneous and look through the reports. Most of the thirty-odd files have innocuous names, but one catches my eye. It's labeled Staff Pensions.

I open the folder. I am not a financial wizard, but I have a very basic understanding of how transactions are recorded.

If what I'm seeing here is correct, then the pensions of every member of the Jensen household staff have been liquidated and transferred to Jensen Wealth Management. It seems that Frederick Jensen's financial woes wouldn't be solved as easily as Thomas Keller believed.

The amounts range depending on the owner of the account. Two entries—Carlotta and Emma—have less than five thousand dollars in their accounts. I assume those are the two young handmaids I see Sophie berate the night of Frederick's murder. Others, like Franz and Pierre, have heftier sums, between thirty and ninety thousand dollars.

One account has nearly three million dollars in it before it's liquidated. I look at the name attached to the account, and my heart sinks.

"Bit of a bummer, isn't it?"

I jump at the voice and stare in shock at Sophie. She stands in the doorway of the study, smiling wistfully at me. "I worked hard for that money for all my adult life. Some of my childhood, too."

I don't say anything. I'm too shocked to form any thoughts.

"I've contributed nearly all of my salary to my pension," she says. "I've only taken a few thousand here and there when I've absolutely needed it. Most I ever took out at once was ten thousand to visit my parents when they died and help contribute to their arrangements. All the rest went in there."

She looks over my shoulder at the wall. "I was close. This year, I would have been able to leave. I had a nice home picked out in Derby. Two hundred thousand it would've cost me. That's sterling, so two-fifty American. Figure another two-fifty for furniture, taxes, a car, and other little odds and ends I might need. Probably not that much, but I was planning carefully. That leaves two and a half million to last me the rest of my life. I'm a thrifty woman, and I don't care much for fancy things or wealth. I could live off of fifty thousand a year quite comfortably. That's fifty years it would have lasted me. I'll be ninety-seven when that's up. If I make it to ninety-seven, and I'm still alive, that's my fault."

She chuckles softly at her joke and looks down at her hands. She's turning something over in them. I look down and gasp when I see what she's holding.

She runs a finger lovingly over the slide of the gun and says, "I worked hard for all that. I hated it, too. I lied to you a little when I told you about how I came here. I was taken in by Frederick. Why wouldn't I be? He was handsome, he was wealthy, he was devilish, and he took a liking to me. Not that kind of liking. I've always been a homely woman. I know that. I never thought I'd have a chance to marry Frederick or anything like that. I suppose I indulged in a fantasy or two that he might come home lonely one of these days and look at me different, but I always knew they were fantasies. I just thought…"

She sighs and lets the gun drop to her side. She's standing in the doorway, blocking my exit. My phone is on the desk, clearly visible. She'll see if I move it.

"I thought it would be an adventure. Something to get me off the farm. My parents warned me, they did. They were right." She sighs and fiddles with the gun again. "I hated it here. Took me a year to realize I'd made a mistake.

"But I had nowhere to go. My parents wouldn't take me back, and I had no skills to work anywhere else. So I thought if I just worked hard, if I just put my head down and saved my money, then I could eventually make it out and set myself up. Just retire and be a country gentlelady."

She took a deep breath. "Then, I looked at my account just before Christmas to see if I'd gotten a bonus just like I get every year." She laughs, and when she speaks again, her voice shakes. "I'd gotten the bonus."

She closes her eyes and squeezes tears out of the corners. I pull my phone under the desk and quickly silence it, then call Sean. I wait until I see that it's connected, then mute the call volume.

Sophie opens her eyes. "Frederick had given me the bonus, but he'd liquidated my pension. There wasn't a zero balance or anything. It just wasn't there."

"So you killed him?" I ask, speaking for the first time.

This is for Sean's benefit. I want him to hear Sophie's confession so the police know who they should be looking for. I also want him to know that I'm in danger.

Sophie continues, seemingly ignoring me. "I called the bank and asked what was going on, and they told me the account had been closed and the money liquidated. I asked how that had happened, and they said that it was closed by the owner of the account. I said that I'm the owner of the account, and they said that technically, Mr. Jensen is."

She presses her lips together and looks at the wall. I resist the urge to check my phone and see if Sean is still connected. I feel a brief panic when it hits me that I should have just called Dubois directly. I assumed that he wouldn't be able to answer because of the signal, but if I can talk to Sean now, then I could have called the police directly. It's a mistake I might not live to correct.

"So," Sophie continues. "I go to Mr. Jensen. I ask him has there been a mistake? Or some sort of trouble? Has someone stolen the account number or stolen the money?" She shakes her head. "I really thought that he couldn't have done this. I thought it must have been something like fraud or theft. I thought that if I talked to him, he'd make it right. I thought he'd… get the money back somehow." She chuckles. "But he said, ‘No, there's no mistake. I liquidated the account.' I asked him why, and he said, ‘Because I wanted to put the money somewhere else.' So I ask, is something wrong? Did I do something? And he says, ‘No, no, you're wonderful. I just decided to liquidate your pension.' So I ask, is this permanent? I'm not getting the money I've worked most of my life for? And he just laughs at me. That's it. Just laughs."

She turns her eyes to me, and I risk asking again. "So you killed him?"

Once more, she keeps talking and ignoring the fact that I've spoken. "Thirty-two years I've worked for him. Thirty-two years I cooked for him and his friends and his associates and his whores and his brats. Thirty-two years I worked fourteen hours a day seven days a week, holidays included. I never took a vacation except for four days to bury my mother and father. Thirty-two years I slaved, dreaming of the day when I could finally live a simple life in a small cottage in my hometown and maybe every once in a while take a trip. Not an expensive trip. Just a chance to visit a few places: Paris, Rome, Madrid. I'd stay in a cheap hotel and eat cheap food, take cheap tours. I don't want much. I just wanted my own life. And he took that from me just because he could. He was worth ten billion dollars when he died. He didn't need three million dollars. But he took it anyway."

In fact, most of Frederick's wealth was a farce, and at the time he took Sophie's money, he probably did need it, or he would have suffered the same fate he eventually did suffer but at someone else's hands. I don't tell Sophie that, though. There's no point.

She meets my eyes and says, "I argued with him. Fought with him. Threatened him. But what could I do? Who could I turn to?" She takes a deep breath and releases it slowly. "Last Sunday on the boat, I went to him one last time. I showed him this gun"—she lifts her handgun—" and I told him, 'You will pay me what you owe me now , or I will kill you where you stand.' He looks at me with his stupid cigarette clenched in his teeth that he hides from his wife because he's a coward, and he laughs. He just…" her face screws up in a look of rage that chills my soul. "Laughs. So I shot him. And when he fell, I realized that I was royally fucked, pardon my French. So I wrote the note. It wasn't hard to match his handwriting. I left it on his body, wiped my prints, and placed the gun in his hand. Took me all of fifteen minutes. Then I went back to the house." She chuckles. "You were five minutes from catching me."

She sighs. "I like you, Mary. You're a good woman. I wish we could have been friends. I tried to put you off the scent so I wouldn't have to do this." She lifts the gun. "But I don't have a choice now."

It's only instinct that saves my life. I leap to the side just as she fires the weapon. Then I find reserves of strength I don't realize I have and shove her. Even with all of my might, she only stumbles but doesn't fall.

I can't wait to test my strength again. I recall how deftly she wrestled Veronica Baines. I sprint out of the study through the living room and the foyer and out into the swirling storm.