Chapter 24

“How very nice of you to trespass. Please make yourselves at home while you snoop around my office.”

Detective Stark and I both jump and turn around. Standing in the doorway is Ms. Serena Sharpe, car keys clinking in one hand.

“The man downstairs let us in,” Stark explains.

“So I hear. May I ask what the hell you’re doing in my office?”

“I knew your mother,” I blurt out. “Or rather, I didn’t know her. But I saw her here when I was a child working alongside my gran. She was Mr. Grimthorpe’s personal secretary. This photo—you’re her daughter,” I say as I point to the picture on the wall.

Ms. Sharpe sighs. “Yes. That’s my mother. So what?”

“You never mentioned that before,” Detective Stark says.

“And you also failed to mention that your mother is the real author of Mr. Grimthorpe’s books,” I add.

Ms. Sharpe affixes me with her sphinxlike gaze. Then she strides across the room to stand in front of the niche containing her mother’s typewriter. She puts one finger on the letter I. “How did you figure that out?” she asks.

“The Moleskines,” I say. “They’re filled with nothing but doodles, and yet rat-a-tat-tat-tat. Your mother was always typing something. Every single day.”

She nods slowly. “Mrs. Grimthorpe picked her for her discretion, amongst other things. My mother was good at keeping a low profile, brilliant at keeping secrets, too.” Ms. Sharpe ponders the photo on the wall. “Grimthorpe was never a writer, not really. In the old days, before he got writer’s block, he’d come up with outrageous plots and intrigues, which he’d deliver to my mother in long verbal rants. She’d coax his madness into something sane and novelistic, something that intrigued on the page. She was so good at it she turned him into a bestselling writer. But she was always the real magic behind his books.”

“He kept her a secret,” I say.

“Yes,” Ms. Sharpe confirms. “Mrs. Grimthorpe knew the truth, but no one else.”

“Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?” Stark asks. “When you met me at the station, you said nothing about your mother and you refused to say a word about what Mr. Grimthorpe was announcing.”

Ms. Sharpe crosses behind her desk and takes a seat in her pristine desk chair. “I couldn’t tell you because I signed a contract,” she says. She gestures to the two white chairs in front of her. “Please,” she says. “Sit.”

Detective Stark complies. I take a seat beside her.

Ms. Sharpe interlaces her hands and places them on her desk. “I’ve known for many years that my mother was his ghostwriter. I begged her to ask for proper compensation and a share of J.D.’s royalties, but she was a single mother terrified of her boss and of losing a stable job. She knew she deserved more, but she could never bring herself to confront him or his wife. She didn’t want to face their wrath.” Ms. Sharpe goes quiet as she stares through the open door into Mr. Grimthorpe’s chaotic study. “Such a literate man, and yet he could never write a decent book. So damaged.”

“Damaged and powerful,” I say. “He had a way of making you feel special and yet small at the very same time.”

Ms. Sharpe’s eyes go wide. “That’s exactly right. When my mother died last year without ever receiving proper compensation for her writing, my anger seethed. She’d scrimped all her life. She’d been paid a secretary’s salary for decades. Fear kept her quiet, but that didn’t work on me. I devised a plan.”

Detective Stark and I exchange a look. “Go on,” she says.

“I quit my MBA and took over as Mr. Grimthorpe’s personal secretary. He was thrilled. He had continuity and secrecy, all in a younger, prettier model. He was foolish enough to think that I, too, could write, but I’ve never had my mother’s gift for storytelling. When he figured that out and threatened to fire me, I threatened him right back.”

“Threatened him how?” Detective Stark asks.

“I told him I was going to reveal him for the fraud he was, that I’d tell the entire world my mother was the real author of his books,” she says as she gestures to the cubbyholes filled with manuscripts. “I threatened to sue him for every penny he ever made…unless he met my terms.”

“Which were?” I ask.

“A lump-sum fee of five million dollars payable to me, and one hundred percent of his royalties going forward for every book my mother wrote.”

“Meaning all of them,” Stark says.

“Yes,” Ms. Sharpe replies.

“How did he react?” I ask.

“With icy calm. I think he knew he had it coming.” Ms. Sharpe lays her hands on the closed laptop in front of her. “He agreed to my terms. He didn’t even try to convince me to stay quiet about my mother’s contributions. But in return, he had a few requests of his own.”

“Which were?” I ask.

“He insisted on publicizing the news himself. He wanted to control the message.”

“Hence the press conference at the hotel,” Stark notes.

“Yes. And he made me sign a contract that specified if I let anything leak before the big event, our entire deal would be null and void.”

“Meaning no money for you,” Stark says.

“Meaning no credit for my mother,” Ms. Sharpe replies, her voice razor-sharp. “That’s why I couldn’t say anything when you asked about what Mr. Grimthorpe had planned to say at the press conference. I didn’t want to nullify the contract.”

Ms. Sharpe falls silent as she produces the contract from a file drawer and hands it to Stark, who peruses it somberly and then nods.

“What happens now?” I ask. “Since dead men tell no tales.”

“I’ve consulted a lawyer. Seems I’m in a bit of a bind,” Ms. Sharpe replies. “If I reveal the truth, no deal, even after death.”

“So getting credit for your mother means forfeiting all financial gain?” I say.

“Correct,” Ms. Sharpe replies with a smile that doesn’t quite reach her feline eyes.

Detective Stark stands and paces in front of Ms. Sharpe’s desk. “You must have hated him,” she says suddenly.

“I still do,” Ms. Sharpe replies.

“Then let me ask you this: did you hate him enough to poison him?”

Ms. Sharpe laughs, but the sound is tinny and thin. “Have you understood nothing? He’s no good to me dead.”

“He was no good to you alive either,” I point out.

Stark looks at me, her lips curled into an almost imperceptible smile.

“Make no mistake,” Ms. Sharpe says. “I hated that man with every fiber of my being. He took advantage of my mother in more ways than I can enumerate. He used her talents and palmed them off as his own. He did other things, too.”

“Such as?” Stark asks.

“He made unwelcome advances on your mother and then used them against her,” I say.

Ms. Sharpe eyes me with curiosity. “How did you know that?”

“My gran,” I reply. “He did the same to her. I suspect he did the same to all his female staff, which is why Mrs. Grimthorpe insisted on having only the two women she trusted in the mansion. And by ‘trusted,’ I mean women forced to keep quiet.”

“Your gran and my mother.”

“Yes,” I reply.

“He got away with this his whole life, even tried it on me,” says Ms. Sharpe. “I swear, I pushed him off me so hard, I nearly killed him. Such a powerful man and yet so weak. I always figured he’d drop dead one day since he was so susceptible. I looked forward to it. I just didn’t expect him to die on exactly the wrong day.”

One word she said stands out from all the others. “Susceptible,” I say. “Why would you describe Mr. Grimthorpe as susceptible?”

“His years of alcoholism had taken their toll. His liver and kidneys were shot,” Ms. Sharpe says.

“Which explains why the antifreeze took him out so quickly,” Detective Stark adds. “His organs couldn’t process the poison at all.”

Just then, Jenkins appears at the door of the office. He’s carrying a tray with a steaming teapot and porcelain cups I recognize from long ago. “Ma’am?” he says. “Your tea. I wasn’t sure if you wanted cups for your guests.”

“My guests? You’re the one who let them in, Jenkins,” Ms. Sharpe replies.

“I didn’t have much choice,” he says, though he doesn’t meet her eye. “Anyhow, I brought tea for three.” He places the tray on her desk, smiles at me, then slinks out the door.

Ms. Sharpe picks up the pot and pours tea into three cups. “You might as well help yourselves,” she says to Detective Stark and me.

“I take mine black,” Stark says as she grabs a dainty cup that looks too small for her large hands. “Not much of a tea drinker. Coffee’s more my thing.”

I take a lovely porcelain cup from the tray. I add a drop of milk and stir with a tarnished silver spoon. It makes a delightful tinkling sound as it grazes the fine porcelain, the same sound that a Regency Grand spoon makes against a Regency Grand teacup.

I gasp out loud and nearly spill hot tea all over myself. I set the teacup and spoon down on Ms. Sharpe’s desk.

My heart starts to pound. It comes together in an instant, every missing piece, every variable falling into perfect place. My breath catches in my throat. The room tilts to one side. “Detective Stark,” I say. “We have to get to the hotel. Right away!”

“But we just got here,” she replies. “And I have more questions for Ms. Sharpe.”

“No! No more questions. We don’t have time. We must go to the Regency Grand, posthaste!”

“What the hell is going on, Molly? Why are you suddenly in such a rush?” Stark asks.

“Because it’s not Ms. Sharpe who killed Mr. Grimthorpe. And I know exactly who did.”