Daisy managed a shaky smile. “Thank you, Bernard. I appreciate the gesture and your persistence.”
“Quite all right. Think nothing of it,” he said. “I am happy to be at your service.”
“Don’t you have your own laptop that you travel with?” Araminta had to admit that she wasn’t exactly up on all the newfangled technology, but she was pretty sure that executives of even smaller companies had their own laptops.
“Sure.” Bernard smiled down at her as if he thought it was quaint that she knew about laptops. “But Archie’s home computer has a VPN I can use to connect to the company without going through the internet. It’s much more secure, and I don’t have that on my laptop.”
Araminta had no idea if this was true. She glanced at Daisy, who nodded. Okay, then apparently Bernard had a good reason to be using the computer. She cautioned herself to be wary. She was starting to suspect even the most innocent of actions.
Bernard left them then, and for a moment, Araminta simply studied her niece by marriage, giving Daisy a more thorough once-over. “Are you certain you’re all right, dear? Back at the funeral parlor, you seemed a little more than shaky.”
“I could use a bite to eat, I think. I must shamefully confess to skipping breakfast, but otherwise, I’m fine,” she assured Araminta. “I was merely a bit taken off guard for the moment by the absolute finality of it all.”
Araminta wondered if she was being honest with her. Was it possible that Daisy was actually the one who had poisoned poor Archie? If so, pretending to be upset would be prudent. But was Daisy pretending? Her tears were certainly genuine, but maybe she was a good actress. Araminta needed to solve the mystery of the goblets or find the vase that the lily of the valley flowers had been in. Surely one of those would hold a clue to the identity of the killer.
“I’ll ask Mary to send up a tray and leave you to your work, then. But if you should need anything, promise you’ll call. I’ll only be somewhere in the manor.”
Before she made it to the stairs, however, Araminta found Harold busy with something at a table in the hallway. He was carefully arranging today’s freshly cut flowers in an antique vase—a tall one, Araminta noted—while yesterday’s wilted bouquet lay spent on the table beside today’s choices for a new one. No lily of the valley, she quickly noted.
She heard a noise. Glancing up, she saw Bernard climbing the stairs, headed to his room. Before she could follow suit to check again for a vase, Stephanie came in from a side door with a handful of short-stemmed roses she’d obviously snipped from the bush twining up the trellis outside the kitchen near the garden. She carried the sweet-smelling blossoms to the table for Harold so that he could add them to his arrangement, but poor Harold didn’t even hear her, though she was standing right beside him. She had to nudge him to get his attention.
“Would you like to add these to the vase you have there?” Stephanie asked as she pointed from one to the other, her voice overly loud so that he could hear her.
“These are lovely, Miss Stephanie. Thank you for bringing them. But the stems are far too short for this one.” Rather than hurt her feelings, he quickly offered, “I have a different vase for the shorter-stemmed flowers. A rose bowl, actually. One moment. I shall fetch one from the cupboard in the dining room.”
Stephanie nodded, and he disappeared to do just that. She took a deep breath of the roses and turned to Araminta. “I do love puttering in the garden, so I figure while I’m here I might as well find some enjoyment.”
“Indeed. Gardening is so therapeutic, isn’t it?”
“It is.”
Araminta stared at the roses, lost in thought for a moment. Something Harold had said had prompted a shadow of a thought. Then realization struck. Lily of the valley was short like the roses. They would have short stems too.
She’d been searching for taller vases, but clearly they would have been in a shorter one or a rose bowl, as Harold had mentioned and was even now searching for. Just as she was about to head upstairs to renew a search of her own, Harold returned with a clean and dry low bowl, which he filled with water from a pitcher on the hallway table, then he carefully put the roses in.
“There,” he said once he was satisfied with how they looked. He turned to Stephanie. “Shall I place these on the coffee table in the parlor?”
“That would be perfect.” Stephanie followed him down the hall.
Araminta watched them go, a frown darkening her features. Harold seemed very familiar with those short vases and what went in them. Harold was inheriting money from Archie and was old and might not have wanted to wait to get that money. Was it possible that such a thoughtful, genuinely sweet old man could be guilty of a crime as horrible as murder?
Chapter Fifteen
In her suite of rooms, Araminta sat on the comfy sofa in the lounge near the big picture windows overlooking the gardens, her thoughts busy on figuring out the identity of Archie’s killer.
The morning had been a bit hectic, with the reading of the will and the visit to the funeral parlor, but at least she’d learned something important and possibly vital to discovering his killer’s identity: whoever had poisoned Archie had used a liquid extract to do it.
Now that Detective Hershey had clarified there were no actual flowers or leaves from the lily of the valley in Archibald’s system, she knew the convallatoxin had to have come from a vase containing water in which the flower’s stems had sat for some time. Her research on the internet indicated that the flowers would have had to have been soaking for a few days at least. But knowing this still didn’t help her figure out who had killed Archie, and she was still having trouble working out the how.
If the poison was in water from a vase, she was almost certain whoever had given it to her nephew had dosed his wine with the awful toxin but not the whole bottle of wine, as they had all drunk from it. It must have been in the goblets, perhaps swabbed on the sides and maybe a bit of liquid on the bottom. Or had they somehow poured it in after the wine? Would swabbing it on the glass be enough to kill? With Archie’s heart problems, it might be.
If it was the goblet, when had the killer switched it with the one from the set in the dining room? Reggie had the other five goblets that matched the one that was different in the dining room, but where was the original goblet that had been switched out? Did the killer still have it?
Strange, she thought, that Trinity still hadn’t mentioned to anyone in the household that one of the goblets didn’t match. On second thought, Araminta realized she might not have needed to report it. If she was the killer, she wouldn’t be worried about bringing the matter to the family’s attention. And with the family all leery about eating in the formal dining room after what had happened there, the goblets hadn’t been needed, so if Trinity were innocent, she might not have had occasion to notice. Of course, someone had to put them back after the dinner, but everyone was so upset over the death that it stood to reason that a mismatched goblet might escape notice. The differences were very subtle, after all.
Either Trinity or Harold would have had ample opportunity to switch the goblets, but only Harold would have been able to ensure that particular goblet went to Archie.