Beatrice opened her eyes on the third day.
It was not a triumphant return to consciousness. There was no sudden gasp, no reaching for the hands of her gathered family. Instead, she simply blinked once, twice, and then stared at the ceiling with the vacant expression of a doll that had been left out in the rain. Her lips moved, but no sound came out. Her fingers twitched beneath the quilt, and when I leaned closer, I caught the faintest whiff of something acrid—the remnants of the poison still working its way through her system.
Dr. Pritchard had stationed a nurse at her bedside, a stern woman named Miss Halstead who treated the entire household with the same brisk contempt she might have reserved for recalcitrant children. She allowed us to visit in small groups, no more than two at a time, and only for five minutes. I went in with Richard, who stood by the window with his arms crossed, his face a careful mask of brotherly concern that did not quite hide the calculation behind his eyes.
"Beatrice," I said softly, taking her hand. "Can you hear me?"
Her gaze shifted to me. For a moment, I saw recognition—a flicker of the sharp, sardonic sister I had known. Then it faded, replaced by something else. Fear.
"Edmund," she whispered. Her voice was a dry rasp, like dead leaves skittering across stone. "The sherry... I did not... I did not pour it myself."
"Who poured it?" Richard asked, stepping closer. "Beatrice, think. Who handed you the glass?"
She tried to shake her head, but the effort was too much. Her eyes drifted closed. "The decanter was already there," she murmured. "On the sideboard. I thought... I thought it was the same one from dinner. But it was not. It was warmer. The glass was warmer."
Warmer. Someone had held that decanter recently. Someone had carried it from another room, perhaps, or had kept it close to their body to avoid being seen. A small detail, but a telling one.
I looked at Richard. His hands were shoved into his pockets, but I noticed that his signet ring was missing. Had it been there before? I could not remember. And that was the problem—in a house where every gesture was suspect, memory became a unreliable witness.
We left Beatrice to her nurse and walked together down the corridor. The snow had stopped falling, but the sky remained a low, bruised grey, and the Hall felt colder than ever. Richard stopped at the landing and turned to face me.
"Edmund," he said, and his voice was different now—softer, almost conspiratorial. "We need to talk. You and I."
"About what?"
"About the fact that someone in this house tried to kill our sister. And about the fact that it was not you, and it was not me." He paused, his eyes searching mine. "I know you think I did it. I saw the way you looked at me in the drawing room. But I swear on our mother's grave—I had nothing to do with it."
I did not believe him. But I also did not disbelieve him. That was the strange thing about living in a house of suspects—guilt was not a binary state. It was a spectrum, and we were all shifting along it with every passing hour.
"Then who?" I asked.
Richard leaned closer. "Henry," he said, and his voice dropped to a whisper. "Think about it. He was terrified before Beatrice even collapsed. He knew something was going to happen. And he has been lurking in the kitchens every night, asking Mrs. Gower about her stores, her herbs, her medicinal tinctures."
"That proves nothing. He is a nervous boy."
"Or a clever one," Richard said. "The youngest always has the most to gain. Father has never trusted him, never thought him capable. But that is exactly why he could do it—because no one would suspect him."
I did not point out the irony of Richard accusing Henry of being the least suspected, when Richard himself was the one who had been seen by Henry with a small, dark bottle. The evidence was circular, self-consuming. In a house built on lies, every accusation was also a confession.
That night, I did not sleep. Instead, I stationed myself by the window of my room, which overlooked the rear garden and the greenhouse beyond. The moon was hidden behind the clouds, but I could make out the shapes of the hedges, the frozen fountain, the broken panes of the greenhouse glinting like scattered teeth.
And then I saw it—a light. Faint, flickering, moving through the greenhouse. Someone was there.
I pulled on my coat and descended the back stairs, moving as quietly as I could. The kitchen was dark, the servants long since retired. I slipped through the scullery door and out into the garden, the frozen grass crunching under my shoes.
The greenhouse door was ajar. I pushed it open and stepped inside.
The air was cold and damp, but I could smell something else—earth, fresh-turned, and the faint metallic tang of iron. In the centre of the greenhouse, a small lantern sat on the ground, casting a pool of yellow light. And beside it, kneeling in the soil, was Celia.
She was planting something. Her hands were covered in dirt, and she was carefully pressing small bulbs into the ground, covering them with a layer of compost. She did not hear me at first. She was too focused, too intent on her work.
"Celia," I said.
She spun around, her face lit by the lantern. For a moment, I saw panic in her eyes. Then she composed herself, brushing the dirt from her hands with a dignity that seemed almost rehearsed.
"Edmund," she said. "You startled me."
"What are you doing?"
She looked down at the bulbs she had planted. "These are snowdrops," she said. "They bloom in February. I thought... the garden has been so neglected. I wanted to bring some life back to it."
Snowdrops. I knew them well—they were beautiful, delicate, and utterly harmless. But they were also one of the first flowers to appear in the dead of winter, a symbol of hope in the midst of decay. And I knew that Celia had never been interested in gardening. She was too practical, too calculating for such a sentimental pastime.
"I see," I said. "And the iron smell? The fresh earth?"
She shrugged. "I am not a good gardener. I used a trowel, but the ground was frozen. I had to work hard."
It was plausible. Everything she said was plausible. But I did not believe her. And I think she knew that, because she stood up and walked past me, brushing my shoulder as she went.
"Goodnight, Edmund," she said. "Sleep well."
I stayed in the greenhouse after she left. I crouched down and examined the soil where she had planted her bulbs. It was loose, freshly turned, and I dug my fingers into it, searching for something. I did not know what—a seed, a vial, a clue.
My fingers touched something hard. I pulled it out.
It was a small glass phial, about the size of my thumb, stoppered with cork. Inside, a few drops of a dark, viscous liquid remained. I brought it to my nose and inhaled cautiously. The scent was faint, but unmistakable—bitter almonds.
Cyanide.
Or something like it. Cyanide itself had a characteristic odour, but there were related compounds, derived from fruit pits or laurel leaves, that produced the same effect. And Celia had been studying herbal remedies for years. She would know how to extract them.
I slipped the phial into my pocket and left the greenhouse, my mind racing. If Celia was the poisoner, why had she left the evidence in plain sight? Or had she hidden it there, intending to retrieve it later, and I had simply arrived too early?
The questions piled up like the snow on the window ledges, and I knew that I would not find answers by waiting.
The next morning, I summoned Henry to my room. He came reluctantly, his hands shoved into his pockets, his eyes darting around as if he expected an ambush.
"I need you to tell me exactly what you saw," I said. "The night Beatrice was poisoned. The hand with the ring. Describe it to me again."
Henry swallowed. "It was a man's hand, I think. Large. There was a ring on the forefinger—a dark stone, maybe onyx or garnet. I did not see the face. I told you that."
"Did you see the cuff? The sleeve?"
He frowned, trying to remember. "It was... dark. Wool, perhaps. Or tweed."
"Did it have a pattern? A stripe?"
"Edmund, it was dark. I could not see clearly. And I was terrified—I thought if I stayed any longer, the person would see me."
He was telling the truth, I was certain of it. But his truth was incomplete, filtered through fear and the dim light of a corridor. And that was the problem—I had no way to verify any of it.
I dismissed him and spent the rest of the morning in the library, reading. Not for pleasure, but for purpose. I studied the symptoms of the poison that had been used on Beatrice—the constricted pupils, the frothing, the shallow breathing. It was not belladonna, which dilated the pupils. It was not strychnine, which caused convulsions. It was not cyanide, which acted too quickly and left a distinct odour.
It was something else. Something more obscure. And the more I read, the more I became convinced that the poison was not a single compound at all. It was a combination—a mixture of digitalis and a sedative, perhaps, or a derivative of henbane. A sophisticated cocktail that required knowledge, precision, and access to a well-stocked apothecary.
Celia had that knowledge. Richard had the access—he owned a hunting lodge in Scotland where he kept all manner of supplies. Henry could have obtained anything from the village chemist, who knew him and trusted him. And Father, of course, had the whole house at his disposal.
But there was another possibility, one I had not considered until now.
The poison could have been intended for someone else. Not Beatrice at all. The decanter had been on the sideboard, accessible to anyone. Perhaps the target had been Richard, or Celia, or even Father himself. And Beatrice, in her thoughtless habit of pouring herself a generous glass, had simply been the wrong victim.
That changed everything. If the poisoner had missed their intended target, then they would try again. And the next attempt might be more deliberate, more precise.
I went to Father's study, where he spent his afternoons in his wheeled chair, staring at the fire. He did not turn when I entered. He knew my step by now.
"Father," I said. "I need to ask you something."
"Ask," he said, without looking up.
"The night Beatrice was poisoned. Where was your ring?"
He turned then, and his eyes met mine. They were the colour of winter slate, and they held no warmth at all.
"Which ring, Edmund? I have many."
"The signet ring. The one you always wore on your forefinger. I have not seen it since that night."
He looked down at his hands, which were clasped in his lap. The ring was not there. Instead, there was a pale band of skin, as if the ring had been removed recently.
"I gave it to Harkness for cleaning," he said. "It had become tarnished. You know how I dislike tarnish."
"Cleaning," I repeated. "At this hour? On a night when your daughter was dying?"
He smiled, a thin, cold smile. "Edmund, you have always been the suspicious one. The watcher. The questioner. But you forget—I am the master of this house. I do not answer to you. I answer to no one."
I left his study without another word. But I could not shake the feeling that he was lying. The ring had not been sent for cleaning—it had been hidden. Or discarded. Or lost on purpose.
And if Father had been the one in the corridor that night, with the dark bottle and the shaking hand, then the game was not about inheritance at all. It was about something else. Something deeper.
Control. Power. The pleasure of watching his children tear each other apart while he sat back and enjoyed the spectacle.
I walked to the greenhouse that evening, the phial of cyanide still in my pocket. I had not told anyone about it. I was not sure I ever would. But as I stood among the broken glass and the frozen earth, I realised that I had a choice.
I could expose Celia. I could take the phial to Dr. Pritchard and let the authorities handle it. But that would end the game. And I was not ready for it to end.
Because I had not yet answered the question that had been burning in my chest since the first night: what would I do when the moment came for me to act?
I knelt down and dug a small hole in the earth, near where Celia had planted her bulbs. I took the phial from my pocket and buried it there, deep enough that no one would find it by accident. Then I covered it with soil and patted it down.
Not as evidence. Not as a threat.
As a promise.
To myself.
And as I walked back to the Hall, the snow began to fall again, silent and relentless, covering the greenhouse and the garden and the frozen lake in a blanket of white. I entered through the scullery and climbed the back stairs, my footsteps muffled by the cold.
But when I reached the landing outside my room, I saw that the door was open. Just a crack, but enough to know that someone had been inside.
I pushed it open slowly. The room was dark, but I could see that my journal was on the floor, its pages scattered as if they had been rifled through. The drawer where I kept my clothes was open, and my spare coat had been moved.
I knelt down and gathered the pages. None of them were missing. But they had been read—I could tell by the way they had been folded, the corners bent in a way I had not left them.
Someone knew about my notes. Someone knew about the poisonous plants I had been studying. Someone knew that I was playing the game.
And that meant I was no longer the observer.
I was now a player.
And in this house, the only way to win was to make sure that everyone else lost.
I blew out my candle and sat in the darkness, waiting. The snow fell outside, the house groaned around me, and somewhere in the distance, I heard a clock strike midnight.
Then I heard another sound—a scream. High, thin, and utterly terrified.
It came from Celia's room.
I ran.
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