The Husband Poisoning Society, Chapter 28

We listened until the hallway was quiet again.

Lynn had her hands in her hair. She paced the room.

“Why would he do that? Why did we let him? Why did I do this?” She said as she paced.

“We’re going to save him.” I said.

“We can’t. No without turning you in. And I can’t do that either.” Lynn grabbed my shoulders.

“We will find a way.” Fiona said.

“I can’t deal with this. This is my fault. This is all my fault. Oh god. I didn’t think this through.”

“We all asked him to pretend he hadn’t seen us.” I said.

“No. You don’t understand. I did this. I did all this. This is my fault.”

“How in the hell is this your fault?” I asked. 

Lynn stopped and then reached into her bodice. She produced a pair of gold rings. One looked like a wedding ring. The other looked like a signet ring.

“Lynn.” I said. “Are those what I think they are?”

Lynn nodded.

“How did you get them?” I asked. 

“How do you think I got them?” Lynn asked.

“I don’t think I want to know.” I said.

“I took them after you finished examining the body.”

“But why? Why would you take them?”

“To stop the future weddings. I wasn’t going to let Monique- I wasn’t. I couldn’t.”

“But that’s all you did, right?” I asked. “You took advantage of the murder and tried to protect Monique.” 

“I took the horn as well.” 

Silence. Lynn watched us. None of us said anything. I gathered my thoughts. She took the horn. That meant more than taking the rings. Taking the rings could have been an act of opportunism. Taking the horn would make no sense, unless Lynn were involved in the murder. I mustered myself.  

“How did you take the horn?” I asked. 

“He left it on the table when he went to get more mead. I took it before we went to the bathroom, so Amy couldn’t do a reading on it. But, of course, the horn slipped from my chatelaine bag, and Quincy found it.” 

“Why would you do that?”

“You have to know by now, Ren.”

I nodded. “I’d like to hear it from you.”

Lynn nodded. She was crying, I noticed. “Alright. I killed Duke Siggis. I poisoned him myself. Then I left with Monique to establish an alibi. I knew the delay in the poison would buy me time.”

Amy gasped. Monique gasped. Laila gasped. Fiona nodded. Vincent raised his eyebrows. 

I pulled Lynn into an embrace. “You stupid crazy woman.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t think that they’d try to pin it on you. I thought I had made the case unsolvable.”

I held her for several minutes in silence. 

“Now what?” Laila said. “I mean, We’re not going to turn the baroness in, are we? She saved me. And I can’t imagine you will.  So what do we do now?”

Leon was in prison in my place. I was wanted for murder, along with everyone else now. And Lynn was the murderer. Which meant we had no way to expose the murderer without sentencing her to death. I didn’t know what we were going to do.