Page 69 of The Hearth Witch’s Guide to Magic & Murder (The Hemlock Saga #1)

Avery saw the tension in her companion’s shoulders as she followed Carys inside.

She shared Saga’s apprehension but did not feel in any danger.

If anything she began to worry that not only was Carys not the one they were looking for, but that perhaps this would end up being a waste of time.

Still, leave no stone unturned. Things were not always as they seemed, and she was far too out of practice to leave on first appearances alone.

Inside, the house smelled musty and faintly of mildew.

There was a cloud of dust that never settled, merely danced in and out of the shafts of dim light.

The paint on the walls was cracked and peeling at the corners, and there was a pattern of water damage on the far wall.

It was not filthy, but it did carry the perception of a house that, while occupied, was not particularly lived in.

Avery waited for the door to close behind them. She focused her breath. Calm. Safe. Trustworthy. “Were you very well acquainted with Alistair Campbell?”

Carys frowned, the dim light overhead deepening the wrinkles and lines in her skin. “Who?”

“Eira’s doctor,” Saga prompted. “He’d been treating her for several years? Was a good friend of your cousin’s family?”

A slight realization dawned on the older woman’s face. “Oh. I’d never really spoken to the man. We didn’t run in the same social circles. I don’t expect you to understand, it’s a matter of breeding.”

Something wasn’t right. Avery had seen Carys talking to the doctor at the funeral. “You didn’t even exchange words at the funeral?” she asked.

“It wasn’t really what I’d call the social event of the season,” said Carys. “I barely spoke with anyone.” Her face contorted angrily. “And if I’d known she’d be such a disrespectful cow, I never would have gone in the first place!”

Avery exchanged a look with Saga, who brought out her notepad to begin taking notes as she had before. “Sorry, who was disrespectful to you at the funeral?”

“Eira, of course!”

“Eira was disrespectful at her own funeral?” asked Saga.

“Don’t be daft,” snapped Carys. “She was disrespectful to me in her will.”

“Ah, yes,” sympathized Avery.

Carys turned her attention to Avery markedly.

“So you know about that then?” The words growled out of her.

Then her antagonistic stance relaxed with a sniff.

“Of course you do. I imagine all of London knows about it by now.” She began to pace in the entryway, walking in and out of the shafts of cool light that poured in from behind the old curtains.

“She couldn’t just leave me nothing, no, she had to gift me with one last insult.

Her humility, ha!” She whirled back on Avery.

“Tell me, Inspector, does that sound like the words of a humble woman?”

Another deep breath, and Avery focused on keeping her voice grounded. “No, I suppose not.”

“Spiteful creature,” Carys continued, practically spitting the insult.

“I suppose we never did get along—but our mothers were so close, you’d think she’d at least have remembered me for her sake.

” She wrapped her arms around herself and gazed upward at the vaulted ceiling.

“This monstrosity doesn’t keep itself, you know. ”

“I can only imagine what it costs to maintain its grandeur. You were counting on Eira leaving you something financially substantial,” Avery concluded gently.

“Yes, of course!” Carys exclaimed. “How else am I going to preserve this legacy? I can’t be expected to work.” It was at that instant that she remembered that a police inspector was standing in her foyer. “Why? What does that have to do with anything?”

Avery cleared her throat and clasped her hands in front of herself. Her voice’s usual magic did not seem to be having even the slightest effect on Carys Varney, which worried her for the reaction her next words would incite. “Alistair Campbell was found murdered in his home yesterday.”

Carys brought her hand to her heart as if she’d been shot. “My God…”

“We understand that in Eira’s will he was left a rather substantial sum.”

“Well, they all were: the doctor, her friends, her son the serial fornicator, even that conniving little towhead pretending to be her boyfriend. Only I was left in the cold.”

“Do you know why she was so generous to the doctor in particular?”

Carys bristled. “He was her charity case. She was always trying to recommend him for things. She tried to foist him on me when my mother got sick—sent him over here without even consulting me. I wasn’t going to have it, mind you, the disrespect of it all.

” Carys huffed, forgetting again that she was being questioned by the police about a man’s murder.

“I bet that’s why she cut me out, for sending her doctor away, but if he couldn’t help her mother, what arrogance to think he could help mine. ”

Avery exchanged a look with Saga briefly. “So Campbell was Mari Goff’s doctor as well?”

“To every last one of them, even Elis when he was a boy.”

“And Osian?” Avery prompted, relieved she was finally gaining some ground with this woman’s ramblings.

“Oh, him,” Carys said darkly. “Not a word for years, and then one day there’s just a single line buried in the obituaries about him passing in his sleep.”

“When was that, roughly?”

“Nearly two decades ago, but I haven’t forgotten how they treated me, mind you. I wasn’t invited to the funeral—no one was, from what I hear. If you ask me, Eira didn’t want anyone knowing he’d done it to himself.”

Avery frowned, finding this even more suspicious. “You think Eira was trying to cover up her father’s suicide?”

“What else could it be? And now she’s dead because the doctor couldn’t help her either. And now the doctor is dead too? What an utter failure, the man couldn’t even help himself. I was right to turn him away. Does that lawyer know about this? I could fight the will with this, couldn’t I?”

It took every ounce of willpower Avery had to not look at Saga once more.

This woman might not have the physical prowess to commit the murders, but her complete lack of empathy was making her a more likely candidate.

“Doctor Campbell isn’t the only inheritor to meet great misfortune.

Were you aware Elis was admitted to the hospital a few nights ago due to liver failure? ”

Carys scoffed. “I’m not surprised. Drinks like a fish, that one. You’d barely know when he had time to breathe air.” She paused, realized what company she was in once more, and quickly asked, “Is he all right?”

“He barely survived,” clipped Saga.

“And we have reason to believe something more nefarious than alcohol poisoning caused his liver to fail,” added Avery.

Carys frantically glanced back and forth between the two other women. Uncertain and off-balance. “Like…what?”

“We aren’t at liberty to share that information at this time.”

Carys blinked. “How would one even cause liver failure? And why? Are you sure it wasn’t just the alcohol that did it? I’m sure his liver would have to be a sorry sight, with the amount he drank you had to keep him away from open flames.”

“Someone might have wanted it to seem like alcohol poisoning, but we’re certain,” Avery confirmed gravely.

She needed to press her. Carys was not the most stable of creatures, and perhaps with a little more deliberate pushing, she would show her hand.

“You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that? ”

“Why would I? We barely spoke.”

Avery began to wonder if “we barely spoke” was Carys’s favorite method of deflecting any kind of suspicion. “It seems a strange pattern of misfortune is targeting the heirs of Eira’s will, and you have already made your anger about being excluded clear.”

At last, true realization dawned. “Oh you don’t think that… Surely, I’m not a suspect!” She laughed. Nervously.

“We don’t eliminate any possibility until we’ve thoroughly investigated it.”

Carys visibly swallowed.

“Ms. Varney, can you account for your whereabouts Sunday night?”

Carys glanced from Avery to Saga. She wrung her hands and swallowed again before answering. “I-I was at the funeral, then the dinner, and then I came home, read a book, and went to bed.”

Avery glanced to Saga, who made a show of writing something down in her notepad, then back again. “Can anyone vouch for that?”

“N-no.” Carys’s steely demeanor was rapidly crumbling. She cleared her throat and forced a smile, gesturing farther into the sitting room just beyond the entryway. “Perhaps you should come in and sit. I could make some tea. I’ll answer anything you want to know.”

“No tea necessary,” Avery dismissed. She wasn’t sure if it was Carys’s sudden behavior change or merely the state of the house, but her gut told her she didn’t want to consume anything made in that kitchen.

“Could I use your loo, by chance?” Saga piped up with a sheepish smile. “Afraid it might be a bit of an emergency. Rather large cup of coffee this morning.”

Carys sneered in disgust, then gestured dismissively down the hall. She led Avery straight through the foyer into the sitting room, though she herself did not sit. She picked at her fingernails and cuticles as she began to pace in front of the worn sheer curtains with small timid steps.

It was a dayroom, clearly not meant for holding company anytime near sunset, as the windows faced full west and would have been an incredible discomfort. Thankfully, they had several hours before the sun would begin to make the heat and backlighting unbearable.

Avery brushed a small amount of dust off an ottoman before sitting on its edge. “Were you aware your nephew had taken ill?”

“He’s my second cousin,” Carys corrected. “But no, I wasn’t aware he was in the hospital until you told me.”

“Yet learning about it didn’t appear to upset you.”