“Monkshood.”
“Monkshood?”
“Yep.”
“What is it?” I said.
“Our cause of death,” Maddie said.
“It hardly sounds dangerous.”
“The Greeks didn’t call it the queen of poisons for nothing,” she said.
The light from the sun blinded me. I yawned, reached out to adjust my curtains, and then closed them all together. I wasn’t ready to get up yet.
“So Charlotte was––”
“Poisoned,” she said.
“How?”
“It’s ingested or absorbed into the system, and in this case, she ingested it, a lot of it,” Maddie said.
Audrey had been right.
“I can’t believe it.”
“It’s possible someone gave it to her before she went skiing,” she said.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because this stuff has nasty side effects.”
“Such as?”
“Paralysis of the facial muscles and the heart,” she said.
“Wow.”
“It also dulls vision. At some point on the ski trail, she probably couldn’t see where she was going. It’s a nasty poison, and the sad thing is, when her body started to break down, she probably remained conscious right up to the end.”
“Any chance she came across it on accident?”
“I don’t see how,” she said.
“It was premeditated then.”
“And the killer never thought they would get caught,” she said. “Whoever did this assumed her death would be ruled an accident and didn’t take time to consider there might be a toxicology report.”
“Their world of disillusionment is about to change.”
“The drug works fast, and based on the amount I found in her system, death probably came within a few hours from the time she ingested it, maybe less.”
“That gives me a good place to start.”
“Go get him, sister,” Maddie said.