x.

William had been poisoned. He survived the attempt on his life but was barely hanging on.

North asked me to meet him at the hospital where he was keeping vigil with William’s sister as well as his co-worker Emily. I declined the invitation. I told myself I was done sticking my nose into the murderous mess of the Lexington Museum. I hoped to see the historical sculpture returned, but no more playing detective for me.

If only life were that easy.

When I let myself into my office on Monday morning, North was waiting for me inside. Admitting defeat, I taped a message to my door saying office hours would begin fifteen minutes late.

“I suppose I should be brief,” North said, “if fifteen minutes is all I’ve got. You were right that it’s the mistress after all. Not the husband.”

“I never said that. I just said I wasn’t convinced it was William.”

“Potato, potato.”

“Emily’s been arrested? And she wasn’t his mistress.”

“Whatever she is to him, she hasn’t been arrested yet. But William was poisoned by his favorite treat: sugar-free almond flour cookies made with a pungent dried fruit imported from Cambodia that masked the flavor of the poison. Emily baked the cookies—supposedly to celebrate his release from jail—but he didn’t die quickly enough and called 911, so she wasn’t able to dispose of the evidence.”

“That’s awful,” I said. “But since I don’t know anything about poison, and I doubt this is a social visit, I take it The Churning Woman is still missing and that’s why you’re here?”

A knock on the door interrupted us, so I didn’t get to hear whatever excuse North would come up with. I opened the door and let the student know I’d be a few more minutes.

“What did that young ruffian say to you?” North asked as I closed the door. “You’re as white as a sheet.”

I leaned my back against the door, my mind racing. “It wasn’t what he said. It was the interruption itself.” I thought about everything I’d learned over the last three days. “The office door being closed…The salt at the restaurant not being the ingredient I thought it was…Margery supposedly shaving her head for charity…”

“You’ve solved it,” North whispered.

“Maybe.” My gaze snapped to North. “I need you to find out two things for me.” I wrote a note on a slip of paper and handed it to him. “Call me when you find out the answers.”

He frowned. “Medical records? How am I supposed to find this out? The first is most definitely confidential.”

“When has that ever stopped you before?”

“True.”

  

As I wrapped up office hours two hours later, North was waiting outside my door.

“You were right,” he said. “She had stage four melanoma. And it wasn’t the force of the bronze statue hitting her that killed her; she overdosed on morphine. How did you know? And why does it matter?”

“The only solution that made sense was farfetched, unless one final criterion was met. That wasn’t the main reason Margery Lexington killed herself, but—”

“Killed herself?”

I nodded. “That’s how the impossible crime was done.”

“You’re forgetting that someone tried to kill William today. Unless she rose from the grave—”

“I can explain that too. Let me start at the beginning. Margery and William had already drifted apart. The newspaper stories backed up William’s account that she was the philanthropist who was part of San Francisco society, whereas William was the scholar who kept his head down and attended to the museum. Reading between the lines of what William said and those photographs in the paper, she was concerned with being important. She was front and center in photos at galas and at volunteer photo-ops. She wasn’t the helpless victim she pretended to be when she hired you last month.”

“I didn’t exactly say that,” North protested.

“She told you how fearful she was of the letters. Of the curse. One thing I should have realized earlier, when I spoke to William, was that there was no curse until Margery invented it last month.”

“Of course there was a curse,” North snapped.

“Was there? Tell me, why exactly do we think so?”

“Her grandmother Sarah wrote of it. That’s documented. Isn’t that what you historians care about? Historical documentation?”

“What the accounts from Margery’s grandparents actually say,” I said, “was that they were ‘warned.’ They were warned by an understandably angry person whose heritage they were stealing.”

“Margery said it was a curse, not a warning,” North began, then swore. “I answered my own question, didn’t I?”

“I’m afraid so. Everything we know about the ‘curse’ is from what Margery told people this month. She planted the seed with her husband after she started receiving the threatening letters—which of course she sent to herself. Only then did she tell him the details of her grandfather’s death—details she had previously claimed not to know, but now she ‘confessed’ to William she’d held back because her grandmother had been afraid of a curse. Margery had also never told William the details of how her father died, probably because it was painful, so she used that as an opportunity to invent ‘mysterious circumstances.’”

North swore.

“There were no online references to the curse before she died,” I continued. “Not one. Just as there was no reference to the curse in the museum’s materials. I thought it was because they were interested in facts more than publicity, but it’s because it never existed.”

“She hated him,” North said. “She hated William for making her feel superficial, and for leaving her emotionally for Emily. And William and Emily both loved that sculpture…”

“And she was dying,” I said. “She didn’t tell anyone about the cancer, instead saying she shaved her head for a cancer charity. She and her husband had already drifted apart and were living separate lives, so the charade wasn’t difficult. Angry and alone, she thought up the idea to frame William for her inevitable death. And if he didn’t get arrested, the next time he baked his favorite dessert, he’d die. She must have known it was a risk. Even if both of those parts of her plan failed, then at least as a free man he wouldn’t have his prized possession that he and his mistress both adored.”

“But how did she kill him from beyond the grave?”

“She’d already planted the poison.”

“She wasn’t a monster who would have someone else die accidentally,” North said. “Hating your spouse enough to kill them is one thing, but leaving poison for any random person to die? I can’t see it.”

“I can’t either,” I said. “William’s favorite cookies are homemade, and you pointed out the unusual ingredient used in them. I saw the makings for them on the counter, and I can’t imagine anyone else liking that recipe. Margery knew he was the only person who would be poisoned.”

“But why the impossible crime? If she wanted to frame William in the first place, which she did so well in so many other ways, why make it seem like he couldn’t have done it?”

“I don’t think she meant to have it look impossible. Remember she was working alone at the museum. She’d already removed the sculpture from her safe. She was planning on killing herself with a morphine overdose, making it look like someone was forcing her to open the safe and accidentally gave her too much of the relaxing drug. She was going to leave both the door to the safe and her office open—”

“When William unexpectedly showed up at the museum,” North said. “That’s why she had to close her door and lock herself in, because she’d already started her plan.”

“She had to think fast. She injected herself with the rest of the drug, then cried out and toppled a heavy sculpture so it would make noise and look like someone had hit her with it.”

“And here I was thinking I was the king of contingency plans,” North murmured. “But Margery has me beaten. Killing herself and framing William. Or in case he wasn’t sent to jail she’d kill him from beyond the grave. Or at the very least she’d make sure he didn’t get to enjoy his favorite sculpture that he and his mistress loved. Bloody brilliant.”

“She had a fourth plan too,” I said.

North raised an eyebrow.

“Remember the 1925 French colonial law mentioned in the letters? If we find the bas-relief sculpture, what do you want to bet it’s hidden with information from her grandfather proving it didn’t leave Cambodia until 1925. Or at the very least her own research that calls into question the timing. William won’t get to keep the sculpture regardless.”

“I’m sorry you won’t get your well-deserved finder’s fee, Jaya, since even though you solved the mystery, the sculpture is lost forever.”

“Why do you say that?”

North stared at me. “You know where it is?”

“I think I do. It’s somewhere only Margery could have hidden it. It’s obvious, when you think about it. But nobody was looking there. It’s a spot that only the murder victim herself would think of.”

  

I learned that William woke up the following day, with Emily at his side, cleared of all charges. The police found the contractor Margery had hired to “fix” the earthquake-damaged back porch. The man, speaking through a translator, confirmed he’d been asked to bury an old slab of sandstone for sentimental purposes, and had been given a hefty tip to post a letter for Margery on a specific date.

The police unearthed The Churning Woman sculpture, hidden underneath the renovation of the cracked back porch, the renovation that William had thought Margery wanted because of their beloved hippopotamus bench. The bas-relief was wrapped in plastic along with documentation about its 1925 passage to America, and it hadn’t fared too badly underneath the back porch bench of William the Hippopotamus—directly under his rump.