“Get away from me!” Sylvie shrieked. With a look of utter disgust directed at Tempest, she stomped toward the exit.
Ash took a step forward. He was limping. He really had hurt his leg as part of his trick to escape. In spite of the injury, he looked as if he was ready to tackle her if necessary, a chance Tempest didn’t want to take. She knelt at the hooves of the merry-go-round horse. They’d put casters on his legs to slide him across the floor without damaging it, and instead of removing the wheels had locked them. She unlocked the wheels and shoved.
The wooden horse slid across the floor toward Sylvie. Ash caught it as Sylvie fell across its saddle.
“You’re all crazy.” Sylvie pushed herself up, causing the horse to teeter for a moment before crashing down across the opening leading to the hallway out.
“Don’t try to climb over him,” Ash said. “Tempest, you have the floor.”
Sylvie glared at him but didn’t speak.
“I thought Ellery was having an affair with Corbin because of what I thought was a clue he left behind,” Tempest said. “I thought he was having an affair with someone who both dyed their hair and was named after a literary character, just like a character he wrote named Alice. My assumptions were wrong about both. First, I only had the literary allusion half right. Sylvie’s neighbor told me she collects records and has them delivered from an ‘LP’ shop. The packages her neighbor saw weren’t of records. They were signed, ‘Lord Peter.’ She thinks of herself as a literary character who’s the love interest of Lord Peter Whimsey. And even though Ellery’s hair dye is obvious, Sylvie presents an outward impression that’s so put-together that I didn’t even think about the fact that she probably dyes her hair. Sylvie was the one having an affair with Corbin. Not Ellery.”
“Sanjay.” Ash pointed at the rope in his hand. “Time to use that.”
“Get. Away.” Sylvie tried to slip around Sanjay, but Sanjay was faster.
“Are you absolutely sure about this?” Sanjay asked Tempest.
“Ninety-nine percent,” she said.
“Great,” Sanjay muttered. “I’m not going to tie anyone up, but nobody climbs over the horsey to leave. If you do, I’ll change my mind.”
“This is kidnapping,” Sylvie said.
“Go ahead and tie her up,” Ellery said. “Tempest isn’t wrong about the clues she found. Not at all. I’m not the only person in this room named after a character. Sylvie is named after Sylvie and Bruno by Lewis Carrol, who also wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I know that little tidbit because that’s how the two of us first bonded over books, in spite of our other differences.”
Tempest groaned inwardly. She’d jumped to the obvious conclusion about Ellery’s name, so she hadn’t even stopped to consider more direct possible parallels in Corbin’s sly references.
“And yes,” Ellery continued, “though she’s never admitted it, at one of our meetings I spotted a millimeter of white in just a few strands of Sylvie’s hair.”
Sylvie narrowed her eyes at Ellery. “I don’t have to stay here and listen to these insults.”
“I’d like to hear the rest of what Tempest has to say.” Kumiko wheeled herself in front of the fallen horse.
“As would I.” Lavinia joined her mom in blocking the exit.
“Why kill Corbin in such a convoluted way?” Tempest asked. “Impossible in four separate ways. You were all there when we solved the four impossibilities. The fake knife covering a real wound, a person materializing fifty-five miles away in a matter of minutes, a body hidden where there was nowhere to hide one, and a dead body landing on the séance table with nobody breaking hands. I explained the mechanics last night, but that was just one big piece of the puzzle. I was missing the lynchpin.” Tempest held her breath and hoped she was right. “Sylvie’s kidnapping wasn’t real.”
“I’m calling the police now.” Sylvie felt around inside her purse, getting more frantic by the second.
“Looking for this?” Ash held up her phone. He tossed it from his left hand to his right, disappearing the phone before it hit his right palm.
“I was so focused on the puzzle,” Tempest said to a fuming Sylvie, “which was just as shortsighted as the police being so focused on the physical evidence implicating my grandfather. I lost sight of why it was necessary to kill Corbin Colt at the séance.” She paused. “It was necessary because Sylvie wanted to frame Lavinia for Corbin’s murder.”
“Sylvie?” Lavinia gasped. “Why?”
Sylvie said nothing.
“Her plan went wrong in several ways,” said Tempest. “Having a complex crime come together must have been more difficult than it appears in books. People have their own free will. They don’t act like you imagine they would.”
“Ashok wasn’t supposed to be there,” Kumiko said.
“My grandfather jumped up immediately and tried to help Corbin, meaning Sylvie couldn’t get Lavinia to be the one to inspect the body; she thought she’d be able to get Lavinia to do so since it was her husband. Sylvie planned to kill Corbin in the second wave of darkness and then say something to the effect of, ‘Lavinia, your stupid ex is playing a practical joke on us, you need to smack him and make him stop,’ so that Lavinia would get blood on herself.
“Sylvie’s plan had started well. She set it up to be believable that Lavinia wanted to kill Corbin. That’s why she wrecked Lavinia’s beloved typewriter. Sylvie knew Lavinia would be furious and blame Corbin, and we’d all be able to testify about Lavinia’s outrage. Things went downhill from there.
“The fake kidnapping was a desperate move. Sylvie even had to take the risk of injuring herself, but a bit of research reveals that superficial head wounds can produce enough blood to look scary. My grandfather remained the one charged. She needed to try again to frame Lavinia. The kidnapping was meant to make it look like Lavinia was desperate. She didn’t know Lavinia wouldn’t be at home at five in the morning. It was a good bet that Lavinia would be, but unfortunately, she was wrong in her assumption.
“I don’t know how much she cares about sending an innocent man to prison, but making her rival Lavinia suffer was a huge part of this plan being a success in her mind. Sylvie copied Lavinia’s key, which is how she was able to fake the kidnapping. That’s why there was putty on Lavinia’s key the day after the murder. I didn’t realize what it was at the time when she met me at the Whispering Creek Theater, but there was something sticky on her keys then. Because Sylvie had made an impression of her keys.”
Sylvie’s gaze was unreadable. “Anyone could have done that. Her bag—”
Snap.
A movement appeared outside the window of Lavinia’s Lair at the same time as the sound.
A raven.
Only this raven wasn’t a large bird. It was a full-size person. One wearing the beaked black mask of a medieval plague doctor like the one from Tempest’s notebook.
Tempest stared in horror at the living incarnation of her raven sketch.