2 Murder Most Fowl Read Online Free Page B

the quail.”
    “I see. So someone injected the quail with hemlock.”
    Cressida shook her head so hard that I feared her glasses would fly off. “No, and that’s what makes it worse for me. The quail had been fed hemlock.”
    I set down my spoonful of blueberry cheesecake. “But that makes no sense, Cressida. The quail would’ve died if they’d been poisoned with hemlock.”
    Cressida leaned forward. “That’s just it. The detectives told me that quail aren’t affected by hemlock. Have you ever heard of coturnism?”
    I had to admit that I hadn’t.
    “Coturnism is the illness caused by eating quail that have fed on hemlock,” Cressida said. “See, there’s even a medical term for it! The detectives knew all about it; the forensics team had told them. If people eat quail that have fed on hemlock, the people get sick or die, but the quail are okay. Oh, well, apart from the fact that they have been eaten, of course.”
    I was trying to wrap my head around this. “But why is that worse for you?”
    “Who has access to my quail, Sibyl? I’m the only one who feeds them.”
    “Your quail are free range, Cressida. I wonder if hemlock grows wild?” I tore my eyes way from the lashes of luscious blueberries and cream, and reached for my iPhone. “I’ll google it to see.”
    Cressida shook her head. “It doesn’t matter; it’s worse than that. The salad I took to Martin Bosworth’s room also had lots of hemlock leaves in it.”
    I gasped. “But didn’t you look at the salad, Cressida? Didn’t you notice the hemlock?”
    “I don’t even know what hemlock looks like, Sibyl. Martin Bosworth always liked his salad soaked in lemon juice overnight, so I always had it premixed for him. Anyone could’ve gotten access to it and slipped in the hemlock. It was a mixed salad, so there were different types of leaves. That’s why I’m the main suspect.”
    I set down my spoon. “Surely not.”
    “Lord Farringdon says that quail are nothing but trouble,” Cressida said. “I should’ve listened to him.”
    I didn’t know what to say to that, so sipped my drink, and listened to the bustle of the shop. I was glad to see that Cressida ate some cheesecake.
    “Feeling a little better?” I asked, after I had fortified myself with sufficient whipped cream and chocolate.
    Cressida nodded. “I feel a little less overwhelmed.”
    Her face was pale, a feat considering the layers of make up, so I decided I should distract her. “I've always meant to ask. What's the story with the boarding house?”
    “My husband and I bought it together before he passed away.” Cressida took a sip of coffee. “He died of a heart attack the year before last.”
    I stirred my straw through my drink. “So you wanted to keep the house, but found it was too big for one person living alone?”
    “Not exactly, he had run up a lot of debts while he was alive. Too many debts. I didn't even know about them.”
    I murmured my sympathy.
    “He didn’t even have insurance policies,” Cressida continued. “Maybe things would’ve turned out differently had he been more honest with me about the whole thing. It was one of the darkest times of my life. One day, he and I were respected in the general community, invited to attend social functions and all that. The next thing I knew, I was alone, deep in debt, and all these so called friends were busy and absent.”
    “Oh, Cressida, that’s awful.” I reached across the table and patted her hand.
    “The job market was terrible at the time. I didn't have the skill sets needed to get back into the workforce.”
    “So you turned the house into a business.” I was impressed with her strength.
    Cressida shook her head. “I was desperate rather than clever. It had been a good life, when I didn’t know about the debts and secrets that my husband had been keeping. I’d sincerely thought we were going to make a good life together. I never expected him to be taken from me like that. I always wonder if