Claire had a way of turning rooms into questions. She could stand in the center of a parlour and map guilt like a constellations chart: names where there were stars, lines where there were alliances, dark patches that suggested something once burned. The Lancelot ballroom had been the scene; the suspects were becoming a crowd.
Her first task that morning was practical: assemble a list of plausible motives, and then begin pruning. Motives came in neat categories—money, resentment, secrecy, and fear—but people rarely fit into a single box. They were better thought of as mixtures, and the exact ratio usually determined whether someone would shout or schematically silence a life.
Simon Lancelot arrived thin and unremarkable in a way that made Claire suspicious. He carried the kind of understatement many wealthy men cultivated: unbranded sweater, shoes scrubbed of any signature, a face that had been smoothed by private schools and careful tutors. He did not look like an heir chosen for melodrama; he looked like an heir trained to avoid it.
"You're Simon," Claire said, not a question. She had learned that naming someone inside a room changed their dynamics.
"Yes," he said. His voice was level, polite in a way that had practice behind it. "I—thank you for coming."
"You were marked as 'left early' on the guest list," Claire began. "Where did you go after the gala?"
Simon's jaw tightened just enough to be visible. "I went home. We've had arguments. We both needed space. I left with my driver around… eleven." He looked away, then back, as if measuring whether the face before him would betray anything. "I didn't come back."
"Do you and your mother argue often?"
He gave a small, bitter laugh. "Isn't that everyone's line? Yes. We argued. She wanted the company to expand and I— I thought she was reckless. But people fight, Detective. They don't shoot each other over business plans."
Claire filed that with the predictable denials. "Where were you between eleven and midnight?"
"At the house. In the study. I went to my room at—" He hesitated. "I cannot account for every minute."
The kind of hesitation that suggested something to hide is the sort that often worried witnesses most: not the outright lie, but the small, unnecessary omission. Claire made a mental note and kept the conversation brief; Simon would be formally interviewed later with full rights and counsel if he wished.
Next, she brought Amy Russell into a small conference room at the station. Amy had become a presence in the case not only because of proximity but because of promise: Madeleine's assistant held logistics and secrets the way a small vessel holds water. Claire kept her questions as gentle as her tone allowed.
"You said your employer expected someone last night," Claire said, folding her hands. "Do you know who?"
Amy's first act was to look down and count the fibers of the table as if they constituted an answer. Her voice, usually so controlled, showed fissures. "She said someone from her past. She said nothing else. I only know that she was nervous and that she asked me, twice, if I could get her a copy of the gate footage. She said she wanted it for—personal reasons."
"When did she ask?"
"Around ten. She thought she misplaced her speech notes. She asked me to make sure the security feed was saved. I checked. The guard said he would. I—" Amy's fingers trembled. "I should have pushed harder."
"You turned over her phone," Claire said. "Any messages or calls around midnight?"
Amy swallowed. "There's a text, from her to someone saved as 'E.' at 11:48. She wrote she'd found something. She wrote '12:15.' I didn't think he'd come. I thought it might be an old friend."
Ethan Ward's name—E—had been on Claire's list already. She kept her tone neutral. "Did Madeleine ever mention blackmail, or threats? Or money disappearing?"
Amy's eyes darted, not entirely willing to be honest. "She said she'd found irregularities in the fund. She said it had kept her awake. Once she showed me a check redirected—small amounts, here and there. She called them 'bubbles,' like air trapped in an old blanket. She told me she was going to fix it."
"If she found irregularities, who would that implicate?" Claire asked.
Amy touched her throat as if to steady a pulse. "People whose names I've read in emails: board members, project partners. There's a Mr. G—someone she worried about. And a donor, older, who was always polite and then not. I don't know their full names. I only manage calendars."
Claire left Amy with instructions: be available, do not speak to the press, and turn over any emails, notes, or receipts. The assistant's small comforts—her attention to Madeleine's daily life—had become major threads.
Ethan's presence in the case was inevitable. He had the kind of access that sometimes threatens a police investigation: he could insert rumors into the public record and harvest confessions via a column. Claire met him outside the station, where he leaned against his car like a man marking his territory with smoke.
"You're looking at everyone," he said. "But I think you're missing the shape of it."
"Enlighten me," Claire replied.
He flicked ash into a nearby planter. "Madeleine made enemies by being necessary. Who does that? People with power. Men who signed her checks used her to grease wheels. Contractors who took her money used her for leverage. Someone's pride was cut. Someone's account emptied. Someone feared that exposure would mean something else—loss of reputation, families being humiliated, a political career ended. You look at the ledger, Claire. That's where the motive is."
She did look at the ledger. It kept revealing patterns that were as sensible as they were dangerous. Claire's next calls were logistical: audit the charitable fund, pull bank statements, and subpoena guest lists and phone records. The more she asked for, the more she could feel the town's breath hitching.
By midday the list of people of interest had multiplied. There was Derrick Haines, the local councilman who had benefited from Lancelot donations and who'd been photographed with Madeleine at more than one ribbon-cutting. There was Mayor Helmsley's chief of staff, who had argued publicly with Madeleine over a rezoning project. There was Mr. Hargreaves, the security supervisor, whose access to cameras rendered his testimony crucial. There were contractors whose invoices bore Madeleine's stamp. Each face came with a version of favor and potential betrayal.
Claire interviewed Derrick in an empty conference room lined with blinds. He was defensive, polished, and practiced in public contrition.
"Madeleine was a friend," he said. "She supported my initiatives. She made mistakes—don't we all?—but killing? No. People are cruel, Detective, but murder is a different class."
"Did you speak to her last night?" Claire asked.
"Yes. At the gala. We discussed a potential donation she considered retracting. It would have affected a bridge project in the north-east district. She warned me that some funds had been redirected." Derrick's jaw set. "We argued. She accused me of voting improperly. I told her to present evidence, otherwise it was empty bluster."
Arguments matter. Not every angry word blooms into violence, but when combined with money and the threat of exposure, they form a pressure cooker. Claire file-marked his statement: argument, publicly documented, motive potential. She also noted the political cost a scandal would bring him, which multiplied motive.
The same afternoon, she spoke to Mr. Hargreaves, who looked like a man who remembered everything because he preferred to be the keeper of memory. He swore his cameras were maintained, that glitches happened, but he also admitted that certain feeds were routinely backed up and others overwritten to save space.
"We only save the main gate feed for thirty days unless a supervisor flags it," he told her. "Ms. Russell used to request copies sometimes. I assumed… I assumed she knew what she was asking for."
"Who has access?" Claire asked.
"Me, Cole the guard, and Ms. Russell. Mr. Lancelot has a proxy account, but he rarely logs in." He hesitated. "There's a contractor—TechServe—who maintains the drives. Otherwise, no. Only us."
"Was there any reason to lock a feed or delete files?" Claire asked.
Hargreaves squinted as if searching for a memory he'd misplaced. "Only if someone wanted to, Detective."
There it was—possibility again. Either a purposeful removal or a conveniently timed failure. Both hurt the investigatory chain.
As evening drew in, Claire felt the edges of the day fray. The suspects multiplied; every new person she spoke with offered a piece of the town's mosaic, but the picture refused to cohere. There were accusations not yet made aloud, and there were things people did not say because revelation would be worse than silence.
She returned to the Lancelot estate and stood on the cliff edge, looking at the sea that had become a background to the town's polite performances. In the house behind her, lives had always been conducted in a ledger's language—debts, credits, balances. Now those balances were unsteady. Someone's loss had been multiplied by another person's need to keep the accounts tidy. Who moved beyond paper to pull a trigger?
Claire thought of the scrap in her pocket—the note with the single initial, M. She thought of the camera glitch, the compact car at the gate, the man who cried at a café, and the ledger that hid both kindness and leverage. The faces of interest gazed at her from the files in her bag like a gallery with small, chilling smiles.
She arranged them in her head, as she arranged rooms—by proximity, by motive, by opportunity. Simon: proximity and inheritance, a man who had reasons to disagree with expansion and whose relationship with his mother had frayed. Amy: proximity and access, the keeper of calendars and messages. Derrick: political exposure, terrified of scandal. Hargreaves and Cole: technical access, the possibility of interference. Ethan: observer and instigator, someone who could turn rumor into pressure.
Someone among them had chosen to move from ledger to finality. Claire could feel the weight of the town's curiosity pressing behind her shoulders, hungry for resolution. She had a list. She had a plan. In the morning she would begin formal interviews, subpoenas would move, and the audit would open its teeth.
But for now, dusk wrapped the manor like a veil. People would sleep with uneasy dreams. The town would tell itself an easy story if it could—accident, misadventure, a tragic mistake. Claire did not want easy. She wanted truth, which in this case smelled faintly of old money and newer betrayals.
She pocketed her notes and walked back to the house, the faces of interest arraying behind her like a procession. Each face offered a path. Each path carried a risk: some would reveal too much, others would twist into traps. She would have to choose which to follow first, and in doing so, she would mark someone else's life forever.