Rita nodded and followed him to the other side of the room. He showed her the cover of the magazine and she looked bored. He opened it up and she went pale and stumbled back a few steps, shaking her head as if she could deny what she was seeing, and then she fainted. She landed on the floor so hard that if she hadn’t already blacked out, she’d have knocked herself out for certain.

“Mum!” Piper cried. She hurried to her mother’s side and crouched down.

Detective Stewart looked at me and Harry and yelled, “Get help!”

“Stay here,” Harry ordered and he ran from the room.

That was an easy order to follow as I stood there frozen, not knowing what to do.

“Mrs. May, are you all right?” Detective Stewart was kneeling on the other side of Rita. He was checking the pulse at her wrist and frowning in concern.

Her eyelids fluttered and she stared up at him. “I know how awful it looks, but I didn’t do it.”

“Do what?” Piper asked. “You need to see a doctor.”

“No, I’m fine,” Rita insisted.

“Can you sit up?” Detective Stewart asked.

She nodded, then took his hand and let him help her to a nearby chair.

“Were the . . . uh . . . photos what you asked Archie Carlton to find for you?”

“How do you know about that?” Rita’s pale face flamed red. “Did he tell you that?”

“It doesn’t matter how I know,” Detective Stewart said. “The fact is that it gives you a real motive to have murdered Dooney Portis.”

“What?” Piper cried. “Are you out of your mind? My mother would never.” She turned to Rita. “What is he talking about, Mum? What photos?”

Rita exhaled as if she knew the battle was lost. This was it, I thought, she was going to confess.

“When I was very young, I did some modeling,” Rita said. “The poses were risqué.”

Detective Stewart and I said nothing, which I thought was very good of us given that “risqué” was quite the understatement, even by British standards.

“I don’t understand,” Piper said. “What does that have to do with Dooney?”

“He was blackmailing me,” Rita said.

She was the woman we heard in the garden on the day we arrived. It had to have been her, yelling at Dooney about ruining her. It all clicked. Dooney was blackmailing Rita with those photos, so she’d murdered him.

Piper blinked. She looked confused. “I don’t understand. Why would Dooney blackmail you?”

“Because marrying into money wasn’t enough for him,” Rita said. “He wanted more and more and more.”

“So, you killed him,” Detective Stewart said.

“No, I didn’t,” Rita protested. “I would never. Yes, I wanted the blackmail to stop but I would never have murdered him. I paid him but he refused to give me the photos.”