No. No fucking way. “Let me guess, illegitimate daughter?”

“That’s the one. I told her. She didn’t want to know, we had a bit of a row, I think one of the guests overheard us.”

“Vivien Ackroyd?” asked Liza, trying not to sound too clue-excited.

“Maybe. I don’t really pay much attention to you lot. If I hadn’t been working the night shift, I’d have been home right now ignoring all of this nonsense.”

The door opened again, and the awkwardly young footman came in. Which meant it was time for them to move the body, and it seemed best to just let them get on with it.

Retreating from the latest of the many murder rooms, Liza and Hanna did their best to pull themselves together, which, in a world of mysterious poisoners, suddenly-revealed illegitimate grandchildren, and essentially no sleep, was turning out to be tricky.

“So that’s …” Liza began.

“Yeah,” agreed Hanna. “And we really should have been less classist about this.”

“I was mostly thinking about the poison.”

“Oh, right.” An I’m-not-going-to-like-this-but-will-go-along-with-it-anyway expression crept over Hanna’s face. “You want to go check out the cellar, don’t you?”

Liza really wanted to say no, but—and maybe it was just the hope of rescue, or the fact that there were hardly any suspects left—she was really starting to feel like things were falling into place. Of course, what that place was, she still hadn’t worked out. “Kinda?”

Reaching out a hand, Hanna took her arm. “Come on then, let’s go.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Liza, in the Cellar, with the Poison

Wednesday evening

Liza and Hanna made their way down a flight of stairs that probably wouldn’t have been health-and-safety compliant if it had been installed any time in the last century and into an atmospherically dark cellar. Liza switched on the torch that she’d borrowed from Mr Burgh and swept it around the room.

“What’re we looking for?” asked Hanna. “And perhaps more importantly, what’ll we do if we find it?”

Liza continued rummaging. The cellar seemed to have been in continuous use for centuries, and half its contents were buried under layers of dust and cobwebs. The rat poison, however, was on a shelf to one side. One packet was open. “We’re looking for this,” she said. “As for what we’ll do with it … honestly, I just want to know what’s happening.”

“And it’s great to see you get your detective on. I just—we’re really close to getting rescued.”

“Which is why it’ll be helpful to know if we’re going to get poisoned or not.” Holding her torch in one hand while the bag hung awkwardly from the other, Liza scanned the warnings on the packet. “It wasn’t this,” she said at last.

Hanna came cautiously down the steps. “How do you know?”