1

The green tea was precisely room temperature. Clara Reed held the porcelain cup with both hands, staring down at the pale, unenthusiastic liquid. It was her third cup of the morning, each one arriving at the exact moment of minimum comfort, and she drank it anyway out of a grim, mechanical politeness.

Behind her, the local constable was murmuring into a radio. In front of her, the library of the Vance estate waited in morning light.

Dr. Eleanor Vance, the foremost historical architect of her generation, lay dead on the Persian rug nearest the heavy oak door. Clara had known Eleanor for three years. They had fought over the specific hue of eighteenth-century beeswax polish. Now Eleanor was a shape on the floor, wearing her austere tweed suit, eyes closed, hands resting somewhat haphazardly near her sides.

The immediate cause of death, according to the paramedic who had arrived twenty minutes too late, was likely a massive dose of fox