Chapter 7: Bianca's Last Move
Marsh brought Bianca into the drawing room.
She sat across from us with her hands folded on her knee and her expression arranged into something that was almost calm.
Almost.
Her eyes moved across the table — the documents, the envelope, Graham's open case — and I watched her calculate.
"I'd like to explain the context," she said, before Marsh could speak.
"Go ahead," Marsh said.
"My father was not well in his final years.
He made decisions that were — inconsistent.
The property transfer was his idea.
He came to me.
He said he was worried about the estate being mismanaged after he was gone.
He trusted me to protect it." She looked at me.
"Daniel was never interested in the business side of things.
Father knew that."
"The psychiatric evaluation," Marsh said.
"Dr.
Renner."
A brief pause.
"Father's GP recommended a cognitive assessment.
Renner was a referral."
"From whom?"
Another pause.
Shorter, but there.
"I don't recall exactly."
"Dr.
Renner's licence was revoked for providing fraudulent assessments in exchange for payment," Marsh said.
"Were you aware of that?"
"Not at the time."
"And the signature on the property transfer.
A handwriting analysis will be completed.
If the signature does not match your father's authenticated documents, that becomes a serious matter."
Bianca looked at the table.
"I'm sure it will match."
She said it with just enough confidence to suggest she wasn't sure at all.
Marsh let the silence sit for a moment.
Then: "Evelyn has provided a detailed account of the morning of the wedding.
The confrontation in the hallway.
The locked floor panel." He paused.
"She was in that space for three years, Ms.
Ashworth."
"She was disturbed," Bianca said.
"She had a breakdown.
I was trying to protect her.
To protect Daniel from the embarrassment of—"
"She was locked in," I said.
Bianca turned to me.
And for the first time, the arrangement on her face came apart — not into guilt, but into something rawer.
Something that looked almost like the sister I had grown up with.
"She was going to destroy this family," she said.
"Everything Father built.
Everything he worked for.
She walks in here for five minutes and finds one piece of paper and suddenly she has the right to tear it all down?"
"She had the right to marry me," I said.
"That's all she had."
"You don't understand what was in those accounts.
What Father had done.
What would have come out."
The room shifted.
Marsh leaned forward slightly.
"What would have come out, Ms.
Ashworth?"
Bianca stopped.
She heard herself.
Her jaw tightened.
"I want to speak to my solicitor," she said.
"That's your right," Marsh said.
He nodded to the officer near the door.
Bianca stood.
She straightened her jacket with both hands — a small, precise gesture, the kind of thing you do when you need to feel composed and your body is the only thing still cooperating.
She looked at Evelyn.
"I kept you alive," she said.
"Whatever else you think of me.
I kept you alive."
Evelyn looked back at her without flinching.
"A cage is still a cage," she said, "no matter how carefully you feed the person inside it."
Bianca said nothing more.
She walked out with the officer, and the sound of her footsteps on the hall floor was the last ordinary sound the house made for a long time.
Graham looked up from his papers.
"She said 'what Father had done,'" he said quietly.
"What did she mean by that?"
I looked at Evelyn.
Evelyn looked at the envelope in Marsh's hands — the letter from my father — and then back at me.
"There's one more thing," she said.
"Something I didn't tell the detective yet.
Something your father wrote in the middle of the letter.
Not at the end.
In the middle, where I almost missed it."
She reached over and gently took the envelope back from Marsh.
She opened it and pointed to a single paragraph, third from the bottom.
I read it.
Then I read it again.
May you like
"Graham," I said slowly.
"How much do you know about my father's business partner?"
