“By whom?”
“She implied household staff had access to her dressing room.”
“Elena?”
“She never named anyone directly.”
“She did not need to,” Mara said.
“She planted the suspicion, and you carried it into court.”
Seraphina’s attorney demanded that the questioning stop.
The judge agreed that formal interrogation would require proper procedure, but he also ordered Seraphina’s bracelet seized.
She resisted when an officer approached.
“It belonged to my mother.”
“You reported it stolen,” Price said.
“I found it later.”
“When?”
“I don’t remember.”
Clara remembered.
“You wore it the morning Daddy died.”
Seraphina stared at her.
Clara continued.
“You came into my room before the police arrived.
You told me Daddy was gone.
You had the bracelet on because it scratched my cheek when you held my face.”
Mara crouched beside Clara.
“What else did she say?”
Clara’s voice dropped.
“She said Elena had done something terrible.
She said if I told people about the shouting, they might take Elena away forever.
Then she said it would be my fault.”
Elena closed her eyes.
That threat explained Clara’s silence during the first interviews.
Investigators had described the child as withdrawn and inconsistent.
Nobody had asked whether the grieving widow was coaching her.
Seraphina’s control began to fracture.
“This is obscene,” she said.
“You are twisting the memories of a traumatized child.”
“No,” Mara replied.
“We are finally listening to her.”
The bracelet was sealed.
The court then authorized an emergency search of Blackwood Manor, Seraphina’s vehicles, her private office, and the financial records Gideon had referenced in the recording.
By evening, the case against Elena had begun to collapse.
The first discovery came from the manor’s security archive.
At trial, prosecutors had relied on a report stating that Elena entered Gideon’s study at 6:12 in the morning and that no one else entered between midnight and the moment she found him.
But the original security system had not been examined.
Investigators had received a printed summary prepared by the manor’s security consultant, a man hired by Seraphina two weeks after her marriage.
When technicians recovered the raw logs, they found that the study door opened at 5:31 in the morning using Seraphina’s private access code.
The entry had been deleted from the summary.
At 5:34, the kitchen pantry opened with the same code.
At 5:41, Elena’s bedroom door registered an attempted access.
Elena had been asleep inside with the bolt engaged.
At 6:03, the study door opened again.
At 6:12, Elena entered, found Gideon, and called for help.
Seraphina claimed someone else must have used her code.
Then investigators searched her dressing room.
Behind a removable panel in a jewelry cabinet, they found a velvet case containing three silver vials.
Two were empty.
The third held residue chemically consistent with the poison found in Gideon’s blood.
Seraphina said she had never seen them before.
