"A Murder In Milburn", Book 3: Death In The Library by Nancy McGovern Page A

you.”
    There was a hiss and a boom outside. By now used to them, the party ignored the firecrackers and focussed on Nora.
    “Petyr loves you very much, Maria,” Nora said. “He left you and Johann behind when he ran away to Portland, but he’s always felt very guilty about it. Like he betrayed the family. Hasn’t he, Katya?”
    Katya nodded. “He has.”
    “Well when he was arrested, he thought maybe it was Johann who did it. He looked at you, Maria, and he thought about how you’d feel if you found out it was Johann. With the shock and emotion, he decided that he’d rather confess himself.”
    “That’s not possible!” Johann sprang up.
    “Or maybe,” Nora said. “Maybe he thought you did it yourself. Maybe he thought you’d been the one to kill Reynold. That after years of suffering psychological abuse at his hands, you’d snapped. You were the one who handed Johann the basket of mushrooms today afternoon. You’re the one who later bought them to me. I think Petyr thought that somehow, you’d decided to murder his father on the spur of the moment, but accidentally implicated Johann! After all, you were insisting that it was a suicide when it couldn’t possibly have been.”
    “It’s a horrible lie!” Maria cried. “I would never have hurt Reynold! I loved him.”
    “But she’s right. Why did you insist on calling it a suicide?” Johann asked.
    “Because I thought it was one of you!” Maria said. “It had to be. What possible reason could Katya or Lila have?”
    “Ah.” Nora smiled. “That’s an interesting question. What could their motive possibly be?”
    All eyes were on her again.
    “Katya, let’s see… Katya could have many motives. Reynold could have told her that she would never marry his son. She could have been afraid that he wouldn’t agree, and decide that he needed to be removed from her path.”
    “Nora!” Katya sounded angry, and betrayed.
    “But that’s not what happened,” Nora said. “Lila killed Reynold.”
    “What!” Lila sprang up. “How dare you say something so horrible!”
    “Oh, it’s horrible, but you aren’t calling it a lie,” Nora said.
    “Johann, it’s about time you threw her out of here!” Lila said.
    “Is it?” Nora asked. “Johann, I think it’s about time you called the police!”
    “I’m going to go ahead and do that,” Johann said grimly. “But first, I’d like to hear out this awful accusation you’ve made, and then I’ll probably call them to have you thrown out!”
    “It’s the only logical solution, isn’t it?” Nora asked. “Lila is the one who suggested mushroom gathering in the first place. When your father latched onto it, she made it sound like it was his idea. After a childhood in France where she went mushroom-foraging, Lila is one of the only people here who could know which mushrooms were poisonous. She has a degree in biology too. A good understanding of chemistry also, I assume.”
    “But Lila never went near those mushrooms!” Johann said. “Petyr was the one who plated the dish. Mother was the one who bought them to you. Katya had a chance when she went out to help mother with the dishes, and afterwards too. But Lila never went near them!”
    “Yes,” Nora said. “Which in itself is slightly suspicious. Lila made it very clear that she never went near that plate. It’s true. She didn’t.”
    “What then?” Johann asked.
    “I was fooled because you overturned the table in your rush to reach your father,” Nora said. “In the hurry, you made all the plates crash to the ground, so that none of us could properly look at them, and the police had trouble with the forensics too.”
    “Well?”
    “The thing is, that poison was never in the sautéed mushrooms I created,” Nora said. “It was in the iced tea.”
    Johann gasped.
    “Lila made the iced tea. Lila served you all. How easy would it be to slip some mushroom powder into Reynold’s iced tea? She made a grave error though. She assumed