Page 38 of Murder on the Upper East Side

‘About Elle,’ she said delicately while Theo signalled a server for another martini.

Her attempt at conversation earlier in the night had gone poorly to say the least – and that was before Elle’s best friend had been murdered and all eyes had fallen on Hannah. If Elle hadn’t wanted to talk to herthen, she certainly wasn’t going to give her the time of day now. She’d need to get what she could from Theo.

‘Mmm?’ he asked.

Everyone else here seemed primed to conveniently ignore the facts, but Elle had been theactuallast person seen speaking with Madison – not Hannah. And Madison had expressly told her friend she was going to the ladies’ room. Elle had opportunity, and if she’d come to the Lenox Club prepared to poison her friend, she would have had the means stashed away in her patent leather clutch. What Hannah needed to learn more about was Elle’s motive.

‘She went to Harvard, then stayed in Boston after college,’ she said. ‘She’s only been back in the city for, what, two years now?’

Theo pushed away his plate of half-eaten fish and focused on his drink. ‘I think it’s been three,’ he said after a moment. ‘But yes, she studied math at Harvard undergrad, then did her MBA at Sloan.’

‘That’s MIT?’

He nodded. ‘Elle’s the smartest among us, by a long shot. She did her best to keep her brains under wraps at Prescott, but she’s always been ambitious and bright.’

Hannah’s eyes strayed to the gold and Murano-glass chandelier above. She’d known that Elle had gone to Harvard undergrad, but she’d failed to clock her subsequent enrolment at one of the top business schools in the world. It made sense. Since returningto New York, Elle had opened a financial consultancy, Harrington Strategic Insight, and racked up quite a client list. It took far more than a family name for the uber-rich to trust you with their money, and the challenges for a young Black woman in private wealth management would be especially steep.

Theo turned to her, frowning. He wasn’t showing overt signs of drunkenness, but his eyes were starting to lose focus. ‘You don’t really think Elle masterminded Madison’s murder, do you? I mean, she’s smart enough to pull it off, but despite their differences, they were still best friends.’

Hannah leaned in and dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘You and I both know their friendship has always been complicated, at best. Whoever killed Madison made a glaring – and risky – statement by staging her murder at a crowded Prescott event. Madison was constantly upstaging Elle at school, knocking her down a peg so she could stay on top. She could be manipulative and downright cruel, and if Elle wasn’t her partner, she was her target. No one wanted to dethrone Madison more than Elle Harrington.’

Theo shook his head slowly back and forth. His fine, white blond hair skimmed his forehead. ‘Leaving Prescott was good for Elle. LeavingNew Yorkwas good for her. She’s not the same status-obsessed teen she used to be. Things are different now. Madison doesn’t –didn’t– get to her the way she used to.’

‘Of course not.’ She leaned back, then raised her martini to her lips. ‘But Elle’s in New York again. Madison DuPont and Henry Alcott Winslow’s New York. Before she died, Madison’s roots here were deeper and shinier than ever – and if he wins his primary this month, her husband has a good shot at becoming mayor. That could all bring back old feelings of jealousy, I imagine.’

Theo placed his hand on top of Hannah’s, and her skin tingled. It was a warm feeling, spreading all the way from her hand up her arm and across her chest. ‘I know you want to find Madison’s killer. Clear your name. But I think you’re on the wrong track. Distance was good for Madison and Elle – different colleges, different cities, different careers. They went their separate ways for a while there, but lately, they’d become close again. They weren’t the petty girls they used to be.’

Hannah frowned. When he’d first sat down at her table, Theo had insisted that he and Madison hadn’t been close in years. But he seemed to know quite a lot about her recent relationship to Elle.

His hand was still resting lightly against her skin. He flexed his fingers, threading them through hers. Her eyes flickered to his in response. Was Theo acting on the old feelings she’d always suspected hummed between them, unspoken – or was he deliberately trying to distract her from Elle?

Slowly, she closed her fingers around his. She could have this both ways. Maybe Theo was a bit of adistraction, but she wouldn’t be led off course. Elle was extremely smart, smarter even than Hannah had realised, and Madison wasn’t the only one who could play. Maybe Elle had only outwardly appeared to be cosying up to Madison since returning to the city. Maybe she’d been biding her time, playing a long game…

Something needled away in her mind, something Theo had said about the ticketing website for the gala.Elle said something about a private link, but the site wasn’t secure.How exactly had Elle known there was a problem with the website? Maybe she’d been remembering something that hadn’t seemed important until Gemma had appeared in the doorway to the club. But there was another possibility. Had Elle had access to her phone tonight? What if she had gone back to the website, noting its problems when Gemma walked through the door and Bash confirmed she’d bought a ticket?

And if she had had her phone…

Whoever killed Madison had turned off the lights somehow. Either they’d been working with an accomplice who had access to the club’s electrical system, which was probably somewhere down in the basement, or perhaps they’d taken control of the lights through an app. Meaning, of course, someone had smuggled in a phone.

Hannah glanced up, taking stock of the overhead lighting. Unlike the rest of the Lenox Club, which had barely been updated since the club’s founding in 1896,the overhead fixtures were modern, dimmable and consistent across the three downstairs rooms. Even the grand chandelier was fitted with dimmable LED bulbs. It wouldn’t be very befitting of the Lenox Club, but it was certainly possible that the entire lighting system was programmable via an app. If Elle had somehow managed to hold onto her phone tonight, or even to plant a phone in the club on an earlier occasion, storing it away until she needed it, might she be tech savvy enough to have taken control of the lights?

‘Hannah?’ Theo was saying. ‘Where did you go?’

They were still holding hands at the table. She felt warm all over – the work of the vodka, but also old feelings inconveniently but unmistakably rising to the surface. When it came to Elle, she’d gotten all she was going to get out of Theo, at least right now, in the very public dining room. Besides, she realised with a warm jolt, information wasn’t the only thing she wanted out of Theo Fitzgerald tonight. She slid her hand out from under his and drew her fingertips lightly across his forearm. His eyes locked with hers.

‘Ten minutes,’ he whispered. ‘Meet me upstairs. The Cabot Room.’

Hannah frowned. ‘But everyone will see us going up. And that officer hasn’t budged.’ She motioned to the woman in uniform who had been stationed at the base of the stairs all night.

‘Ah.’ With a small movement of his head, Theo drew Hannah’s focus to a dim hallway behind thereception desk. ‘Follow the hallway past the cloakroom, almost to the end. There’s a pocket door in the wall, to the left. You’ll find a handle at about hip-height.’

‘A secret door?’

‘Well, secret to most members. It’s a staff staircase to the second floor.’

She smiled. ‘How convenient.’

‘I’ll get us a room key. See you soon.’