Page 51 of Murder on the Upper East Side

18Saturday, 13 June 2026

1:58am

Ten minutes later, Hannah and Ami were still tucked away in the Lenox Club’s hidden reading nook, talking. The conversation had migrated from the investigation to Ami’s job as a fashion assistant (occasionally exciting but mostly boring as hell) to her trip to Japan.

The grandfather clock struck two am, then fell silent. A moment later, the door slid open, washing the little room with light. Both women sat up, startled.

‘There you are.’ Edward Beaumont leaned into the nook, scowling.

‘Didn’t know you were looking.’ Hannah stretched out her legs and stood.

‘It’s Ami I need this time, not you.’ He gestured to Ami with a curt jut of his chin. ‘The detectives want to talk.’

Almost imperceptibly, Ami shrank back in her seat.

‘Why?’ Hannah cut in. ‘Ami didn’t have anything to do with all the Madison drama.’

Edward shrugged. ‘I’m just the messenger. Besides, I was at Yale during your final year at Prescott, and they still gave me the third degree.’

Ami gave Hannah’s hand a squeeze. ‘It’s fine. See you soon.’

Hannah watched her little sister stride purposefully out of the reading nook and through the library doors. Ami would be fine. She could handle herself. It was a thought she’d had repeatedly since childhood. Still, she was struck by the same feeling that always followed – that she should have done better to protect her sister somehow.

Inside the Caraway Room, Detective Randall Crews took Ami through the recording consent. She kept a smile on her face, but her hands were clenched between her knees. She’d been desperately hoping to avoid a turn in the hot seat, but no such luck.Of course fucking not.Now that she was here, she needed to be extremely careful.

She’d almost told Hannah the truth down in the library, but she couldn’t draw her sister into this. Opening up to Hannah would mean putting her sister’s life in danger. She hadn’t understood what the note had really meant until it was too late. And now she was the keeper of a terrible secret she’d have to hang onto just a bit longer. Hannah was desperate to solve Madison’s murder, and shake suspicion off herself, but if Ami told the detectives everything she knew before she had a chance to speak to Madison’s killerherself – an inevitability she’d been putting off all night – she’d be endangering her sister, and herself. He was powerful – part of one of the most powerful families in all of New York. An arrest wouldn’t come close to guaranteeing their safety. She’d learned a bit about power on the Upper East Side during her time at Prescott.

Then Detective Raina Wellesley opened a manila envelope and took out several photo prints. She spread them on the mahogany desk between them.

Ami leaned in to look. Before her were a series of images like apparitions from the past. In them, she was fifteen again, dressed in a silk slip dress, the same baby blue colour she’d chosen to wear tonight. She’d accessorised with knee-high riding boots and a bulky cream cardigan. In the first two shots, she was on the deck with Bash, his arm draped over her shoulders, her head listing against his side. In the other four, she was at the base of the stairs, first sprawled in the snow, her long black hair fanned out around her, then sitting up and clutching her wrist. Hannah was crouched down beside her, and Madison loomed over them both, arms folded across her chest, glowering.

She leaned back in her seat, heart pounding.Stay cool.She didn’t need to ask where the detectives had gotten hold of the old pictures. They’d run onPage Sixthe day after the soft launch at Orchard & Vine, and while that was a decade in the past, the internet lives for ever. Who’d taken them in the first place was the more interesting question.

Detective Wellesley’s pink-polished nail tapped against the last image, the one in which you could most clearly see Madison’s nasty scowl. ‘What’s going on here?’

‘Teenage stupidity,’ Ami answered truthfully. ‘As I’m sure you read in the captions, these were taken at a party upstate, on the Fitzgeralds’ property. These show a series of bad decisions that resulted in a tumble down the stairs.’

After the photos ran online, Ami had been grounded from Prescott parties for the rest of the year. To be honest, she was still a little bitter about that.

‘You fell?’ Detective Crews asked.

‘I fell,’ Ami repeated. When the photos ran, the brief captions mercifully left out her scuffle with Hannah. Sebastian Beaumont and Madison DuPont were the real gossip items;Page Sixloved to spotlight any whiff of scandal surrounding the Upper East’s most influential families. Ami and Hannah were nobodies; she’d simply been the mystery girl cosying up to Bash, then making a fool out of herself. No one had cared about Hannah’s role in the whole mess then, and Ami was determined to keep it that way now. The last thing her sister needed was more negative attention thrown at her tonight.

‘And here?’ Detective Wellesley’s nail tapped against the first two photos in the set, the two in which Ami was leaning into Bash’s side.

‘Exactly what it looks like,’ Ami said, working hard to keep her voice steady. It was so long ago – but theold memories hit harder than she’d expected. ‘I’d been partying too hard, and Bash and I were talking. That’s it.’

‘That’s it?’

‘Nothing happened between us, if that’s what you’re asking,’ she said. ‘Less than five minutes after those pictures were taken, I was making snow angels at the base of the stairs.’

‘And where was Sebastian Beaumont then?’ Detective Crews asked.

She shrugged. ‘I think he came down to check on me, but I don’t really remember. I’d just fallen down a flight of deck stairs, and as I mentioned, I was pretty messed up.’

‘He’s not in any of these pictures,’ he observed.

‘No,’ Ami agreed. ‘I think Madison sent him back to the party.’