The Wedding Project 💍

'And So It Goes' - The Conclusion (@MikeMacColin)

Although she was crying like a child, she managed to shake her head. "No!" she wailed in between her sobbing. "Please! I... I didn't do it!"

"Then tell us what is in the syringe!"

Another minute filled with tears passed, but finally she gave an answer. "Abrin. It's... it's abrin."

Gordon let out a quiet whistle. "That's the good stuff. Hard to come by... unless you have connections."

Harris nodded. It was a very effective poison, attacking the cells in a body, and there was no antidote against it. Experienced chemists or pharmacists were able to get it from rosary pea plants, otherwise it was pretty rare - which was a good thing. "I guess someone like you has some good connections."

"Please!" She shook her head, raised her hands in front of her. "I didn't do it. Please, you must believe me."

"I know."

Still Susan went on: "I swear to God I did not... wait! You know?"

Harris showed her a faint smile, but it quickly vanished again behind his mask of cold professionalism. "You will answer to a lot of things, young lady. You can rest assured that Miss Vanders is going to press charges against you for attacking her. And this..." He pointed at the syringe. "Possession of a poison of that kind is illegal in many states and countries, but I guess the Haitian authorities have to decide that."

Still, Susan's watery eyes were fixed on Harris. "But... you know I didn't kill Anna?" A hint of hope sounded in her trembling voice.

Harris pointed at the syringe. "This did not kill Anna. Abrin works very slowly - it can take a day. I guess you were counting on that fact when you planned to murder her. But Anna died within half an hour - that is the time window before her leaving the table and being found dead by Miss Walker. And from what we know about the murder weapon, the effect of that was almost immediate."

"It just leaves the question why you would leave the syringe lying under the bed in the first place," Gordon added. Telling from his puzzled look on his face, he was almost as surprised as Susan herself that Harris knew she wasn't the killer.

The maid of honor calmed down enough to tell the entire story. How she had planned to kill Anna because she wanted her husband for herself. How she had tried to inject her with the poison before the wedding ceremony. How she had dropped it accidentally and had no opportunity to retrieve it without everybody else noticing. When she discovered the body later and found out that someone had beaten her to it, she simply had no mind for looking for the syringe.

To Harris it all made sense. It was possible that Susan had to improvise another murder weapon after she dropped her syringe under the bed. But then she would have remembered to pick it up again after killing Anna, not leave it in the room for a half decent detective to find. Besides, her fingerprints were all over the place - along with the prints of every other bridesmaid who had come to visit Anna before the wedding.

"Am I free to go?" Susan coyly asked as both detectives turned away from her.

Harris paused for a moment, fixating her with a stern glance. "I do not approve of any of the things you have done today. As I said, you will answer to them." He gave it another brief moment of silence in which the woman would hang and suffer in uncertainty before he would continue: "But we are not the police. Our job is to find out who killed Anna Gilmour... or Anna Wallace, actually. And we know you didn't do it. So we have no reason to keep you here."

She hesitated at first. But when she tried to get up from her chair, nobody interfered. So she turned around without another word, hurried to the door and opened it.