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She crossed the street and went to the front entrance, the same door they’d all fled through on that September night five months ago, flames at their backs. The bulletproof glass was gone and the alarm panel hung loose at the side, wires dangling. The doorway itself was roughly fitted with a section of plywood. A pile of discarded office furniture and construction debris lay off to the side.

Marple found a three-foot length of flat metal on the ground and wedged one end between the plywood and the doorframe. She waited for a line of cars to pass by on the side street, then pried an opening just wide enough to slip through.

When she stepped into the foyer, she gasped. The video from the insurance company had not done the scene justice. She walked a few more feet across broken glass and charred tile. The bomb had been set near the reception area and Virginia’s desk. The shrapnel had blasted all the way across the first floor, destroying desks, walls, file cabinets, computers. Luckily Virginia had already left for the night. Anybody sitting there would have been killed instantly. The whole place still smelled of smoke and burned plastic.

Marple walked toward the back of the building. The kitchen counter was cracked. Wooden stools lay broken on the floor. The spiral staircase to the second floor looked precarious. It was unmoored at the bottom, the lowest step dangling in midair with no visible means of support.

Marple placed one foot on the bottom tread, testing its strength. It wobbled but held. She grabbed the railing and ascended the staircase like a rock climber, keeping three points of contact at all times.

She stepped onto the mezzanine that overlooked the office space. This was the residential level, the floor where the three partners had their private suites. This very spot on the railing was where Marple had huddled with Holmes, Poe, and Helene Grey just before making a run for their lives through the blinding smoke and flames. As the fire trucks arrived, they crammed together in Poe’s car and sped out of the city, with nothing but their phones and the clothes they were wearing—and Marple’s black cat, Annabel, tucked under her arm.

Marple turned and walked past her old bedroom, the one she’d shared with Brendan Holmes for exactly one night—the first night they’d made love. That was just before the explosion changed everything.

She passed Poe’s bedroom, where he and Helene had been living as a new couple. Near the end of the hall, she stopped in front of a heavy metal door, once an impregnable barrier, now jolted off its hinges. She angled her body and stepped through, into what had been her favorite room in the entire building.

The library.

Eighteen feet up, there was a gaping hole in the skylight where firefighters had broken through. The opening was covered with a blue construction tarpaulin, but water had seeped in anyway. Against one wall, wooden cases were cracked and splintered. A glass case was shattered and empty. Looters had made off with a collection of rare violins, treasured by Poe and Holmes, and an assortment of antique weapons. The shelves were still lined with books, but many of them were sodden and crumbling. Marple felt her heart sink.

She pushed aside a broken chair and knelt on the floor. She shifted a row of books and lifted a shelf to expose a sturdy combination lock on a thick metal door set into the wall. She twisted the dial from memory—left 4, right 5, left 0—and let out a sigh of relief when the heavy door released and swung open. Marple grabbed a plastic bin from the corner and began loading it with the contents of the vault.

These were the true collector’s items. The rarest works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Allan Poe. And most important to her, first editions of the novels that featured her namesake and idol, the original Marple.

She filled the bin to the brim, until it was almost too heavy to lift. As she started pushing it toward the door, something shiny on a bookshelf caught her eye. It was an antique silver frame holding a black-and-white photograph of a young girl, her blond hair worn in short bangs and untamed waves. The frame was intact, but water had damaged the photo underneath the glass. There were stains along the edges and two distinct marks on the girl’s face, just below her eyes. The girl in the photo was Agatha Christie, and it looked like she was crying.

Marple took the photo off the shelf and cradled it against her chest.

Then she cried too.

CHAPTER 52

VIRGINIA FILLED THE hot-water bottle with not-quite boiling water, then carried it into the lodge’s great room, where Helene Grey sat reclined in a chair, exhausted, her swollen legs stretched out on an ottoman, Baskerville snoozing at her feet.

It was after dark. At this very moment, Holmes, Marple, and Poe were in an FBI helicopter, on their way back from New York. Virginia could hardly wait for them to arrive. Poe especially.

“You should have been a nurse,” said Grey as she walked over, wrapping the water bottle in a towel.

Virginia smiled as she sat down on a stool next to her chair. “No, I should have been a vet.” Grey leaned forward and Virginia placed the water bottle against her lower back. “That’s why I was working at the animal shelter in Brooklyn.”

“So, what happened?”

“One day Mr. Poe came in looking for a cat for Ms. Marple. A good mouser. I led him to Annabel. He rescued her. Then he offered to hire me.”

“Do you regret it?” asked Grey.

“What? Working with them?”

“No. Not going to vet school.”

“Sometimes I think about it,” said Virginia. “But then I wouldn’t have met you, or Mr. Holmes or Ms. Marple or Mr. Poe.” She reached down and ruffled the fur around Baskerville’s neck. “And I wouldn’t have found this guy.”

Baskerville had been abandoned by his previous owner, a teenager involved in a ransom scheme the firm had cracked. The dog had been trained as a four-legged courier for cash and jewelry in a deal that went very wrong. Now he answered only to Virginia.

Virginia watched as Grey adjusted the water bottle and decided to change the subject. “Have you ever considered a water birth, Detective Grey?”

Grey looked at her as if she’d lost her mind.

“A cousin of mine did it back on the farm for her first baby,” Virginia continued. “I was there. It was magical.” For a moment, she closed her eyes and pictured Helene Grey semi-floating in the huge claw-footed bathtub upstairs.