Chapter 8 - The Dead Man Under the Chapel
Workers removed the casket platform and discovered a concealed lift descending into a medical room beneath the chapel.
Henry Whitmore lay inside on a hospital bed, weak but alive, monitored by a private nurse.
He had faked his death after surviving poisoning at a board dinner.
The physician who declared him dead worked for the family, and the funeral director had been paid to prepare an empty casket.
Henry believed the conspirators would reveal themselves only if they thought he could no longer testify.
Anna stared at him without relief.
He had used her suspicion, Marcus’s fear, Lorraine’s disappearance and Julian’s guilt as pieces in a plan designed to save his own reputation.
Henry apologized and said he had always intended to compensate the Reed family.
Anna asked how much money he believed twelve stolen years should cost.
No amount could return her mother’s birthdays, her abandoned nursing degree or the nights Marcus went hungry.
Henry confessed that he had helped create the employee blacklist before later attempting to dismantle it.
He had benefited from the same injustice he now wished to expose.
Julian demanded to know who poisoned him.
Henry looked toward Eleanor.
Mrs. Whitmore removed her veil and admitted placing medication in his drink, but said she had done so after receiving proof that Henry planned to have her declared mentally incompetent.
She claimed she used a harmless sedative, not poison.
Someone else had replaced the bottle.
Henry revealed that the replacement had come from the Whitmore family pharmacy chain.
The prescription was approved through Julian’s executive account and collected by Marcus.
Every accusation now pointed back toward Anna’s family and Julian.
Marcus insisted he had collected medicine for Lorraine, not Henry.
Anna opened the file she had saved from the fire.
It contained a photograph of Lorraine entering the pharmacy beside a woman with Anna’s face.
The date was from the previous week.
Anna had been working at the Whitmore house that day.
Henry looked at her in terror.
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“The woman beside your mother has been living in my guesthouse for six months.”
“She says she is Anna Reed.”
