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When Marta had arrived that morning for the will reading, as requested, she did not expect to hear that she had inherited, solely, the entire Thrombey estate, nor did she expect to be facing down nearly the entire Thrombey family crowding her, pointing fingers, and demanding explanations as she backed away from the house. Wanetta wasn’t there obviously, nor was Ransom as he had taken a phone call and promptly left the estate, while his family bickered about his cursing them out after it was revealed he had been cut out of Harlan’s will. It seems obvious now that he knew that she was getting everything, though that would have been nice to know ahead of time, but that didn’t help her now as she was trying to get her old and, apparently, now unreliable car to start so she could get away from the accusations, attempts at persuasion, and threats. She had just put her head on the wheel in despair, when the sound of another car pulling into the driveway quickly made her and everyone else look up. The black SUV had barely stopped when Ransom popped out of the driver’s side.
“What on earth is going on here,” he demanded as he rounded the front of the car. The distraction afforded Marta just enough time to push open her car door and slip around the back of her own car to the area between the car and the SUV.
“What happened,” Walt yelled. “What happened?! What happened is that the pretty little nurse is inheriting everything and Harlan left the rest of us out to dry– that’s what’s happening!”
“Knew I should have been here to see how you reacted to the will reading,” he smirked. He opened the backseat of the SUV and quickly pulled out a large over-the-shoulder bag and a small child, no more than a couple years old and clearly ill and miserable. He quickly passed both off to Marta. “Got sent home. Will you take her upstairs and do your nursing thing.”
Marta scurried back inside, giving the family a wide berth as she made her way to the steps, and not saying a thing as she passed Blanc and the troopers.
“Who on earth was that,” Linda cried as she pushed her way towards Ransom, who was following Marta into the house.
“A sick kid, didn’t ya notice,” he brushed his mother off. He faced Blanc. “Did you still have questions for me, or can I leave?”
“A few questions, Mr. Drysdale, yes,” Blanc said, “Though the answer to your mother’s question is one that I am rather interested in hearing myself.”
“She’s the reason Marta inherited everything.” He pulled his coat in, continuing, “If you have any other questions, ask them inside. It’s freezing out here,” before he strode inside, ignoring the shocked faces he left behind.
It was only after the medical examiner’s office burned a couple days later that the entire family and staff were reconvened together at the old mansion, the whole family crowded together for Blanc’s next words.
“Now, some of you may already know that the medical examiner’s office that was doing a toxicology screen on Harlan’s blood was burned down in the early hours of the morning, which only adds another layer to this mystery. You see, we have several mysteries working alongside each other, each confounding the next. Did Harlan commit suicide as it appeared at first, or was it something more? Who called me in, and why? And why was the medical examiner’s office burned down?”
He was interrupted by the appearance of Fran in the doorway. “Phone call for Mrs. Drysdale.”
“Oh, tell them to call my office,” Linda said. “Don’t worry me about it now.”
“The supposedly easiest question to answer,” Blanc continued, “Is the burning of the medical examiner’s office– to keep the results of Harlan’s toxicology report from getting out, but that’s only if there’s something on it of interest. Would you care to comment on that Ms. Cabrera? Please bear in mind that the examiner was kind enough to send a copy of the results to me immediately, before the office was burned.”
Marta paled considerably, and looked up across the room, seeing harsh glares scattered around the room. They knew she couldn’t lie; now or later, it wouldn’t matter. “It was an accident. I would never have done it on purpose, and then the naloxone was gone and I don’t know why. I tried to call an ambulance, but Harlan knew it wouldn’t get here in time, so he– he tried to protect me by making it look like a suicide. He told me to go down the trellis and leave, so it looked like he killed himself after I had left, then he– then he…”
“He took his own life, believing that it was only hastening his end by mere moments, and protecting you from investigation and the Slayer clause, thus allowing you to inherit his estate as he had wanted,” Blanc finished.
Marta nodded.
“Well, that’s it then,” Richard said, starting to get up, “The previous will stands, end of the mystery. Thanks for your time–”
“I’ve not finished, Mr. Drysdale,” Blanc interjected. Richard sank back into his chair. “As I said, there are many mysteries involved in this case. And in fact, we haven’t cleared up a single one yet, as Ms. Cabrera, I don’t believe, burned the examiner’s office.” He noted Marta shaking her head as he continued, “Nor have we uncovered who hired me and why, as Marta here would have no reason to do so. No, I believe there is something much more devious at play here, a mystery inside a mystery, so solving one doesn’t actually solve anything at all. No, I believe someone else sneaked into Harlan’s study before the end of the party, and switched the medications using the syringes in Marta’s medical bag. They even took the naloxone, the life-saving antidote, thus ensuring that when Marta gave Harlan his evening injections, she would cause his death.”
“No, no, no” Marta interjected, “That’s impossible.”
“It is the truth,” Blanc answered back. “Hand me that vial of morphine, and I’ll show you,” he said as he gestured to the two vials.
“If they did that, if the meds were switched, then when I got them mixed up, I– I accidentally switched them back and I gave Harlan–”
He took the bottle from her, starting to peel off the label. “The correct doses, yes, but not accidentally. I taped over the label of these two vials. The vials themselves are identical. How did you know this was the morphine?”
“I just knew.”
“You knew because there is the slightest almost imperceptible difference in tension and viscosity between the two liquids. You knew because you had done it a hundred times.” Harlan looked her in the eye and he encouraged, “You gave him the correct medication because you are a good nurse.”
“Then Harlan was–”
“I’m sorry, Marta, but yes, Harlan was fine. His blood work was normal. His cause of death was death was purely, solely suicide, and you are guilty of nothing but some damage to the trellis and some amateur theatrics. In fact, if Harlan had listened to you and called the ambulance, he would be alive today.” The room, and Marta particularly, stewed over that thought for a minute. The burden on the nurse shifting away, leaving just a puddle of grief behind. “A tangled web– and we are not done untangling it yet. It was the person who switched the medications that contacted me, hoping to shed light on the medication mix up, and that burned down the examiner’s office, as the toxicology report that previously would have incriminated you now exonerates you, and the true villain of this tale knew that as soon as they overheard you discuss the one person you trusted in this family about the switch. They thought you wouldn’t be able to keep that secret for long, not with your inability to lie. They assumed we would find out about the baby through any decent background check, which we would have, just as we found that you weren’t being paid through a nursing agency or as a self-employed nurse, and that would just continue to redirect suspicion onto you. And so, the redeeming toxicology report had to be destroyed. They had come so far to keep from losing everything, and they were fairly sure that a will naming you sole heiress would result in them losing everything.”
“So it was Ransom, after all,” Walt chimed in. “He doesn’t have anything now that he’s written out of the will. He has no job, no future. He’s blown through his trust fund years ago, I’m sure. And with that argument the night before–” Walt had gotten up and started making his way over to his nephew, brandishing his cane like a weapon every time he lifted it.
As the family started to break into fisticuffs again, with Blanc futilely trying to quiet them. No one saw the figure sneaking over to the throne of knives and drawing one out, until she was darting towards Marta, blade posed to strike. The grasping hands and cries of warning from around the room were too late to prevent the knife point pressing into Marta’s chest as she hit the ground.
There was quiet as Fran lay atop a frightened Marta, a sudden moment of confusion as Fran pushed the fake knife point a couple more times into Marta, until with a gasp of horror, Ransom dragged one woman off the other.
As the troopers drew Fran back, her face grew hard. “You, you who look so innocent and angelic. No one ever looked twice at you, never thought what you could be. All these years serving here, keeping my nose clean, and you act the disgrace and shame all of us by sleeping your way to the top! I saw how after you got here, it wasn’t long after Harlan warmed up to you that you started wearing even baggier sweaters. You thought that hid the bump?! I knew, I always suspected it was Harlan's baby with the way he lit up to see it, but then I overheard him talking about a will that gave you everything, and I knew. I knew. I knew that you had filled every stereotype about people like us, just to get a leg up in the world!”
“And you knew that Marta likely wouldn’t require your services for one reason or another if she inherited,” Blanc interjected, “But if a member of the family inherited the house, they would likely keep you on, and your future would be secure.”
Marta had tears in her eyes as she choked out, “Fran, why didn’t you just talk to me? It didn’t have to be like this. It never–” She broke down into tears fully, and Ransom gathered her into his arms.
“There’s nothing you could say that would change what you did,” Fran spat back.
“Except perhaps the rest of the facts,” Blanc reminded her. “Did you stop to wonder why she trusted Ransom with the secret of injecting Harlan from the wrong vial?”
“That sounds like a great idea,” Meg piped in. “He probably just wanted to get Marta in trouble too, or get friendly with the new money pot.’
“Oh shut up, Meg,” Ransom sneered. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Indeed,” Blanc explained, “As, in fact, it would have been in Ransom’s best interest if Harlan had lived to see the will updated again.”
“What?!” the family cried.
“But he was threatening grandpa,” Jacob argued, “I heard him!”
“You heard part of it,” Blanc said, “But while you heard a threat, Harlan saw a good man willing to put the best interest of his wife and child above money, even if it meant threatening his grandfather and inheritance, thus passing a test to confirm the changes that Harlan had seen in you over the last few years.” He didn’t even pause as every person in the room gaped at Ransom. “Because little Maria was never Harlan’s baby, was she Marta? That was never even in question for you.”
As Marta shook her head, Ransom dipped his own a bit to brush a kiss to the top of Marta’s scalp. “I had met her when she was working in an ER, I was the least drunk of my friends when someone needed to go in, and I was stuck on her– just like that. I asked her out, still a bit too tipsy to really be driving. She said she never considered accepting dates from drunk men. So when I sobered up, I kept going back until I caught her on shift again. I don’t know what she saw in me that day, but she took a chance on me, one I never deserved, but I'm not throwing away..”
She turned her head to look back at him, “I saw what I knew you could be, just like Harlan did. And you proved us right, so many times, with your book, how you started looking after yourself, started looking after me.” She pressed a kiss to his chest.
“And when Harlan needed a nurse–” Blanc prompted.
“Granddad didn’t want any outside help, even though he needed it,” Ransom explained. “But I thought maybe he would accept help from family.”
“So just as Fran incorrectly assumed the call that came in a while ago was for Linda Drysdale, she believed the stipend she saw for a full-time family caregiver was for Harlan’s baby mama, not his–”
“Granddaughter, by marriage anyway. I never wanted to tell anyone else about Marta, or Maria, didn’t want them dragged into this mess even more, which is why I was so upset by Harlan’s ultimatum to tell the family about them or get cut out of the will, and why he wrote her name Marta née Cabrera in the will. Maria was up here a lot though, I didn’t mind the only two who actually cared knowing.”
“You married a nurse!” Linda cried, aghast. “Please tell me you at least had the sense to get a prenup.”
“No, Linda, I didn’t.” Ransom ground out.
“She’ll take you for every penny you have,” Donna warned.
“You can get out, Donna.” Ransom ordered. “First, with Harlan’s will, Marta doesn’t need my money anyway, she would be better off than I am, a will that’s been in place for years apparently. Second, I’m never leaving her of my own free will, and if I mess things up enough that the kindest and most forgiving person on the planet decides to leave me, then she will deserve every penny she gets out of me, so you can shove it!”
Marta turned back to a bewildered Fran. “I was married to Ransom before I ever came here, Fran, and I had his baby. I never– it was nothing like that.”
It was a stunned Fran that Trooper Wagner led away. Ransom held his bride tighter as the would-be murderer was marched out in front of them, watching her, then passing a wary eye over his family, turned to Blanc. “Thanks for the help. Send us your bill.”
An older woman stepped into the room with Maria in her arms. “I have to leave for work now if I don’t want to be late.” She passed Maria into Marta’s arms.
Ransom bent down to hug her. “Thanks for babysitting, Mom; we appreciated it. You and Alice are still coming to dinner tomorrow?”
Marta’s mother held his arm to keep him level as she kissed his cheek. “Of course we will. You promised to tell us about that new book you’re working on, Ransom.”
Ransom turned to his family. “We’ll get in touch if we have any questions about Harlan’s possessions.”
Taking that as the cue they were no longer welcome, the Thrombeys started disapprovingly making their way to the door as Ransom held his family as he watched the others go.