On Sunday afternoon, I was calmly lying on my bed, reading, when there was a sudden, urgent knocking on my bedroom door.
"Yeah?" I called.
The door swung quickly open, revealing my Mum standing there, looking worried. "I've just got a call from the Desslers," she said. "Joanna's very sick, apparently. Unconscious, even." I gasped. "Anyway, they've called me over there, so that's where I've gone, if you're wondering."
"Can I come?" I asked.
Mum shrugged. "If you like, but make up your mind, because I have to go right now."
I put down the book and swung into action, following Mum out to the car. Although the Desslers lived within walking distance, I knew Mum would want to get there as quickly as she possibly could. Mum was the 'default' backup to Edward in a medical crisis, since she knew more about the workings of the human body than anyone else in the town (after Edward, of course). Edward couldn't come simply because it was daylight, and venturing outside his home would've been fatal.
"Do you know what's happened?" I asked while Mum drove.
She shook her head. "Not sure," she said. "But it's very worrying in someone so young." Joanna, the Dessler's young daughter, was only seven.
It didn't take long to reach the home of the mysterious Dessler family. Marie was waiting for us out the front, worry lines decorating her forehead and a crumpled tissue clutched in one hand. She looked up in relief as we arrived.
"She's in the lounge room," she told us, leading the way with unmistakeable haste.
"What's happened to her?" Mum asked as we walked.
"We're not entirely sure, but we think there was something in a muffin she ate."
"Do you have any more of the muffins?" Mum asked.
Marie nodded. "It was just the one, but she didn't quite eat all of it. She bought it fresh from Lou's, I think." By this time, we were inside the house, and Marie was leading us over to Joanna's unconscious form, spread out on the floor, surrounded by her father and brother.



Marie continued to explain. "When she was about halfway though, she said that it tasted funny, so she stopped. Then she started complaining of a headache, then a bad stomach ache, and then she started vomiting a few minutes before she collapsed."
Mum held Joanna's wrist in her hands, feeling her pulse. "Does she have any allergies?" she asked.
Marie shook her head. "None that we know of. We've had her tested before, too."
Mum's brow furrowed. "Look, I think the safest thing to do would be to get her over to Edward's as quickly as possible."
"Edward?" Marie repeated. "But he can't come out in daylight, can he?"
"He's not too bad if he stays inside his house," Mum said, standing up and taking out her mobile phone. "And he has a makeshift emergency room for occasions like this. I'll call him while you get her in the car and start driving."
Everyone seemed to go into action, leaving me feeling like an awkward fifth wheel. I wasn't sure if I had the right to intrude on what was obviously a major medical crisis for the family, but I knew it would be impolite to just leave. I watched as Marie, Anthony and Nathan gently carried Joanna to lie on the back seat of their car, before Marie and Nathan drove away.
Anthony watched them drive off, standing out the front, tears in his eyes and worry clouding his face.
I felt awkward, but still felt the need to comfort him in some way.
"She'll be fine," I said encouragingly.



He shook his head. "No, she won't," he said bleakly. "And it's all my fault."
"Don't be ridiculous," I said. "It's not your fault."
"Yes, it is," he said, turning dead eyes to face me. "All my fault."
I realised there wasn't much more that could be said to someone whose mind was already firmly made up. Meanwhile, Mum had stopped talking and motioned for me to get back into the car again. I gave Anthony one last look of sympathy, then got back into the car.
"Poor Edward," Mum sighed as she drove us to the Guildenstern's mansion. "He'll be feeling very sick after this. Whenever he gets up during daytime…"
"What do you think happened?" I asked.
Mum shrugged. "Poison, perhaps? I don't know. I don't think it's an allergic reaction, because that would've brought on a different response. Also, if she was that badly allergic to something, her Mum would've known about it."
When we reached the Guildensterns, the Desslers were nowhere in sight. Presuming they'd already gone inside, Mum went to ring the doorbell.
"Come in!" called Edward from the other side.
I'd been over to the Guildenstern's place several times, but once again, the grandeur of the building really struck me. It was an enormous castle of a place, complete with elegant antique furniture and old, disused candlestick holders attached to the stone walls. It was rather dark, since there were only dark stained-glass windows in the walls, but the artificial lighting gave off sufficient light with which to see.
Mum led me into a small room towards the front of the house, where Edward was already examining Joanna, who was lying on the bed, still out. Marie was telling Edward everything she'd told my mum, and he listened patiently, nodding as he worked.



When he'd finished his examination, he frowned. "Do you still have the leftover muffin?"
"Right here," Marie volunteered, handing him the remains.
He sniffed it carefully and nodded. "Arsenic poisoning," he announced, putting the muffin in a plastic bag and quickly going over to some cabinets full of medical supplies. "She'll need to get to a hospital as soon as possible."
Marie inhaled sharply, looking horrified. "Poisoned? By who?"
Edward shook his head, still gathering medical equipment. "No idea. We'll have to tell Christopher, and there'll be a full police enquiry into the matter. Until then, I can try pumping her stomach, and then call for a chopper to come and pick her up pronto."
Marie blanched. "Pumping her stomach?"
"At this stage, I think this would be the safest course of action," Edward said. "At the hospital they'll be able to give her better treatment, but I don't have any dimercaprol here at the moment, so we'll just have to try and flush as much of the arsenic out of her as we can. Marie, do you know Joanna's blood type?"
Marie nodded. "A negative, we had some blood tests done a while back—"
Edward nodded briskly and addressed my mum. "Jamie, can you call the hospital and ask them to prepare for a paediatric case of acute arsenic poisoning, tell them to have some blood units of A negative on standby for transfusion, as well as dimercaprol and the rest…"
Edward kept rattling on in medical jargon for a minute. I decided to leave as soon as he started inserting a long tube into Joanna's stomach. I knew I wasn't needed and felt like a useless spectator, watching something I didn't really want to see anyway.

Mum went with them to the hospital, and later told me that Joanna was going to be OK.
"Apparently, it was just enough to make her very sick, but not kill her," Mum said. "Although I wonder if she would have survived if we hadn't acted quickly enough."
Of course, since it was obviously a deliberate criminal act of poisoning, a police investigation was underway, headed by Christopher. And of course, since it was a muffin from Lou's shop that had been the culprit, Lou was immediately looked upon as the prime suspect.



Later, he told me that he was extremely sorry that the accident had occurred, and that he was helping the police in every way he could. He did feel a little hurt that Christopher suspected him, though.
"I've only been the shopkeeper here without trouble for over twenty years," he sniffed.
Suspicion quickly fell on Adrianna and Lola as well, since they helped Lou run the shop. They, too, claimed to know nothing about the poisoned muffin, and said that they were in an Eridessa pub at the time the poisoning occurred – a fact that was confirmed by several witnesses.
The news of Joanna's near-death experience shocked our community. No kind of criminal activity had ever happened in all the years I'd been living there, except for one famous night when Lou's store was nearly robbed. The fact that some kind of malicious crime had occurred in sleepy Solitaria was stunning, and suddenly people began to distrust one another: was the killer one of us? And more importantly, would they strike again?