'Has she said anything yet?'

'No, sir. Just said that her lawyer was here and she wanted to talk to you and Detective Esposito.'

Beckett nodded at Julian who was standing outside the interview room, stabbed her plastic fork into the ravioli in her bowl; she'd had to heat it up in the break-room microwave but it was better than interrogation on an empty stomach. Montgomery had always teased her that he knew how hungry she was for a snack by how snappy she got in the box.

She was cramming in the last of it when she saw Esposito emerge from the elevator, polishing off the last of some delectable treat courtesy of his wonderful wife.

'Hey, sorry, I got held up at home. Tessi got home with Meredeth and she needed me to tuck her into bed.'

'Oh, that's good, she's keeping solids down?' Beckett asked, depositing her empty ravioli bowl onto her desk.

'Yeah, she had tea, chicken soup with crackers, even had a little toast with Nutella on it. When she kept that down and digested it with no Linda Blair pea-soup moves, she was sprung with her medicines around the same time you and I called it a day.' Esposito licked crumbs off of his thumb, looked at Julian. 'How long have they been waiting?'

'Fifteen minutes at most, sir.'

'Julian, you don't need to call me sir,' Esposito reminded him.

'I know sir. Habit from my days in the air force.'

'How come you never tried for the detective's exam?'

Julian shook his head. 'After two tours in Gulf Two doing bomb and ordinance disposal, I promised my wife and kids I'd have a nice safe desk job. I'll be at my desk if you need me.'

Esposito and Beckett watched him lumber off before turning to the observation room and watching Aurora with a woman who was probably the same age as the prisoner but thanks to stress and hard living appeared years older. She had paper peach skin and a face as wrinkly as a pug dog, and pale eyes that kept darting towards the one-way glass, as though she knew she were being watched.

'What do you make of this?' she asked Esposito.

'What?'

'This woman has tonnes of money. Hell, her husband is a lawyer and yet she goes with Jessica Fletcher in there?' Beckett gestured towards the elderly-looking woman. An idea struck and she looked at Esposito. 'You think you can run down to Booking for a moment?'

'Yeah, why?'

'Jackie's in the lab tonight, right?' Beckett detailed her plan and Esposito nodded, though he looked a little skeptical. 'What? You think I'm being paranoid?'

'No, not paranoid. Unorthodox, but not paranoid.'

'Good. Tap on the door, not the glass, when you're back.'

Beckett opened the door, walked in with her files and back-up recorder. She recited the necessary information for the record, then folded her hands on the table. 'Would you please state your name for the record ma'am?'

'My name is Minerva Dickinson,' she replied in a voice that was as creased with age as her face. 'I am Missus White's representative.'

'And what has persuaded you to change your mind and tell us the truth once and for all, Missus White?'

'My conscience, and Elaine. The doctors let me speak to her by phone this morning and I told her that in order to get this all sorted out by the police we needed to be honest- I needed to be honest, and explain the full nature of our relationship.'

'Very well.'

Aurora sighed, looked to Minerva who bowed her head in the slightest of movements, signaling for her to speak. 'My mother was a teenage mother, not well off and she gave up my care to people who wanted a baby and had the means to care for it. She became pregnant a second time, this time with Elaine only she kept Elaine because by then she had a job and was capable of taking care of a baby.'

'Did you know who she was?'

'Yes, I did.' Aurora nodded. 'And she knew who I was, though we never discussed it in public. It was never kept a secret by my parents who my birth mother was, as she hadn't given me up because I was an inconvenience to her. She wanted a good life for me, and from what I've heard Elaine talk about she was given as much advantage as her mother could afford. We didn't go to the same school but we knew each other, until Elaine's mother and Elaine moved to New York when she was transferred there for work.'

She paused, sipped the water Julian had brought her prior to the detective's arrival. 'We reconnected, as I said, through a theatre circle. Elaine loves the theatre, which I thought was quite odd since Victor was such a dramatic personality, but she said for a few hours a night she could lose herself in someone else's problems and make her forget her own.'

'Take us through the tipping point.'

'I'm sorry, the what?'

'The tipping point,' Beckett repeated, 'where Elaine came to you and said 'I've had enough, I need your help to escape'. What happened with that conversation.'

'I'd like to say something here,' Minerva interjected. 'My client is already facing numerous charges on obstruction of justice and lying to the police. She's already made it clear how minimal her part is in this. I won't have you asking her to talk about things that make her look more guilty than she is.'

'We've already established that this is about information only, Counselor. We just need the truth about Elaine Hammond.'

'Elaine came to me at work, she even made an appointment under her maiden name with me,' Aurora told them, 'and explained to me what it was she wanted, that she needed some money set-up in my name for her to access so that she could. We went to my bank, explained that I wanted the account and she needed to be able to access it without question.'

'What about her plan to drug her husband and kill him?'

'Kill him?' Aurora shook her head. 'No, that was never her plan. She wanted to write a tell-all book about him, how horrible he was and humiliate him as she'd been humiliated, though I think her real plan was to get a settlement out of court. They had a prenup that was iron-clad.'

'I know.'

'She would have had nothing if he left her, and if he died from natural causes, she would get half of what he had when they were married.'

'What about murder?'

'She would get five percent times the number of years they were married. Victor set that price so high because he believed no one would try to kill him, he believed his public persona made him beloved by nearly everyone.'

Beckett did the math in her head; she'd seen Victor's income tax return from the previous year and had nearly choked on her coffee when she'd read the figures. 'So that's roughly one million and a quarter, right?'

'Right.'

'So here's my question. Did she wait until she knew she'd get the big payoff or was she really sick of being abused by him?'

'Elaine is a gentle creature,' Aurora said for what felt like the millionth time. 'She is not a violent person or an evil on, she just finally realized that what he was doing to her was wrong.'

'I don't believe that,' Beckett said. 'Something had to have happened for her to have been worked up enough to go from being so sweet and kind to planning and carrying out a scheme with this degree of complexity. So what happened?'