“Yes, we’ve been on the show together since season one. We are both original cast members.”
“Are you two friends?”
Meredith takes a moment before answering. “We have been, in the past.” She is calm, factual, as she speaks in her distinct, croakier-than-one-might-expect voice. She sounds like someone on the cusp of losing their voice or a lifelong smoker, though I know she is neither.
D’Agostino asks more questions about their on-and-off friendship and then gets to a very specific point.
“Despite this history, we are here to discuss one event in particular. You took a trip with Margot and other cast members two years ago, correct?”
Meredith nods. “Yes.”
There is one trip that immediately comes to mind that I assume as the one the prosecutor is referencing. Margot went on a girls’ trip with three cast members during the past off-season—Alizay, Meredith, andBritain Buchanan, a onetime assistant to Dua Lipa. Between the four of them, they posted dozens of bikini boat shots. Even more bikini beach shots. There were also some bikini making-drinks-in-the-expansive-stone-kitchen-of-their-exclusive-rental shots. The trip wasn’t filmed for the show, so I don’t know the details of it other than what the women chose to post. What could have happened on that trip that’s relevant to this trial?
At D’Agostino’s urging, Meredith describes the trip. “We ate, drank, lounged. It was delightfully unexciting.”
Indeed, this sounds like quite a departure from the televised trips the women usually take (at least one per season to some tropical destination), where they fight over who gets the best room and dance with unassuming waiters after too many glasses of pinot grigio. Meredith is perhaps best known for drinking too much and then falling into bushes. Margot, on the other hand, is usually diving naked into the pool or ocean or hot tub.
“What did you ladies talk about? On this trip?” Albert D’Agostino asks. The co-prosecutor is a stout man, portly and short-limbed with glasses he pushes up his nose with a pointed index finger. When beside each other, D’Agostino looks a bit like a child compared to D.A. Stern’s long, towering frame.
Durrant Hammerstead’s foot taps under the defense table. I assume he is awaiting an opportunity to interject with an objection if D’Agostino doesn’t make a connection soon.
“We discussed normal things mostly. Our families, what activities our kids were obsessed with at the moment. What we were reading. But Margot was reading this book,The Poison Keeper.”
She glances at Margot who looks sad, a defeated, sunken quality having taken over her eyes and cheeks. This isn’t like the catty exchanges expected between the women on the show. It is, instead, one-sided.
I exhale as a murmur of confusion streaks across the room.
Albert D’Agostino returns to the prosecutors’ table and picks up a clicker. He lifts it toward the screen beside the witness stand. When he does, a photo of Margot fills it, one pulled from her social media, including the caption and like count. She’s wearing a shiny gold bikiniand straw hat, lounging poolside, her bronzed legs crossed at the ankle on a lounge chair. She’s on a terrace, sea glistening behind her below the balcony’s edge. It’s somewhat reminiscent of the opening shot of season one of the show. The caption reads “Misbehaving in Mallorca”and has more than one hundred thousand likes.
“This is a picture Margot posted on her social media. Can you confirm this is from the trip in question?”
“Yes, it is. I took that photo for her,” Meredith says.
Albert D’Agostino clicks again, and a new photo appears, this one a pixilated close-up of the book splayed open on the end table next to the lounger, too blurry to notice in the original. The title fills most of the screen.
The Poison Keeper.
The title alone is damning enough, but it’s about to get a lot worse for Margot, I realize, knowing most of the courtroom and jury likely haven’t heard the details of the story Margot was casually reading poolside in Mallorca. I know them only because of a documentary I happened to watch a few months ago when deep into my true crime phase.
Albert D’Agostino clicks again. This time, he has pulled up the back of the book jacket. Words pop out at me like jabs to the eyes. Poison. Cruel death. Based on the legendary life of Giulia Tofana.
“The Poison Keeper,” Albert D’Agostino reads as he steps toward the jury box. “A novel all about the life of Giulia Tofana. On this trip, did Mrs. Kitsch talk about this book she was reading, just seven months before her husband died?”
Meredith leans forward and gazes at Margot, the two looking at each other as if strangers. As if they haven’t shared so much of their lives with each other. I wonder what led Meredith to do this to someone she considered a friend. Tenley, I get. They had a falling out. Tenley was sleeping with Joe. But Meredith has always been the levelheaded one.
“Yes. At dinner on the last night of our trip, Margot told us all about it. About how fascinated she was by the story. How this woman, Giulia Tofana, lived in Italy in the 1600s and was the daughter of an apothecary. Apparently, her mother was executed for murdering herhusband. Margot told us how this woman went on to sell this product called Aqua Tofana, I think it was. This face cream or oil, or something, given to women looking to escape abusive husbands. As Margot described it, this Giulia was selling these women a mix of toxic chemicals so they could kill their husbands. The women would add drops to their husbands’ drinks or meals. Margot told us about how it would happen slowly, over time, so most of the deaths were never attributed to poison but rather some unknown illness.” She pauses. “She even told us how Mozart claimed he was poisoned by Aqua Tofana on his deathbed. Giulia Tofana was a bit of an icon, the way Margot described it.”
I hear the wordobjectionin my head before Durrant Hammerstead even says it. There’s a slight squabble between Judge Gillespy, Albert D’Agostino, and Durrant Hammerstead, and I draw a tally mark in the corner of the sheet in my notebook, where I’ve taken to tracking the number of objections. I’ll need a new sheet corner soon.
Once the objection is resolved, Judge Gillespy allows the line of questioning to continue, and D’Agostino asks, “Why is it that you remember this particular conversation so distinctly?”
“Because”—Meredith leans in again—“Margot was... excited. Like, enthralled by this book, this woman. She was talking fast and loud and went on and on about it, to the point where Britain—she’s another cast member who was on the trip—and I talked about how weirdly obsessed she was with it.”
Virtually everyone in the courtroom looks at Margot. Damon’s eyes, though, shift to me. But not before I watch him underline a statement he’s written on his notepad.
WAS READING A BOOK ABOUT POISONING HUSBANDS
Durrant Hammerstead’s counterpart, Irena Medley, cross-examines Meredith. Irena Medley holds her own physically against the rest of the occupants of the defense table. She towers over both Margot and Durrant Hammerstead, long and lanky lean like a supermodel. She wears her hair pulled back tightly and has the sharpcheekbones and jawline to match, giving her an exquisite androgynous quality.
