Henry Queripel. Susan Queripel. George and Georgina Elkin. They all had the same motive: the power line. More than that, they were actively working together to prevent NAB from being constructed and all of them believed that without le Mesurier there to guide it, it might not go ahead. If he disliked le Mesurier so much, why had George Elkin even gone to the party? He had vehemently denied entering the Snuggery, but he could easily have slipped across the garden and unbolted the door at the back to allow one of the others to climb up from the beach. The three-handed bridge game was very convenient. It drew them all in together and gave each of them an alibi.

Colin Matheson. I added his name to the list and stared at it on the page. The barrister and States member was also implicated with NAB but in a different way. Everyone believed that Charles le Mesurier had some sort of hold over him and that Colin was acting against his conscience by supporting the line. Could le Mesurier have been blackmailing him? Suppose that was the case and Colin had finally decided that he’d had enough. But then again, why that business with the parcel tape and the single free hand? What would have been the point of that?

From everything that I had been told, Colin Matheson was very much under the control of his wife. George Elkin had said that it went further, that he depended on her for his very livelihood. Was she a possible suspect? It was certainly true that of the two of them, she was far more likely to have had the guts to commit a murder. When Hawthorne and I had arrived at The Lookout after the body had been discovered, she hadn’t been shocked or upset. She had been angry. Could it be that she knew her husband had committed the crime? Could they have done it together?

That was eight names so far . . . if I included Anne Cleary. To reach the full dozen, I would have to fold in some of the other guests who had been invited to the Alderney Literary Festival and I knew at once which name I had to add to the list.

Kathryn Harris.