“You planned it all very well, and were very patient, Mrs. Whittlesby. The idea surely came to you when the Murder Fête was first announced. You had some time to set the stage, so to speak. Or, to be more relevant, to plot the story. And that’s what you did, isn’t it? You plotted your own murder story, complete with red herrings, clues, and a very clever killer.”

Mrs. Whittlesby’s expression now held a hint of admiration. “But how did you figure out it was me?”

“There were three things that gave you away. First, the two hat boxes in your bedchamber from your Thursday visit to Wenville Heath. The receipt in your pocketbook—which you had specifically placed therein to prove that Mr. Whittlesby had decided to drive the MG into town; that was very clever—indicated that only one hat had been purchased. So why were there two hat boxes but only one hat?”

Phyllida smiled, noticing by their expressions that some people—Agatha, of course, and Miss Sayers—had already caught on. “A hat box is very similar to a bakery box, isn’t it? That’s how you brought the cake into the house unnoticed—the cake that you poisoned for Father Tooley and purchased from a bakery in Wenville Heath. Then you framed your husband for the priest’s murder by stuffing a shirt under his bed with strawberry jam on it.

“The second item that caught my interest I’ve already mentioned—the fruit flies about the ficus. Once I realized you were dumping your drinks, I began to look at everything quite differently.

“Then there was the motorcar crash. Not only was there a branch that didn’t belong, but there were no wire cutters in the toolbox in the sedan’s boot. I’m told,” Phyllida said, glancing at Bradford, “that wire cutters are a basic tool that would nearly always be in a vehicle’s toolbox. You bashed Mr. Eugene on the head and killed him, then used the wire cutters to snip the brake hoses. But you were afraid of leaving fingerprints on the wire cutters, so you threw them into the woods as far from the scene as possible. You couldn’t wear your gloves whilst cutting the brake lines because you couldn’t chance getting grease or oil or anything on them—there would be no good explanation for that.

“I wasn’t certain about the wire cutters until I had Bradford and Elton look around the motorcar crash—and they found them. There is no other reason for such a tool to be in the woods nearby, and I’m quite certain we will find your fingerprints on them.”

Phyllida heard Inspector Cork’s muttered, “We?”