Phyllida suspected that at that moment Mrs. Whittlesby had the strength and ability to succeed if she attempted to strangle her husband. As one with her vast experience well knew, hell hath no fury like a scorned woman.

“You have nothing to worry about—in that regard at least, Mrs. Whittlesby. I am a connoisseur of detective stories and I can attest that your husband’s work might be grammatically correct with proper sentence structure and spelling, but there’s little else to recommend it. On the other hand, I discovered several crumpled papers in Mr. Whittlesby’s waste can. The writing on those papers—typed, one must presume, by yourself in your own sitting room and locked in the drawer so that no one would discover them—was far better and much more compelling. In truth, I wanted to read more of the story.”

“Oh, was that the one with the green bus ticket?” asked Mrs. Whittlesby, preening a little. “I thought it was a rather clever premise myself.”

“Yes,” replied Phyllida. “There was, in fact, a green bus ticket that seemed to play a significant role—although I only saw two pages. It seemed that your husband had decided to toss your work and strike out on his own, now that he expected to win the short story contest . . . which was quite a foolish decision since it was one of your stories that had been submitted and would be announced as the winner.

“And perhaps that was your final twist of the knife, so to speak, Mrs. Whittlesby. That when your husband was announced as the winner—and it became clear from your diabolical machinations, framing him up to be your own would-be murderer—that you would divulge the fact that you were the actual author of the stories, and that that was part of the reason he wanted to get rid of you: so he could write his own stories and not have to share the credit.

“And that brings me to the final point I wish to make, and then I will turn the floor over to Mr. Chesterton and Inspector Cork.” And, she hoped, have Mr. Dobble or someone pour her several fingers of whisky.

It had been a long, very long Murder Fête.

The inspector muttered something that might have been “finally,” but Phyllida ignored him and went on to elucidate her last plot point.

“The short story results I found on Rita’s person were quite interesting. It appeared that some numbers had been erased and new numbers put in. The winner on that sheet was, as everyone expected, the Inspector Belfast story. But the scores seemed to have been altered—and that was the final nail in the coffin that you had created for your husband, wasn’t it, Mrs. Whittlesby?