“Of course not,” she replied. “For if it were my housekeeping domain, I would already have assigned the tasks to my staff and I would have excellent progress to report. Now, I do have information for you that should remove everyone in the dining room from your list of suspects. Would you like to hear it, or shall I go off to my ‘housekeeping domain’?” She lifted her nose and gave him the sort of look she used when she caught one of the chambermaids standing about holding up a wall.

He made a grumbly noise, then nodded. “Of course, Mrs. Bright.”

She smiled at him. “I thought so.” She went on to recount the conversation she’d overheard, then explained that the Detection Club writers had all been together, just getting out of the Mallowans’ motorcar, when the exchange happened. “So it couldn’t have been any of them. That is, of course, assuming the individuals who were speaking are the actual perpetrators,” she added as the thought struck her that perhaps they hadn’t been.

After all, if the conversation had happened only yesterday, when would they have had time to get a second bottle of Monteleone’s Special Bitters and add the poison?

Unless . . . the murderer already had the plan made out, with poisoned bitters at the ready, and was merely talking about it with one of his or her coconspirators?

Not that she thought for one moment that any of the celebrity writers would have stooped to murder. There was simply no motive and even less means and opportunity for any of them to add poison to a very rare bottle of spirits. That is . . . unless someone had brought a bottle with them from London . . .

Phyllida sighed inwardly. It was possible. Not likely, but possible. But it certainly had not been one of the Detection Club members who’d been speaking of poisoning a cocktail and Mr. Whittlesby—

She stopped her train of thought. If one was being particular, one should acknowledge that Mr. Whittlesby’s name hadn’t been mentioned in the exchange. It might not have been the Murder Club president who’d been the topic of the conversation.

But who else could it have been, whose “boastful, overbearing nastiness” could no longer be abided? Alastair Whittlesby certainly fit the bill.

Boastful, overbearing—

Inspector Cork grunted again, interrupting the wisp of a thought that had begun to form in her mind. “Whittlesby does seem to have acquired a number of enemies, hasn’t he?” Then he flattened his mouth as if realizing he had no reason to discuss the investigation with Phyllida.

“He certainly has,” she agreed, thinking of John Bhatt. She really needed to speak with him about what had happened between him and Alastair Whittlesby.