“I suppose Sir Rolly might have been able to slip inside and then back out again without being noticed,” she mused.

“When I saw him, he was walking around from the front of the rectory,” Bradford said.

“Was that where his motorcar was parked?” Phyllida asked.

“No.”

She frowned. Why would Sir Rolly want to do away with Mr. Whittlesby? According to his wife, they interacted socially, and if not close friends, they were at least friendly. Neither of the Rollingbrokes seemed to have a reason to murder the man. Unless Vera Rollingbroke was desperate to eliminate Mr. Whittlesby as competition for publication.

And according to his wife, Sir Rolly knew about Alastair Whittlesby’s cocktail preference. Perhaps he’d taken to heart Mr. Whittlesby’s disappointment over not having a Vieux Carré when they had dinner at the Rollingbroke home, and ordered a bottle of Monteleone’s Special Bitters to have on hand.

And perhaps he wanted his wife to succeed in getting her stories published.

Or perhaps there was another reason, related to whatever Mr. Whittlesby had said—which had sounded almost like a threat, hadn’t it?—that prompted Mrs. Rollingbroke to decide to invite him to her soiree at the last minute.

“Thank you for that information,” Phyllida said. “As for what I learned from Mrs. Panson—the cake was definitely not from the bakery, and the perpetrator used one of the smaller boxes. All of the suspects have ordered pastries from Panson’s in the last week, and since it was the smaller box, it could have been any of them.”

“What does the smaller box have to do with it?” Bradford asked in a tone that was, for once, simply curious.

“A smaller box means a smaller order, and many of our—er, my—suspects live alone: the vicar, Miss Crowley, Mr. Genevan . . .”

“Dr. Bhatt.”

“Yes,” Phyllida replied a little shortly. “If it had been the larger box, it might have been easier to determine who did it because a larger household might have had a larger order.”

“Right.”

“What must be determined is whether the same perpetrator who attempted to kill Mr. Whittlesby is also the person who murdered Father Tooley. One cannot assume it is the same individual,” she said, giving him a sidewise look.

“No, one cannot,” he replied.

“But if it isn’t the same individual—I suppose even if it is—there must be some motive for putting arsenic in his cake. By all accounts, Father Tooley was a great consumer of sweets, and so one would expect he’d eat the cake as soon as possible. It was delivered at about half ten yesterday morning, and its appearance would have negated his usual trip to the bakery for a treat after mass, as he usually did. Whoever poisoned the cake knew his habits well and made certain it was delivered before he visited the bakery so that he would eat it right away.”