‘When did you suspect Valmai?’

‘I wasn’t very certain until I saw that the person who murdered Garcia had held his head back by the hair, and that he had struggled so hard that—well, that he had struggled. I then remembered the cut on Seacliff’s hand, and how she had showed it to me only when she saw me looking at it, and how she had said it had been made by her horse’s reins, when it had obviously been made by some thing much finer. I remembered how, when I suggested it was not the reins, but the horse’s mane, she had agreed. But to go back a bit. From the moment we learned that it was Seacliff who posed the model I felt that we must watch her pretty closely.’

‘I don’t understand that. You say Garcia set the trap with the knife.’

‘Yes, but I believe Seacliff watched him through a hole in the studio window-blind.’

‘Seacliff!’