So they sat, that evening, in the common room, with the driftwood fire and the tillies, and George explained it all.

“When did you know that it was Jasmine?” John asked. “I can still hardly believe it.”

“I should have known on the night Pamela Marshall died, when I checked all the bedrooms and found Jasmine asleep.”

“What do you mean? Could you tell that she was only pretending to be asleep?”

“It’s not that, though she may have been acting. No. There were some sleeping pills in her bedroom. I suppose that she took them when her arthritis was painful. I should have known then that she had murdered Charlie Todd. Pamela was a different matter. Nicholas was giving such a good impression of a homicidal maniac that I was confused. He wasn’t the only one of you, of course, who confused the issue. There were Elizabeth’s mysterious trips to the mainland, and Doctor Derbyshire’s raid of the Wendy House. They shook my faith for a time in my judgement that Jasmine might be the murderer.”

“My dear boy, I’m sure that you never considered, for a moment, that I could have been the murderer.” Paul Derbyshire was jolly and nervous, and his eyes were watchful. He was wondering what else George would say.

“Not for a moment,” George answered. “ But you did search the Wendy House, that morning? While John, Nick and Mark went to the seawatching hide.”

“Yes. I didn’t know that he was dead then. I thought that he was seawatching. He had something which belonged to me.”

“Had you asked him to give it back to you?”

“Yes. He refused to give it.”

“What was it?”

“A diary.”

Although it was conducted in front of all the others, the conversation was intensely personal. Nobody interrupted.

“Jasmine found a letter, you know, in your waste bin. I saw her find it. That must have pleased her. She would have told me about it eventually, but it suited her purpose much better for me to ask to see it. She expected me to take it to the police, although she was too clever to say so. She was beginning to realize that I found the case against Nicholas unconvincing, and she wanted to give me another suspect. It was, perhaps, foolish to have given her that opportunity.”

The warning had been gently given, but Paul Derbyshire recognized it.

“Oh yes,” he said. “Yes. Quite. It won’t happen again.”

That was the end of it. Nobody discussed, even among themselves, what the doctor had been hiding.

George turned to Elizabeth. “ Can you tell us why you went to see Ernest Todd and William Marshall?” he said. “Or is it still a deadly secret? Molly imagined you as a secret agent of the Todds, sent by them to kill Charlie.”

“Did she? How exciting! How clever of you to find out where I’d been. It’s all much more boring than that, I’m afraid. I don’t mind explaining now. I’ve talked to John about it.”