“Did she set fire to the Wendy House, then?”

“Yes. I think that she went to talk to Charlie, having already decided that if he didn’t listen to her, she would try to kill him. She wore the duffel coat and boots from the lobby, so that in the poor light if anyone did see her, she would be fairly anonymous. He refused to be persuaded by her, so she tipped over the lamp as she went past the open window. She hoped that the arson would be thought to be an accident. When Charlie survived the fire, she decided to try again. She would have been able to see from her bedroom window that the fire had been extinguished. It was because of the Wendy House fire that Pam Marshall had to die. She heard Jasmine out on the island on the night of the fire. Jasmine’s arthritis gave her a very distinctive walk. Jasmine knew that Pamela wanted to talk to me. I think that Pamela may have given away something of her suspicion. So Jasmine killed her.”

“What about the guy rope? Did she take it specially to strangle Charlie?”

“No. She couldn’t have done. But she did take it. She was on the island the week before Charlie died. She saw a Sabine’s gull, if you remember. You were staying here too, Nick. You know what a stickler she is for tidiness. I think perhaps you’d left a net out. She tried to put it away, but again, the stiffness in her fingers made her fumble it. She left the guy out. She didn’t want to admit that she’d made a botch of it, so she just put the guy in her pocket. Charlie Todd would have been waiting in the hide, that morning. The door would have been open because he was expecting Jerry. The sea and the wind would have been making so much noise that he wouldn’t have heard her coming. She was wearing the coat again, and the boots. He would have been surprised to see her, but not frightened. I expect that she sat on the seat behind him. His attention would have been held by the sea. It would have been easy to kill him.”

No one spoke. The edges of the room were in shadow, and in the firelight the faces were expressionless, unfamiliar. George continued:

“It was always probable, of course, that she had killed Pamela too, but there were two points which made me quite certain. The murderer used chloroform to drug Pamela before killing her. Jasmine knew that Pamela already suspected that she was the murderer. If Pamela had woken up to find Jasmine in her room, she would have screamed. Jasmine made certain that she did not wake up. How many of you knew that there was chloroform in the ringing room? Only John. The jar was not marked, so how could you know? But she was a biology teacher. She would have been interested in what the school groups were doing.