‘Perhaps the girl did come out on the balcony. De Sousa realizes she’s seen what he’s doing, so he comes ashore and deals with her, gets her to let him into the boathouse by asking her what she’s doing there. She tells him, pleased with her part in the Murder Hunt, he puts the cord round her neck in a playful manner – and whoooosh…’ Major Merrall made an expressive gesture with his hands. ‘That’s that! Okay, Bland; okay. Let’s say that’s how it happened. Pure guesswork. We haven’t got any evidence. We haven’t got a body, and if we attempted to detain De Sousa in this country we’d have a hornets’ nest about our ears. We’ll have to let him go.’

‘Is he going, sir?’

‘He’s laying up his yacht a week from now. Going back to his blasted island.’

‘So we haven’t got much time,’ said Inspector Bland gloomily.

‘There are other possibilities, I suppose?’

‘Oh, yes, sir, there are several possibilities. I still hold to it that she must have been murdered by somebody who was in on the facts of the Murder Hunt. We can clear two people completely. Sir George Stubbs and Captain Warburton. They were running shows on the lawn and taking charge of things the entire afternoon. They are vouched for by dozens of people. The same applies to Mrs Masterton, if, that is, one can include her at all.’

‘Include everybody,’ said Major Merrall. ‘She’s continually ringing me up about bloodhounds. In a detective story,’ he added wistfully, ‘she’d be just the woman who had done it. But, dash it, I’ve known Connie Masterton pretty well all my life. I just can’t see her going round strangling Girl Guides, or disposing of mysterious exotic beauties. Now, then, who else is there?’

‘There’s Mrs Oliver,’ said Bland. ‘She devised the Murder Hunt. She’s rather eccentric and she was away on her own for a good part of the afternoon. Then there’s Mr Alec Legge.’

‘Fellow in the pink cottage, eh?’

‘Yes. He left the show fairly early on, or he wasn’t seen there. He says he got fed up with it and walked back to his cottage. On the other hand, old Merdell – that’s the old boy down at the quay who looks after people’s boats for them and helps with the parking – he says Alec Legge passed him going back to the cottage about five o’clock. Not earlier. That leaves about an hour of his time unaccounted for. He says, of course, that Merdell has no idea of time and was quite wrong as to when he saw him. And after all, the old man is ninety-two.’

‘Rather unsatisfactory,’ said Major Merrall. ‘No motive or anything of that kind to tie him in?’