It was evident to Livingston that the initial shock had worn off and the assembled young women had probably talked half the night about the death. A number of them were holding teacups and there was a platter of the hors d’oeuvres he had refused when he came to the house last evening. They looked as though they had been left out all night.

Philip Whitcomb was standing at the window looking out at his formal country gardens, as though the sight of them was somehow giving him comfort. His fiancée, Val Twyler, was standing beside him, her arm slipped through his. Nigel realized that that was exactly the way they had been standing last night, and he had the incongruous thought that maybe they hadn’t budged since then.

Lady Exner rushed into the room behind him. This morning she was wearing a bright pink jumpsuit that would, Livingston decided, have been more appropriate for his fifteen-year-old daughter.

“Dear Inspector,” she cried, “how noble of you to not take these sweet young girls down to that dreary station. I do hope you won’t need to question Penelope much. She was really most distressed with agida last night. However, brave soul that she is, she will join us shortly.”

Livingston reflected that since Penelope Atwater had not set foot in Oxford until Lady Exner hired her as a companion four years ago, he would not have been distressed to have her distress keep her out of the way. Last night she had exhibited a macabre interest in the crime and even gone so far as to ask if she could view the body. “Reading suspense has always been my passion,” she had told him with a nervous, braying laugh.

Murmuring what he hoped were appropriate expressions of sympathy, Livingston walked over to the fireplace. All eyes focused on him expectantly.

“The autopsy is complete,” he announced. “Athena Popolous did indeed die of strangulation. There is absolutely no question of accidental death. If you’ll remember, last night I asked you to try to think of anything Athena might have told you, in however casual a fashion, that might make you think she was planning to meet someone or if she perhaps was quietly dating someone who lived or worked in the vicinity.”

As he had expected, the response was generally negative. He tried another tack. “Let’s talk about her family again. What did she say about them?”

Again, what he heard was the same as last night. Athena and her wealthy, prominent parents did not get along. On a couple of occasions Athena had told Regan Reilly about her aunt’s murder the summer before she came to St. Polycarp’s, but then never wanted to talk about it again. Apparently her aunt had left the beach, gone back to her house for her prescription sunglasses and stumbled onto a burglary in progress, a crime that turned deadly.