George’s eyes danced away from mine for a moment before he deliberately looked me in the eye and spoke. ‘Yes, ma’am. Before the police arrived, Mr Durbridge and I both watched the footage of that night for around the time of Mr Jeavons’ demise.’

‘What did you see?’ My breathing was getting faster.

George’s gaze didn’t falter as he kept his expression carefully neutral. ‘A section was missing. The image jumped from Mr Jeavons looking up as his door opened to him slumped over his desk with you standing behind him, the letter opener in your hand, just before you stabbed him in the back.’ The butler announced this like he was giving a weather report.

Shit!

Silence.

My thoughts were spinning coins on a table, which I could do nothing with until they noisily settled and were still. As well as the murder weapon, Tobey had a recording of me with it in my hand.

Jon was right: I was going to be framed for Dan’s murder, and the worst thing of all was I had no one and nothing to blame but myself.

‘George, for what it’s worth, I didn’t kill Dan. I was stupid enough to take the knife out of his back because I thought he was playing some asinine prank. When I realized he was really dead, I replaced it and wiped the handle so I wouldn’t have anything more to do with it.’ My face began to burn. ‘Not my finest hour. I wasn’t thinking straight.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ said George non-committally.

I shook my head. Even now I couldn’t believe I’d done that. When they used that cliché in films or TV dramas, I used to laugh at how ridiculous it was. As if anyone would be brainless enough to really touch or pick up an obvious murder weapon like that.

I wasn’t laughing any more.

The thing was, when I walked into Dan’s study that night, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing was real. I thought it was another of Dan’s mind games. One of his nasty little tricks to gain the upper hand. It was just the kind of insidious bullshit he’d get up to and it certainly wouldn’t have been the first time.

After pretending to leave the dinner party for the evening, and telling George that I’d see myself out, I loudly closed the front door, then hurried down the hallway away from the dining room to wait in the bathroom opposite Dan’s study, praying that no one would want to use it while I was in there. I reckoned that I should be safe as there were two other bathrooms closer to the dining room than the one I occupied.