The family gathered in the bar, dotted around the room in separate clusters. Marcelo sat with Audrey, clasping her hand tightly. Lucy was with them, tucked under Audrey’s wing. Like all in-laws, they’d never gotten along perfectly, but they had mutual grief to share. Both of them had loved Michael. Both of them had never doubted him. Now, both of them felt robbed. Katherine was pacing. Andy was lying on his back on the floor.

I was only there because no one would let me back in the Drying Room. I’ve been told I was, apparently, hysterical. Erin was with me, keeping watch, but also marooned. She’d lost Michael too, but wouldn’t be welcome to share in Lucy and Audrey’s mourning. With Michael dead, she must have been wondering what her place in the family was. She was keeping a stiff upper lip, both in fortitude and in a literal sense, because she hadn’t escaped a few stubborn, snotty tears, which had hardened on her top lip.

Juliette was busying herself behind the bar, I assumed for a distraction. Just prior, she’d draped a blanket over my shoulders and brought me a hot chocolate, both of which had proved surprisingly effective at calming me down. So had her hand, warm and gently lingering on my uninjured one as she handed me the cup. Someone had given me back my oven mitt. I’d seen Katherine walk over and ask Juliette for a warm drink too, to which Juliette had replied, ‘What’s your room number?’ and Katherine had stalked off, offended.

The only people absent were Sofia and Crawford, for whom we were waiting to come back with a post-mortem report. I’d like to lie here and claim that I was in the Drying Room myself, poking around and making genius deductions, but I was in deep shock. I didn’t have the faculty to analyse a crime scene.

If I’d known the answer to the mystery yet, I would have deemed this a suitable place for a grand summation, being that all of us were gathered together. But the room had a very different feel to the parlour or library where the detective usually struts, one hand in their pocket, while they reveal their cleverness. The first difference was that I was still wearing a bathrobe, which meant that I would also risk revealing more than just my cleverness. But the attitude in the room was also wrong. This was not a room of suspects, it was a room of survivors.