‘You wanted rid of her. Why not just own up and let us all go home?’

Harry decided to see if he could shake them. ‘I don’t think it could possibly be Jerry,’ he said. ‘I mean, he was four sheets to the wind last night. His hand wouldn’t have been steady enough to inject the drug into the champagne bottle.’

All eyes turned on him. Angela Stockton, resplendent in acres of black velvet and a black cap, looked like an actress playing Hamlet’s aunt. ‘You’re being ridiculous,’ she said. ‘Isn’t he, Peregrine?’

‘Talking tosh,’ mumbled her son. ‘We’ve got to get out of here or we’ll all go mad.’

He had reason to be worried. The night before, when Mrs Jerry was choking out her last breath, he had been busy seducing a buxom kitchen maid. The girl had cried afterwards and said she had sinned and he was terrified she would tell Lady Glensheil before he had a chance to put some miles between himself and the old battleaxe.

‘No,’ said Harry calmly. ‘Mrs Jerry did not struggle before she died. There was an empty champagne bottle beside the bed. The cork was in the wastepaper basket and it had a fine hole pierced in it.’

There was an alarmed silence. The general consensus of opinion of everyone except Rose and Daisy was that the much-goaded Jerry had lost his rag in a drunken rage and throttled his wife and they didn’t blame him one bit. ‘Would have done it myself if I’d been married to a bullying horror like her,’ Neddie Freemantle had said earlier.

‘I do not like everyone shouting across the table,’ said Lady Glensheil. ‘Kindly confine your conversations to the people on your right or on your left.’

No one paid any attention to her.

‘You know what I think?’ asked Tristram Baker-Willis ponderously.

‘No, we don’t,’ snapped Sir Gerald. ‘None of us thinks you can think.’

Tristram ignored him. ‘I think it’s all balderdash and tosh about poor old Freddy being a blackmailer.’ He fastened his gaze upon Rose. ‘You never liked him. That’s why you started this rumour about blackmail.’

‘That’s not true!’ said Rose. ‘How do you explain three people paying him ten thousand pounds each and now one of them is murdered?’

‘We all know Jerry strangled his wife,’ said Tristram.

‘I say, steady the buffs.’ Neddie Freemantle.

‘Enough!’ shouted Lady Glensheil. ‘We will now talk about something else!’

That evening she was wearing a small jewelled cap embellished with ostrich feathers and those very feathers appeared to bristle with outrage.

They all felt silent, poking at their food like bad children and covertly studying one another.

There was a general feeling of relief when she rose to lead the ladies to the drawing-room. They were crossing the hall when a small kitchen maid curtsied and addressed Angela Stockton. ‘Mum, I got to speak to you.’