“Binky,” I called. “Are you home? I am in desperate need of a glass of brandy. Do you have the key to the liquor cabinet?”

There was no answer. I felt the emptiness of the house pressing down on me. It wasn’t usually the brightest of places but today it felt positively chilly. I shivered and went upstairs to take off my maid’s uniform. As I passed the bathroom on the second floor I heard a loud drip, drip, drip. Then I saw a trickle of water, coming out from under the bathroom door.

Really, Binky was just too hopeless, I decided. He must have decided to have another attempt at a bath and had forgotten to turn the tap off properly. I threw open the bathroom door and stopped short, my mouth open in alarm. The bathtub was full to overflowing, and occupied. For a moment I thought it was Binky lying there.

“Frightfully sorry, ” I muttered, then I took a second look.

A fully clothed man was lying submerged in the bath, not moving, his face under the water and his eyes wide open, staring upward. What’s more, I recognized him. It was Gaston de Mauxville.

Chapter 12

Rannoch House
Friday, April 29, 1932

I had never actually seen a dead body before and I stared at him in fascination. He can’t really be dead, I told myself. It’s some kind of macabre French joke, or he’s trying to frighten me. Or maybe he’s sleeping. But his eyes were open and staring vacantly at the ceiling. I tugged experimentally on a black-patented toe that was sticking out of the water. He sloshed around a bit, sending more water onto the floor, but his expression didn’t change. That’s when I admitted what I had known all along. Gaston de Mauxville was lying dead in my bathtub.

A cold dread seized me. Binky had been in the house earlier. Had the same madman also murdered him? “Binky!” I shouted, running out of the bathroom. “Binky, are you all right?”

I searched his bedroom, the study, the morning room. No sign of him. Then panic really overtook me and I pictured his body hidden under one of the dust sheets, so I ran from room to room, tearing them off, looking in wardrobes, under beds. I even went down to the servants’ quarters and poked around there. There was no trace of him, not even in the coal’ole. I went back into his bedroom, and I noticed his clothes were gone. A terrible suspicion began to take shape. I remembered Binky’s brave assertion that he would challenge de Mauxville to a duel. Could he possibly have killed de Mauxville? Then I shook my head firmly. Binky was brought up to be the honorable sort. He’d mentioned challenging de Mauxville to a duel. I could picture any kind of fair play and may the better man win, although I thought it hardly likely that Binky would turn out to be the better man in any kind of combat. But drowning somebody in a bathtub? Binky would never resort to such demeaning behavior, even to his worst enemy, and even if he were strong enough to hold a large chap like de Mauxville under the water long enough to drown.