“I’ll take it from the moment the seventh guest entered, if you don’t mind. I can’t say I was keeping count of who was drinking what. Except that Captain Dunne, Knight Templar that he is, was drinking pure spring water. He turned round and greeted the last guest as though he’d been expecting him.”

“Oh, he had. Counting on his arrival, I’d say. He was preparing to kill him.”

“It happened so quickly. I suppose that’s what they all say . . . We hadn’t even sat down to dinner. Still, with two old ex-soldiers facing up to each other with murder in mind and twenty years of gathered venom bursting out, who would wonder at the speed? Those men were trained to deliver the first blow and make it a cruncher. I know that much.” He suppressed a shudder.

Redfyre looked with more care at the figure in front of him. This was the same man, handsome, broad-shouldered, who had cut a dashing figure on the dance floor, but he seemed much reduced now. The effects of a bad conscience, perhaps? Unusual for a murderer of this scale to have a conscience. Redfyre frowned, his mind darting back and forth.

“Fanshawe saw the danger and dismissed the other guests?”

“Yes. He dropped a hint to Rendlesham. ‘Go down to the refectory, the three of you,’ he said. ‘Digby will come down and join you in a minute. Be sure you leave a space for him.’”

“So the first two signed in fountain pen, blue-black ink, and passed the pen to Rendlesham, who then—quite literally—left a space and signed on line four. When you came down—and you’re going to tell me how much later—you filled in the gap. But in your haste and confusion, understandable after experiencing two killings within seconds of each other, you used your black ink, italic-nibbed pen. The trailing loops of the letters y and g on Digby run over the following scrawl by Rendlesham.” He tapped the file on his desk. “Excellent forensic methods we use these days. Photographic evidence, particularly when enlarged, impresses a jury.”