The consensus in the room was that this made sense, and so now the whole—worryingly small—group of them put down their spoons and followed Sir Richard back up to his aunt’s bedroom. Mr Burgh opened the door, and the guests all crowded around with what felt to Liza ever so slightly like ghoulish curiosity.

The room—elegant and antique, rather like Liza and Hanna’s—was empty. The bed hadn’t been slept in.

The legendary stiff upper lip of the British ruling classes served Sir Richard well. “This is beginning to look rather bad, isn’t it?”

“Afraid so.” Professor Worth patted him comfortingly on the shoulder.

Mr Burgh suggested, and the guests agreed, that it would be best to search the hotel. There weren’t quite enough of them, this time, to split into three groups of three, so they went for two groups of four: Liza, Hanna, Mr Burgh, and Reverend Lincoln in one; the rest in the other. They set off in opposite directions, and since they’d last seen Lady Tabitha in the library, Liza and Hanna took their group there first.

Which made it, in the end, a very short search.

She sat in the same chair she had been sitting in yesterday, head down as if reading. Even the record from the night before was the same, caught skipping on a high, trilling note that, with repetition and the grim tableau in front of them, soon began to sound like a scream. Lady Tabitha’s body was soaked in blood from the neck down, and the solid platinum poignard lay discarded on the floor beside her.

“I don’t believe it,” said the reverend. “We are being ten-green-bottles-ed.”

Mr Burgh went to find Sir Richard’s party while Liza, feeling a little numb and a little like she was halfway through a tunnel and wishing she’d turned back earlier, pulled out her phone and began photographing the body. As she reached into her pocket, she felt the USB key nestling there like a tiny, unexploded bomb.

“So you don’t think was him, then?” asked Hanna. “Mr B?”

“No.” Reverend Lincoln was grave. Then again, that was in many ways part of his job description. “Why would he?”

Trying very, very hard not to retch, Liza photographed Lady Tabitha’s throat. She’d taken a single stab wound to the neck and, from the way she was sitting, must have died pretty quickly. “Throw us off the scent?” she suggested. “Make us think we’re chasing a serial killer when there are only one or two real targets?”

The reverend seemed to consider this, then dismissed it. “Bit pointless. The more people he kills off, the fewer suspects there are left. Plus, more murders means more evidence when the police get here.”

He did, Liza thought, have a point.