The colonel’s had been a sparse room with mustard yellow walls and framed black-and-white pictures above the bed that looked like they’d once illustrated some Victorian novel about colonial adventurism. The curtains were drawn across the bay windows, and hunkered in one corner where, Liza suspected, he really had been the entire time—barring lavatorial breaks—was the colonel himself. His body—assuming it was a body, which seemed increasingly likely—was curled into a foetal position, and he was still clutching the gun he had fought so hard to acquire tightly to his chest. A search of the room revealed no signs of a struggle. The bed was unslept in, the dinner tray from the previous evening uncollected, the various standing lamps and vases of flowers that decorated this room as they did every room quite undisturbed. But there was a slight smell of vomit in the en suite, which, when Liza checked the body, she thought she could also smell on the colonel’s lips.

“Poisoned?” she speculated aloud.

Lowering her pistol a fraction, Ruby put a hand to her forehead. “As if we didn’t have enough to worry about, now we’ve got a poisoner as well.”

“Oh gosh.” Sir Richard looked smug. “What sort of access would a person need if they wanted to introduce something deadly into the colonel’s food?”

“I suppose”—Hanna was looking a little shaken—”we can at least rule any of us out—except you, Mr Burgh, no offence. We were all together last night.”

Sir Richard sauntered over to inspect the body himself. “Well, you know what I think. My money is on the maid—sorry, on Mary. But poisons are tricky things. It could have been in anything.” He went to the bedside cabinet, opened it, and produced a bottle of brandy. “This, for example. There could have been poison in this for days.”

Eyeing Sir Richard suspiciously, Liza joined him at the bedside. “And how did you know this was there?”

“Because I had a drink with the colonel on Friday. And I know it wasn’t poisoned then, but it could have been poisoned at any time since.”

“Or you could have poisoned it,” suggested Ruby.

Sir Richard gave a non-committal shrug. “I could. I didn’t, but there’s no point denying that I knew the bottle was here and had access to it at least once.”

While everybody else had been musing, Reverend Lincoln had been saying a few words over the body. Now he looked up. “Do we know what kind of poison it was?”

“Not really.” Liza gave him an apologetic look. “Vomiting plus death could be anything, and it’s not like we’ve got a lab in the hotel. Or like anyone would know how to use it if we did.”