Ruby stretched like an annoyed cat in red silk. “Well, this would suggest that our plan to sit around staring at each other until a rescue arrives was a gigantic waste of our time, so I am going to take my leave of you all and get some actual sleep in an actual bed.”

To Liza’s horror, Sir Richard levelled his pistol. “You know we can’t let you do that.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, why not?” Hanna’s exasperation had, apparently, overcome her natural aversion at firearms.

The professor unsteadily aimed his own gun at Sir Richard. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to point that somewhere else.”

“We don’t know what’s going on.” Sir Richard kept his gun pointed at Ruby while trying to talk to Hanna and look at the professor. “And I don’t trust that woman an inch.”

Stepping forward, Liza put her hands slowly into the air. “None of us trust her, Sir Richard, but the guns aren’t helping anything.”

“Sweet of you, darling.” Ruby, Liza noticed, had her own pistol at hip height, and it was already trained on Sir Richard. “But I think I’ve got this.”

On the other side of the room, Mr Burgh was making an effort to keep all three of the gunpersons covered with one pistol. “I’m going to have to ask everybody to calm down,” he insisted un-calmly.

“Can I suggest”—the reverend was already crouching beside the colonel’s body—”that everybody who isn’t armed right now get on the floor? And Burgh, take your finger off the damned trigger.”

Liza and Hanna had both just about managed to find something to hide behind when Burgh turned sharply in the reverend’s direction, made a kind of confused yelp, and fired. The exchange of shots that followed was deafening in the confined space, and when they’d all come to their senses again, Sir Richard was on the floor bleeding from the right shoulder, the reverend was crouched behind the bed, Hanna was lying on the floor with her arms over her head, and Ruby was gone.

“She shot me!” Sir Richard exclaimed, his hand pressed to a wound that to everybody’s relief was oozing rather than gushing blood. “She damned well shot me.”

“I think I might need a lie down.” The professor was crumpled by the wall. Liza was pretty sure his gun had gone off but couldn’t tell where it had hit.

The reverend rose slowly from where he’d been hunkered. Behind him, Liza noticed, the window had been shattered by a stray bullet. “We should probably all go and take a lie down. And can everybody, for—and I mean this quite literally—the love of God, put your weapons away?”