She shrugged. She seemed curiously calm about having to move a corpse, which might have meant—as Sir Richard would have suggested—that she was a cold-blooded killer, or might have meant that once you’ve had to shift five dead bodies in as many days you developed a new perspective on these things. “Quinn’s coming up in a minute.”

Liza didn’t know who Quinn was either, although by process of elimination it must have been the footman. “And you’re the one who delivered his breakfast?”

“Yes. I should have looked closer, but, you know, I was pretty keen to get out of there.” Again, her manner was muted, almost matter of fact. And again, it could have meant she was a clinical psychopath, or that she’d just had it up to here with working in a hotel full of murder.

In the circumstances, Liza would have been too. “Do you think he was dead when you arrived?”

Mary gave a half-squirm-half-shrug. “I wouldn’t want to say. He might have been.”

“But he might not.”

“Well.” The maid gave Liza an apologetic look. “No offence, but you lot have all been acting pretty weird since this whole thing kicked off. And I don’t really know any of you, so when the colonel started hiding in his room and not moving from that spot under the window, I just sort of went with it.”

“And”—this was a bit of a punt, but Liza felt it was worth punting—”how well do you know Mr Burgh?”

“Not very. He’s only been here a month or so. The company sent him after Mr McCall had his accident.”

“Accident?” asked Liza, trying not to sound too eager for a story of human suffering.

Mary nodded. “He had a nasty fall. He could have died, and he was in his sixties, so they gave him early retirement.”

That was sounding suspicious. Potentially very suspicious. But sitting around grilling a woman who was just trying to do her job was probably not fair, so Liza and Hanna got up and were just about to leave when Liza stopped in the doorway and turned around. “One more thing. There aren’t any, y’know, incredibly deadly poisons lying around the place, are there?”

“There’s something for the rats,” Mary replied. “They keep it in a cupboard in the cellar.”

Odds were, Liza wasn’t going to like the answer to her next question. “And who has access to the cellar?”

“Basically everyone.”

That figured. But it meant the easy bit was over. “And … look, I’m not really sure how to say this, but … you should know Sir Richard is going to try to pin this whole thing on you.”