Sir Richard gave her a falling-into-place look. “So that’s what the issue was. Knew it was something. Probably would have pieced it together myself if I hadn’t been so pressed for time. There we are then: everybody has done something that a psychopath with a twisted sense of justice would want them dead for.”

“The Ackroyds probably ran somebody over,” suggested Ruby. “They seemed the sort.”

Liza leaned forward, propping her elbows on her knees. “Okay, and in this scenario, who is the mysterious killer?”

“Well, it certainly can’t be me,” the professor insisted from his tied-up position at the end of the sofa. “For many reasons previously established. So please do me the courtesy of letting me go.”

“And it’s not me,” added Mary. “I was in the kitchen when Belloc died, and with Quinn when Mrs A was shot.”

“She was,” the footman corroborated. “We’re usually together because we’re usually, y’know, moving corpses and cleaning your rooms.”

Having apparently decided that the mysterious phantom theory was good enough for him, Mr Burgh went to untie the professor, and Liza responded instinctively by snatching up the discarded pistol and pointing it at him. This brought out every other weapon in the room—even Sir Richard’s, despite the weakness in his arm.

“Why don’t we all calm down,” Hanna suggested, hands in the air, “and accept that whatever’s going on, whoever’s tied up, whoever did whatever, it’s all going to get sorted out really soon, and the most important thing is to make sure nobody else gets shot?”

Putting on a show of struggling against his bonds, the professor gave her an aggrieved look. “That’s easy for you to say; you aren’t tied up and about to be framed for six murders.”

“Nil desperandum, dear boy,” said Sir Richard. “Nobody is going to frame you for anything. As you say, we can’t get you for the reverend, or for Belloc as I recall, so I’d say you’re off the hook. In fact, I do wonder if it might not be better all around if we stopped looking at each other altogether.”

“In what way?” asked Liza. Frankly, this whole conversation was beginning to trend in a very worrying direction. A healthy scepticism of law enforcement was one thing; Most Actual had done a half-dozen episodes about miscarriages of justice. But this was starting to sound a lot like Sir Richard was suggesting that they, “Get their story straight.”

“Well …” Sir Richard pantomimed innocence. “Is it completely impossible that there’s somebody else on the grounds?”

Hanna said, “Yes,” at the same time that Liza said, “Well, no, but,” and everybody else in the room heard whichever of the two answers they wanted to hear.