Liza carried on, and now she was relaxing into it the words were starting to come more naturally. “When he got here, Mr B had two priorities. To get rid of the traitor, and to get his banking information back before it could go to the police. He knew that she couldn’t have sent it out electronically because they were somewhere with no means to access the internet, so it was just a question of getting hold of whatever she’d stored the data on. And it would probably have been an easy job, except there was an investigator on his tail, and a good one, if his reputation is to be believed.”

“They seldom are,” observed DCI McManus.

“He was stuck. But he got his first opportunity when Malcom Ackroyd was killed. I really do think it was an accident—I think his wife shoved him during a fight, and he lost his footing in the snow. He’d been on the balcony earlier trying to get mobile phone reception and she was really angry about it, and there was a blizzard, and, well, that’s the exact kind of circumstance that gets people shoved to their deaths.”

The DCI raised an eyebrow. “I don’t suppose you bothered with little details like evidence?”

Liza took another breath. This was okay—she could take questions. She had answers. “Nobody else has a motive. They’d been fighting all evening. And when the body was found she’d clearly left her hotel room in a hurry. I think she’d been trying to give herself an alibi. I’ve got—I’ve got film of her.”

“You’ll be handing that over, of course.”

“I will. But some of it’s on my laptop, which was stolen, and I think the professor has it, or might have destroyed it. But you can have whatever’s still on my phone.”

“Very generous of you, Miss Podcaster.”

Liza took a moment to steady herself, then carried on with her grand theory. “Once Belloc had announced himself, I think Mr B saw an opportunity. He stole a pistol from the hotel’s gun room and persuaded Mrs Ackroyd that she’d inevitably be caught and tried for murder if she didn’t do something drastic. He can probably be quite persuasive because—well, because I’m afraid this theory does still involve a teeny tiny touch of criminal mastermind. Anyway, she lured Belloc down to the lake and shot him. Then she panicked. She threw the gun out of her bedroom window—I saw the spot where it fell; I can show you a picture of that too—and Mr B picked it up and used it to kill her.”

“In the staged suicide?”