“I never said alone; I was quite happy to accommodate both of you. And it was never meant to be a reveal. I just thought we might want to keep each other …”—Ruby twirled her hand in an exaggerated looking-for-words gesture—”abreast of our enquiries. I suppose you’ve made some progress yourselves.”

A light switched on in Liza’s head. “Oh right, this is a mutual trust thing?”

“Since you turned down the other way of building mutual trust, I thought this one might work.”

Hanna had de-slumped and was now standing with her arms folded and a deeply sceptical expression on her face. “This sounds a lot like you’re trying to scam us.”

“Alas, I am unmasked.” With a theatrical gasp, Ruby clasped her hands to her chest. “You have seen through my dastardly plan to trick you into sharing information that might stop us all from being brutally murdered.”

“Nobody,” Hanna insisted, “has been brutally murdered. Not for certain.”

“Yes, for certain.” For all her flirtatiousness and self-conscious obfuscation, Ruby seemed suddenly very serious. “Where Mr B is concerned—”

“Oh, not you as well.” For reasons Liza understood, Hanna was not in a patient mood. “Can we stop with the Mr B nonsense? It makes this whole thing sound like an episode of Sesame Street.”

Ruby gave a not-the-point shrug. “Where my former employer is concerned, there are no coincidences. Mr Ackroyd’s death is very likely to be part of something. The question is what.”

“Maybe.” There were two conflicting impulses at war in Liza’s mind, and she still hadn’t decided which it made more sense to go with. “Right now, all we have is the dead body of a man who seemed to rub a lot of people up the wrong way. He argued with the footman, he also argued with the colonel. Hell, he argued with Hanna.”

“Definitely wasn’t me,” Hanna volunteered. “I’d have remembered.”

“And he still might just have slipped and fallen. If the manager is leaning towards the staff, that might mean something, or it might just mean he’s thinking about the scenario that’s worst for his job. So the way I see it, it’s an even …”—she counted quickly in her head—”six-way tie between an accident, the colonel, the footman—what’s his name, by the way?”

“Never bothered to find out.” There were too many teeth in Ruby’s smile.

“The unnamed footman,” Liza continued, “Mrs Ackroyd, Emmeline White, or a mysterious shadowy assassin working for an underworld kingpin.”

Ruby sat up. “What makes you suspect Ms White?”

“She found the body.” It wasn’t a great reason, but then Liza didn’t feel there were many great reasons to be had. “But that probably doesn’t mean much in this case.”

“Why not?” asked Hanna, still not taking her eyes off Ruby. “I’ve listened to your podcast, the person who finds the body is usually a prime suspect.”