“I didn’t say it was likely” admitted Mr Burgh. “Just that we should probably remember that we are none of us professionals.”

Sir Richard raised a hand. “Excuse me, I have solved no fewer than six murders in my day and recovered Lady Billingham’s missing emeralds.”

“That hardly counts, dear,” said Aunt Tabitha. “The cat had eaten them.”

Mr Burgh was looking increasingly flustered. “Even so, you aren’t actually an official detective, so I just think it’s important that we remember not to overreach ourselves or jump to any conclusions.”

Colonel Coleman slathered butter onto a slice of bread from the basket on his table. “If I’m being honest, old boy, you’re talking rather a lot like you killed the bugger.”

Was he? Wasn’t he just suggesting, quite sensibly, that they not jump to conclusions? Then again, he would have had access to the gun. And to the Ackroyds’ room. And his name did begin with a B.

“I most certainly didn’t,” protested Mr Burgh. If he was a steely-eyed killer just pretending to be a flustered hotel manager, he was doing a very good job of it. “I was in my office. I just mean that we should be careful. The killer can’t escape until the snow clears—”

“You realise that also means we can’t escape the killer?” Hanna’s tone was sharp, but now that Liza was paying attention, she could hear real disquiet in it. “How is that a good thing?”

“If we’re lucky,” said Sir Richard, “the killer is done. Most folk don’t kill over and over again, you know. Seldom any mileage in it for ‘em.”

“And if we’re unlucky?” Ruby’s voice floated across the room like smoke from the cigarette she wasn’t holding.

Sir Richard gave an apologetic shrug. “Ah. In that case, things might get rather bloody.”

“Well, I say,” Colonel Coleman continued, “that we all rally together and run this blighter to ground.”

“Oh, wonderful.” Hanna clapped her hands. “Mob justice.”

Liza squeezed her wife’s arm. “Maybe we shouldn’t be running people to ground exactly. But we are in this together, aren’t we?”

Across the room, Ruby smirked. “Well, all except one of us.”

“Rather than—um—rather than hounding anybody,”—Professor Worth sounded even more hesitant than usual—”perhaps we could at least try to locate the gun? I know I for one would feel far more comfortable if I knew that all of the firearms in the hotel were locked up safely where they should be.”

“You mean, locked up in the gun cabinet that somebody definitely already managed to break into?” There was a definite tension in Hanna’s body as she spoke.

“Better than having it just floating around the hotel, surely?” said the professor. “And, you know, if we find the gun, we might find the killer.”