“Run where?” Hanna’s tone wasn’t hostile exactly, but it had an edge to it.

“To the gun.” One of Ruby’s eyebrows curved into a perfect, victorious arch. “Call me selfish, but it’s not her escaping I’m worried about; it’s her retrieving a weapon and killing me.”

“Or,” Hanna suggested, “somebody else?”

“No, mostly just me.”

Hanna glared.

Ruby met the glare with a defiant smile. “Oh, don’t look at me like that. I don’t know any of you—why should I pretend to care about your lives as much as my own?”

That rather put an end to the discussion, and the four of them set about gathering the rest of the guests. The Quirkes and the professor, it transpired, had also parted company when a sudden noise which turned out to be a particularly aggressively blocked pipe spooked the professor so badly that he needed to go and lie down. Mrs Ackroyd resented the summons but came along with the rest, and then the guests, plus a largeish chunk of the staff, gathered in the lounge where, to Liza’s surprise, Mr Burgh handed straight over to her.

“Okay,” Liza began, and then waited to see if anybody would shout at her or throw anything. This was way easier with a microphone and wine. “I think I’ve got something.”

Sir Richard gave her an enthusiastic nod. “Good show, old girl. I mean, late-twenties-early-thirties girl.”

“Thanks,” she replied in her most sincere pretty-sure-I’m-being-patronised voice. “I had a look around the woods and I think I found the killer’s footprints, but they just came back to the hotel. Then when we searched the hotel, we didn’t find anything—”

“Because there was nothing to find,” protested Mrs Ackroyd. Protested too much, Liza thought.

“But then we looked outside. Because we thought maybe the killer might have thrown the gun out of the window when we started looking for it.”

Mrs Ackroyd blanched. It couldn’t be this simple, could it? Except wasn’t it always this simple? In real life. No twists or shocking revelations, no need to get everybody into the drawing room at the end and give a big speech about how it all fit together. Just, “Yeah, it was probably that person.”

“And we found evidence,” Liza continued, “that something had been thrown from a long way up into a bush just next to where we found Mr Ackroyd’s body last night.”

The professor took off his glasses, polished them, and put them back on again. “Good Lord, you’ve found the gun.”

Well, that was embarrassing. “Not exactly.”

“Oh.” An expression of puzzlement spread across the professor’s face. “I just assumed—you know—because we’d all been gathered together.”

“Does seem a touch premature,” agreed Colonel Coleman.