I felt sorry for him. He was a bright young man forced into this kind of work by circumstance, and now he was jobless again. I walked slowly back up the driveway. Truthfully I wasn’t anxious to be roped into more party preparations. I just wasn’t in the mood. I told myself that I should be happy that I would no longer be suspected of the first murder if I couldn’t have committed the second, but I kept seeing that poor man lying there with those shears savagely driven into his back. And I thought back to the wound on Sir Toby’s head. Surely it would have been simple enough to have knocked him out and then dragged him into the pool to drown. These were crimes of great savagery committed by a violent and angry person. As I went about my tasks—blowing up balloons, setting out candles and ashtrays—I wondered why it had become necessary to kill the gardener. I could come up with two reasons—one, that he had been part of the original plot, including the need to incriminate me, and his conscience had gotten the better of him, or two, that he knew who had committed the murder and was attempting, foolishly as it turned out, to extract some hush money from the murderer.

I had just pondered these things when Inspector Lafite turned up, the last person any of us wanted to see.

“Lady Georgiana. We meet again. And do I understand correctly that you were the one who discovered this body?” he asked. “I find this most interesting.”

“Yes, your man was with me. I saw the foot sticking out and he parted the branches to reveal the man lying there.” I made sure he knew that his man was part of this equation.

“And how did you come to be strolling through the garden of Sir Toby Groper? Was this a usual occupation for you? You had done it before, perhaps?”

I tried not to let my face show annoyance. He was so clearly trying to trap me into confessing that I often took a shortcut across Sir Toby’s property.

“That’s simple to answer,” I said. “I wanted to meet this gardener for myself. I wanted him to have a chance to see me face-to-face and realize that I was not the one he saw sneaking into Sir Toby’s house. Since I was under the supervision of your men, I took one of them with me. The gardener’s wife said he had not returned home from work. On our way back to Sir Toby’s house we noticed the small door in the wall, found it unlocked and followed the path. That’s when we saw the foot.”

“A second murder,” he said. “One must ask oneself why this man was killed.”

“Presumably because he knew who the murderer of Sir Toby was,” I said.

His eyes narrowed. He stroked his extravagant mustache.

“Precisely, young lady. And if he was the only witness to the murderer entering the house? Why, he must be silenced forever.”