Rose, later looking out of the castle window, saw figures bearing torches streaming out across the moors. Please catch him, she prayed, and let this all be over. Then she worried that Aunt Elizabeth might prove to be like the duchess in Paris and decide she did not like being near someone who caused such upheaval.

Harry, arriving with Becket the following morning, having driven through the night, saw, to his dismay, a policeman standing on guard outside the castle door.

‘Now what?’ he muttered under his breath.

Becket was too tired to care. He felt he had been unable to spend any proper time with Daisy since their honeymoon.

Harry strode into the castle demanding to know the reason for the police presence. Jamie, the footman, told him they were all in the drawing room and Harry went up the stairs as fast as his bad leg would allow.

A police inspector rose as he entered the room. ‘I am so glad you are back,’ said Aunt Elizabeth. ‘May I present Inspector Macleod. Inspector Macleod, Captain Cathcart.’ She indicated a portly gentleman seated by the fire. ‘And this is our Lord Lieutenant, Sir Edwin Godfrey. Sir Edwin, Captain Cathcart.’

Harry shook hands with both of them. He smiled at Rose. A shaft of sunlight shone on the ring on her finger. Despite his fatigue, he felt a surge of gladness that she was unharmed and that she was wearing his ring.

Then he turned to the inspector. ‘What has been happening?’

He listened carefully to the story of the pearls. ‘But we can’t find hair nor hide o’ the fellow,’ ended the inspector. ‘The policeman in Golspie went up to Dunrobin Castle early this morning and the Countess of Sutherland’s butler there said he had never heard of this so-called footman. I believe you have been working on this case.’

‘Yes, and I have some more news. Dolores Duval was actually Betty Biles, brought up in the East End of London. Her father was English and her mother, French. Father, it seems, was a bit of a brute. When Dolores – I will always think of her as Dolores – was fifteen, her father was going to sell her to a local businessman. No question of marriage. The mother had died. Dolores ran away. The father owned a small grocery store. Dolores had taken the money out of the till. She must have gone straight to France. Now, there is a brother. Jeffrey. What did this footman look like?’

Rose gave him a description. ‘That sounds like the description we had of the brother. No one has seen him for a long time. As he seems to be hell-bent on putting the blame for the murders on Lady Rose, he must have committed them himself.’

‘But to kill his own sister!’ exclaimed Aunt Elizabeth. ‘Why?’

‘As her next of kin, he would inherit unless she had left her money and property to someone else. That is why Madame de Peurey was killed, I think. How he can hope to inherit anything now that we are on to him, I don’t know.’