“Of course you can,” Fen said, apparently unaware that the mound of her bosom was almost as much an impediment to working lungs as the shadow hanging over Bill. “And don’t panic. This is dreadful, I grant you, but we don’t know what sort of dreadful. Haworth might have been blackmailing Jimmy, but it might just as well have been, uh, someone else.” Pat didn’t miss that little hesitation: evidently no alternative candidate leapt to mind. “The fact is, Mr. Merton was quite right in what he said, that the police will pry into everyone’s private business. So I think we just have to do what he suggested, and everything will be all right.”

Pat couldn’t remember Bill offering a solution. “Mph?”

“Find out who did it, and have them confess before the police arrive.”

Pat sat up as if pulled by a string. “What?”

“Well, what else is there?” Fen asked reasonably. “If we’re mired in a police investigation, with journalists hanging round and so on, it will be awful. We can’t have your brother’s private affairs come out at all, Victoria might well be accused because of the knife, and Jimmy could be arrested because honestly he is the obvious suspect from about three different directions. And I don’t wish to be selfish, but it’s bad enough ending my third engagement at all, let alone while my fiancé is under investigation for murder. No, there’s no two ways about it. We need this cleared up right away before everyone’s dirty linen is washed in public.”

“So we’re going to clear it up?” Pat asked faintly. “You and me?”

“Why not? You’ve got more sense than anyone I know, and I can ask the most awful questions because people expect me to be silly. And we were together more or less every minute since we saw him going into the East Wing, so unlike everyone else, we didn’t do it, if you see what I mean.”

“It would be something if everyone else did do it.” Pat briefly pictured the guests and hosts of Rodington Court queueing up outside that first-floor room, knives in hand, and had to rub her eyes. “I’m not sure I know how to investigate a murder.”

“I’ve never done it before either, but there’s a first time for everything.” Fen took her hand. “I’m serious, Pat. Everyone else is afraid or untrusting, and hiding something. You and I are the only people with no—what’s the phrase? Motive, means, or opportunity.”

“Everyone had the means,” Pat pointed out. “Anyone could have taken that knife off the wall.”