“I thought I heard something,” Algie said. “Something like a sinister growl, or a groan. Or maybe a snarl. Or a snort.”

“That was Juan clearing his throat.” Darcy gave him a withering look. “I told you at the time. When you grabbed me and nearly yanked me over backward.”

“It sounded jolly sinister to me,” Algie said. “Like an animal, you know.”

“How are you feeling, Juan?” Stella went over to him and guided him to a big armchair.

“How do you think I feel, eh?” he demanded indignantly. “I am in a deep sleep. Suddenly I am rudely awoken. Now my head throbs.”

“He bally well was in a deep sleep,” Algie said. “Talk about the sleep of the dead. We had to shake him before he finally surfaced.”

“I must have drunk too much wine with dinner. When I am depressed I drink too much wine,” Juan said. “It does not agree with me.”

“You’d better have some coffee.” Stella picked up the pot. “Oh, it’s gone cold again,” she said. “I’d better have Maria make more. Has anyone told her yet about Cy? Oh God. She’ll have hysterics. She worshipped the ground he trod on. You should do it, Mrs. Goldman.” And she tried to hand Helen the coffeepot.

“Helen is in no fit state to go anywhere,” Barbara intervened. “You’re the one who is here more than anybody. You do it.”

“I don’t think I could bear her weeping and wailing all over me,” Stella said. “I’m only just holding my own emotions together at this point. Ronnie, sweetheart, would you be an angel?” And she handed him the coffeepot.

Ronnie looked at it in his hands and tried to come up with a good reason why he shouldn’t go in to face Maria. Then he sighed. “Oh, very well,” he said. He set off in the direction of the kitchen.

And an interesting thought struck me as I watched Stella go over to perch on the arm of Juan’s chair. I would have said that she was with us in the rotunda all the time, but she had left once before when she went to ask for more coffee. So really only my mother, Charlie Chaplin and I had never left this area after dinner. Craig and Darcy had come in together, which cleared both of them. But all of the others had been alone and unaccounted for at some moment. I looked around the room. It was hard to picture any of them sneaking up on Cy Goldman and hitting him over the head with his own candlestick. Maybe it was a slick and agile intruder after all. When the groundsmen returned perhaps we’d know more.