“It looks that way,” Craig said. “Unless anyone else went into the library after us.”

“They’d have had to pass this young fellow playing with the suit of armor, wouldn’t they?” the sheriff asked.

“Ah, well,” Algie cleared his throat nervously. “I wasn’t there the whole time. You see I needed to spend a penny.”

“Spend a penny?”

“You know. Take a widdle. Visit the loo, old man.”

“What’s a ‘loo, old man’?” the sheriff demanded.

I looked at Belinda and we started to giggle. We couldn’t help ourselves. The sheriff was glowering.

“He means he went to find a lavatory,” Darcy said, also trying hard not to smile.

“Oh, you mean take a piss.” The sheriff nodded now. “So anyone could have snuck down that hallway while Mr. Goldman had his back turned, and struck him over the head.”

“Yes, only we were all here together,” Stella said. “Except for Mrs. Goldman, who went up to bed right after coffee.”

“But before her husband was killed?” the sheriff asked.

“Probably,” Stella said, her face calm and sweet.

“We have no idea when my husband was killed,” Mrs. Goldman said. “All I can tell you is that I was upset and tired and I went up to bed sometime during the evening.”

“So everybody else is accounted for except Mrs. Goldman?”

“Actually this young lady and I went for a swim together,” Craig said, managing to imbue that phrase with hidden implication.

“You went for a swim—in the dark?”

Craig gave that devastating smile. “The pool is lighted and heated, Sheriff. It was very pleasant—wasn’t it, Belinda?”

“So you and the young lady were absent for a while?”

“But together,” Craig pointed out. “And outside.”

“And everyone else was in this room, apart from Mrs. Goldman, who had gone to bed?”

“And Juan,” Algie pointed out.

Juan shrugged. “I am sleeping in my bed, senor. After dinner the wine does not agree with me. They do not understand wine in America. Too many years of prohibition, I think. So my head hurts and I go straight to bed and fall asleep.”

“We can vouch for that,” Algie said. “We had a devil of a time waking him.”

“So it appears that you can all vouch for each other?” the sheriff said. “How convenient.”

“If you’re trying to suggest that it was a conspiracy between us to kill Mr. Goldman, I think you’re barking up the wrong tree,” Stella said, coldly now. “We all owed everything to him. Without him our lives are in tatters.”

The sheriff rocked uneasily in his chair. I wondered how many murder investigations he’d had to conduct before and decided he wasn’t quite sure how to proceed. “We can’t do much until the doctor ascertains the time of death,” he said.