“I’ve just had the bad luck to have been staying in places where someone died. Nothing to do with me, I assure you. Just an innocent bystander.”

“And this young woman is your maid?”

I sighed. “Yes, I suppose she is.”

“Well, keep an eye on her. I’m still not happy about someone trying to break in.”

“Don’t worry. She’s quite harmless apart from damaging everything within reach,” I said.

Craig had also risen from his seat and went over to the men who were lingering near the front door, looking uncomfortable at being inside the house. “You’re the groundsmen, right? So did you find any evidence of a break-in along the fence?”

“No, senor,” one of them said. “The fence looks fine. We drove all the way around and didn’t see nothing unusual.”

“And the man at the gate? Nobody has tried to get in or out apart from this young woman?”

“No, sir. Jimmy says the only people he’s let in all day have been Mr. Goldman’s guests. People he knows.”

Craig looked around at the rest of us. “Then we have to presume that the killer is among us here, don’t we? It simply can’t be an outsider.”

“Unless the outsider is still hiding among the trees and rocks,” Mummy said in her usual bored way, stretching languidly on the sofa as if this were any cocktail party and not a murder inquiry. “It seems to me it would be quite easy to hit poor Cy over the head and then melt into that fog until an opportune moment came for someone to open the gate.”

“So maybe you guys could start patrolling the grounds now,” the sheriff said.

“In the dark? What could we see in the dark?” one of the groundsmen demanded. “Someone hears us coming and slips behind a tree or a rock. It’s impossible.”

“Then we’ll get dogs brought in in the morning, wild animals or not,” the sheriff said. “My men will be arriving soon with the medical examiner, and then we’ll do a complete search of the house for clues. And in the meantime I’ll be questioning each of you in turn in the library.”

“In the library?” Mrs. Goldman demanded. “But my husband’s body is still there. Surely that’s not appropriate and most insensitive.”

“They can move the curtains around the body if you do not wish to look at him,” Juan said. “But I think you will not wish to interview me. I was not there. I left after dinner.”

“I told you. Nobody is touching anything,” the sheriff boomed. “And I want to speak to everybody.”

“Then why do you want us in the library, if we’re not supposed to touch anything?” Barbara said in a testy voice. “Won’t that risk contaminating the crime scene?”

It was clear we were all getting tired and feeling the strain.