“Won’t be contained for a few days at least,” one said. “They’ve got fire crews come in from all over the place but it’s moving so damned fast they can’t stop it.”

“Right. Nothing more we can do there anyway. In the hands of the fire marshal now,” he grunted in his deep, gravelly voice. “Doc’s with the body now. I need you boys to do a thorough search of this house. And did one of you bring a fingerprinting kit?”

“Out in the truck, Sheriff.”

“Then go get it. We’ve got us one fine bloody print that should make it easy to identify our killer.”

One of them slouched out again, walking with that strange rolling gait that comes from a life in the saddle.

“So what are we supposed to be looking for?” another of them asked.

“Clues, boys, clues. Any more fingerprints—oh, and a golden candlestick covered with precious stones. Not too easy to hide, I’d have thought.”

“Surely nobody would be stupid enough to hide the candlestick in the house,” Belinda whispered to me. “But then I can’t think that anyone would be stupid enough to steal the candlestick in the first place. Certainly not one of us. And if I were trying to steal it and Mr. Goldman caught me at it, I’d bluff my way out, saying I wanted to take a closer look in good light. I wouldn’t bash him over the head.”

“I know,” I said. “That’s why I think it has to be an outsider. One of us would have a good excuse for being in the library and wouldn’t have panicked if we’d been caught with the candlestick.”

“I wish we could go to bed,” Belinda muttered. “I am incredibly tired. Of course I could have livened up no end if there had been a good reason to stay awake. But alas, I seem to have lost my sex appeal.”

I had just decided to spill the beans to her when we heard running footsteps on the gallery up above and then someone yelled, “Sheriff. Up here.”

The big man took the stairs with surprising grace. Then we heard him say, “Well, I’ll be . . .”

He returned to the head of the stairs. “Okay, who is currently sleeping in this room to the left at the top of the stairs?”

“That’s my room, Sheriff,” Stella said coldly.

“Then perhaps you’d like to come up here, Miss Brightwell,” he said. His eyes had a triumphant gleam to them.

“Oh really,” she said. “What have they found now? My frilly underpants from Paris?”

“Oh, no. Much more interesting than that,” he said.

Stella stalked across the foyer and up the stairs. “Mrs. Goldman was right when she said we should try to bring in detectives from Los Angeles,” she said. “Your incompetent louts are keeping us awake for nothing.”