She looked around. “Obviously we must make sure that everything is kept from that odious little policeman. We must work fast before he makes a complete mess of everything. Typical bungling foreigner. No clue how to run things properly. It is up to us now to unmask the murderer.”

“I don’t see how we’re ever going to do that,” I said. “I was there, facing Field Marshal Pirin all the time. If it was Dragomir or one of the footmen who slipped the cyanide into the glass, he was very slick and I don’t see how we’d ever find out who did it.”

“That’s if it was Dragomir or one of the servants,” Lady Middlesex said knowingly. She drew me closer. “Deer-Harte thinks she saw something. Of course, she is prone to flights of fancy, as we know.”

“I am an excellent observer, Lady M,” Miss Deer-Harte said, “and I know what I saw.”

“What did you see, Miss Deer-Harte?” I asked.

Her face went pink. “As you recall on the first night here I was not invited to join the company for dinner. Lady M thought it wouldn’t be right for a mere companion. I was told my supper would be sent up to my room. But after a while I thought that it wasn’t fair to one of the servants to have to walk up all these stairs with my tray, so I decided to come down and fetch it myself. Well”—she paused and looked around again—“as I passed the banqueting hall I heard the sound of merry voices, so naturally I lingered and took a little peek inside.”

“This was the first night,” I interrupted. “The night before Pirin was murdered.”

“It was, but what I saw could be significant. There was somebody watching from the shadows on the far side of the hall. He was dressed in black and he was standing half hidden behind one of the arches. He just stood there, not moving and watching. I thought it was odd at the time. I remember thinking, ‘That young man is up to no good.’ ”

“You always think things like that, Deer-Harte,” Lady Middlesex said. “You think that everyone is up to no good.”

“But in this case I was proven right, wasn’t I? And I’d like to wager that he was the same young man I saw creeping along the corridor in the middle of the night. I couldn’t see his face clearly on either occasion, but the build and demeanor were the same. And the way he was slinking along, he was clearly up to no good.”

“I am inclined to think she’s been letting her imagination run away with her again,” Lady Middlesex said, “but at the moment we are grasping at straws, aren’t we?”

“I don’t believe it was simply imagination,” I said. “What color hair did he have?”