She frowned, thinking. “It looked light to me. Yes, definitely light. Why do you ask?”

“Because a strange man came into my room on the first night, and then my maid came to me in great distress the next night to report that a man was in her room.”

“A young man with light hair?”

“Exactly. A good-looking young man with a Teutonic face.”

“I didn’t see his face, but I definitely saw the hair,” Miss Deer-Harte said.

“He came into your room?” Lady Middlesex demanded. “With what intention? Burglary or designs on your person?”

“I didn’t take the time to ask him. I rather fear the latter,” I said. “He was bending over me with a smile on his face. But when I sat up he disappeared hastily.”

“And your maid? Did he have designs on her person too? Clearly a man of great depravity.”

The thought struck me that a man would indeed have to be desperate to have designs on Queenie’s person. I knew it was deadly serious but I had to stop myself from giggling. I suppose it was the tension. “He didn’t touch her. He stood inside her door and when she gasped, he slipped out.”

“And did you report these effronteries to anyone?”

“No, I didn’t.” I paused.

“I would have. If any man had dared to come into my room, I should have reported him immediately.”

I hardly liked to say that nobody was likely to pay a nightly visit to Lady Middlesex. Nor did I want to bring up the possibility of vampires. Miss Deer-Harte, the one who had worried about vampires on the train, did not seem to connect her lurking young man with anything supernatural. And if the same man was our poisoner, then it was unlikely that he was anything more than a normal human. Vampires don’t need to poison people. In fact they wouldn’t want to taint their blood supply.

“One can only conclude,” Lady Middlesex went on, “that he was casing the joint, as criminals would say. It is most probable that he is a trained assassin and has been hiding out, waiting for the right moment to kill.”

I considered this too. It made sense that he was a trained assassin and that he was hiding out in the castle. But as Prince Nicholas had pointed out, there were surely easier ways to kill someone in a rambling old building like this than risk being detected at a very public banquet.

“And did you happen to see him at the banquet last night?” I asked Miss Deer-Harte.