“No, but then I was included in the party last night, not standing outside as an observer. One looks down to eat, so that one doesn’t risk spilling food, doesn’t one? One looks at the person to whom one is speaking. And I was naturally at the far end of the table, among the least important of the diners. But the interesting thing was I checked this morning that the spot where he had been standing was exactly behind Field Marshal Pirin’s seat. If you want my opinion, he was planning a dummy run, plotting when he could dart out and put the poison in the glass.”

“But I would have noticed any intruder, I’m sure,” I said. “So would Prince Anton and Princess Hannelore, who were sitting on either side of me.”

“Are you so sure?” Miss Deer-Harte said. “Supposing, for example, that you were in the middle of being served. Your server offers you the platter and says, ‘Some cauliflower, my lady?’ And you nod and say, ‘Thank you,’ and watch while it is put on your plate. For those moments you are not watching what is happening across the table, are you?”

“No, I suppose not,” I said.

“And if someone were dressed in black, not unlike the footmen’s uniform, or he had actually managed to procure himself a footman’s jacket, then nobody would look twice if he passed the table with a carafe in his hands. Servants are always too busy making sure they do their job to perfection to notice other servants. And it has been my observation that people simply pay no attention to servants.”

“Dragomir would have noticed,” I said. “He was hovering behind Prince Nicholas, directing the proceedings. As he said, he would have noticed anything slightly wrong.”

“Then let us consider that this Dragomir chappy is somehow involved,” Lady Middlesex said.

I couldn’t see why Dragomir would want to kill Prince Nicholas any more than he would want to kill Pirin. But if he were, in fact, from the Macedonian province that was now part of Yugoslavia it was just possible that he might want to cause civil war in Bulgaria as a way to reclaim its Macedonian lands. And what better way to do that than to assassinate its crown prince? Binky had said that they were always assassinating each other in this part of the world, hadn’t he? I decided that I’d risk a little chat with Dragomir myself.

“We obviously can’t snoop through every room in the castle,” Lady Middlesex said, “particularly now that the royal party has arrived, but it seems to me that the first task is to find out how he came by the poison and where he’s hiding the vial it came in.”

“I presume that any assassin could have the poison in his pocket when he came into the castle and would leave again with the empty vial,” I said.