“And you think that he had made an important discovery so someone had to silence him?” I felt a shiver running through my body. If someone had killed Hugo then he would have no compunction about killing me, if he thought Hugo had told me anything. Did he know I had been sent here to spy? Then of course it came to me that the broken rope on the climb might not have been intended for Prince George or someone else at all. It might have been intended for me. And if it hadn’t snagged on that little tree on the outcropping, I’d have been dead by now.

There was a knock at the door and one of the maids came in with a tray of coffee and freshly baked toasted buns. “Cook says she’d just got them out of the oven so she thought you’d like them better than toast,” she said, placing the tray on a side table. “She remembered you were always fond of her buns.”

“Thank you.” I felt tears threatening to come. It was the ridiculous contrast of normality—a home where I should feel safe and the knowledge that nothing was safe anymore.

I poured coffee and Sir Jeremy sighed with pleasure as he took his first bite of the toasted bun. “One misses so much living in a service apartment in London,” he said. “My man is adequate in the cooking department but if I want more than a boiled egg I have to go to my club.”

“To get back to Hugo,” I said. “Do you have any idea what he might have discovered? Had he shared any suspicions at all?”

He shook his head. “Nothing. He’d been up and down between London and Scotland several times this summer but gave me no indication he was onto anything at all.”

“That’s too bad,” I said. “As I say, I arrived on the scene not long after he had been shot. I saw the members of that shoot. There was nobody present who could possibly have shot Hugo. Apart from an American and an Austrian count, I know everybody.”

Sir Jeremy wiped his mouth fastidiously. “In my long career one thing I have learned is that murderers are remarkably good at concealing their true personalities. I can tell you of several brutal serial murderers who were described as good family men, even by their wives. However, I have been supplied with the list of those present and we will be trying to match guns and fingerprints. I fear it will be a thankless task, however.”

“Surely you can’t match bird shot to any particular shotgun,” I said.

“Quite right,” he said. “Only BB wasn’t actually killed by bird shot.”

“He wasn’t?”