“My husband is currently out of the country. And if he weren’t, I wouldn’t need his permission to go on a trip with my friend.”

“A most modern man.”

“A wonderful man. I’m very lucky.”

He realized he was losing his line of questioning. “So to come back to tonight. You fell asleep, having heard nothing.”

“As I said, I was just dozing off when I thought I heard a cry or a scream. I wasn’t sure whether I had dreamed it, so I put on my dressing gown and opened my door. There was a light in Belinda’s room and she was standing there, holding that knife with a look of pure terror on her face. She told me she’d come back from her bath and kicked something in the darkness. When she picked it up, it was that knife. She turned on the light and found Tony Summers lying on her bed as you saw him. Naturally she screamed.”

The inspector swiveled back to face Belinda. “So, Miss Warburton-Stoke, do you have any idea why Mr. Summers would be lying naked in your room?”

“No idea at all, Inspector.” She paused, glanced at me, then added, “But I do have an idea who might have killed him and tried to frame me.”

This made him open his eyes. “You do?”

“My uncle, Sir Francis Knott. He came to the house this afternoon. He wanted to see Tony Summers because he was angry that Tony had doubled the mooring fees and my uncle lives on his sailing boat and is frankly short of cash. I had met with my uncle earlier and he was also very angry that he had not been included in my grandmother’s will. I was her sole heir. He tried to suggest that he had been cheated and that I divide the spoils with him, so to speak.”

“She was his mother?”

“She was.”

“And why was he excluded, do you think?”

“He had proved himself to be reckless with money. He had always been untrustworthy and a gambler.”

“So you think that this uncle decided to take care of Mr. Summers and make it look as if you did it?”

“I’m afraid that is the only conclusion that makes sense, Inspector,” she said. “With me out of the way, I presume he would inherit his mother’s estate. He could easily have hidden out in an unused room until tonight. He would have seen the weapons displayed on the walls when he took tea with us. He was quite handy with weapons, having fought in the Great War. In fact he boasted about how he had killed Germans.”

“Ah.” The inspector was nodding now. “And where do we find this uncle of yours?”

“As I said, he lives on his sailing boat and moors it across the river in Padstow.”