“And how would this outsider know which room was her bedroom? And more to the point, that he’d arrive at the right moment to find Mr. Summers naked in that room?” He gave a satisfied little smile as if he’d just scored a point in a courtroom. “To me the whole crux of the matter comes down to this: Mr. Summers was killed on this lady’s bed. He was naked.”

“Was his robe found among the bedclothes?” I asked.

“Not that I’ve been told,” he said, glancing down at the notebook he held in his hands and then jotting down a couple of words.

“And you don’t find that odd?” I went on. “How many people walk down a long hallway with no clothes on after a bath?”

He gave another small smirk. “From what I hear about you aristocrats, there are all kinds of funny goings-on. And it was his own house, after all. I’ve been known to come out of my bathroom with just a towel around me.”

“Yes, but not walk the length of a very long hallway when he knows there are female guests in residence. It would be horribly cold, for one thing. And certainly shocking for me if I’d opened the door and bumped into him.”

“Perhaps he had something else around him—a towel, a sheet?” DI Watt said.

“Was a towel found among the bedclothes?”

“Not that I know of.” Another glance down at the notebook.

“Detective Inspector,” I began, a little hesitantly this time, “is it at all possible that he was killed elsewhere and his body brought and dumped on Belinda’s bed?”

He was frowning now—well, scowling, actually. “In my experience I’d say no. People do not go on bleeding for long after they die. There’s no heart to pump the blood around, you see. And there is a good-sized bloodstain on the sheet where he is lying. Also surely someone in the house would have reported seeing blood spatters in another room or along the hall.”

I had to agree this was a good argument.

“You seem to have a morbid fascination with this case,” he said. “Do you read a lot of detective novels? See yourself as one of those clever lady detectives who are so far removed from real life that it’s laughable?”

“No, actually I’ve been involved in a few real murders, Detective Inspector,” I said.

“You have? And how is that, pray? Trying to solve them when you read about them in the newspaper?”

“No, I just happened to be on the spot when someone was killed on more than one occasion. Once I had to solve a murder that they wanted to pin on my brother. Fortunately I was able to do so.”