“I’ll do my very best,” I said, “but at the moment I’m stumped. I’ve been thinking that Rose could have chosen you as her alibi if she wanted to kill Tony, but how would she have known that he came to your room and was on your bed, naked, if she was down in the kitchen? He’d hardly have told his wife that he was off to have his way with Belinda while she was making cocoa.”

“Oh, shut up, Georgie.” She gave a half laugh. “What could he have been thinking?”

“His hair was wet,” I said. “Apparently he washed his hair when he had a bath at night. So maybe this has something to do with bathrooms. Did you see him at all when you went to have your bath?”

“No. I didn’t see anybody,” Belinda said.

“Oh, that’s a pity. I thought he might have just come out of his bath, spotted you going in to your bathroom and, in a fit of passion, decided to sprint down the hallway and lie in wait for you.”

“Except that he would have taken his bath in his own bathroom, not the one in the hallway.”

“Ah yes. Of course.” I sighed.

“And he would have grabbed his bathrobe. That corridor is freezing cold with a wicked draft coming down it.”

I nodded. “True.”

“It’s hopeless, isn’t it?” she whispered.

“No, it’s not. There is a logical explanation and we’ll find it. Perhaps it has to do with his former life in London. His financial dealings. His father was in banking and lost all his money, you say. Perhaps Tony had borrowed heavily and hadn’t paid back the debt and whoever he owed it to sent a henchman to finish him off.” Then I shook my head. “No, that doesn’t make sense, does it? They’d want him alive to pay back the money.”

“And I don’t think he was the sort to be involved in shady deals. He always struck me as absolutely straight.”

“Apart from not telling you he was engaged when you had your little fling.”

“Apart from that,” she agreed, “but remember how scathing he was about the foreign gentleman at Trengilly and his shady dealings. And Jago being mixed up in them? I say, Georgie—I wonder if they are smuggling arms or something and Tony found out about it when he checked on the moorings he now owns and someone had to silence him?”

“As we decided the only thing against that is how would an outsider have known where to find a ceremonial dagger or where to find Tony, for that matter?”

“Good point.” She hesitated. “And you still don’t think Jago might have climbed in through my window, do you?”

“How would he have known that Tony was going to visit you?”

“You’re right. He wouldn’t.” She sighed.