I was a little out of breath when I came to a door on the floor above and opened it. I was standing at the far end of my bedroom corridor, right next to Rose and Tony’s bedroom. I glanced around, then tiptoed into the room, carefully closing the door behind me. It was a lovely big room with a four-poster, a pretty dressing table in the window, and Rose’s dress flung carelessly over the stool. An enormous oak wardrobe took up a lot of one wall. It was in many ways a woman’s room. I spied a door beside the wardrobe and found myself in a large bathroom. On the other side of that was yet another door that led to a gentleman’s dressing room and beyond that what must have been Tony’s bathroom. Yes, there were his shaving things on the shelf and an enormous claw-foot tub. I stood, staring down at it, picturing Tony in that bath. If someone had come in unexpectedly, he would have been taken off guard. Someone with a knife, or in this case, a dagger. It was not the sort of tub from which one could have made a speedy exit.

The only thing against that scenario was that there would have been blood in the water. Someone would have had to have enough time to clean up the bathroom, and there would have been blood on the towels too. Besides, how could anyone have carried him through the whole bedroom suite, down the length of the hallway and laid him on Belinda’s bed? Rose might have had time to run up those back stairs from the kitchen and kill him, but would she have had time to carry him the length of the hallway without being heard? I was in my room, after all, and it would have taken superhuman strength. Wouldn’t I have heard a body being dragged? Maybe not on the carpeted hallway. But wouldn’t she have let out a grunt of exertion that I might have heard through my door? Unless this was some sort of conspiracy and the killer had a helper—one who got away through that open window. I wondered who might have been Rose’s ally.