“YOU’RE RATHER QUIET,” I said to Belinda as we drove home. “Are you trying to decide whether it’s worth going to a lot of trouble with your cottage?”

“No, I was thinking about Jago. I mean, he was a local boy. Surely he would have had very little schooling. How did he wind up in a position like that?”

“He got a scholarship to Oxford,” Rose said. “I remember my mother telling me. I couldn’t believe it because he was always—well, shy like me around you upper-class children. He hung around with us but I don’t remember him ever saying much, do you?”

“I remember he was one who tried to save Colin,” Belinda said. “He was a good swimmer, wasn’t he?”

“He was. But it was hopeless. The currents are so strong when the tide is coming in. Colin was swept away and disappeared under the water.”

We drove on in silent contemplation. I wondered how I’d handle it if I’d let a pal drown. They’d done all they could, at least Jago had done all he could. Presumably Tony too. But Jonquil had known that Colin couldn’t swim. And now Jonquil was dead. I began to wish I had never accepted Belinda’s invitation and had stayed safely but boringly at Eynsleigh.

Belinda was clearly having the same sort of thoughts. The moment we were together upstairs, sprucing ourselves up before tea, she tapped on my door. “What do you say we forget about the cottage for now and flee?” she said. “Darling, if I’d known what I was getting you into, I’d have left you alone.” She closed the door behind her and came over to me. “Do you think that Rose is batty? I mean, I knew Tony pretty well and I simply can’t believe that he’d go around murdering wives.”

I nodded. “And yet it’s clear she’s scared, isn’t it? And something must have prompted her to start wondering whether Jonquil’s death was an accident. I don’t know how you’d ever prove that it wasn’t, unless there was an eyewitness.”

“She said Tony got rid of all the staff, didn’t she? Perhaps one of them saw something.”

“Then you’d want to keep a close eye on them, not set them free to gossip. And he didn’t get rid of Mrs. Mannering. If anyone was spying through a window, it would have been her.”

“But she adored Jonquil,” Belinda reminded me. “If she’d seen Tony giving her a push, she’d definitely have gone straight to the police.”