Rosalind sighed. ‘I’ll talk to Juliette later, try to get her to call the boyfriend for me. Claim it’s some sort of great-godmother thing.’

‘So what do we do in the meantime?’ Posy asked.

‘I’d suggest stopping for a cup of tea, personally,’ Rosalind replied, still sounding annoyed with Caro. ‘I mean, we’ve asked questions all morning and the only secrets we’ve uncovered are an illicit kindle, a clumsy attempt to cheat at a stupid game, and a teenage love tryst. Why not quit before we’re more behind? We’re actresses, not detectives.’

‘We can’t be both?’ Posy asked, eyebrows raised.

‘Of course we can.’ Caro gave Rosalind a hard stare. ‘Dahlia wasn’t a detective to start with, either. But she had brains and a talent for getting people to tell her things they’d probably be better off if they didn’t. She solved puzzles and saw connections. And she knew people. Just like we do.’

It was only as she was saying it that Caro realised how true it was. They’d spent their careers pretending to be other people, learning what made their characters tick, why they made the decisions they did. Their biggest mistakes, their regrets, their passions – their motivations.

And that was what they were doing at Aldermere.

Rosalind sighed. ‘Fine. So what do we do next? Since you seem determined to be Head Dahlia in this investigation.’

Caro tried not to preen too much. Of course she was Head Dahlia. She’d played her the longest. ‘Well, the way I see it, we have two options.’

‘Oh?’ Rosalind’s expression was bored, but Caro could see the flicker of excitement in her eyes. She was enjoying this more than she’d let on.

‘Either we search Marcus’s room for a reason someone might want to kill him, or we ask Ashok why Juliette saw him leaving Posy’s bedroom during dinner last night.’

Ashok, it transpired, had gone straight from the Three Dahlias panel into another event in one of the other marquees, so they decided to search Marcus’s room first. Although Posy did fill them in on Ashok’s role in her searching of Clementine’s room as they headed back to the house.

‘And you didn’t think to mention this earlier?’ Rosalind asked.

Posy shrugged. ‘He wanted his phone back. He played lookout. He never went inside the room. It didn’t really seem important.’

Until it did. Wasn’t that always the way with Dahlia’s investigations?

For now Caro settled for keeping a mental running list of questions to ask Ashok when they caught up with him, and hurried up the stairs towards the China Room.