‘So I’ve discovered,’ Ashok said. ‘And yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised if one of his victims did kill him. But that’s not what I was here to investigate. I was under instructions to find the evidence Marcus held, or find enough evidence against him to discredit him completely.’

‘What evidence were you looking for?’ she asked. ‘What was your client being blackmailed over?’

Ashok gave her a pitying look. ‘Ms Hooper, you know I can’t tell you that.’

‘Client confidentiality,’ she chorused with him. ‘I know, I know. Can’t blame me for trying though.’

All the same, another section of the jigsaw that was this weekend was coming together in Caro’s head at last. Why, if Ashok was behind the magnifying glass and poison bottle in Posy’s room, he’d been seen leaving there after the first was hidden and before the second, and the magnifying glass had stayed undisturbed both times, for instance.

‘You weren’t searching Posy’s room that night, were you? You were going through it to search Marcus’s.’ Like they had done, earlier that day.

Ashok nodded. ‘The lock on his door was a newer, sturdier one. But I knew from the floor plans I’d studied before I came here that the rooms were connected by a bathroom. Posy’s lock was much easier to pick.’

‘Well, you didn’t search it very well,’ Caro told him. ‘He always hid his most important stuff underneath the desk drawer in his room.’

‘I heard a noise out in the corridor before I could finish searching,’ Ashok admitted. ‘Had to get out of there fast.’

‘That would have been Juliette, going up to change clothes. She saw you, by the way.’

He winced. ‘So much for being stealthy. I was sure whoever was outside had gone past; I guess I didn’t bank on her coming back again so soon.’

‘Is that why you went back again today? To finish the job?’ Ashok looked confused at the question, so she explained. ‘Harry and Heather said they saw you outside Posy’s room before lunch.’

‘No. No, I was waiting for Felicity. Posy had asked to borrow her kindle, and left her door open so she could leave it in her room without anyone seeing. Felicity said that Posy was feeling self-conscious about how little she knew about Dahlia, and wanted to read up on the books without having to ask to borrow them from the library here.’

‘I see.’ It was a good excuse, a plausible one for sure. Ashok had certainly bought it. But Caro also knew for a fact that it was a lie. And Felicity just took the number two slot on my ‘would most like to interrogate’ list. With Clementine still gone, that effectively made her number one. Unless Rosalind and Posy had already finagled the truth out of her.