The point was, she decided, as she clumped through the undergrowth between the Gate House and the river path, she wasn’t the woman who got into scrapes like these. That was Caro, or Posy – jumping in without thinking, or being led astray by their impulses and inability to say no.

She was Rosalind King. She shouldn’t be here.

But Caro had been right. She couldn’t leave Posy alone with a murderer.

The rain had started up again, a relentless drizzle that Rosalind was sure would wear off before morning. She wiped her eyes, blinking away the droplets as she tried to focus in the darkness. How were they supposed to find anybody out here?

The path that ran alongside the river bank seemed even blacker than the trees and undergrowth they’d struggled through to get there. Hands on hips, Rosalind looked both ways along the path – the one that led off the Aldermere Estate, following the river as it made its way towards the nearest village, then back again at the path that led to the folly, and the house.

‘Which way do we go?’ Posy asked. ‘Do we split up?’

‘No!’ That was definitely not the plan. ‘If they wanted to get off the estate, they’d have taken the main road, or hidden and waited for us to pass then made a run for it.’ In which case, they might be chasing no one at all. ‘If they’re still here, they’ll have gone towards the house.’

If they were right, and the murderer was one of the people staying at the house, they’d want to get back there before they were missed, so they could pretend they’d been there all along. Except Clementine hadn’t been back to the house since Saturday.

‘Come on, then.’ Posy set out along the path towards the house, leaving Rosalind trudging behind, still thinking.

There had been sugar on the counter, in the Gate House. If Clementine had been hiding out there she could have made the sugared poison flower, then snuck up during dinner to place it on Marcus’s saucer – disguised as one of the waiting staff, like Felicity had suggested. Nobody had really looked at their faces, Rosalind would bet, and they’d all had those little caps covering their hair.

But if she had, she wouldn’t be heading back to the house now, would she? Unless she wasn’t done. Unless there were more deaths to come …

A shiver crept up Rosalind’s spine. She stopped on the path, suddenly certain that she was being watched. She could feel someone’s gaze on her, as clearly as she knew when she held the audience in her thrall on stage.

Clementine.

She hadn’t gone back to the house. She hadn’t escaped to the village. She was waiting, watching, to see what they did next.