Posy curled up on the window seat, hugging a cushion to her chest. ‘I don’t know if I can sleep. I keep thinking about Clementine.’

White skin in the moonlight. Those bulging, staring eyes. Rosalind swallowed.

‘Do you think whoever killed her was in the Gate House tonight?’ Posy went on. ‘That the person that attacked Caro killed Clementine? And Marcus? Why?’

Why?

Wasn’t that always the most important, and infuriating question? The one that drove everything else. Rosalind had asked Hugh ‘Why?’, all those years before, and so many times since. She’d never had a satisfactory answer to that question, either – why, if he loved her, he’d slept with Isobel. Why he’d married her, stayed with her when it became clear there was no baby.

Maybe that was why she kept coming back, why she’d orbited him so tightly through the years. If she’d had an answer to her why, maybe she’d have moved on.

‘Perhaps Clementine was behind the blackmail and the fakes after all,’ Caro suggested.

‘Was there anything in Marcus’s ledger we might have missed? Anything about Clementine?’ Rosalind asked.

Caro frowned. ‘I don’t think so. Hang on.’ She fished the small, brown leather journal from the overnight bag she’d brought from her room and paged through it. ‘I can’t see anything, but then I might be concussed. You try.’ She tossed it to Posy, who caught it easily, dropping her cushion to do so.

Posy leafed through the ledger more slowly, taking the time to check every page. Rosalind returned to the bathroom to smooth night cream into her skin, and by the time she’d finished, Posy was done.

‘Nothing I can see. Nothing that makes this make sense.’

The three women absorbed the information in silence. Rosalind turned the facts over in her head, but she still couldn’t find a way to make a coherent story.

They needed to find the missing links, or else they’d never know why someone here this weekend turned to poison. And bludgeoning.

She frowned. Something else that didn’t make sense.

‘Clementine was hit over the head before she was dumped in the river,’ she said, thinking aloud. Posy closed the ledger and gave her full attention, which was gratifying. Caro was less attentive, but Rosalind forgave her because of the possible concussion. ‘And the killer tried to do the same to Caro tonight.’

‘I was there,’ Caro grumbled, rubbing the side of her head. One of her victory rolls had come unpinned, and a long dark curl hung down the side of her face, while the other remained pinned and pristine. ‘I remember.’

‘That doesn’t seem the same sort of death that Marcus suffered, does it?’