‘Who is?’ Rosalind asked as she took her own seat on the chaise longue. She knew her conclusions from Libby’s confession, but she wanted to know what her fellow Dahlias thought before she committed to it.

‘Hugh,’ Caro said, promptly. ‘Obviously.’

Posy glanced at Rosalind. ‘It could be Isobel,’ she said, but Rosalind couldn’t tell if she was saying that to make her feel better.

She sighed. ‘Let’s take this one at a time. Caro – make your case.’

Caro jumped to her feet, pacing as she talked, ticking points off on her fingers as she made them. Posy, meanwhile, stole her seat.

‘We know that Hugh knew Clementine was Lettice’s granddaughter, and potentially entitled to a lot of the money that he inherited, right?’ She looked up for confirmation, and the other two nodded. ‘He had a copy of the script, so he’d have known about the sugared flowers. It sounds like he was stalling for time in giving Clementine anything, and he didn’t tell anyone else about her as far as we can tell, which is suspicious in itself, right? So he planned to kill her when she arrived for the convention, and there were lots of people and fuss around to cover it. But then he discovered that Marcus knew too, so he had to kill him as well. He had access to the flowers in the Murder Spiral – he was there that morning with Clementine – and to the Gate House, and the Boat House. He knows Aldermere better than anyone, so would have known the reeds would hide her body, hopefully long enough for any connection to him to be hidden – although he got unlucky with the rainstorm. He might be older, but he looks strong enough to shift a body – especially one as slight as Clementine’s. Plus he owns all those cars – he could have driven her out in one of those when he said he was collecting the car from the station yesterday morning.’

‘You seem to have it all worked out,’ Rosalind said. There’d be time enough to indicate the flaws in Caro’s argument after Posy had put forward her thoughts. ‘Posy? Why do you suspect Isobel?’

Caro, realising Posy had taken her chair, sat on the other, less comfortable one to listen.

‘Isobel stood to lose just as much as Hugh,’ Posy argued. ‘She knew Hugh had been in contact with Clementine, but maybe that wasn’t all she’d found out. She’d seen a copy of the script to sort the menu for the dinner, and I bet you she knows how to sugar a deadly flower. Everything about knowing Aldermere still stands for Isobel as much as Hugh. And as for moving the body, well, maybe she told Hugh what she’d done and he helped her, which makes him an accomplice, not a murderer.’