‘It took me a while,’ Rosalind admitted. ‘Maybe longer than it would have taken Dahlia. But in the end there was only one explanation that made sense. And when I checked Hugh’s phone this afternoon, it confirmed my suspicions.’

‘My phone? When did you—?’ Realisation dawned on Hugh’s face. He didn’t look happy about it. ‘That’s why you told me about the jeweller’s loupe. To make me mad enough to leave you alone in here. You manipulative—’

‘Clementine never called you that afternoon,’ Rosalind interrupted, not wanting to hear how he’d finish the sentence. ‘I imagine that when you saw her driving away, you were scared for what she had planned, or the questions that might be asked about her taking your car, so you covered as best as you could on the spur of the moment. Am I right?’

Hugh gave a stiff nod. ‘I called her, repeatedly, afterwards, but she never answered.’

‘Because she was already dead,’ Rosalind said.

Gasps went up from the assembled group. Kit, she noticed, was leaning forward, his forearms on his knees, taking in every moment of the drama. Libby, however, was looking faintly sick.

‘Clementine never left the stables after the murder mystery,’ Caro explained. ‘Not alive, anyway. Her murderer confronted her there and, in their argument, hit her on the head and killed her. Then, the person stripped her, shoved her into the boot of Hugh’s favourite vintage car, put on her clothes and drove away from Aldermere disguised as Clementine, while we were all stood on the front steps to see it. Then, I imagine, this person left the car on the other side of the river, pushed the body into the reeds to sink, and raced back across the bridge to the Gate House to change and sugar a flower to kill Marcus that night.’

‘But what about the voicemail Marcus got from Clementine?’ Libby asked, her brow furrowed. ‘That was her voice. I was certain.’

‘It was,’ Rosalind reassured her. ‘That was another thing I found on Hugh’s phone: a voicemail from Clementine, dating back a few months to after their meeting in London. In it, she apologised for having to leave suddenly. Apparently there had been a family emergency.’

‘The words weren’t exactly the same,’ Caro said. ‘But it would have been easy for the murderer to take a recording of the message on their own phone and edit it with an app to say what they needed it to say, then call Marcus from Clementine’s mobile when they knew he couldn’t answer and play the message to his answerphone.’

‘Same with the text messages people have received from Clementine since then,’ Rosalind said. ‘They were all sent from the murderer.’