‘Should we go?’ Posy whispered beside her. ‘Leave them to it?’

Caro brushed her hands against her dress to try and get the last of the glitter off them. Damn stuff got everywhere. Like secrets.

But she couldn’t help but be impressed that Posy had thrown herself in front of a bullet – well, poison – for Rosalind. Even though she knew they’d probably tease her about it later. That was the Dahlia way.

After Caro had got some sleep, and the memory of this weekend wasn’t so raw and terrifying.

‘I think our work here is done,’ she said, as she headed for the stairs.

Another Dahlia Lively mystery solved. She couldn’t wait to tell Annie about it.

Epilogue

‘What will you do now?’ Johnnie asked, concern in his voice. ‘Where will you go?’

‘Oh, I imagine I’ll go wherever I am needed,’ Dahlia replied. ‘After all, there are mysteries to be solved in every corner of this world. And I think, at least for some of them, I am the exact right person to solve them. Don’t you agree?’

Johnnie smiled. ‘I do.’

Dahlia Lively in Poisoner’s Delight

By Lettice Davenport, 1985

Rosalind

‘Are you sure you won’t stay?’ Hugh’s blue eyes looked tired and old in the late afternoon sunlight. Like he’d aged a decade or more over one long, terrible night. He slouched against one of the vintage cars waiting to take the remaining guests to the station, as if his bones couldn’t hold his body up any longer.

From the driveway, Rosalind could see the blue and white police tape fluttering in the distance, towards the Boat House. Up at the Gate House, everything was in darkness.

DCI Larch had spent the morning speaking with each of the exhausted Aldermere guests, before allowing them to leave. Caro was still packing up her bag, and Posy was hammering out final details with Anton and Kit about filming schedules, before they said their goodbyes. It gave Rosalind a moment in private with Hugh, for which she was grateful. Last night, he’d been beyond conversation. It had been all she could manage to get him to bed – aided by another whisky – before she dropped, exhausted, into her own.

But they did need to talk. And she didn’t want this conversation to be overheard, if she could help it.

‘I can’t stay, Hugh.’

‘Because of Isobel? Or Juliette? Because, quite frankly, when you reach a certain point of reputational ruin, what’s one more scandal?’ he asked. ‘You know it’ll all come out in the trial. About us, I mean.’

Rosalind couldn’t see any reason why Isobel or Juliette would keep it quiet. The papers would love it, of course – her adoring but judgemental fans probably less so. They could probably get away with it, though, now that Hugh’s wife turned out to be an accomplice to murder.