The fans. Heather and Harry, clutching hands as they stood by the body. Felicity and Ashok off to one side, as if realising what they’d signed up for by coming here. You and me both, kiddos.

The film team – Anton, Kit and Libby. Anton looked like he might be taking mental notes for staging the film, but Libby had grabbed hold of Kit’s arm, and he looked to be comforting her.

And the Dahlias. The other two. Rosalind standing silently at Hugh’s side, Posy staring at the empty coffee cup on the table in front of Marcus. Her two doppelgängers. Her co-conspirators.

Twelve people – thirteen, if she counted herself. Twelve suspects, then.

And Caro wasn’t ready to cross any of them off her list yet.

Sirens broke the silence in the dining room not long after, and Aldermere became a hive of activity again. By the time the paramedics and police were finished, it was well past two in the morning, and everyone was too exhausted to be traumatised by the idea of sleeping in a house where a man had just died.

Odds were, as Caro pointed out to Ashok, hundreds of people had died in this house over the years, anyway. Strangely, that didn’t seem to reassure him.

The paramedics and police medical examiner seemed casually certain that the death was a result of Marcus’s pre-existing heart condition, and the uniform officers were happy to agree if it meant they got home tonight. They bagged up Marcus’s phone and pills from the table, sealed off his room, and took everyone’s contact details. As the body bag was carried away, the medical examiner muttered something about a post mortem after the bank holiday.

‘We should have told them,’ Posy murmured, as the door shut behind the police officers. ‘About the blackmail. That there might be more to this than it seems.’

‘Based on what? Coincidence? The fact that his heart gave out at the same point as in the book?’ Caro patted her lightly on the back, rubbing circles like her wife Annie did for her when she was stressed. ‘They wouldn’t have believed us, anyway.’

‘Caro’s right.’ Had Rosalind ever uttered those words before? Probably not. Caro drank them in, knowing it could be a long, cold while before she heard them again. ‘Did you see their faces? They think we’re all nuts, being here in the first place.’

‘Maybe not nuts,’ Caro allowed. ‘But they definitely think we’re drama queens. Playing this up for extra theatrical excitement.’ The older police officer had recognised her. He’d grinned and made a joke about leaving it to the professionals this time, eh?

Caro had no intention of leaving it to the professionals.

She was Dahlia Lively; if anyone was going to solve this murder it would be her.

Because whatever the professionals said, Caro was certain this was murder.