‘Ye-es,’ Caro agreed. ‘I saw it too – the teabag was there when the cups were on the long table. I remember stopping to look at them between a couple of the courses – not sure which ones, though. The breeze through the window was lovely, the room was so hot.’ That, or she was starting to experience the hot flushes her mother had complained so bitterly about throughout her forties, and Caro refused to countenance that idea. ‘I remember rolling my eyes when I saw Marcus’s teabag – bloody awkward man, I’ve seen him order black Americanos in Starbucks plenty of times, when he’s hungover. He likes to be different when people are watching.’

‘Liked,’ Rosalind corrected her. ‘He liked to be different.’

The reminder made her insides squirm. For a moment, she’d forgotten a man she knew was dead. She’d been focused on the puzzle.

It’s easier when you’re not a part of the story. She’d said that line as Dahlia once, hadn’t she? When you’re just an observer, solving a puzzle.

‘Yes. Right. The point is, we were moving seats all evening and we must have passed that table half a dozen times or more. Any one of us at dinner last night could have switched that sugared flower for a deadly one.’

The three Dahlias contemplated that idea in silence for a moment.

‘It would take some planning,’ Rosalind said, finally. ‘The flower must have been sugared, not fresh. That takes time and effort.’

‘Well, we were hardly thinking this was a spur of the moment killing,’ Caro pointed out acidly. ‘That’s why we can be pretty sure none of the catering staff were behind it. This was definitely personal.’

Sugaring flowers sounded like something her ex-mother-in-law would have expected her to do, for perfect dinner parties to support her husband’s career.

Needless to say, such events had never been high on Caro’s agenda.

She’d bet that Rosalind had sugared a flower or two in her time, though. And Isobel definitely would have done. Another one for the suspect list.

‘More than that, they’d have needed to have read the script.’ Posy spread the script pages open again to the relevant scene. ‘Otherwise they wouldn’t have known about the sugared flowers.’

‘It comes back to the script again, doesn’t it?’ Caro said, thoughtfully.

‘The original script was leaked on the internet. We need to check if that had the flowers in too – if it did, anyone here could have read it. But if Libby added them in …’ Posy let the sentence trail away.

‘It narrows our pool of suspects down to the people who had access to it,’ Caro finished for her. ‘So we need to find out who those people were.’

Rosalind checked the slender golden wristwatch on her arm. ‘As fun as this has been, ladies, we do have a panel we’re supposed to be attending shortly.’