“Then perhaps if you’d be good enough to stay, and any others who saw the actual accident, we can allow everyone else to go home.”

“And I to my bed,” the dowager countess said. “That woman was asking for trouble with all that trailing fabric near live flames.” And she stomped off, clearing a way through the crowd with her stick.

“I think we should go to bed too,” Colonel Rathbone said. “This has quite upset my wife and she’s not a well woman.”

My mother sidled over to me. “Noel wants to stay in case anything exciting happens, but I feel it’s too, too ghoulish. I can’t get that image out of my mind—that poor woman going up in flames. I said to Noel, ‘That could have been me.’ I’m sure this fabric is just as flammable as hers.” She put her hand up to my cheek and patted it. “We’ll see you tomorrow, I suppose. Noel is frightfully keen to watch the ridiculous Lovey Chase thing. I expect it’s all those young men in shorts and singlets that excites him.” She cast a wicked smile in Mr. Coward’s direction as she went to join him.

One by one the guests departed until the ballroom had that abandoned feel of the day after a party. I took Darcy aside and murmured my suspicion to him. He frowned, considering this. “Frankly, if he’d wanted to do away with her, a simple cigarette to her skirt would have done the trick, wouldn’t it?”

“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe he wasn’t taking any chances. All those candles at once meant that her costume would catch fire in many places. And there was a chance she’d be knocked out as well, therefore not able to do anything.”

“You’re a grizzly little thing, aren’t you?” He slipped his arms around me, gazing down at me fondly. “And I was so looking forward to my last waltz with you—a chance to dance cheek to cheek.”

“There will be other chances, I hope,” I said. “Right now I wish we could escape from here. Until now it was people we didn’t know. Now it’s finally come here. I can’t stop wondering who will be next.”

One of the footmen was about to close the French doors. “I don’t think you should touch anything until the police arrive,” I called to him. He looked startled, but stepped away. I went over to stand beside the candelabra. “Was this exactly where it stood before?” I asked.

The footman looked around the room at where the other candelabras had been placed. “Pretty much, my lady. Maybe a few inches to the left.”