I went to move it and couldn’t. It was too heavy for me. And as I held the shaft in my hand I looked down and saw something moving in the strong wind that was now blowing icy cold air into the room. I dropped to my knees. “Look at this,” I whispered to Darcy. It was a small piece of black thread caught on one of the curly legs of the candelabra.

Chapter 31

Chapter 31

VERY LATE NOW, DECEMBER 28

Inspector Newcombe arrived about a half hour later. He looked bleary-eyed and grumpy, as if he had been roused from his bed. He took statements from those who had seen the candelabra topple. Nobody recalled seeing anyone standing nearby. I suddenly thought of the person in the gorilla suit I had noticed at the beginning of the evening. I hadn’t seen him since supper. I mentioned him and no one had any idea who he was.

“Any other time I would have guessed it was old Freddie, if he hadn’t . . . you know,” Mr. Crawley, my hunting friend, said. “Just the sort of thing he’d do. Probably would have swung from the chandeliers too.”

Nobody had seen the gorilla leave. He hadn’t appeared at supper. Certainly he hadn’t been seen standing anywhere near the candelabra, so the inspector dismissed him as unimportant. A constable was dusting around the French door for fingerprints. I waited until the inspector went over to examine the candelabra, then brought his attention to the piece of thread that had been caught on one of its legs.

“You’re suggesting that this was attached to the candelabra and at the right moment someone tugged it over?” he asked.

I nodded.

“It’s a thin sort of cotton to shift a great thing like that.”

“I suspect it’s something like button thread, which is quite strong,” I said, fingering it. “But the candelabra is clearly top-heavy and the least little jerk might have achieved the desired effect.”

He stared at the open door, the candelabra and the spots of melted wax still on the floor.

“So you want me to believe that someone rigged up a way to topple the candelabra in the hopes that Mrs. Sechrest might come and stand in the right spot sometime during the evening? That seems like a long shot to me, especially when it might be rather hard to stand anywhere alone in a crowded ballroom.”

I sighed. “I agree, unless she wasn’t particularly the intended target. If someone just wanted to cause mischief and chose a target at random, that would be different.” Or if her husband wanted to get rid of her, he’d simply push the candelabra over onto her, I thought, but I couldn’t bring myself to say those words. Instead I said, “We have to assume this was today’s intended death, don’t we?”