“I suppose not,” I said, fighting back my anger. “So how long are you going to let these deaths continue? Until January? February? Summer? The local population will be seriously depleted by then, won’t it?”

He winced as if I had struck him and immediately I felt bad. He was just doing his job, following orders from much higher up, and I wasn’t actually angry with him. I simply was frustrated that none of us had managed to do anything to stop people from dying.

“I think we should all go to bed,” he said. “We’re all tired and there’s nothing more we can do here tonight.” He summoned the constable who had been dusting for fingerprints, and the two of them left. Darcy came to my side as I made my way up the stairs.

“Cheer up, old thing,” he said and put his arm around my shoulder. “I know it’s upsetting to see something like that, but there’s nothing more we can do.”

“We just have to wait for someone to die tomorrow, is that what you are saying?”

“I’m saying that there is a perfectly good police force in the village and we need to leave it to them. Oh, and we watch our backs too, just in case.”

“It’s lucky we’re not from around here, isn’t it?” I said.

He looked down at me. “Well, I suppose you can say I have local ties. My mother was born in Devon. Lady Hawse-Gorzley’s my aunt.”

“Yes, but you are not known to the killer, are you? If it is one person, he must have a reason for choosing these particular people. It must be some kind of vendetta.”

“Do you believe he was here tonight? In the ballroom?”

I stared ahead as we reached the top of the staircase and the long corridors stretched away from us into darkness. “There was that man in the gorilla suit. Nobody knew who he was and we didn’t see him toward the end of the evening.”

Darcy frowned. “If he’s as clever as he appears to be, then I think you should not interfere. I don’t want some ‘accident’ happening to you.”

I rested my head on his shoulder as we walked down the hall. We reached my bedroom. “Good night.” I turned to give him a kiss on the cheek.

“Is that it?” he asked. His hands grasped my shoulders and he pulled me toward him, his lips coming to meet mine in a demanding kiss. I felt myself responding to him, my body melting against his as his arms slid around me, crushing me to him. When we broke apart breathlessly, I remembered where we were.

“I don’t suppose we should be doing this in the corridor,” I whispered. “Someone might come.”