Questions started to come thick and fast from both guests and staff members then.

‘How can you be sure that the rest of us are not going to be targeted?’

‘Why would anyone want to hurt Rachel?’

‘Shouldn’t the hotel have better security?’

‘When can we all go home?’

Most of the questions James couldn’t or didn’t want to answer so he focused on doing his best to assure everyone that they were safe. He then made a point of asking about the bearded man.

‘We are also hoping one of you can help us in identifying a man who was seen with Rachel earlier this evening. He’s a person of interest to us and is known to have a beard and an Italian accent. And just to put your minds at rest I can confirm that the individual in question is not among those men in this room who are sporting a beard.’

Several people immediately raised their hands.

The first – a woman in her twenties – claimed a man with a beard had sat next to her during the marriage ceremony. ‘He told me his name was Carlo and that Rachel had invited him to the wedding,’ she said. ‘And he definitely had an accent.’

James then called on the second woman, who identified herself as wedding coordinator Erika Chan. A petite thirty-something with black hair pulled back in a tight braid, Erika told James, ‘Rachel asked me to make a place available in the name of Carlo Salvi on a table at the wedding breakfast. She told me that Libby had okayed it so I went ahead and arranged it.’

The next person to speak up was a close friend of Rachel’s and she revealed something that Rachel had told her in confidence over the phone the night before the wedding.

It clearly came as a surprise to most of the guests in the room, but James suspected that to Rachel’s parents and sister it would come as a complete shock.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Rachel’s friend gave her name as Emily Straus and said she had known both sisters since they were at school together. She’d phoned Rachel the night before the wedding to check what time she needed to be at the hotel.

‘She was very excited,’ Emily told James when he took her to one side after she’d dropped her bombshell. ‘I couldn’t wait to talk to her about it but I knew it would have to wait until after the ceremony. Unfortunately, I never got the chance.’

James took out his notebook and pen and wrote down Emily’s name, address and phone number.

‘Now can you please repeat exactly what Rachel told you during your telephone conversation?’ he asked her, pen at the ready. ‘I need to make sure I’ve got it right.’

Emily stared up at him, her eyes fearful as the words tumbled out between quivering lips.

‘She told me that she was going to surprise everyone at the wedding by announcing that she would soon be moving to Italy with her new boyfriend. She said he’d be there and we would all be able to meet him for the first time, including her family. I wasn’t even aware that she’d been seeing someone! She said his name was Carlo and she told me that she was in love with him.’