“I saw her in her room a few moments ago,” Mark said. “She was sitting on the bed. She looked upset.”

“I’m upset!” Eric said. “We’re all upset! Well, let’s begin without her.” He cleared his throat as if we were the jury and he was about to begin his summing-up. “We are clearly in a very awkward situation here. We’ve been invited to this island, only to discover that our host, Rory McDougal, has been murdered. We can’t call the police because it would seem that there are no telephones and none of our cell phones can get a signal. Unless we can find a boat to get back to the mainland, we’re stuck here until Captain Randle—or whatever his name was—arrives to pick us up. The only good news is that there’s plenty of food in the house. I’ve looked in the kitchen. This is a comfortable house. We should be fine here.”

“Unless the killer strikes again,” I said.

Everyone looked at me. “What makes you think he’ll do that?” Eric demanded.

“It’s a possibility,” I said. “And anyway, ‘he’ could be a ‘she.’”

I noticed Libby shivered when I said that—but to be frank she’d been shivering a lot recently.

“Did Rory invite you here, too?” Mark asked.

“Not exactly. He invited Tim, and Tim couldn’t leave me on my own at home. So I came along for the ride.”

Eric scowled for a second time. Scowling suited him. “I wouldn’t have said this place was suitable for children,” he said.

“Murder isn’t suitable for children,” I agreed. “But I’m stuck here with you and it seems to me that we’ve all been set up. No phones! That has to be on purpose. All the rooms were prepared for us, with our names on the doors. And now, like you say, we’re stuck here. Suppose the killer is here, too?”

“That’s not possible,” Brenda whispered. But she didn’t sound like she believed herself.

“Maybe Rory wasn’t murdered,” Tim suggested. “Maybe it was an accident.”

“You mean someone accidentally chopped him to pieces?” I asked.

Janet glanced at the door. She was looking nervous. A hairdresser having a bad hair day. “Perhaps we should go and find Sylvie,” she suggested.

Nobody said anything. Then, as one, we hurried out of the room.

We went back upstairs. Sylvie’s room was halfway down the corridor, two doors away from our own. It was closed. Tim knocked. There was no reply. “She could have fallen asleep,” he said.

“Just open the door, Tim,” I suggested.