Eric knocked on her door. There was no answer. He knocked again, then turned the handle. The door opened.

The hairdresser had overslept all right, but nothing was ever going to wake her up again. She had been stabbed during the night. She was lying on her back on a four-poster bed like the one in our room, only smaller. The bed was old. The paint had peeled off the posts and there was a tear in the canopy above her. In fact the whole room looked shabby, as if it had been left out by the decorators. Maybe I noticed all this because I didn’t want to look at the body. You may think I’m crazy, but dead people upset me. And when I did finally look at her, I got a shock.

Whoever had killed her hadn’t used a knife. There was something sticking out of her chest and at first I thought it was some sort of rocket. It was silver, in the shape of a sort of long pyramid, with four legs jutting out. Then, slowly, it dawned on me what I was looking at. It was a model, a souvenir of the building that I had climbed up with Tim only the year before.

It was incredible. But true. Janet Rhodes had been stabbed with a model of the Eiffel Tower.

*  *  *

“The Eiffel Tower!” Tim muttered. His face was the color of sour milk. “It’s an outrage. I mean, it’s meant to be a tourist attraction!”

“Why the Eiffel Tower?” I asked.

“Because it’s famous, Nick. People like to visit it.”

“No—I don’t mean, why is it a tourist attraction. I mean, why use it as a murder weapon? It’s certainly a strange choice. Maybe someone is trying to tell us something.”

“Well, they certainly told Janet something,” Tim said.

We were back at the breakfast table. The scrambled eggs were cold and congealed and looked even less appetizing than before. All the cornflakes had gone soggy. But it didn’t matter. There was no way anybody was going to eat anything today. The way things were going, I wondered if any of us would ever eat anything again.

Nobody was talking very much. I knew why. But it was Brenda who put it into words.

“Do you realize . . .” she began, and for once her voice was hoarse and empty. “Do you realize that the killer could be sitting here, at this table?”

Tim looked around. “But there’s only us here!”

“That’s what she means, Tim,” I said. “She’s saying that the killer could be one of us!”

Brenda nodded. “I know it’s one of us. One of us got up last night and went down the corridor.” She shuddered. “I thought I heard squeaking last night . . .”

“That was Tim,” I said. “He snores.”

“No. It was a floorboard. Somebody left their room . . .”

“Did anyone else hear anything last night?” Eric asked.