“Tim?” I called again.

“Nick?” I was relieved to hear his voice.

“Eric?” I tried.

Silence.

“Brenda?”

Nothing.

“Mark?”

The lights came back on.

There were only two people alive in the room. I was standing in front of my chair. One more step and I’d have put my foot through the coffee table. Tim was under the coffee table. He must have crawled there when the lights went out. Eric was on the floor. He had been shot. There was a flintlock pistol, still smoking, lying on the carpet on the other side of the room. It must have been taken off the wall, fired, and then dropped. At least, that’s what it looked like. Brenda was sitting in her chair. She was dead too. One of the organ pipes—the largest—had been pulled down on top of her. That must have been the thud I had heard. Brenda had sung her last opera. The only music she needed now was a hymn.

There was no sign of Mark.

“Are you all right, Tim?” I demanded.

“Yes!” Tim sounded surprised. “I haven’t been murdered!” he exclaimed.

“I noticed.” I waited while he climbed out from underneath the coffee table. “At least we know who the killer is,” I said.

“Do we?”

“It’s got to be Mark.” I said. “Mark Tyler . . .”

“I always knew it was him,” Tim said. “Call it intuition. Call it experience. But I knew he was a killer even before he’d done any killing.”

“I don’t know, Tim,” I said. It bothered me, because to be honest Mark was the last person I would have suspected. And yet, at the same time, I had to admit . . . it would have taken a fast mover to push the globe off the roof and make it all the way downstairs in time and Mark was the fastest person on the island.

“Where do you think he went?” Tim asked.

“I don’t know.”

We left the room carefully. In fact, Tim made me leave it first. The fact was that—unless I’d got the whole thing wrong—it was just the three of us now on the island; Mark could be waiting for us anywhere. Or waiting for Tim, rather. He had no quarrel with me. And that made me think. Tim had come in first in needlework. Following the pattern of the other deaths, that meant he would probably be killed with some sort of needle. But what would that mean? A sewing needle dipped in poison? A hypodermic?

Tim must have had the same thought. He was looking everywhere, afraid to touch anything, afraid even to take another step. We went out into the hall. The fire had died down and was glowing red. The front door was open.

“Maybe he went outside,” Tim said.

“What would be the point?” I asked.

Tim shuddered. “Don’t talk about points,” he said.