“Or he forced the password out of him at knife-point, once he’d taped him to the chair,” said Sam.

“Possible. Unlikely, though. This killer’s demonstrating that he’s the expert: on Blundy, his computer password, why he deserved to die. He’s boasting. Look around you: this whole room’s a display of self-congratulation in crime-scene form. He knows everything; we know nothing. Or she.”

“You think it’s a woman?”

“Did I say that? Still, Blundy’s wife’s more likely to know his password than anyone else, isn’t she?”

“Is she?” Sam asked. “If you password-protect a laptop that lives in your house, aren’t you mainly protecting your privacy from the person or people you live with?”

“How long before I can talk to her?” Simon asked.

Sam looked toward the open door of the study. “There’s no point in either of us trying until she’s capable of stringing a sentence together.”

Hannah Blundy was two floors below, in her converted basement kitchen-cum-dining room with a family liaison officer. She’d found her husband’s dead body at ten thirty this morning when she’d brought him up a mug of tea that never made it into the room. Hannah hadn’t yet calmed down sufficiently to tell anyone anything useful, but judging by the mess on the landing, it seemed likely that she’d gotten to the top of the stairs, seen Damon framed in the doorway of his study, murdered and bound by tape to his desk chair, and dropped the mug where she stood.

Shock. Or designed to look like shock by the same person who had so carefully orchestrated the rest of the murder scene. Simon wanted to know which.

“If Hannah Blundy calmly and methodically murdered her husband and then staged the distraught meltdown we witnessed when we arrived—” Sam broke off, shook his head. “She’d almost deserve to get away with it if she can act that well. I don’t really mean that,” he qualified quickly.

“Anyone can weep and collapse on the floor,” said Simon, though in fact he couldn’t imagine ever managing to be so emotionally unrestrained in public, however distressed he was. “Especially a murderer surrounded by police, terrified they’ll see through her act.”

“I don’t think so,” said Sam. “I can’t see Hannah Blundy as a killer.”

“I can. If I had to lay a bet now, my money’d be on her.”

“For any other reason than that she’s his wife?”

“I haven’t met any other suspects yet, have I?”

Sam’s face reddened.

Simon took pity on him. He was too easy to wind up. “Actually, it’s not that. Or that she’s his wife.”

“Then what?”