‘It couldn’t really have been anyone else,’ said Freddy, as they all sat in the small salon after dinner. Lavinia was making the most of her invalid status, and was sitting in a comfortable armchair, sipping sherry delicately and allowing Daphne to attend to her. Mr. Wray had at last agreed to take some of Lavinia’s sleeping drops, and had been persuaded by Bea to go to bed. He would be safe there until the police arrived, although they had taken the precaution of locking his door and removing all heavy objects from his room. ‘However I looked at it, I couldn’t see any possible way in which the professor could have died at the time we thought he did. There were simply too many people wandering around the house between ten past three and twenty to four, when we found his body. The murderer would have to have been extraordinarily lucky not to have been spotted by somebody. Nugs and I were both up just after two, but I didn’t think the professor could have died before that, for various reasons—first, one would have expected the police doctor to have spotted that he’d been dead much longer than we thought, and second, there was all this business with the man in Ro’s room. Our biggest mistake, you see, was to assume the intruder was Coddington, come to steal the pearls, whereas in fact it was Mr. Wray, who had merely got lost in the passage as he tried to escape. He was trying to get to the linen cupboard, but he went in without a torch, missed his way and ended up at the entrance to Ro’s room. It’s easily done—I did it myself twice today, in fact.’

‘I don’t think I follow,’ said Cedric. ‘If Coddington didn’t take the pearls, then why was he found with them in his hand?’

‘He did take them,’ said Freddy. ‘He went into Ro’s room through the door quite openly at twenty-five past two and took them from her dressing-table. She heard him, but decided later that it must have been Goose, Nugs and I banging about in the corridor. But at twenty-five past two we were all still in the study, drinking, so it couldn’t have been us. It must have been Coddington. I’d always wondered why he didn’t have a torch with him when he was found, but of course he never went into the secret passage at all, and so had no need of one. I can’t be sure, but what I think happened is that Mr. Wray was up, saw the professor coming out of Ro’s room and followed him down into the library, where he found him preparing to examine the pearls. There was an altercation of some kind, and Professor Coddington came off worst. It’s easy enough to see how it might have happened—Lord knows, any one of us might have done it if we’d happened to have a sash weight handy just as the professor made one of his pointed remarks. At any rate, Mr. Wray found himself suddenly and distressingly responsible for the existence of a fresh corpse, and I expect was hoping to sneak back to his room and pretend it had never happened, when unfortunately for him Goose came downstairs looking for a torch. I think Mr. Wray was just coming out of the library when he spotted Goose coming down the stairs, went into a panic and decided to escape through the secret passage instead. He ran back in and opened the door, then at the last minute remembered to run back and switch off the light. He was just in time to disappear into the passage when Goose came in. You, of course, didn’t spot the professor or the open passage door,’ he went on to Goose. ‘And why should you have? He was lying behind that big desk and you went to quite a different part of the room.’

‘I say,’ said Goose, disconcerted. ‘I had no idea. Do you mean to say I nearly tripped over a dead body and didn’t notice?’

‘It seems so,’ said Freddy. ‘So, then, at ten to three or thereabouts Mr. Wray, still holding the sash weight, went into the passage without a torch, got lost, as we know, and accidentally stumbled into Ro’s room. She yelled, and he immediately realized his mistake and made his escape. A few minutes later he came through the door into the linen cupboard, hid the weight and came out—only to find, much to his horror, that Ro’s scream had woken the rest of the household, and they were all holding merry session out there in the corridor. He was about to withdraw hurriedly when he saw that Mrs. Philpott had spotted him, and decided to brazen it out, since she seemed unsuspicious—which she was, as she’d taken her sleeping-draught that night and was only half-awake, so didn’t understand at the time what she’d seen. She assumed the door he’d come out of was the one to his room, and it wasn’t until the next day that she realized it wasn’t his room at all.’

‘Yes, indeed,’ said Lavinia, nodding. ‘I remembered the next day that poor Mr. Wray’s bedroom was around the corner from mine, so I went and peeped in through the door I’d seen him come out of, and found out sure enough that it was a cupboard. I was most puzzled, but in the end I thought Mr. Wray must have been searching for the—er—small room, and had taken a wrong turning. I didn’t draw attention to it, because one doesn’t like to embarrass people by pointing out their mistakes, does one? But today I overheard him talking to Freddy and he sounded terribly unwell, and it struck me that perhaps I might be of assistance, so I knocked on his door and offered him some of my drops. I take them to help me sleep, but they are also very efficacious in soothing a sore head—and safe, too, quite safe. He seemed puzzled, so I confided my fears about his health, and said I was sure he couldn’t have slept much recently—not with such bad headaches—and I expected that was why he was confused and had made the mistake about the cupboard. When I said that he went positively white in the face, and attacked me quite without provocation, to my great surprise. Fortunately, I’m not the sort of woman to take that kind of thing lying down, and I fought back as hard as I could, but I’m very glad that Freddy and Lord Holme turned up when they did, or I don’t know that my strength would have held out.’

‘Yes, we arrived just in time,’ said Goose. ‘But how did you know what he was going to do, Freddy?’

‘I didn’t—not for certain. It was just a suspicion, since I knew he was feeling ill again, and it occurred to me that he was probably a little unbalanced when he was having these attacks. Mrs. Philpott meant to be kind by trying to help him with his headache, but I knew she’d seen him coming out of the cupboard, and was worried she’d mention it to him and unwittingly put herself in danger. And so she did.’

‘I’m afraid I got hold of the wrong end of the stick, and thought you were attacking him,’ said Goose. ‘I do beg your pardon, Mrs. Philpott.’

She accepted the apology graciously, and took another sip of sherry. Freddy went on:

‘Once I’d realized that Mr. Wray had come out of the cupboard and not his bedroom it was easy enough to work out the rest. Everyone thought the passage door into the linen cupboard had seized up years ago, but it opened quite easily when I accidentally stumbled upon it, so it was obvious that somebody had been through it recently, and Mr. Wray was the only guest who had been here long enough to have explored all the secret passages and got the door working again. He showed me a plan of the house himself, and was obviously very familiar with the place, so I knew he was almost certainly the culprit, but I hesitated to speak at first because he didn’t seem to have a motive. He told me that first evening that he felt the house was threatened by a great evil, and he later said he sensed it had something to do with the professor. I assumed he believed he’d foreseen the professor’s death, but now I rather think what he actually meant was that he felt the professor himself to be evil. I don’t suppose he said anything when you put him to bed, Bea?’

‘Yes, he did,’ replied Bea. ‘And you’re quite right. The poor thing saw the professor with the pearls and thought he’d come to ruin the family. The professor actually confessed as much—said he believed the pearls were fake, and the fact ought to be exposed.’

‘But that’s not reason enough to kill, surely?’ said Freddy. ‘Why should he care about what happened to you?’

‘Family pride, I expect,’ said Bea. ‘Mr. Wray is a Wareham, you know. As a matter of fact, he’s the grandson of John Wareham, who brought the Belsingham pearls to England.’

‘Really?’ said Freddy. ‘But wasn’t that about a hundred and twenty years ago? Mr. Wray can’t be that old, can he?’

‘John married twice, the second time very late in life to a woman much younger than he. She bore him a daughter, Maria, who was Mr. Wray’s mother. Mr. Wray became a little heated on the subject upstairs just now, but I gather Professor Coddington taunted him about it. You know, of course, that John Wareham spent some years trying to prove that his elder brother had forfeited all right to the dukedom, and that he himself was the rightful heir. It’s all nonsense, but Professor Coddington told Mr. Wray he’d found some evidence that the story was true, and that it was a pity Mr. Wray was descended from John through the female rather than the male line, because then he might conceivably have had a claim to the dukedom himself. Apparently Mr. Wray became very dignified and said that, unlike his grandfather, he would never dream of behaving so badly as to try and claim something to which he was not entitled, upon which the professor said something that goaded him past all endurance, and in his fury he picked up the weight and—well, you know, of course. I don’t know what that final taunt was, though, as Mr. Wray refused to say.’

‘I expect it was something about his birth,’ said Cedric. ‘There’s a story that Maria Wareham was thrown out of the house and married Mr. Wray senior in rather a hurry, from which I suppose we must draw our own conclusions. It was in a long, rambling letter Coddington sent me before he arrived. I didn’t pay too much attention to it at the time, but I read through it carefully after he died, in case there were any clues. It was certainly the sort of sneaking thing he’d do—make impudent remarks about a fellow’s parentage. I shouldn’t be surprised if he threatened to put it all in his book, in fact.’

‘Mr. Wray would have hated that,’ said Bea. ‘He was very confused, poor thing. He’s terribly proud to be a Wareham, but hates the fact that he’s descended from one of the less worthy ones. And to have everybody knowing that his mother wasn’t exactly what she ought to have been either would have tortured him, I imagine. I don’t know why Professor Coddington thought he had to mention it. If he’d had the sense to leave well alone then he might still be alive.’

‘I doubt it. If not Mr. Wray then someone else was bound to have landed him one on the noggin,’ said Goose cheerfully. ‘Sorry, Mother,’ he added, as he saw Bea’s face.

‘Mr. Wray is very ashamed of what he did,’ said Bea severely. ‘With any luck the police will let him sleep for a while when they get here. I have the feeling he hasn’t slept in days.’

‘I’m sure I shan’t sleep a wink myself tonight, after all the excitement!’ said Lavinia. ‘Thank you, Daphne. Perhaps I shall have just another little glass.’

She looked up in surprise to see Cynthia approaching her, pen and notebook in hand.

‘Now darling,’ said Cynthia briskly, ‘I know you won’t mind, but I simply must put you in my column this week, given everything that’s happened. All London will be simply dying to know about the events here at Belsingham once the story gets into the papers. Of course my readers are more interested in the human side of things, so we’ll start with that delightful frock of yours. Now, would you describe it as fuchsia or cerise?’

‘Oh!’ said Lavinia, gratified.