I felt a violent tug at my arm. Nicholas. I had completely forgotten about him. ‘Miss, look! Over there -’

Antonia stopped writing and looked up with a frown.

I am making it sound like a story, she thought. She was writing in her diary, but it didn’t read like a diary entry at all. It read like a detective story… Death at Chalfont… Some such title.

She knew the significance of the long little finger. The reason for the death had been fully explained. She knew how the killer had got hold of the gun. (All right, not for certain, but they had a viable theory.) Most importantly – the identity of the killer was no longer a mystery. The whole enigmatic affair had been elucidated, yet, when she wrote in her diary about it, she indulged in deliberate obfuscation and set out to create suspense… Miss, look! Over there – Why, she had even broken off on a cliff-hanger! It was almost as though she were writing for an audience.

Antonia bit her lip, at once amused and annoyed with herself. She couldn’t help it, she supposed. Well, once a detective story writer, always a detective story writer, but then how many detective story writers got involved in real life murder mysteries? Not many, to her knowledge. In fact she couldn’t think of a single one outside fiction.

Her thoughts turned back to the fatal night… Dinner over, they had sat in the drawing room, sipping coffee. Rich and dark as the Aga Khan, Lady Grylls said. Hugh started describing some money-spinning son et lumiere venture with Chalfont at its centre – an ingenious installation involving wires and cables and hundreds of lights, all controlled from one point – wouldn’t his aunt consider it? Then the phone call had come.