‘Mrs Chandler, I must ask you to stay here in the kitchen. On no account are you to enter the hall. If you would be so kind, could you make my assistant a strong cup of tea? She has had a great shock.’ He leaned towards Miss Cain. ‘I must leave you just for a few minutes. But I shall arrange for an ambulance to take you to hospital. You must try not to touch the clothes you are wearing because the police will need them for evidence. These people will look after you. I will be back soon.’

He nodded at Mrs Chandler, who was already reaching for the kettle, and went back into the hall just in time to see Hare standing back up.

‘He’s dead,’ the detective chief inspector said.

‘It is unbelievable. It happened right under our eyes.’

‘And it was my fault!’ Hare had never looked more defeated. ‘I shouldn’t have allowed him to leave the room.’

‘I really do not believe you should feel any culpability,’ Pünd assured him. ‘It was a perfectly reasonable thing to do and this … ’ He glanced at the corpse lying at the foot of the stairs. ‘None of us could have expected it.’

‘I don’t understand how it happened.’

‘There are many questions that we will ask later. For now you must make a telephone call. We need two ambulances. One for Francis Pendleton, another for Miss Cain.’

‘And I’ll need to bring in backup.’

The policeman who had been sent upstairs came back down again. He was trying not to look at the body but he couldn’t keep his eyes off it. ‘There’s nobody up there, sir,’ he said. ‘There was a man sitting in an upstairs kitchen but he says he works here.’

‘Eric Chandler,’ Hare said.

‘Yes, sir. Nobody else. Would you like me to look outside?’

‘That would be a good idea.’

The policeman edged past the dead man and went out.

‘I’ll start making some calls.’ Hare went back into the living room.

Pünd was left on his own. A pool of dark red blood had spread over the wooden floor. Somehow it reminded him of the night before, the sea in the moonlight. He had believed then that there was an evil presence in Tawleigh-on-the-Water. He had not expected to be proved right so soon.

*

Three hours later, Detective Chief Inspector Hare and Atticus Pünd were in the living room of Clarence Keep, sitting opposite one other. For once they were ill at ease. Hare still blamed himself for what had happened and even Pünd was beginning to think that the killer had made a fool out of him. To be summoned to the scene of a murder a week after the event was one thing, but this time he had actually been present when it took place. It was something that had never happened before.

Events had moved swiftly since the crime had been committed. Two ambulances and four police cars had arrived from Barnstaple and the ritual that follows any murder had begun. A police doctor had pronounced Francis Pendleton dead from a single stab wound to the heart. A police photographer had taken twenty different shots of the crime scene. Fingerprint experts had covered the entire area, having done the same thing upstairs only a week before. The body had been lifted onto a stretcher and carried out to the ambulance to be driven into Exeter for further examination. The second ambulance had already left with Miss Cain.

It had already been established that Dr Leonard Collins and his wife, Samantha, were still in London. Simon Cox, the producer, was at his home in Maida Vale. Lance Gardner had been at the hotel all morning and his wife, Maureen, had been working behind the reception desk as Nancy Mitchell had failed to turn up for work. She and Algernon Marsh were the only people associated with the investigation who were unaccounted for and the police were looking for them now.

The mysterious figure who had appeared at the window had vanished into thin air. Whoever it was, they had left no footprints or any other traces, and but for the fact that both Hare and Pünd had caught a glimpse of them, they could have been a figment of the imagination.

‘It’s my belief that Francis Pendleton committed suicide.’ Hare broke the silence. ‘Of course, there’ll be a full inquest, but if you ask me that seems to be the only explanation. I mean, consider the evidence! The knife that he used – it was a prop out of one of Melissa James’s films – was on a table right next to the stairs. He must have seen it as he went up to get his jacket and shoes. He’d just confessed to the murder of his wife and he knew it was all up for him. He grabbed it and took the easy way out. Maybe it’s for the best at the end of the day. It saves the cost of a trial.’

‘And what of the intruder?’

‘I’m not convinced they could have killed him, Mr Pünd, even assuming that was what they came here to do. Pendleton was stabbed within about ninety seconds of your secretary seeing the figure at the window. To kill him, the intruder would have to continue all the way round the house and come in through the back entrance. That would have brought them into the kitchen. They’d have had to continue into the hall, take the knife and stab Pendleton before somehow disappearing into thin air. How would they have had time?’

‘I assume nothing, Detective Chief Inspector. And I agree with you. It would have been very difficult – though not impossible – to manage the crime in the way you have just described.’

For once, Hare was agitated. He was on the defensive and Pünd understood why. This was Hare’s last case. He had hoped to retire at the end of a successful investigation with the thanks and congratulations of his superiors. He had not foreseen any further complications and he had been completely unprepared for them when they arrived.

‘It all seems pretty straightforward to me,’ he insisted. ‘Francis Pendleton was a man who had just killed his wife and he’d been found out. You heard what he said. He actually wanted it all to be over.’

Pünd looked apologetic. ‘It is perfectly possible that he strangled his wife. I have said as much all along and it is still the most likely scenario, particularly in light of the fact that he lied about the opera. But there is still the matter of the telephone to consider. You will recall that we discussed this at dinner last night.’

‘Ah yes! The telephone. Why don’t you explain yourself about that? You’ve obviously got a bee in your bonnet about it!’

‘I’m sorry? A bee?’

‘What’s been worrying you about the phone?’

‘Only this, Detective Chief Inspector, and it is something that struck me from the very beginning. You told me that you found no fingerprints on the telephone or the receiver.’

‘That’s right. It had been wiped clean.’

‘But why would Francis Pendleton need to do that if he was the one who had used it as a murder weapon? He was not a stranger to the house. He would have used the phone many times. He had no need to cover his tracks.’

Hare considered. ‘You’re right. Although has it occurred to you that he could have deliberately wiped the phone clean to throw us off the scent?’

‘That to me is unlikely.’

‘What difference does it make, Mr Pünd? Francis Pendleton confessed to the killing! We were both in the room.’

‘I did not hear him confess, Detective Chief Inspector. He said only that he intended to make a full confession.’

‘Exactly!’

‘But a confession to what?’

‘I don’t know.’ Finally, Hare lost his patience. ‘Perhaps he was going to confess to stealing sweets from the village shop or to parking on a yellow line. But since I had just arrested him for murder, I’d imagine that was uppermost in his mind.’ He stopped himself. ‘I’m very sorry, Mr Pünd,’ he said. ‘I really shouldn’t talk to you that way.’

‘Detective Chief Inspector,’ Pünd began again, speaking slowly, ‘you do not need to apologise, and please trust me when I say that it is not my desire to complicate the matter unnecessarily. But I do not believe it is the case that Francis Pendleton confessed to everything. And I can suggest to you three reasons why it is unlikely that he committed suicide.’

‘Go on!’

‘First of all, he left the room to put on his jacket and his shoes. You might think that if he intended to kill himself, he suggested that only as an excuse to be left on his own. But this is my point. He did put on his jacket and shoes. He was wearing them when he died. Why did he do that? If he was about to die, what would it matter to him what he was wearing?’

‘If you’ll forgive me for saying it, maybe you don’t understand the way an English gentleman thinks, Mr Pünd. I investigated the case of a landowner over in Taunton who blew his brains out. He had money troubles and he left a letter explaining exactly what he was going to do and why. But he put on a dinner jacket before he did it. He wanted to look his best when he went.’