‘You lied to me!’ Pünd strode back to the chart on the wall. ‘And the ten moments of time. They also lied. Let us examine them again in the light of what we know.

‘At 5.40 p.m., Melissa James leaves the hotel. She is upset after her altercation with Simon Cox and she goes to the church of St Daniel’s because it is opposite the house of the man she loves. She wishes to see Dr Collins and to tell him that she will be alone that night. Francis Pendleton is at the opera. They can meet. But before she can speak to him, she must check that he is on his own. She looks at the house and sees Mrs Collins watching her from an upstairs window. What is she to do? She turns and enters the church as if that was the reason for her being there.

‘At 6.05 p.m. she returns home, where Francis Pendleton is waiting for her. He knows that she is being unfaithful to him. He loves her more than anything in the world and the thought of losing her drives him to insanity. The two of them argue. Mrs Chandler does not hear this. She is a little deaf and anyway, she and her son are one floor down, in the kitchen, which has been built with thick walls. We will never know what is said between the husband and the wife. Perhaps he accuses her and she admits the truth and tells him that their marriage is over. That is what she had threatened to do in the letter she wrote but never sent. And so, in a fit of rage, Francis takes hold of the telephone cord and strangles her. It is 6.18 p.m. and the little dog is outside the room. He does not bark because a stranger has arrived at the front door. He barks because he has the instincts of many animals and knows that great violence is being done to his mistress.

‘Francis Pendleton is in a rage. He is exactly as the detective chief inspector described. He has become Othello, strangling the one true love of his life. And then, when he sees what he has done, he turns and runs from the house. That is the sound of the door opening and closing which Mrs Chandler hears at 6.20 p.m. Of course, he does not go to the opera. He drives away. He sits and considers what he has done. He is full of remorse and fear and despair. When I saw him, even a week later, I knew that this was a man who had lost everything that mattered to him.’

‘So he did kill her!’ Miss Cain exclaimed.

‘He did not kill her,’ Pünd replied. ‘This is where we made the mistake. What happens in the play of Othello? Othello wrongly believes that Desdemona is having an affair and strangles her. Iago’s wife, Emilia, enters the room and Othello confesses what he has done. “She’s dead,” he says. “Still as the grave … I have no wife.’

‘But he is wrong! A few moments later, Emilia hears something and calls out: “What cry is that? … that was my lady’s voice.” It turns out that Desdemona has not yet been killed but is only unconscious. She recovers long enough to claim that Othello is innocent of the crime. And then she dies.

‘This is what occurred with Melissa James. Strangulation can kill in many ways. Preventing blood flow and oxygen from reaching the brain is the most common. It can cause a heart attack. An artery may be torn. But what is perhaps less well known is that with strangulation, although unconsciousness will occur in seconds, death may take several minutes.

‘So let us imagine what Francis Pendleton perceives. He strangles his wife. He believes she is dead. She falls and knocks her head against the bedside table. There is blood. She is not moving. Thinking that he has killed her, he runs out of the house. From this moment on, he believes himself guilty of murder.

‘But a few minutes later, Melissa James recovers. She is alone in the house for the Chandlers have now left. She finds herself in the bedroom and she is distraught, with tears pouring down her cheeks. She has almost been killed! She uses not one but two paper tissues, dropping them to the floor. What will she do? She must call the man she loves and who, she believes, is in love with her. But she cannot call him from the bedroom as the telephone has been torn from the wall. So she must go downstairs to the living room to call him from there. Taking another tissue, she makes her way down.

‘She calls Dr Collins at 6.28 and tells him that Francis Pendleton has tried to kill her. Dr Collins immediately leaves his home and arrives at Clarence Keep at 6.45 p.m. The time is in fact immaterial. When he gets there, Melissa is lying on her bed. She can barely speak.

‘And what happens next?

‘Dr Collins has been having an affair with Melissa James. One can understand the attraction. She is a glamorous Hollywood star. She owns a beautiful house, a hotel. She is about to appear in a new film. He has been thinking, perhaps, of leaving his ordinary wife and his boring life in a small seaside village. But everything has changed with the death of a relative who has left Samantha Collins an enormous amount of money. And Melissa has debts. Her business is failing. Suddenly, life with her seems less attractive.

‘But at the same time, Melissa is demanding that they reveal their affair. What is it that she wrote in her letter? ‘We have to be brave and tell the world our destiny.’ If Melissa speaks out as she threatens, he will lose not just his wife but her inheritance. For him it is an impossible situation.

‘And suddenly he sees his opportunity. Everything has been prepared for him. Melissa James has been attacked. He was at home with his wife when she called him. The call will have been registered. Quickly, he takes hold of the telephone cord and continues the work that Francis Pendleton began, only, being a doctor, he knows how long he must apply pressure and he can also recognise the moment when life has been extinguished. The only evidence? There are two sets of ligature marks. These, Detective Chief Inspector Hare notices, but he assumes, not unreasonably, that they were made during the struggle.

‘Dr Collins kills Melissa James and calls the police. His story will be that he came to the house and found her dead. He does not tell them that she had named her husband as the attacker. It might have been tempting to do this, to say that Melissa had identified him – but he cannot be sure at what time Francis left the house and whether Melissa was seen still living after he had gone. Anyway, it does not matter to him. He knows that Francis Pendleton will be the most obvious suspect whatever he says. He makes, however, a second mistake which is of greater importance. He has handled the telephone and wipes it clean to remove his fingerprints. As I remarked to you, Detective Chief Inspector, this is something that Francis would not have needed to do.’

There was a stunned silence in the room. Everyone was staring at Leonard Collins. His wife was physically recoiling from him in shock. Algernon was half smiling, amazed that his brother-in-law should have been capable of such a thing – and yet the smile faded as he realised that any chance of his getting a share of the inheritance had just evaporated. Phyllis Chandler was horrified. Madeline Cain looked shocked.

Dr Collins got to his feet. He stood there like a man facing an execution squad. ‘I really did think I would get away with it,’ he said.

‘Leonard … ’ Samantha began.

‘I’m sorry, Sam. But he’s right. Everything he said. A boring life, a boring wife … I dreamed of bigger things. Say goodbye to the children for me.’ He walked to the door and jerked it open. There was a uniformed policeman waiting on the other side. ‘You’ll forgive me if I don’t listen to the rest of it,’ he said. ‘I think I’d prefer to be on my own.’

He went through the door, closing it behind him. There was a long silence. Samantha buried her face in her hands. Miss Cain wrote something in her pad and underlined it.

‘So he killed her!’ Hare couldn’t believe what he had just heard. ‘It all makes complete sense, Mr Pünd. It’s extraordinary. But there’s one thing you haven’t explained. Why did he kill Francis Pendleton?’

‘He did not kill Francis Pendleton,’ Pünd replied. ‘I’m afraid to say, Detective Chief Inspector, that I know, perfectly well, the person responsible for the death of Mr Pendleton.’

‘And who was that?’

‘It was me.’

EIGHTEEN

SITUATION VACANT

I have a confession to make,’ Pünd continued. ‘I was at Clarence Keep when Francis Pendleton was killed and I see now that I was in some ways responsible for his death.’

‘You killed him?’ Algernon asked, incredulously.

‘No, Mr Marsh. I was not the one who stabbed him with the knife, but if I had been more observant or if I had proceeded more rapidly with my deductions, it is a death that might have been avoided.’

‘Nobody could have done more than you, Mr Pünd,’ Miss Cain muttered. She was looking at him disapprovingly.

‘It is kind of you to say so, Miss Cain. But I have learned a lesson in Tawleigh-on-the-Water and it is one that I will discuss one day in my book.’

‘I think you’d better make a clean breast of it, Mr Pünd,’ the detective chief inspector suggested.