‘The thing about Frank Parris was that nobody at Branlow Hall had any reason to kill him,’ I went on. ‘He was passing through … on his way to visit his sister and his brother-in-law in Westleton. He’d just come back from Australia. Apart from his half-share in a house here, he had no links with Suffolk. My first thought was that he had been killed by Derek Endicott. It could all have happened by mistake because Frank hadn’t liked the room he’d been given and had been changed to room twelve, which was where a retired headmaster called George Saunders was meant to be staying. As it happened, Derek had gone to Bromeswell Grove, which was where Saunders taught, and he had a very rough time there. He was certainly very put out when he saw Saunders again.

‘I could imagine a scenario in which Derek took a hammer and went upstairs in the middle of the night. It’s dark in those corridors and he could have killed Frank without realising he’d got the wrong man. As it happens, we only have Derek’s word for it that Stefan ever went into the room. Nobody else saw him.’

‘That’s a ridiculous story,’ Aiden said. ‘Derek wouldn’t hurt anyone.’

‘I agree. Which is why I’ve ruled him out. Anyway, Derek could never have arranged all the other clues that pointed to Stefan; in particular, the money under the mattress and the blood splatter. I just don’t think he’s clever enough.

‘Now we’re left with just the four of you,’ I said. ‘But there are two people missing from the room and I want to deal with them first. Let’s start with Melissa Conway. She was staying in Oaklands Cottage on the edge of the estate and she was in and out of the hotel around the time of the wedding. She saw Frank and she wasn’t happy about it. Part of her blamed him for leading her husband down the garden path; the path in this instance taking him to gay bars and bathhouses. Suppose she’d decided to get her own back on him for stealing her husband? Though it often surprises me, she did actually love Alan.

‘What would have happened if Alan had discovered the truth – that his own ex-wife was guilty of the crime? Wouldn’t that have been a perfect motive for not revealing it in his book? He would have to keep quiet to protect her and, by extension, himself. The moment I heard she’d been here, I thought she was a likely suspect. But there was just one problem. She couldn’t possibly have overheard Cecily make the phone call to her parents. She was probably at her home in Bradford-on-Avon when Cecily disappeared.

‘However, Melissa said something to me that really got me thinking. She mentioned how she’d used the spa a lot when she was living in Oaklands Cottage and that she used to train with Lionel Corby. Only she didn’t call him Lionel. She knew him as Leo.

‘Now, as it happens, Frank Parris knew someone called Leo, a rent boy working in London. I found that out when I was there. The two of them slept together. Alan Conway even dedicated his book to Frank and Leo. I’m sorry if this is all a bit sordid by the way, Lawrence. And I’m afraid it gets worse. Frank wasn’t just gay. He had quite curious sexual tastes, including bondage, S&M, that sort of thing. Suppose Lionel was Leo and Frank recognised him when he booked into the hotel? When I met Lionel, he mentioned that he’d had a lot of private clients in London. ‘You have no idea of the sort of stuff I got up to!’ Those were his exact words. I assumed he was talking about personal training but who knows?

‘The trouble is, I’ve got the same problem as I had with Melissa. Lionel could have been Leo and he could have killed Frank but he wasn’t here when Cecily made the telephone call. I don’t see how he could have attacked or hurt her. How would he even know she’d read the book?

‘But Eloise was here and she did know.’

The moment I spoke the words, Eloise Radmani lost her temper in the way that Mediterranean people do so well. ‘How can you drag me into this!’ she cried out. ‘I have nothing to do with it.’

‘You were here when Cecily disappeared and you even overheard the telephone call she made to her parents about the book. You were outside the office.’

‘I had nothing to do with Frank Parris!’

‘That’s not true. You worked at the same advertising agency as him: McCann Erickson. You were the receptionist.’

That took her by surprise, the fact that I knew. She faltered. ‘I was there only for a few months.’

‘But you met him.’

‘I saw him. We never spoke.’

‘You were with your husband then, weren’t you? His name was Lucien.’

She looked away. ‘I’m not going to talk about him.’

‘I have just one question, Eloise. Did he have a nickname? Did you ever call him Leo?’

It was the one thing I needed to know, to be absolutely sure. I wasn’t going to say this to her, and certainly not in front of the others, but it had occurred to me that the AIDS that had killed him might not have been the result of a faulty blood transfusion. Was it possible that he had found other ways to support himself while he was training to be an architect? Had Lucien worked under the name of Leo? Had he contracted AIDS as a result of having unsafe sex? That was what I was really asking.

‘I never called him that. No one did.’

I believed her. Aiden and Cecily had hired her months after their wedding. I couldn’t see how she might have been at the hotel on the night of Frank’s death unless she had come under another name. And anyway, Derek had been sure he had seen a man stealing along the corridor towards room 12. Even as I confronted Eloise, I knew it couldn’t have been her.

Andreas had opened a bottle of mineral water. He handed me a glass and I drank. Over by the door, Locke was sitting ramrod straight, trying to pretend he wasn’t here. I was aware of the others watching me and dreaded what was coming next. But it wasn’t my fault. I had wanted to see Lawrence Treherne on his own. He was the one who had invited the entire family.

‘There is another possibility,’ I continued, choosing my words carefully. ‘It did occur to me that Frank Parris might not have been the target at all. Suppose the whole point of the murder was not to kill him but to frame Stefan Codrescu?’

This was greeted with a less than enthusiastic silence. Eventually, Lawrence spoke. ‘Who would want to do that?’ he asked.

I turned to Lisa. ‘I’m afraid we have to talk about you and Stefan,’ I said.

‘You want to trash us all? Is that your aim?’ She shifted in her seat, crossing her legs.

‘My aim is to tell the truth, Lisa, and like it or not you were very much part of what happened. You were “in a relationship” with Stefan.’ I drew the inverted commas with my fingers.

‘Yes.’ She had already admitted it to me. She couldn’t deny it now.

Her parents looked at us in dismay.

‘He refused to continue that relationship.’

She hesitated. ‘Yes.’

‘Were you aware that Stefan was also having sex with Cecily?’

Now it was Aiden who was angry. ‘That’s a lie!’

‘I’m afraid it’s not.’ I paused deliberately for effect. ‘I saw Stefan this morning.’

‘You saw him?’ Pauline was astonished.

‘I visited him in prison.’

‘And he told you that about Cecily?’ Aiden sneered at me. ‘And you believed him?’

‘He didn’t tell me. In fact, he did the best he could to cover it up. But all the evidence was there. I just had to put it together.

‘Lionel Corby told me that he had seen two people having sex in the wood near Oaklands Cottage a couple of weeks before the wedding. At first, he thought one of them was you, Aiden. But then he saw that the man didn’t have a tattoo on his shoulder and realised it was Stefan. He couldn’t see the woman from where he was standing. She was underneath. But he knew that Stefan had been seeing Lisa – against his will – and assumed it was her.

‘He was wrong.’ Again I addressed Lisa. ‘How do I know? Actually, it’s very simple. There was something that you said to me over breakfast, just before you asked me to leave. You denied that you had fired him “because he wouldn’t come into my bed any more” and it was that turn of phrase that told me everything I needed to know.

‘Why would you take the risk – and the discomfort – of meeting him in the middle of a wood when you could quite easily have sex in your own home? You live alone in Woodbridge. You had no reason to hide. But of course, for Cecily it was different. She was sharing a house with Aiden. The two of them were engaged. She couldn’t even use a room in the hotel. She might be seen. Sex in the wood was the answer.’

‘Cecily would never have cheated on me!’ Aiden was furious. ‘We were happy together.’

‘I’m sorry—’

‘Lionel didn’t see her! You just said that.’

‘That’s true.’

‘Then you’re lying!’

‘I’m afraid not, Aiden. I’ve seen a letter that Cecily wrote to Stefan after he was sent to prison. It was very short and she hadn’t written to him for many years. But the tone of it was still intimate. It was signed “with love”.

‘And it wasn’t just that. When I asked Stefan if he had been with Lisa in the wood, he hesitated and then he told me that it was her, even though it directly contradicted what he’d said just a minute before. I knew immediately that he was lying and that he was protecting someone.’

I took another sip of water. Over the edge of the glass, Andreas caught my eye. He gave me a nod of encouragement. I had told him all of this on the way down from Norfolk and he knew what was coming next.