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‘That was rather clever really, wasn’t it?’ I said.

‘You’ve been quite clever, yes, but not clever enough.’

‘All the same I don’t see how you found out.’

‘We found out when there was a second death, the death you didn’t mean to happen.’

‘Claudia Hardcastle?’

‘Yes. She died the same way as Ellie. She fell from her horse in the hunting field. Claudia was a healthy girl too, but she just fell from her horse and died. The time wasn’t so long there, you see. They picked her up almost at once and there was still the smell of cyanide to go by. If she’d lain in the open air like Ellie for a couple of hours, there’d have been nothing – nothing to smell, nothing to find. I don’t see how Claudia got the capsule, though. Unless you’d left one behind in the Folly. Claudia used to go to the Folly sometimes. Her finger-prints were there and she dropped a lighter there.’

‘We must have been careless. Filling them was rather tricky.’

Then I said:

‘You suspected I had something to do with Ellie’s death, didn’t you? All of you?’ I looked round at the shadowy figures. ‘Perhaps all of you.’

‘Very often one knows. But I wasn’t sure whether we’d be able to do anything about it.’

‘You ought to caution me,’ I said reprovingly.

‘I’m not a police officer,’ said Dr Shaw.

‘What are you then?’

‘I’m a doctor.’

‘I don’t need a doctor,’ I said.

‘That remains to be seen.’

I looked at Phillpot then, and I said:

‘What are you doing? Come here to judge me, to preside at my trial?’

‘I’m only a Justice of the Peace,’ he said. ‘I’m here as a friend.’

‘A friend of mine?’ That startled me.

‘A friend of Ellie’s,’ he said.

I didn’t understand. None of it made sense to me but I couldn’t help feeling rather important. All of them there! Police and doctor, Shaw and Phillpot who was a busy man in his way. The whole thing was very complicated. I began to lose count of things. I was very tired, you see. I used to get tired suddenly and go to sleep…

And all the coming and going. People came to see me, all sorts of people. Lawyers, a solicitor, I think, and another kind of lawyer with him and doctors. Several doctors. They bothered me and I didn’t want to answer them.

One of them kept asking me if there was anything I wanted. I said there was. I said there was only one thing I wanted. I said I wanted a ballpen and a lot of paper. I wanted, you see, to write all about it, how it all came to happen. I wanted to tell them what I’d felt, what I’d thought. The more I thought about myself, the more interesting I thought it would be to everybody. Because I was interesting. I was a really interesting person and I’d done interesting things.

The doctors – one doctor, anyway – seemed to think it was a good idea. I said:

‘You always let people make a statement, so why can’t I write my statement out? Some day, perhaps, everybody can read it.’

They let me do it. I couldn’t write very long on end. I used to get tired. Somebody used a phrase like ‘diminished responsibility’ and somebody else disagreed. All sorts of things you hear. Sometimes they don’t think you’re even listening. Then I had to appear in court and I wanted them to fetch me my best suit because I had to make a good figure there. It seemed they had had detectives watching me. For some time. Those new servants. I think they’d been engaged or put on my trail by Lippincott. They found out too many things about me and Greta. Funny, after she was dead I never thought of Greta much… After I’d killed her she didn’t seem to matter any more.