He looked anxiously at his wristwatch.

With the meal drawing to its close, Cecily began to glance around the table, catching the eye of the lady guests and preparing to announce that they would withdraw, leaving the gentlemen to enjoy their port. After that would come tedious rounds of snooker or cards and the evening would run into the sand though, for the moment, the company seemed still sprightly, the buzz of conversation animated. Joe judged his moment had come. With a swift gesture of the hand to Cecily, he held her in her seat and himself rose to his feet.

One of the male guests, more tipsy than the rest, interpreted this as a familiar movement. Joe was about to make a speech. Wilfred knew what to do; he tinkled merrily on the side of his claret glass with a spoon. “Pray silence for the commissioner!” he announced. “Speech! Make it funny, Sandilands!”

“Not a speech, you’ll all be relieved to hear—the Plod are not known for their light-footed levity. Indeed, there was once a policeman so achingly dull, all the others thought he was Noël Coward. But I have to announce—for your further entertainment—and with the gracious collusion and dramatic flair of Lady Cecily …” Cecily chased the expression of astonishment from her features and replaced it with one of knowing amusement as all eyes turned on her.

“… an after-dinner game. No—don’t run for the door, Ripley! I have in mind something a little more sophisticated than Sardines. I’m calling it ‘Deceive the Detective.’ All the rage in London Town. At least half of the people gathered around this table are old hands, in the know, so to speak, and have been playing the current round of the game for some time. The others will be surprised—but I hope not alarmed—by the sudden appearance out of the shrubbery of policemen in uniform, clanking handcuffs, possibly a judge and hangman.”

Glances were exchanged, eyebrows raised. Well, at least this promised to be livelier than a round of piquet, more entertaining than the Music Hall Medley they knew Maggie Somerton had in store for them. They listened on.

“The aim of the game is to solve a murder puzzle before the detective does. You must come up with the answer to two questions: Who has been murdered? Who is the murderer? Evidence will be presented, witnesses called on. You may make notes and confer but there must be a decision arrived at by the stroke of midnight. We’ll need to withdraw from this table, of course, and take a breather. I’ve arranged for coffee and brandy to be served to you in the Great Hall in—shall we say—half an hour?”

Joe caught Ben’s eye and he smiled and nodded.

Murmuring and giggles broke out around the table. Florence Ripley reached into her bag and drew out pencil and notebook and looked up with the alertness of a prize pupil, ready to start. Dorcas stared at him with foreboding. Dorothy and her father exchanged looks of indulgent incredulity. The English and their parlour games! Mungo McIver showed some agitation. He seemed to have heard a whistle blow in the enemy trench and patted his pockets. Seeking what? Gun? Camera? He caught Truelove’s eye and his query was returned by an amused shrug of the shoulders. Adelaide put out a hand below table level and patted Joe’s thigh.

They rose with varying degrees of enthusiasm to his smiling invitation and went off to powder noses, find a flowerbed to pee into, take a breath of fresh air and hiss whispered speculation to each other. Under cover of the disruption, Adelaide leaned close to Joe and whispered, “You’re nuts! You’ll get a unanimous decision: it was the horse that did it, in the stable, with his teeth.”

Joe went straight to the Great Hall to check his arrangements. The ancestors, he thought fancifully, were not pleased to see him. A chorus of harrumphs would have run around the walls if they’d known the real purpose of his unscheduled invasion of their family territory.

Nervously, the thirteen entered on time and gathered together in the centre of the room, too strung up to commit themselves to taking a seat at the table he’d had laid with a carafe of water, glasses, notepaper and pencils. Coffee on trays followed them instantly, supervised, surprisingly, by Mrs. Bolton. A cross Mrs. Bolton who whispered words of protest in Cecily’s ear. “Short handed—sorry, ma’am.”

“Glad you could join us. Do stay, Mrs. Bolton. We’re sorry to inconvenience you,” Joe said. Cecily set about playing hostess alongside Enid Bolton, dispensing coffee as she remembered her guests liked it. Truelove and McIver had instantly stationed themselves, an alert and menacing presence, on either side of the doorway. For their easy retreat or to block Joe’s exit? Cecily was having none of it.

“James! Mungo! Stop louting about over there and come and help me with the cups. Then settle down, will you? I know Joe has something important up his sleeve for us and I insist you play nicely.”

Adelaide carried coffee over to Dorcas, who refused it with shake of the head.

No one would sit. Cups were put away on side tables, behind potted plants, all, in their agitation, chose to keep their hands unencumbered, their feet ready to move off fast. Ben entered with a refill jug of coffee and Joe asked him to wait by the door.

“Joe, will you get on with it?” Cecily demanded. “We’re all ready.”

“Well, I have before me a mixed bunch. I have something approaching a very informal and entirely illegal Court of Justice. You are thirteen in number. Unlucky for one. Twelve good men and true—and women!—will make up the jury who will assess the guilt and decide the fate of the thirteenth member. The one among you who will be here accused of the murder of an innocent woman.”

“Ooh! The game’s afoot,” trilled Alice McIver. “Bags I not be the thirteenth—I couldn’t keep a straight face. You’d all guess it was me.”

Joe smiled and forged on. “Last April, Lavinia Truelove was tricked into confronting a dangerous horse—you all know most of the circumstances. What you may not know is that the maid, Grace, who assisted her in the scheme, in a good-hearted attempt to mitigate the effect of her mistress’s folly, consulted someone she considered an authority on horses, a person of understanding and wisdom whom she trusted. This person chose, for personal motives, to give exactly the wrong advice and also supplied the means to provoke the attack.”

A frisson ran round the company as they realised they were involved with not a game but a real and recent death. A tricky moment. If one of them called his bluff and shouted, “Blow this for a game of soldiers! I’m off!” the rest would follow. Joe relied on the strength of a very human quality to keep them listening: ghoulish curiosity.

“We are looking, ladies and gentlemen, for a person who sought to destroy Lavinia. I put it to you that her death was not an accident. It was willed, engineered and carried out at a distance. The tool was an innocent animal.” Joe filled in as briefly as he could for the benefit of those not in the know how this had been managed. He explained how the horse bate substance had, by trickery, been secreted in the pocket of Lavinia’s cape, triggering the attack on her. “But why? Always the first question for a detective. Several motives were explored and rejected. One—and one only—stayed with us. With his wife disposed of, Sir James was once again a free man. Did someone wish perhaps to supplant Lavinia in Truelove’s affections?”

Joe waited for a spluttering objection from Truelove—“I say! What utter nonsense!”—to roll away and carried on.

“I have in mind a person who was smarting from the insults Lavinia dished out over dinner that evening with such malice. Someone who had formed a secret and hopeless affection for her hostess’s husband. Someone who had the knowledge of country horse-witchery …”

He waited for this information to be absorbed and watched as the audience looked from Dorcas to James and back again with round eyes and an audible intake of breath. He waited for an explosive response from Truelove. But James Truelove made no further protest. He failed to see the disbelief in the eyes of Dorothy Despond standing at his side because he could not bring himself to look at her. Dorothy’s father, Joe noted, moved closer to his daughter and put a protective arm around her shoulders. Dorcas Joliffe had no such comfort, standing by herself, as aloof and friendless as Joan of Arc at her trial.