Isolated in our rooms except when questioned by DI Kate, time passes slowly as the rain tumbles down. There is unexpected good news. Jeri is out of danger and it was not poison, rather a rare allergy to the Mozambique toffee used in the desert and Jeri is due to rejoin us in a few days. So we are back to two deaths and we cling to the hope that maybe it can all be innocently explained. We all have our theories and Matilda’s astute observations of us has led her to focus her suspicions on one member of the group. Oh foolish woman! That evening on the stairs she tells one of our group of her conclusions and that she plans to share her thoughts with the lovely Kate first thing in the morning. A terrible mistake indeed.
The next morning one person is missing at breakfast – Matilda. There is a frantic search and she is found dead in the drying room, cooked to death with the temperature set at maximum and the door jammed shut. With her own blood and in her dying moments she has managed to scratch one word on the inside of the drying room door. The police will not reveal that fatal word; at least now they have a real clue and we must put aside our childish hopes of an innocent explanation and accept that we have a cold blooded murderer, perhaps a lunatic, in our midst.
Tentative connections emerge. Ralph worked with the US military in Australia. Jean was in the Australian army. Mel was a crack investigative war journalist in Iraq and Afghanistan before choosing a quieter and slower life in Western Australia. Jenny says that Bruce had army connections, but this proves untrue; why has Jenny tried to shift attention to good old Bruce? Denise has come to Australia from South Africa and there are whispers of dark secrets but she divulges nothing. Has Jeri deliberately staged her seizure to distract us all from the truth, for she also has wandered the world and is a mathematical whizz. More details are unearthed of Ralph’s undercover military work across the globe and Kate understands that it his death which is the key and that the other deaths resulted from saying the wrong thing at the wrong time to the wrong person. It is in Ralph’s history that the answer must lie.
And at night time she walks and talks with Will and the passion which never died is rekindled in the moonlight as we wait in fear, the old grandfather clock in the front parlour measuring out our time.
The concluding episode is upon us …