BY THE TIME HE GOT back to Sophie Diaz’s bedside, the place was a confusion of activity. Adrian Appleby and his Scenes of Crime officers – or whatever the powers that be had decreed they were to be called this week – had arrived and were busy dusting and sweeping as many surfaces as the room contained. The photographer had also arrived and was busy taking wide shots from the door. Uniform were bustling about, keen to get a look-see. Not that Rafferty imagined all this activity would do any good. It seemed likely, whether Sam agreed or not, that Sophie Diaz had met her end from the same pernicious substance that had killed Ainsley; and that was likely not to have been administered here, but in the dining room, again just like Ainsley.
Alice Douglas had reluctantly admitted that she had sat
