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    “Someone left it on my desk yesterday evening,” he explained. “I have no idea who did it, but it had to have been someone here on the island.”
    “And the typing?”
    “Done on the typewriter on my desk. I checked the ribbon.”
    “More than a bit ominous.” She handed the paper back to her father-in-law. “Did you call the police?”
    Ashcroft refolded the paper and put in his pocket. “What could the police tell me that I don’t already know? Besides, I preferred to handle this matter on my own. So I went into town this morning and had a new will drawn up, naming Creighton as the sole inheritor of my estate.”
    “Creighton? But—”
    “He wasn’t here yesterday evening. He couldn’t have left the note,” Ashcroft explained. “It seemed the logical next step.”
    “So that’s what this whole dog and pony show was all about,” Marjorie concluded. “This note?”
    “Well, trying to prevent the writer of the note from taking any drastic action. Yes.”
    “And that’s all?” she challenged.
    “What else?”
    “Pleasure,” Marjorie stated bluntly. “Creighton is right; you seem to enjoy having control over other people. You enjoy having the money and power to alter their lives. The new will and your performance this evening is just another way for you to pull the strings and watch them dance. The problem is that the writer of that note isn’t looking for money or anything else you can give them; they’re looking to take control.”
    She folded her arms across her chest and shook her head slowly. “You’re a master puppeteer, Mr. Ashcroft; you probably always have been. But I think … I think you may be in over your head this time.”
    “You know what, Mrs. Ashcroft?”
    The use of her new surname gave Marjorie pause.
    Mr. Ashcroft sunk into his high-back chair and drank back the rest of his wine. “I think I am, too.”

Marjorie, her heart racing and her mind thinking only of Creighton, left the dining room. She hurried out the back door of the house and down the white gravel path. Reaching the spot where the path divided, she checked the potting shed, the stables, Selina’s cottage, and their surrounding properties. There was not a soul to be seen.
    She threw her hands in the air in exasperation and stopped to catch her breath. Where was Creighton? And where, for that matter, was everyone else? The scene in the dining room had caused the inhabitants of the house to scatter and disappear into the woodwork.
    Marjorie retraced her steps back to the house. On a whim, she poked her head into the kitchen and then the dining room; like the cottage and stables, they, were unoccupied. Wondering if her fellow guests had retired to their rooms for the night, she proceeded down the entry hall and up the cedar staircase. As she passed the bedroom next to hers and Creighton’s, she could hear, through the closed door, the slightly muffled, high-pitched voice of Prudence Ashcroft.
    “I can’t bear it any longer. I want him out of our lives forever!”
    “I’ll take care of him,” Edward assured. “I promise, I’ll take care of him.”
    “You’d better,” Prudence warned. “Because if you don’t do something about him, I will!”
    Marjorie tiptoed quickly past the closed door and into her own bedroom. Once there, she scanned the area, and the adjoining bathroom, for any trace of her husband. She found none. She was about to head back downstairs when a cool breeze across her shoulders gave her pause.
    Turning on one heel, she rushed to the windows, pushed back the shutters, and leaned outside. There, in the glow of the full moon, she could pick out a figure in white standing at the other end of the verandah. It was not Creighton’s white dinner jacket reflecting the moonlight, but Cassandra’s dress.
    Marjorie watched silently as the spiritualist released her dark hair from the confines of its tight chignon, gave her head a quick shake, and took a long drag from the cigarette she was