Not every woman can collect her dethroned lovers and their wives into one room. But then Claribel was not ‘every woman’. Things happened at her parties and so one swallowed the latest baits and joined all the other poor fish. But having given her party, having collected her bevy of expectant friends, having displayed her three mysterious lovelies, it was painfully bad tactics to make them play a murder game. All sorts of curious things were liable to happen when one let loose such a motley throng in a darkened house. So really it was Claribel’s fault, and she had only herself to blame when things did happen. A fairy tale with a sting in its tail.
