‘I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t deliberately plan to kill Magenta. It just… happened.

‘It all has to do with my past. Everyone in the village knows me as prim and proper Miss Peach, the meek and mild schoolmistress, but I haven’t always been that. Several years before I came to the village, I lived and worked in London. I was terribly naïve and unworldly, I know that know, and I became romantically involved with a businessman called Leonard Pinkerton. Leonard was kind, gentle… and married. We met for dinner once and he told me his wife was in hospital. Terminally ill. He was quite distraught, and I comforted him. And so began our affair. But his wife found out. That was it. Leonard lost everything when his wife divorced him; he lost his job and died penniless two years later.

‘Of course, I had nothing more to do with him once his wife found out. I left London soon after and eventually I got a job here. Nobody knew who I was; Leonard’s infidelity wasn’t high-scale enough for tabloid scandal. So, I could leave this unsavoury part of my past behind and have a fresh start. And I did. I became Emily Peach, the quiet unassuming schoolteacher and nobody was any the wiser as to what I once was. I made some friends, and I fell in love with Graham Slate-Grey. Everything was going so well.

‘Then Magenta Rose turns up and throws everything up in the air. I knew that the second message at the séance was for me, but I couldn’t come forward. Nobody here knows who I was and if they did, well, that would spell the end for everything I now have. So I ignored it. But during my reading, it kept coming up. Leonard this, Leonard that… It made me realise that I couldn’t marry Graham. He thought I was a shy retiring English rose. And I’m not. So soon after the reading, I broke it off. He was distressed, but so was I.

‘But I thought that was it. And it would have been, if Colonel Mustard hadn’t come in to the Dining Room and told me Magenta was planning to expose us all and blackmail us. That was it. Something had to be done. When he went, I grabbed one of the candlesticks and went to the Study, making sure nobody saw me. She wasn’t in there, thankfully, so I took a little revenge by smashing the crystal ball with the candlestick. As I left, I heard a door open. I got so scared I dropped the candlestick and ran to the Lounge. Whilst I sat there, I noticed the ring had fallen off my finger. I panicked. When Magenta saw that, she would know I had done it.

‘After her little outburst, I hurried back to the Study to retrieve my ring. She was in there and started verbally attacking me. We got into an argument that ended when she said she was going to tell everyone about my affair and everyone would know what I used to be. That was it. In blind panic, I picked up the dagger that was on the tabletop and… the rest you know. I threw the body into the cellar and went back to the Lounge.

‘So now you know. I wonder if Graham would’ve still married me if he’d known about my chequered past. He definitely won’t marry me now. I mean, who wants to wed a murderess?’

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