Everything come to she who waits ...

Not that I think, or am claiming, that it is a good way to progress a novel.

But, yes.  I've not been just waiting on this.  Thought I'd got the answer, more or less.  One of two answers anyway.  As I've said before, 'Susannah Elphinstone' began with a blurb challenge, utilising the name of the heroine from an in-progress novel. (Not Susannah:  Madigan.)  It sat for  while, then the premise suggested a story, characters began talking to each other, as they are wont to do, and the book began to take shape, my only input the decision to make it a thriller with a far smaller cast than I'd used before.

Progress was made by conversations:  Madigan with Baz, Baz with Luke, Luke with Madigan.  Ed became involved.  Then the action moved to where Susannah lived.   I remembered that it was a thriller I was supposed to be writing.  Someone had to die.  Actually, someone had died at the beginning, that was left over from the earlier book.  But I needed someone else.

Fifteen to twenty thousand words in I decided who that someone would be.  Next thing, of course, who did it?

Yes indeed.  Who did do it?  For focus' sake it had to be one of two, from up to seven possibilities.  I had to work out how, had to factor in red herrings and misinformation.  Input reasons, methods, timetable, confusion.  I eventually found myself continually see-sawing between two individuals, unable to satisfactorily plump for one over the other.  Unable to justify or even convince myself how.  Quite important that:  if I wasn't convinced I sure as hell would not be able to convince any reader.  Oh, and I also needed to inject pace, and manage a final, surprising, last-minute, totally unforeseeable twist to the tale.

Yesterday, completely out of the blue, the answer came to me.  Of course.  It wasn't either of them, that was why I'd been struggling;  it was someone I'd barely noticed, someone who'd been sending out his own misinformation.  And when I started looking I could see exactly how he'd done it, what lies he'd told, how he'd fooled all of them.  And me too.

So now all I have to do is write it down.   In the correct order.  Remembering that there are things which need not be said until the end.  Gosh.