LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

Henry. ‘The rest of us are all quite prepared for the dawn to rise on our lies and evasions.’

      ‘I hope not,’ said Alleyn.

      ‘Actually we are a truthful family, only the things that happen to us are so peculiar that nobody ever believes in them. Still, I expect you’ve got a sort of winnowing ear for people’s testimonies and will know in a flash if we try any hanky-panky.’

      ‘I expect so,’ agreed Alleyn gravely. From the shadow of the lift Henry seemed to look solemnly at him.

      ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid I expect so too. My father suggested that you ought to be offered a drink and some sandwiches but the rest of us knew you wouldn’t break bread with suspected persons. Or is that only in books? Anyway, sir, if you would like us to send something out here or if you would like to join us for a drink, we do hope you will.’

      ‘That’s very kind of you,’ said Alleyn, ‘but we don’t on duty.’

      ‘Or if there’s anything at all that we can do.’

      ‘I don’t think there’s anything at the moment. Oh, as you’re here, I may as well ask you. Who is the owner of those gloves?’

      ‘What gloves?’ Henry’s voice sounded blank.

      ‘A pair of heavy driving-gloves with stiff gauntlets.’

      ‘Lined with rather disgusting fur?’

      ‘Fur-lined, yes.’

      ‘Sound like mine,’ said Henry. ‘Where are they?’

      ‘I’ll return them to you. My colleague took them into the flat.’

      ‘Where did you find them?’

      ‘In the lift,’ said Alleyn.

      ‘But I wasn’t in the lift.’

      ‘No?’

      ‘No. I expect –’ Henry stopped short.

      ‘Yes?’

      ‘Nothing. I can’t imagine how they got there. You needn’t return them, sir. I don’t really think I want them any more.’

      ‘I don’t think you would,’ agreed Alleyn, ‘if you saw them.’

      Henry’s face shone like ivory on that dimly lit landing. His eyes were like black coals under the cold whiteness of his forehead.

      ‘What do you mean?’ he asked.

      ‘They are stained.’

      ‘Stained? With what?’

      ‘It looks like blood.’

      Henry turned on his heel and went blindly into the flat.

      Fox returned with Bailey.

      ‘I want you to go all over the inside of the lift, Bailey,’ said Alleyn. ‘Try the stops and the door-knobs – everything. Get Thompson to take a close-up shot of the seat and wall.’

      ‘Very good, sir.’

      ‘And Fox, we’ll go over your notes and then I think I’d better see the family.’

      III

      The twins stood side by side on the hearthrug. The lamplight glinted on their blond heads. They wore grey flannel suits and dark-green pullovers that their mother had knitted for them. Their hands were in their pockets, their heads were tilted slightly to one side. Their faces were screwed into an expression of apologetic attentiveness. From her stool by the fire Roberta watched them and felt a cold pang of alarm. For behind the twins Roberta saw, not the coal fire of a London grate, but the sweetly aromatic logs that burnt in the drawing-room at Deepacres in New Zealand. And with the sharpest emphasis of memory she heard each twin confess that he had taken out the forbidden big car, and had driven it through a water-race into a bank. She saw herself sitting mum, knowing all the time that it was Stephen who had taken the car while Colin was indoors. She heard herself asking Colin privately why he had made this quixotic gesture and she again heard his answer. ‘It’s a kind of arrangement we have!’ ‘Always?’ she had asked him, and Colin, rumpling up his fair hair, had answered, ‘Oh, no. Only when there’s a really major row.’ ‘A twinny sort of arrangement,’ Roberta had said, and Colin had agreed. ‘Yes, that’s the idea. As between twins.’ So insistent was this memory that the past was clearer for a moment than the present and she was unaware of the voices in the drawing-room. Her mind seemed to change gear and she found herself thinking of the Lampreys as strangers. ‘I don’t know what they are like,’ thought Roberta in her cold panic. ‘I have no knowledge of their reality. I have fitted their words and actions into my own idea of them but my idea may be quite wrong.’ And she began to wonder confusedly if anybody had a complete secret reality or if each layer of thought merely represented the level of someone else’s idea of the thinker. ‘This won’t do,’ thought Roberta. ‘Stop!’ Her mind changed gear again and Lord Charles’s voice came back, familiar, gentle, a voice she knew and loved.

      ‘Now listen to me,’ Lord Charles was saying. ‘There is going to be no more of this. One of you went down in the lift with Violet and with him. Which was it?’

      ‘I d-did,’ said Stephen.

      ‘Shut up,’ said Colin. ‘I did.’

      ‘Do you realize,’ said Henry, ‘that one of you is making things look just about as murky as may be for the other?’

      ‘If you imagine,’ said Lord Charles, ‘that the police are to be checked by a childish trick of this sort, you are –’ he added hurriedly: ‘you simply couldn’t be more mistaken.’

      ‘What about finger-prints?’ said Frid.

      ‘I didn’t touch anything,’ said Colin.

      ‘I kept my hands in my p-pocket,’ said Stephen.

      ‘Whichever it was, must have worked the lift,’ Frid pointed out.

      ‘The lift’s been used twice since then,’ said Stephen.

      ‘Twice, at least,’ said Colin. ‘There won’t be any finger-prints worth talking about.’

      ‘At any moment now,’ Henry said, ‘Alleyn will come in and begin to ask questions. As soon as he sees what you are up to he’ll talk to you separately. If you think you’ve one sickly misbegotten hope of taking him in, you’re bigger bloody fools than anybody outside a bughouse.’

      ‘Mummy’ll be back in a minute,’ said Frid. ‘Don’t let’s have this going on when she comes in.’

      Lord Charles said: ‘Stephen, did you commit this crime?’

      ‘No, father, I didn’t.’

      ‘Colin?’

      ‘No, father, honestly.’

      ‘On your most solemn word of honour, both of you.’

      ‘No, father,’ repeated the twins. And Stephen added: ‘We’re not sorry he’s dead, of course, but it’s a filthy way to k-kill anybody.’

      ‘Lousy,’ agreed Colin cheerfully.

      ‘I know very well that it seems grossly stupid and fantastic to ask you,’ said Lord Charles. ‘Of course you are quite incapable of it. What I – I implore you to believe is that it is the last word in dangerous lunacy for an innocent man to lie to the police.’

      ‘That’s what I keep t-telling Colin,’ said Stephen.

      ‘Then why don’t you take your own advice?’ asked Colin. ‘Don’t be a fool. I went down in the lift, father, and Stephen stayed in the drawing-room.’

      ‘Which is a complete and sweltering lie,’ added Stephen.

Скачать книгу