LITMIR.BIZ

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ones. I said nothing but what was to your credit. They think you’re wonderful.’

      ‘Like hell they do!’ muttered Alleyn. ‘Where’s that doctor?’

      ‘In with the dowager. I strolled along the passage but I couldn’t pick anything up. She seems to be shedding tears.’

      ‘I wish to high Heaven he’d give her a corpse-reviver and let her loose on us. I’ll go along and wait for him. I’ve told that PC to note down anything they said.’

      ‘I hope he’ll keep his wits about him,’ said Fox. ‘He’ll need ’em.’

      ‘He’s rather a bright young man,’ said Alleyn. ‘I think he’ll be all right. I’ll tell you one thing about the Lampreys, B’rer Fox. They’re only mad nor’-nor’-west and then not so that you’d notice. They can tell a hawk from a handsaw, I promise you, or from a silver-plated meat skewer, if it comes to that. Get along to the dining-room. I’ll catch the doctor as he comes out and I’ll join you later.’

      But as Alleyn crossed the landing he heard a muffled thump somewhere beneath him. He moved to the stairhead and looked down. Somebody was mounting the stairs, slowly, laboriously. He heard this person cross the landing of the flat beneath. He caught sight of a pancake-like hat, a pair of drooping shoulders, an uneven skirt. This new arrival assisted herself upstairs with her umbrella. That was the origin of the thumping sound. He heard breathing and another faint sibilant noise. She appeared to be whispering to herself. A sentence of Henry’s came into Alleyn’s memory. He coughed. The toiling figure, now quite close, paid no attention. Alleyn coughed stertorously but to no effect. He moved so that his shadow fell across the stairs. The pancake hat tilted backwards revealing a few strands of grey hair and a flushed elderly face wearing an expression of exhausted enquiry.

      ‘Oh,’ she whispered, ‘I didn’t see – The lift doesn’t seem to – Oh, I beg your pardon. I thought for a moment you were one of my nephews.’

      Alleyn, remembering her name and praying no Lampreys would hear him and come out, said loudly: ‘I’m so sorry if I startled you, Lady Katherine.’

      ‘Not a bit. But I’m afraid I don’t quite – I’ve got such a very bad memory.’

      ‘We haven’t met before,’ shouted Alleyn. ‘I wonder if I might have a word with you.’ He saw that she hadn’t heard him and in desperation groped for one of his official cards. Feeling ridiculous, he offered it to her. Lady Katherine peered at it, uttered a little cry of alarm and gazed at Alleyn with an expression of horror.

      ‘Not the police!’ she wailed. ‘It hasn’t come to that? Not already!’

      IV

      Alleyn wondered distractedly if there was anywhere at all in the flat where he could yell in privacy into the ear of this lady. He decided that the best place would be in the disconnected lift with the doors shut. By a series of inviting gestures he managed to lure her in. She sank on to the narrow seat. He had time to reflect that Bailey and Thompson had finished their investigation of the lift. He leant against the doors and contemplated his witness. She was a little like a sheep, and a rapid association of ideas led him instantly to the White Queen. He bent towards her and she blinked apprehensively.

      ‘I didn’t realize,’ he said loudly, ‘that you knew this had happened.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘You know all about the accident?’

      ‘About what?’

      ‘This tragedy,’ shouted Alleyn.

      ‘Yes, indeed. Too distressing. My poor nephew.’

      ‘I’m afraid it has proved to be serious.’

      ‘He told me all about it this afternoon.’

      ‘What!’ Alleyn ejaculated.

      ‘All about it, poor fellow.’

      ‘Who did, Lady Katherine? Who told you?’

      She shook her head at him. ‘Very sad,’ she said.

      ‘Lady Katherine, who told you what?’

      ‘Why, my nephew, Lord Charles Lamprey, to be sure. Who else? I do hope –’ She peered again at his card. ‘I do hope, Mr Alleyn, that the police will not be too severe. I’m sure he regrets it very deeply.’

      Alleyn swallowed noisily. ‘Lady Katherine, what did he tell you?’

      ‘About Gabriel and himself. My nephew Wutherwood and my nephew Charles. I was so terrified that it would come to this.’

      ‘To what?’

      ‘Even now,’ said Lady Katherine, ‘after this has happened I still hope that Gabriel may soften.’

      Across Alleyn’s thoughts ran a horrible phrase. ‘Gabriel shall grow hard and Gabriel shall grow soft.’ He pulled himself together, reassorted Lady Katherine’s series of remarks and thought he began to see daylight.

      ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘you left before – I mean when you left, Lord Wutherwood was still living.’

      ‘What did you say?’

      ‘I’m afraid,’ roared Alleyn, changing his course again, ‘I have bad news for you.’

      ‘Very bad news,’ agreed Lady Katherine with one of those half-knowledgeable phrases by which the deaf bewilder us. ‘Very bad indeed.’

      Alleyn threw all delicacy overboard. He placed his face on a level with Lady Katherine’s and shouted, ‘He’s dead.’

      Lady Katherine turned very pale and clasped her hands together. ‘No, no!’ she whispered. ‘You didn’t say – dead? Did you? I don’t hear very well and I thought – Please tell me. It wasn’t that?’

      ‘I’m afraid so.’

      ‘But – Oh, how terrible. And such a grave sin if – did he lay hands upon himself? Oh, poor Charlie. Poor Immy! And poor children!’

      ‘Good God!’ cried Alleyn. ‘Not Lord Charles! Lord Wutherwood. Lord Wutherwood is dead.’

      He saw the colour return in patches to her large soft cheeks.

      ‘Gabriel?’ she said quite loudly. ‘Gabriel is dead?’

      Alleyn nodded violently. For perhaps thirty seconds she said nothing and then on a sort of sigh she whispered astoundingly: ‘Then I needn’t have taken all this trouble.’

       CHAPTER 11

       Conversation Piece

      Roberta had thought that when the two Scotland Yard officials went to the dining-room they would all be able to relax a little, and talk to each other in a normal fashion. It seemed to Roberta that, since the appearance of Alleyn and Fox, neither herself nor the Lampreys had been real persons. She was conscious, perhaps for the first time in her life, of making a deliberate and strenuous refusal to examine her own thoughts. Near the surface of her mind there waited, with the ominous insistence of images in a nightmare, a sequence of ideas and conjectures. And as, even during the experience of a nightmare, the dreamer may sometimes fight down his own images, so Roberta fought down the rising terrors of her thoughts, thrust them into the background, covered them with other thoughts less menacing to the love that six years ago she had so queerly dedicated to each one of the Lampreys. It seemed to her that the Lampreys themselves had completely withdrawn from her and that, without having had an opportunity to consult in private, they had nevertheless come to some understanding

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