LITMIR.BIZ

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lose our tempers with the Lampreys and we’re done. Yes? Come in. Open the door, Gibson.’

      The red-headed constable, who had tapped on the door, was admitted by his mate.

      ‘Why have you left your post?’ snapped Fox.

      ‘What is it, Martin?’ asked Alleyn.

      ‘I beg your pardon, sir, but I thought I’d better come. The dowager Lady Wutherwood’s in the passage and wants to see you. So I thought I’d better come.’

      ‘And as soon as you turned your back,’ said Fox angrily, ‘they got together and agreed on the tale they’d tell.’

      ‘They’ve already done that, sir.’

      ‘What!’

      ‘While you were there?’ asked Alleyn.

      ‘Yes, sir. They spoke in French, sir. I’ve got it down in shorthand. They speak quite good French, with the exception of Lady Patricia. I thought that, before proceeding, you’d like to see what they said.’

      ‘Here!’ said Fox. ‘Do you understand French?’

      ‘Yes, Mr Fox. I lived at Concarneau until I was fifteen. I didn’t know, Mr Alleyn, what the ruling was about listening-in under those circumstances. I don’t remember anything in the regulations as to whether it could be put in as evidence. Seeing they didn’t know.’

      ‘We’ll look it up,’ said Alleyn dryly.

      ‘Yes, sir. Will you see the dowager Lady Wutherwood, sir?’

      ‘Give me your notes,’ said Alleyn, ‘and three minutes to look at them. Then bring her along. Wait a second. Did they say anything of importance?’

      ‘They argued a good deal, sir. Principally about the two younger gentlemen. The twins. His lordship and Lady Friede wanted them to come clean. Her ladyship seemed to be frightened and rather in favour of nobody knowing which twin went down in the lift. Lord Henry was non-committal. They spoke principally about the motive against themselves, sir. I gather that Lord Charles – Lord Wutherwood –’

      ‘Stick to Lord Charles,’ said Fox irritably. ‘The whole thing’s lousy with lords and ladies. I beg your pardon, Mr Alleyn.’

      ‘Not a bit, Brer Fox. Well, Martin?’

      ‘It seems he’s in debt for about two thousand, sir. Pressing, I mean. He asked Lord Wutherwood to lend him two thousand and he refused.’

      ‘Yes, I see.’ Alleyn had been looking at the notes. ‘Well done, Martin. Now, go and tell Lady Wutherwood that I shall be very pleased and grateful and all the rest of it, if she’ll be good enough to come in here. Then return to your shorthand. What’s your impression of Lady Wutherwood?’

      ‘Well, sir, she looks very peculiar to me. Either she’s out of her mind, sir, or else she’d like everybody to think she was. That’s how she struck me, sir.’

      ‘Indeed? Well, off you go, Martin.’

      The red-headed constable went out and Fox stared at Alleyn. ‘We get some unexpected chaps in the force these days,’ he said. ‘In your time, sir, you were a bit of a rarity. Now they go round spitting foreign tongues all over the place. Did you know he spoke French?’

      ‘I did, as it happened, Br’er Fox.’

      ‘I must get him to try some on me,’ said Fox with his air of simplicity. ‘I don’t get on as fast as I’d like.’

      ‘You’re getting on very nicely. Here she comes. Or rather, I fancy, here they come. I think I hear the voices of the medical gents.’

      The door opened and the curious procession came in.

      II

      And now Alleyn faced the woman whom he had previously begun to think of as his principal witness. It was his practice to discourage in himself any imaginative speculation, but on seeing her he could not escape the feeling that with the belated appearance of Lady Wutherwood the case had darkened. She was, he thought, such a particularly odd-looking woman. She sat very still at the foot of the table and stared at him with remarkable fixedness. The presence of Dr Kantripp and of the nurse and the maid lent an air of preposterous consequence to the scene. Lady Wutherwood might almost have been holding some sort of audience. There was no doubt that she was antagonistic, but she had asked to see Alleyn and he decided that he would wait for her to open the conversation. And so it fell out that Lady Wutherwood and Alleyn, for perhaps half a minute, contemplated each other in silence across the long table.

      At last she spoke. Her deep voice was unemphatic, her enunciation so level as to suggest that English was not her native tongue.

      ‘When,’ asked Lady Wutherwood, ‘will my husband’s body be given to me? They have taken him away. He must return.’

      ‘If you wish it,’ said Alleyn, ‘certainly.’

      ‘I do wish it. When?’

      ‘Tomorrow night, perhaps?’ Alleyn looked at Curtis who nodded. ‘Tomorrow night, Lady Wutherwood.’

      ‘What are they going to do with him?’

      Curtis and Kantripp made deprecatory noises. The nurse put her hand on Lady Wutherwood’s shoulder. Tinkerton, the maid, clucked thinly.

      ‘Under the circumstances,’ said Alleyn, ‘there will be an examination.’

      ‘What will they do to him?’

      Dr Kantripp went to her and took her hand. ‘Now, now,’ he said, ‘you must not distress yourself by thinking about these things.’ He might have been a hundred miles away for all the notice she paid him. She did not withdraw her hand but he moved away, quickly and awkwardly.

      ‘Will they do dreadful things to him?’ she asked.

      ‘The surgeon will examine the injury,’ Alleyn said. She was silent for a moment and then on the same level note: ‘Before he returns,’ she said, ‘tell them to cover his face.’

      Curtis murmured something inaudible. Alleyn said: ‘That will be done.’

      ‘Tell them to cover it with something heavy and thick. Close down his eyes. The eyes of the dead can see where the eyes of the living are blind. That is established, else how could they find their way, as they sometimes do, into strange houses?’

      Mr Fox wrote in his note-book, the nurse looked significantly towards Dr Kantripp. Tinkerton, over her mistress’s shoulder, executed a little series of nods and grimaces and shakes of the head. Alleyn and Lady Wutherwood stared into each other’s faces.

      ‘That is all,’ said Lady Wutherwood. ‘But for one thing. It must be understood that I will not be touched or persecuted or followed. I warn you that there is a great peril in wait for anybody who intercepts me. I have a friend who guards me well. A very powerful friend. That is all.’

      ‘Not quite,’ said Alleyn. ‘Lady Wutherwood, if you had not asked for this interview I should have done so. You see, the circumstances of your husband’s death have obliged me to make very close inquiries.’

      Without changing her posture or the fixed blankness of her gaze, she said: ‘You had better be careful. You are in danger.’

      ‘I,’ murmured Alleyn. ‘How should I be in danger?’

      ‘My husband died because he offended against one greater than himself. I have not been told by whose agency he died. But I know the force that killed him.’

      ‘What force is that?’

      The corners of the shifting mouth moved up. Small wrinkles appeared about her eyes. Her face became a mask of an unlovely Comedy. She did not answer Alleyn’s question.

      ‘I must tell

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