“No,” said Lord Charles. “No. We said good-bye in here.”
“Yes. Baskett then opened the hall door. Lord Wutherwood went out to the lift. Baskett says that he was told not to wait and so returned to the servants’ sitting-room. These notes, you will see, account for the movements, or some of the movements, of five persons during the few minutes after Lord Wutherwood left this room. Now, as Baskett left the hall and returned to the servants’ sitting-room, he heard Lord Wutherwood call loudly for Lady Wutherwood. I should like to know next, if you please, how many of you also heard this call. Lady Charles — please forgive me if I still call you Lady Charles—”
“It will be much less muddling if you do, Mr. Alleyn.”
“It will, won’t it? Did you hear this call?”
“Oh, yes. Gabriel, my brother-in-law, always shouted like that for people.”
“Where were you, please?”
“In my bedroom.”
Alleyn glanced at his note-book.
“I’ve made a very rough sketch plan of both flats,” he said. “Your room is the second from the lift end of No. 26?”
“Yes.”
“Were you alone?”
“When he shouted? No. My sister-in-law and — Good heavens, Charlie, for pity’s sake—”
“Yes, Immy, I know. Aunt Kit hasn’t got home yet.”
“Not got home? But honestly, darling, it’s too queer of Aunt Kit. We don’t even know when she left. Why did she vanish like that, do you suppose?”
“I expect she just slipped away,” said Henry.
“She probably thought she’d said good-bye,” said Frid. “You know how absent-minded she is.”
“I expect she did say good-bye, Mummy,” said Patch, “and you didn’t hear her. She talks in a whisper, Mr. Alleyn.”
“What nonsense!” exclaimed Lady Charles. “Of course I would know she was saying good-bye. For one thing she’d kiss me.”
“You might have thought she was just being effusive.” said Frid
“She’s always kissing people,” agreed Patch.
“Well, she didn’t suddenly kiss me in the bedroom out of a clear sky,” said Lady Charles positively. “Don’t be absurd, Patch.”
“Lady Katherine was in your bedroom with Lady Wutherwood then,” Alleyn interposed adroitly, “when you heard the first call?”
“Yes, she was, and perfectly normal. She didn’t hear Gabriel, of course, because she’s deaf, but Violet did. Violet is my sister-in-law. Lady Wutherwood, you know.”
“Yes. What did they do?”
“Violet said she’d better not keep Gabriel waiting. She said she would like to go into the bathroom, so I told her about the one at the end of the passage.”
Lady Charles, who was sitting next to Alleyn, leant over and looked at his note-book. “Is that your plan?” she said. “Let me see.”
“Immy, my dear!” protested her husband.
“Well, Charlie, I’m not going to read any of Mr. Alleyn’s notes and he’d snatch it away from me if there was anything secret in the drawing. There, it’s as clear as daylight. That’s the bathroom, Mr. Alleyn. I told her where it was and off she went. And then Aunt Kit began to whisper — you know how that generation does — only even more so because, as Patch says, she whispers anyway. So she went off to the other place which I see you’ve also got marked very neatly, and now I think of it that’s the last I saw her.”
“It’s as clear as glass,” Frid interrupted. “She probably whispered: ‘I’ll have to go. Bless you, my dear,’ and you thought she said: ‘Lavatory. I’ll just disappear.’ ”
“Anyone would think it was I who was deaf instead of Aunt Kit! She didn’t say anything of the sort. She went down the passage in that direction.”
“Well, perhaps she’s locked in,” suggested Frid. “It happened to her once before, Mr. Alleyn, in a railway station, and nobody heard her whispering.”
“Good heavens, I wonder—”
“No, m’lady,” said Nanny firmly and unexpectedly.
“Oh. Are you certain, Nanny?”
With a scarlet face and a formidable frown Nanny said that she was certain.
“Then, that’s no good,” said Lady Charles. “And then, Mr. Alleyn, I waited for Violet. She was rather a long time and I remember that my brother-in-law shouted again for her. The two girls, Frid and Patch, came in, and then at last she came back and she reminded me that she and Gabriel didn’t like working the lift themselves, so I came along here leaving her on the landing, and asked one of the boys to take them down.”
It seemed to Alleyn that as Lady Charles reached this point a curious stillness fell upon the room. He looked up quickly. The Lampreys had returned to their former postures. Lord Charles again swung his eyeglass, Henry’s hands were again driven into his trousers pockets, and again the twins stared at the fire while Patch, her chin on her knees, squatted on the floor by Roberta Grey. And Miss Grey still sat erect on her stool. Alleyn was reminded of the childish game of Steps in which, whenever the “he” has his back turned, the players creep nearer, only to freeze into immobility whenever he turns round and faces them. Alleyn felt sure that some signal had passed between the Lampreys, a signal that, by the fraction of a second, he himself had missed. At this hated and familiar sign of guardedness his own attention sharpened.
“Ah, yes,” he said. “We may as well clear up this point as we come to it.” He looked at the twins. “Mr. Fox tells me that Lord Charles didn’t notice which of you went down in the lif’t. Which was it?”
“I did,” said the twins.
So complete a silence fell upon the room that Alleyn heard a voice in the street below call for a taxi. The fire settled down in the grate with a little sigh and, as clearly as if, instead of sitting stone-still in their chairs, the Lampreys had made a swift concerted movement, Alleyn heard them close their ranks.
“Hullo,” he said amiably, “a difference of opinion! Or did you both go down in the lift?”
“I went down, sir,” said the twins. Lord Charles, very white in the face, put his eyeglass away.
“My dear Alleyn,” he said, “I must warn you that these two idiots have got some ridiculous idea of stonewalling us over this point. I have told them that it is extremely foolish and very wrong. I hope you will convince them of this.”
“I hope so, too,” said Alleyn. Out of the tail of his eye he saw Lady Charles’s thin hands close on each other. He turned to her. “Perhaps, Lady Charles, you will be able to clear this point up for us,” he said. “Can you tell us who took Lord and Lady Wutherwood down in the lift?”
“No. I’m sorry. I didn’t notice. One of the twins came out to the landing as soon as I asked for someone to work the lift.” She looked at the twins with a painful nakedness of devotion, made as if to speak to them, and was silent.
Alleyn waited. Fox returned and went silently to his chair. Nanny cleared her throat.
“Did anyone else,” asked Alleyn, “notice which twin remained here and which went down in the lift?”
The twins looked at the fire. Frid made a sudden impatient movement. Henry lit a cigarette.
“No?” said Alleyn. “Then we’ll go on.”
There was a sort of stealthy shifting of positions. For the first time they all looked directly at him and he knew that they had expected him to pounce on this queer behaviour of the twins and were profoundly disconcerted by his refusal to do so. He went on steadily.
“When Lady Charles came and asked for someone to work the lift, Lady Frid and Lady Patricia were in their mother’s bedroom, and their brothers were here in the drawing-room?”
“Yes,” said Henry.