“Where had you been before that?”
“In the dining-room.”
“All of you?”
“Yes. All of us. All the children and Roberta. Miss Grey.”
“While your father and Lord Wutherwood were talking in here?”
“Yes.”
“When did you leave the dining-room?”
“When the girls went out. The twins …”
“And you, Miss Grey?”
“I stayed in the dining-room with Mike — with Michael.”
“And Michael,” said Alleyn, “is of course now in bed?”
“He is,” said Nanny.
“Were you all in the dining-room when Lord Wutherwood called out?”
“Yes,” said Henry. “He shouted ‘Violet!’ twice. We were in the dining-room.”
“At what stage did Michael appear in the dining-room?”
Henry leant forward and pulled an ash-tray towards him. “Not long before Uncle Gabriel called out. He’d been messing about with his trains in 26.”
“Right. That’s perfectly clear. We’ve got to the moment when Lady Wutherwood and her escort went into the lift. Did you go out on the landing, Lady Charles?”
“I stood in the hall door and called out good-bye.”
“Yes? And then?”
“I turned back to come in here. I’d just gone to that table over there to get myself a cigarette when I heard—” she only stopped for a second — “when I heard my sister-in-law screaming. We all went out on the landing.”
“I’ll go on,” said Henry. “We went out to the landing. The lift came up. Aunt Violet was still screaming. Then whichever twin it was opened the lift doors and she sort of half fell out. Then we saw him.”
“Yes. Now, to go back a little way. This call Lord Wutherwood gave — Did it strike none of you as at all odd that he should sit in the lift and shout for Lady Wutherwood?”
“Not in the least,” said Frid. “It was entirely in character. I can’t tell you—”
“My brother,” interrupted Lord Charles hurriedly, “was like that. I mean he did rather sit still and shout for people.”
“I see. You wouldn’t say, on thinking it over, that there was any particular urgency in his voice?”
“I see what you mean, sir,” said Henry. “I’m sure there was nothing wrong when he shouted. I’ll swear nothing happened until after that.”
“But wait a moment.” Lady Charles leant forward and the light from a table lamp caught her face at an exacting angle. Shadows appeared beneath her eyes, her cheekbones; shadows prolonged the small folds at the corners of her mouth and traced out the muscles of her neck. By that trick of lighting a prefiguration of age fell across her. Her voice sharpened. “Wait a moment, all of you. Is it certain that he wasn’t calling out in alarm? How do we know? How do we know that he hadn’t seen something — someone?”
Alleyn saw Lord Charles look sharply at her.
“We don’t know, of course,” he said slowly.
“Would any of you say there was an unusual quality in his voice?” asked Alleyn. For a moment nobody answered and then Henry said impatiently: “He only sounded irritable.”
Frid said: “Aunt V. had kept him waiting.”
Alleyn looked at Roberta. “Lord Wutherwood was a comparative stranger to you, Miss Grey?”
“Yes.”
“Would you say that there was any particular ring of urgency or alarm in his voice?”
“I only thought that he sounded impatient.” said Roberta.
Alleyn waited for a moment and then with a freshening of his voice he said: “Well now, to sum up. Each time Lord Wutherwood shouted, the younger members of the party were in the dining room, Lady Charles was in her bedroom and Lord Charles was in here. Lady Wutherwood and Lady Katherine Lobe were with Lady Charles at the time of the first call. At the time of the second call they had gone severally to the bathroom and the other room at the far end of Flat 26.”
“Neat as a new pin,” said Frid, and lit a cigarette.
“It doesn’t take us very far, however,” said Alleyn. “It merely leaves us with the presumption that at these times Lord Wutherwood was still uninjured.” He turned sharply in his chair, recrossed his long legs and looked thoughtfully at the twins. The twins continued to stare at the fire while, under their clear skins, their faces rapidly turned a dull red. “Yes,” said Alleyn. “We arrive at a difficulty. The next step, as you will understand, is to find out the condition of Lord Wutherwood when Lady Wutherwood and one or the other of these two gentlemen entered the lift. As both of these gentlemen agree that only one of them went down in the lift and as each of them protests that he was that one, it would appear that neither of their statements can be particularly valuable. At the moment I don’t propose to argue this point. I propose, when she can see me, to ask for Lady Wutherwood’s impressions of what happened when she entered the lift, and to find out from her exactly when the two uninjured occupants of the lift first realized what had happened. In the meantime, if I may, I should like to see Lord Wutherwood’s chauffeur.” Alleyn glanced at his notes. “Can his name be Giggle?”
“Yes, yes,” said Lady Charles drearily. “The servants in both our families always have names like that. One of you boys go and find Giggle, will you?”
Alleyn watched the twin on the left-hand end of the sofa hitch himself up and walk away. “That’s the one that stammers,” thought Alleyn. “He’s got a mole behind his left ear.”
“Thank you, Stephen,” murmured his mother. The other twin stared uneasily at her, met Alleyn’s glance and looked quickly away.
Alleyn asked Lady Charles when Dr. Kantripp was expected to come back. She said that he had told her he had two visits to make and would call in to see Lady Wutherwood on his return. An image of Lady Wutherwood began to take hold of Alleyn’s imagination and, while he waited for Stephen Lamprey to fetch the chauffeur, he made a picture of her. She would be lying on Lady Charles’s bed in the second room on the left in Flat 26, the room next to that other where her husband waited for the police mortuary van. What was she like, this woman whose screams had risen with the returning lift, who had stumbled through the doors into Lady Charles’s arms, who was (he remembered Lord Charles’s profound uneasiness) not English? What lay at the back of her apparently severe prostration? Grief? Shock? Fear? Why did the Lampreys, incredibly garrulous on all other topics, close down on the subject of their aunt? It was not his habit to speculate on the characters of people whom he was about to interview, and he checked himself. Time enough for him to form an idea of Lady Wutherwood when he met her.
The far door opened. Stephen Lamprey came in, followed by a tall man in a dark grey chauffeur’s uniform.
“This is G-Giggle,” said Stephen.
Evidently Giggle was nervous. He stood to attention and kept closing and unclosing his mechanic’s hands. He sweated lightly and was inclined to show the whites of his eyes. He had a large palish face and bleached eyebrows that met in a thicket over his snub nose. He eyed Alleyn with an air half-mulish, half-apprehensive, but gave his answers crisply enough, thinking for a moment, and then speaking without hesitation. Alleyn began by asking him if he knew what had happened to Lord Wutherwood. With an uneasy look at Lord Charles, Giggle said Mr. Baskett had told him his lordship had met with a fatal accident.
“We are afraid,” said Alleyn, “that it was not an accident.”
“No, sir?”
“No. It looks very much as though there has been foul play. You will understand that the police want to know the whereabouts of everyone in the flat from the time Lord Wutherwood was last seen, uninjured and apparently unthreatened, until the moment when the injury was discovered.”
He stopped and Giggle said doubtfully: “Yes, sir.”