“To me,” said Henry impatiently, “nothing fits. The whole thing’s a nightmare. I know none of us did it and that’s all I do know. I can’t think either of their servants are murderers. Giggle’s been with them since he was a kid. He’s a mild, stupid man and plays trains with Mike. Tinkerton is objectionable on the general grounds that she’s got a face like a dead flounder and smells of hair combings. Perhaps she killed him.”
“We’d get on a good deal faster, of course,” Alleyn murmured, “if everybody spoke the flat truth.”
“Really? Don’t you think we’re telling the truth?”
“Hardly any of you except your brother Michael. Of course we have to be polite and make sympathetic, gullible noises but when all’s said and done it’s little but a hollow mockery. You’ll give yourselves away in time, and that’s the best we can hope for.”
“Do you often talk like this to your suspects? It seems very un-Yardlike to me,” said Henry lightly.
“We vary our tune a bit. Why didn’t you go straight to the drawing-room with your brothers?”
Henry jumped, seemed to pull himself together, and said: “I didn’t at first see what you meant. Hustling tactics, I perceive. I went to the hall door to see if they’d gone.”
“Anybody in the hall?” Henry shook his head. “Or the landing?”
“No.”
“Or the passage?”
“No.”
“How long were you about it?”
“Not long enough to find a meat skewer and kill my uncle.”
“Where was the meat skewer?”
“I don’t know,” said Henry. “We had it in our charade. I suppose it was either in—”
“Yes?”
“It must have been in the hall with all the other stuff.”
“You were going to say in the drawing-room or in the hall?”
“Was I?” said Henry.
“Well,” said Alleyn amiably, “I’m only asking. Were you?”
“Yes, but I stopped because I realized it couldn’t have been in the drawing-room. If any one had taken it from there we should have seen them.”
“I see by my notes,” said Alleyn, “that Lord Charles was alone in the drawing-room for some time.”
“Then,” said Henry stolidly, “he would have seen anybody who came in and took the skewer.”
“Did you happen to look at the hall table on this visit?”
“Yes, I did. I looked to see if his hat and coat were gone. Of course they were. He was in the lift, I suppose, by then.”
Alleyn clasped his hands together on the table and seemed to contemplate them. Then he raised his head and looked at Henry. “Can you remember seeing anything on the table?”
“I remember very well that there was nothing on it but a vase of flowers.”
“Nothing? You are positive?”
“Quite. I remember the look of the table very clearly. It reflected the light from the window. Some one must have given the vase a knock because there was some water lying on the table. It’s rather a favourite of my father’s and I remember thinking that the water ought to be mopped up. I gave it a wipe with my handkerchief, but it wasn’t very successful. I didn’t do anything more about it. I was afraid that Aunt V. might come out of cover and I’d had a bellyful of Aunt V. I went into the drawing-room. But there was nothing on the table.”
“Would you swear to that? I mean, take a legal oath?”
“Yes,” said Henry, “I would.”
“What did you talk about when you went into the drawing-room?”
For the first time during the interview Henry seemed to be disconcerted. His eyes went blank. He repeated: “Talk about?” on a note that held an overtone of helplessness.
“Yes. What did you say to your father and your brothers or they to you?”
“I don’t remember. I — oh, yes, I asked if the Gabriels had gone.”
“Anything else?”
“No. I don’t think anybody said anything.”
“And yet,” said Alleyn, “you must have all been feeling most elated.”
“We — yes. Yes, of course, we were.”
“Everything all right again. Lord Wutherwood had promised to see you out of the wood. Crisis averted.”
“Yes. Oh, rather. It was wonderful,” said Henry.
“And yet you all sat there saying nothing except to ask if the benefactor was out of the way. Your younger sister tells me that she and Lady Friede, who went into Flat 26 at this stage of the proceedings, also had nothing to say. A curious reaction.”
“Perhaps our hearts,” said Henry, recovering his poise, “were too full for words.”
“Perhaps they were,” said Alleyn. “I think that’s all. Thank you so much.”
Looking rather startled, Henry got up and moved to the door. Here he paused and after a moment’s hesitation returned to Alleyn.
“We didn’t do it, sir,” he said. “Honestly. None of us. We are not at all a homicidal family.”
“I’m glad of that,” said Alleyn tranquilly.
Henry stared at him and then shrugged his shoulders. “Not an impressive effort on my part, I see,” he said.
“Have you been honest with us?”
Henry didn’t answer. His face was quite colourless. “Well, good night,” he said and, on some obscure impulse, held out his hand.
Fox had not returned. Alleyn looked at his watch. Almost midnight. They’d done not so badly in four hours. He added another column to a tabulated record of everybody’s movements from the time of Lord Wutherwood’s first yell up to the return of the lift. P. C. Gibson, at the door, coughed.
“All right,” said Alleyn without looking up. “We’ll get going again in a moment. Been following the statements?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And what do you think about it?” asked Alleyn, scowling at his notes.
“Well, sir, I seem to think there’s a good deal in the old lady myself.”
“Yes, Gibson, and so will everybody else. But why, why, why does she want the body? Can you tell me that, Gibson?”
“Because she’s mad, sir?” Gibson ventured.
“It won’t cover everything. She screamed the roof off when the injury was discovered. She wouldn’t go and see him when he was dying. If she killed him why, mad or sane, should she want to take him home? The funeral could have been arranged to leave from the house with all the trappings and the suits of woe, if that’s what she’s after. It may be, and yet — and yet — it doesn’t seem to me like the inconsistency of a homicidal lunatic, but lord knows I’m no alienist. I don’t think I’ve got the dowager right, somehow, and that’s a fact. All right, Gibson. My compliments to his lordship and I’d be glad if he’d see me. The others may go to bed, of course.”
“Yes, sir. Martin asked me to mention, sir, that Mr. Bathgate has arrived and is with the family. He’s been asking if he could see you.”
“So they did ring him up,” Alleyn muttered. “Incredible! I’d better see him now, Gibson, before you give the message to Lord Charles.”
“Very good, sir.”
Nigel lost no time in making his appearance. Alleyn heard him hurrying along the passage and in a moment he burst into the dining-room.
“Look here, Alleyn,” Nigel cried, “I’ve got to talk to you.”
“Talk away,” said Alleyn, “but not at the top of your voice and not, if you’ve any mercy, at great length. I’m on duty.”
“I can’t help it if…” Nigel broke off and looked at Gibson. “It’s — I’d like to see you alone.”
Alleyn nodded good-humouredly at Gibson, who went out.
“Now what is it?” Alleyn asked. “Have you come to tell me I mustn’t speak to your friends as if there’s been a murder in their flat?”
“I’ve come to tell you it’s utterly out of the question that any of them should be implicated. I’ve come to save them, if possible, from opening their mouths and putting their feet in them. See here, Alleyn, I’ve known the Lampreys all my life. Known them well. They’re as mad as May flies but there’s not a vicious impulse in the make-up of a single one of them. Oh hell, I’m not going about this in the right way! I got such a damned jolt when they told me what was up that I’m all anyhow. Let me explain the Lampreys.”