‘Yes. Now look here, Miss Harris, we’re coming to something rather important. You tell me you went up to the top landing between, say, a quarter to one and one-fifteen. Do you think you were up there all that time?’

‘Yes, Mr Alleyn, I think I was.’

‘Whereabouts were you?’

Miss Harris turned purple with the rapidity of a pantomime fairy under a coloured spotlight.

‘Well, I mean to say, I sat on the gallery, I went into the ladies’ cloakroom on the landing to tidy and see if everything was quite nice, and then I sat on the gallery again and—I mean I was just about.’

‘You were on the gallery at one o’clock, you think?’

‘I—really I’m not sure if I—’

‘Let’s see if we can get at it this way. Did you go into the cloakroom immediately after you got to the landing?’

‘Yes. Yes, I did.’

‘How long were you in the cloakroom?’

‘Only a few minutes.’

‘So you were back on the gallery again well before one.’

‘Yes,’ said Miss Harris without enthusiasm, ‘but—’

‘At about the time I am trying to get at, Captain Withers and Mr Donald Potter were on the gallery, from where they moved into the sitting-room on that landing. Sir Herbert Carrados was in and out of the sitting-room and you may have heard him order the servant on duty up there to attend to the ash-trays and matches. Do you remember this?’

‘No. Not exactly. I think I remember seeing Captain Withers and Mr Potter through the sitting-room door as I passed to go downstairs. The larger sitting-room—not the one with the telephone. Lord Robert was in the telephone-room.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘I—heard him.’

‘From the cloakroom?’

‘The—I mean—’

‘The room between the cloakroom and the telephone-room, perhaps,’ said Alleyn, mentally cursing the extreme modesty of Miss Harris.

‘Yes,’ said Miss Harris looking straight in front of her. Her discomfiture was so evident that Alleyn himself almost began to feel shy.

‘Please don’t mind if I ask for very exact information,’ he said. ‘Policemen are rather like doctors in these instances. Things don’t count. When did you go into this ladies’ room?’

‘As soon as I got upstairs,’ said Miss Harris. ‘Hem!’

‘Right. Now let’s see if we can get things straight, shall we? You came upstairs at, say, about ten or fifteen minutes to one. You went straight to this door next the green sitting-room with the telephone. Did you see anyone?’

‘Captain Withers was just coming out of the green sitting-room. I think there was a lady in there. I saw her through the open door as I—as I opened the other.’

‘Yes. Anyone else?’

‘I think I noticed Sir Herbert in the other sitting-room, the first one, as I passed the door. That’s all.’

‘And then you went into the ladies’ room?’