“…and I’m so terrified,” she was saying, “that this really will throw her completely off her balance although, to be quite honest, we all thought she was very alarming when she arrived this afternoon.”

“In what way?”

“Well, quite often she didn’t answer when you spoke to her and then when she did speak it was all about this wretched supernatural nonsense, unseen forces, and all the rest of it. The oddest part about it was—”

“Yes?” asked Alleyn, as she hesitated.

“Perhaps I shouldn’t tell you this.”

“We shall be grateful if you will tell us anything that occurs to you. I think,” Alleyn added without emphasis, “that I can promise you we shall not lose our sense of proportion.”

She glanced at Fox who was placidly contemplating his notes.

“I’m sure you won’t,” she said. “It’s only that I’m afraid of losing mine. It’s just that it seems so strange, now, to remember what Violet said to me.”

“What was that?”

“It was when we were in my bedroom. Gabriel had been rather acid about Violet’s black magic, or whatever it is, and apparently she rather hated him sort of sneering at her. She sat on my bed and stared at the opposite wall until really I could have shaken her, she looked so gloomy and odd, and then suddenly she said in a very bogus voice (only somehow it wasn’t quite bogus, do you know): ‘Gabriel is in jeopardy.’ It was so melodramatic that it made one feel quite shy. She went on again, very fast, about somebody who foretold the future and had said that Gabriel’s sands were running out at a great rate. I supposed she must go in for a little fortune-telling or something, as a kind of relaxation from witchcraft. It all sounds too silly and second-rate but she herself was so wildly incoherent that I honestly did think she had gone completely dotty.”

Lady Charles paused and looked up at Alleyn. He had not returned to his chair but stood with his hands in the pockets of his jacket, listening. Perhaps she read in his face something that she had not expected to see there—a hint of compassion or of regret. Her whole attitude changed. She broke into a storm of words.

“Why do you look like that,” Lady Charles cried out. “You ought to be an effigy of a man. Don’t look as if you were sorry for somebody. I…” She stopped as abruptly as she had begun, beat twice with her closed hands on the wooden arms of her chair, and then leant towards him. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I’m afraid you are quite right about people’s nerves. Mr. Alleyn, it’s no use for me to beat about the bush, with you looking on at my antics. I’m not a clever or a deliberate woman. My tongue moves faster than my brain and already I am in a fair way to making a fool of myself. I think perhaps I shall do better if I’m terribly frank.”