“I think so, too,” Alleyn said.

“Yes. I’m sure you have guessed my view of this awful business. Everything that I have told you is quite true. I do exaggerate sometimes, I know, but not over important things, and I haven’t exaggerated or over-stressed anything that I have told you about Violet Wutherwood. I think she is quite mad. And I believe she killed her husband.”

The point of Fox’s pencil broke with a sharp snap. He looked resignedly at it and took another from his pocket.

“You will think,” said Lady Charles, “that I am working for my husband and my children. I know Aunt Kit told you we were practically sunk and had asked Gabriel for money. I know that will look like a pretty strong motive. I know the twins have behaved idiotically. I don’t even expect you to believe me when I tell you that it’s always been their way, when one of them is in trouble, for both to stand the racket. I realized that all these things must make you a bit wary of anything I say and I can’t expect you to be very impressed when I tell you I know, as surely as I breathe, that none of my children could, under circumstances a thousand times worse than ours, hurt any living creature. But if they were not my children, if I’d only been a looker on, like Robin Grey, only less interested, less of a partisan than Robin, I would still be certain that Gabriel was killed by his wife.”

“It’s a perfectly tenable theory,” said Alleyn, “at present. Can you give me anything more than her condition and her conversation in the bedroom? Motive?”

“They had been at daggers drawn for years. Once or twice they have separated. Not legally. Gabriel would never have considered a divorce, I’m sure. He wouldn’t like the idea of displaying his failure; he would never admit that anything he did was a mistake. And I don’t suppose Violet has ever been normal enough to think of getting rid of him. She seemed to have merely settled down to hating him. And even if she had ever thought of it I don’t suppose she’d altogether fancy the idea. I mean there are certain amenities—Deepacres and the London house and all the rest of it. She could have divorced him, of course. He had a series of rather squalid little affairs that everybody knew about and nobody mentioned. They’d loathed each other for years, in a dreary sort of way, but this afternoon there was something quite different. I mean Violet seemed to be actively venomous. It was as if she had poured all her dislikes of other people or things into one enormous hatred of Gabriel. That’s how it was, exactly.”

“I see. When do you think she could have done it?”

“I’ve been thinking it out. You see, she left Aunt Kit and me in the bedroom round about the first time Gabriel yelled for her. She didn’t come back until after the second time he yelled, and then we both went along to the landing and I went into the drawing-room. There was no one else on the landing or in the hall.”