“We had an example of that,” Alleyn agreed, “in the present stand made by the twins.”

Roberta caught her breath and looked at him. His eyes, with their turned-down corners, seemed to express only sympathetic amusement, as though he invited her to laugh a little with him at the twins.

“But they have always been like that,” cried Roberta. “Even at Deepacres when Colin took the big car…” and she was off again, all her anecdotes of the Lampreys tending to show their devotion to each other. Alleyn listened as though everything Roberta said amused and interested him, and she had ridden her hobby-horse down a long road before she stopped suddenly, feeling herself blush with embarrassment.

“I’m sorry,” she stammered, “I’m talking too much.”

“Indeed you’re not. You’re giving me a delightful picture. But I suppose we must get down to hard facts. I just want to check your own movements. You were in here from the time Lord Charles had his interview with his brother right up to the discovery of the accident. That right?”

“Yes.” Roberta had sorted this out carefully and gave him a clear account of her talk with Michael and her final move to the landing.

“That’s grand,” said Alleyn. “Crisp and plain. There are two points I want to check very carefully…The times when Lord Wutherwood shouted. You tell me that when he first called you were all in here.”

“Yes. Including Mike. He had just come in. But the others went out a second or two after he called out.”

“And the second time?”

“Mike went away with Giggle. A very short time after that Lord Wutherwood called out the second time.”

“You’re quite certain?”

“Yes, quite. Because it was so quiet in the room when they had gone. I remember that, after he had called again, I heard the sound of the lift. Then I heard some one call out in the street below and the voices next door in the drawing-room. It’s all very clear. I heard the lift again just as I took a cigarette out of that box. After that, I remember I walked about hunting for matches. I’d just lit my cigarette and was leaning out over the window sill looking at London when I heard her—Lady Wutherwood. It was awful, that screaming.”

“I want you to go through that again if you will.”

Roberta went through it again and, greatly to her astonishment, again. Alleyn read over his notes to her and she agreed that they were correct and signed them. He was silent for a moment and then returned to the subject of the family.

“Do you find them much changed now you have seen them again?” he asked.

“Not really. At first they seemed rather fashionable and grown-up but that was only for a little while. They are just the same.”

“They haven’t grown up as far as their pockets are concerned,” Alleyn said lightly. But Roberta was ready for this and said that the Lampreys didn’t worry about money, that it meant nothing to them. With a sensation of peril she carried her theme a little further. They would never, she said, do anything desperate to get money.