“That’s an honest speech,” said Alleyn unexpectedly. Henry looked up, quickly. “I think she’s mad, too,” Alleyn said, “but like you I don’t know if she killed her husband. I wonder if we hesitate for the same reason. It seems strange to me that a woman who murdered her husband should demand his body.”

“I know,” said Henry quickly, “but if she’s mad—”

“There’s always that, of course. But to me it doesn’t quite fit. Nor to you, I think?”

“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?”