“I think so,” Alleyn said. “We can arrange for Lady Wutherwood to go to her own house. We shall have to send some one along to be on duty there, but that can easily be done. I can spare a man from here.”

“I’m extraordinarily relieved.”

“About somebody else going—who do you suggest?”

“Well…” Lord Charles passed his hand over the back of his head. “Well, Robin Grey—Roberta Grey, you know—has very nicely offered to go.”

“Rather a youthful guardian,” said Alleyn with a lift of his eyebrow.

“Ah—yes. Yes, but she’s a most resourceful and composed little person and says she doesn’t mind. My wife suggests that Nanny might go to keep her company. I mean she will be perfectly all right. Two trained nurses and Tinkerton, who for all her fright insists that she can carry on as usual and says Violet will be quite quiet when she has had this medicine of hers. You see Frid, my eldest girl, may be a bit shaken, and of course Patch—Patricia—is too young. And we feel it ought to be a woman—I mean just for the look of things. You see, the nurse says that without some one besides Tinkerton she feels she can’t take the responsibility until the second nurse comes. So we thought that if Robin—I mean, of course, with your approval.”

Alleyn remembered a steadfast face, heart-shaped and colourless, with wide-set eyes of grey. His own phrase “a courageous little liar” recurred to him. But it was no business of his who the Lampreys sent to keep up the look of things in Brummell Street. Better perhaps that it should be the small New Zealander who surely did not come into this tragicomedy except in the dim role of confidante and wholehearted admirer of the family. With a remote feeling of uneasiness Alleyn agreed that Miss Grey and Nanny Burnaby should go in a taxi to Brummell Street; that Lady Wutherwood, Tinkerton, and the nurses, should be driven there by Giggle with Gibson as police escort. Lord Charles hurried away to organize these manoeuvres. Nigel, with a dubious look at Alleyn, murmured something about returning in a minute or two and slipped out after Lord Charles. Alleyn, left alone, walked restlessly about the dining-room. When Fox returned Alleyn instantly thrust the notes of Lord Charles’s statement at him.

“Look at that,” he said, “or rather don’t. I’ll tell you. He said that when they got to the far end of the drawing-room his brother promised in a mumble to help him. He said that none of his precious brood could have heard it. He was in a fix. He didn’t know what they’d told me. I tripped him, Br’er Fox.”

“Nicely,” said Fox, thumbing over the notes.

“Yes, but, damn him, it still might be true. They may have lied but he may have spoken the truth. I’ll swear he didn’t, though.”

“I know he didn’t,” said Fox.

“Do you, by George?”

“Yes, sir. I’ve been talking to the parlour-maid.”