“We won’t,” said Alleyn. “To continue. Michael left Giggle and took the parcel into the dining-room. The coast was clear for Tinkerton. We think she may have crossed the landing and got Giggle to come out there. She probably told him then of the quarrel. I fancy Tinkerton, like Lady Macbeth, was the brains of the party, and I may add that a casual conversation with a Shakespearian P.C. first gave me this idea. Sometime between Michael’s departure to the dining-room and Lady Charles’s return from Flat 26 the thing was concocted. Either a tentative plot was interrupted by Lord Wutherwood coming out and getting into the lift, or the whole thing took shape in Tinkerton’s fertile brain after he was there. Here was their opportunity. He was alone and he had quarrelled violently with his brother who had audibly wished him dead. They made themselves scarce while Baskett put Lord Wutherwood into his coat. As soon as Basket had gone, out they came. Giggle got his instructions. He was to go to the deserted landing below, summon the lift with Lord Wutherwood inside it, kill him, and go on downstairs. Tinkerton would recall the lift and as soon as she had touched the button hurry down after Giggle leaving all of you upstairs with a very healthy motive. All went according to plan, except that neither of them knew that injuries to the brain are not always instantly fatal. As soon as Lord Wutherwood entered the lift she gave Giggle the skewer and gloves, sent him along to get Michael as his witness, took to her old hidy-hole until Giggle had gone, and then returned to the landing. She would see the lift go down and stop at the lower landing. She would hear the doors open. Possibly she would hear another more ominous sound. She would hear the doors close again. That was her cue. She pressed the button and followed Giggle downstairs. The lift returned to the top floor and Tinkerton, having summoned it, passed it on her way down. The commissionaire saw them go out to the car, one after another, just as they said. If it seemed impossible for Giggle to have killed him then it must seem equally impossible for Tinkerton to do so since she was on Giggle’s heels. Michael provided the upstairs alibi. The pause on the second floor was sandwiched neatly between their two appearances.”

“They took frightful risks, sir.”

“They took one big risk. I think Giggle left the doors open while he attacked Lord Wutherwood. Tinkerton, in that case, would be quite safe, if she kept her thumb on the call button up above. That would prevent anybody summoning the lift to the ground floor and it would return to the top floor the moment Giggle left it and closed the doors behind him. The great risk was that somebody would come out on the landing and notice that the lift was not there, or catch it on its return, or even see it returning. In that case the job would have been up to Tinkerton. If somebody appeared as the lift was going down, she would have had to keep her thumb on the button and no sooner did it stop than it would return, with Lord Wutherwood angrily alive inside it. If somebody appeared during the few seconds after the attack but before the lift returned, and before Tinkerton got away, she would have had to distract the newcomer’s attention. Ask if she might fetch Lady Wutherwood. Faint, like Lady Macbeth. Slam the hall door on her own finger. Anything to draw attention away from the lift. That was their difficult moment, but it only lasted a few seconds, and remember that Tinkerton knew pretty well what you were all doing. She wouldn’t have been implicated but Giggle would. Giggle was the mug.”