“I understand, my lord. I must thank you for your courtesy and apologize again for causing you so much pain. There are only one or two other points. Did you touch your brother?”

“No!” said Lord Charles violently. “No! No! They carried him out and took him to my room. That is all.”

“And you did not see him again until you came into his room while I was there?”

“I took Dr. Kantripp to the room and waited with him. The children’s old nurse was there. She helped the doctor until the trained nurse arrived.”

“I take it that Dr. Kantripp—” Fox paused for a moment—”the doctor did everything that was necessary? I mean, my lord, that the injury was unattended until he came?”

Lord Charles made an effort to speak, failed to do so, and nodded his head. At last he managed to say: “We thought it better not to—not to try to—we didn’t know whether it might prove fatal to—”

“To remove anything? Quite so.”

“Is that all?”

“I shan’t trouble you much further, my lord, but I should like to ask if you know whether his lordship had any enemies.”

“Enemies! That’s an extravagant sort of way to put it.”

“It’s the way we generally put it, my lord. I daresay it does sound rather exaggerated but you see the motive for this sort of crime is usually something a bit stronger than dislike.”

To this bland rejoinder Lord Charles found nothing to say.

“Of course,” Fox continued, “the term enemies is used rather broadly, my lord. I might put it another way and ask if you know of anyone who had good reason to wish for Lord Wutherwood’s death.”

Lord Charles answered this question instantly with a little spurt of words that sounded oddly mechanical.

“If you mean, do I know of anyone who would benefit by his death,” he said, “I suppose you may say that his heirs will do so. I am his heir.”

“Well, yes, my lord. I know Lord Wutherwood had no son.”

“Do you, by God!” said Lord Charles. The exclamation was completely out of key with the level courtesy of his earlier rejoinders but Fox took it in his stride.

“I have heard that is the case,” he said. “I understand that two of his lordship’s servants were here. It’s not very nice,” continued Fox with an air of one who apologizes for a slight error in taste, “to have to think of people in this light, but—”

“Murder,” said Lord Charles, “is not very nice either. You are quite right, Mr. Fox. My brother’s chauffeur and my sister-in-law’s maid were both there.”

“Might I trouble you for their names, my lord?”

“Tinkerton and Giggle.”

“Giggle, my lord?”

“Yes. That’s the chauffeur.”

“Quite an unusual name,” said Fox, placidly busy with his notes. “Have they been long with his lordship?”

“I believe that Tinkerton was with my sister-in-law before she married and that’s twenty-five years ago. Giggle began at Deepacres as an odd boy and under-chauffeur. His father was coachman to my father.”