“What gloves?” Henry’s voice sounded blank.

“A pair of heavy driving gloves with stiff gauntlets.”

“Lined with rather disgusting fur?”

“Fur-lined, yes.”

“Sound like mine,” said Henry. “Where are they?”

“I’ll return them to you. My colleague took them into the flat.”

“Where did you find them?”

“In the lift,” said Alleyn.

“But I wasn’t in the lift.”

“No?”

“No. I expect…” Henry stopped short.

“Yes?”

“Nothing. I can’t imagine how they got there. You needn’t return them, sir. I don’t really think I want them any more.”

“I don’t think you would,” agreed Alleyn, “if you saw them.”

Henry’s face shone like ivory on that dimly lit landing. His eyes were like black coals under the cold whiteness of his forehead.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“They are stained.”

“Stained? With what?”

“It looks like blood.”

Henry turned on his heel and went blindly into the flat. Fox returned with Bailey.

“I want to go all over the inside of the lift, Bailey,” said Alleyn. “Try the stops and the doorknobs—everything. Get Thompson to take a close-up shot of the seat and wall.”

“Very good, sir.”

“And, Fox, we’ll go over your notes and then I think I’d better see the family.”

The twins stood side-by-side on the hearthrug. The lamplight glinted on their blonde heads. They wore grey flannel suits and dark green pull-overs that their mother had knitted for them. Their hands were in their pockets; their heads were tilted slightly to one side. Their faces were screwed into an expression of apologetic attentiveness. From her stool by the fire Roberta watched them and felt a cold pang of alarm. For behind the twins Roberta saw not the coal fire of a London grate but the sweetly aromatic logs that burnt in the drawing-room at Deepacres in New Zealand. And with the sharpest emphasis of memory she heard each twin confess that he had taken out the forbidden big car, and had driven it through a water-race into a bank. She saw herself sitting mum, knowing all the time that it was Stephen who had taken the car while Colin was indoors. She heard herself asking Colin privately why he had made this Quixotic gesture and she again heard his answer. “It’s a kind of arrangement we have!” “Always?” she had asked him, and Colin, rumpling up his fair hair, had answered, “Oh, no. Only when there’s a really major row.” “A twinny sort of arrangement.” Roberta had said, and Colin had agreed. “Yes, that’s the idea. As between twins.” So insistent was this memory that the past was clearer for a moment than the present and she was unaware of the voices in the drawing-room. Her mind seemed to change gear and she found herself thinking of the Lampreys as strangers. “I don’t know what they are like,” thought Roberta in her cold panic. “I have no knowledge of their reality. I have fitted their words and actions into my own idea of them but my idea may be quite wrong.” And she began to wonder confusedly if anybody had a complete secret reality or if each layer of thought merely represented the level of someone else’s idea of the thinker. “This won’t do,” thought Roberta. “Stop!” Her mind changed gear again and Lord Charles’s voice came back, familiar, gentle, a voice she knew and loved.