“It will be much less muddling if you do, Mr. Alleyn.”

“It will, won’t it? Did you hear this call?”

“Oh, yes. Gabriel, my brother-in-law, always shouted like that for people.”

“Where were you, please?”

“In my bedroom.”

Alleyn glanced at his note-book.

“I’ve made a very rough sketch plan of both flats,” he said. “Your room is the second from the lift end of No. 26?”

“Yes.”

“Were you alone?”

“When he shouted? No. My sister-in-law and—Good heavens, Charlie, for pity’s sake—”

“Yes, Immy, I know. Aunt Kit hasn’t got home yet.”

“Not got home? But honestly, darling, it’s too queer of Aunt Kit. We don’t even know when she left. Why did she vanish like that, do you suppose?”

“I expect she just slipped away,” said Henry.

“She probably thought she’d said good-bye,” said Frid. “You know how absent-minded she is.”

“I expect she did say good-bye, Mummy,” said Patch, “and you didn’t hear her. She talks in a whisper, Mr. Alleyn.”

“What nonsense!” exclaimed Lady Charles. “Of course I would know she was saying good-bye. For one thing she’d kiss me.”

“You might have thought she was just being effusive.” said Frid.

“She’s always kissing people,” agreed Patch.

“Well, she didn’t suddenly kiss me in the bedroom out of a clear sky,” said Lady Charles positively. “Don’t be absurd, Patch.”

“Lady Katherine was in your bedroom with Lady Wutherwood then,” Alleyn interposed adroitly, “when you heard the first call?”

“Yes, she was, and perfectly normal. She didn’t hear Gabriel, of course, because she’s deaf, but Violet did. Violet is my sister-in-law. Lady Wutherwood, you know.”

“Yes. What did they do?”

“Violet said she’d better not keep Gabriel waiting. She said she would like to go into the bathroom, so I told her about the one at the end of the passage.”

Lady Charles, who was sitting next to Alleyn, leant over and looked at his note-book. “Is that your plan?” she said. “Let me see.”

“Immy, my dear!” protested her husband.

“Well, Charlie, I’m not going to read any of Mr. Alleyn’s notes and he’d snatch it away from me if there was anything secret in the drawing. There, it’s as clear as daylight. That’s the bathroom, Mr. Alleyn. I told her where it was and off she went. And then Aunt Kit began to whisper—you know how that generation does—only even more so because, as Patch says, she whispers anyway. So she went off to the other place which I see you’ve also got marked very neatly, and now I think of it that’s the last I saw her.”

“It’s as clear as glass,” Frid interrupted. “She probably whispered: ‘I’ll have to go, Bless you, my dear,’ and you thought she said: ‘Lavatory. I’ll just disappear.—’ ”

“Anyone would think it was I who was deaf instead of Aunt Kit! She didn’t say anything of the sort. She went down the passage in that direction.”

“Well, perhaps she’s locked in,” suggested Frid. “It happened to her once before, Mr. Alleyn, in a railway station, and nobody heard her whispering.”