“Has Dr. Kantripp come back?” he asked her.

“Yes. He’s seeing my sister-in-law now. The nurse says she’s a good deal better. So that’s splendid, isn’t it?”

“Splendid. We can’t go very much further without Lady Wutherwood. I think, as you have kindly suggested, Lady Charles, the best plan will be for us to use the dining-room for a sort of office. I shall ask the police-constable on duty on the landing to come in here. Fox and I will go to the dining-room and as soon as we have sorted out our notes I shall ask you to come in separately.”

Fox went out into the hall. “What’s the time?” asked Henry suddenly.

Alleyn looked at his watch. “It’s twenty past ten.”

“Good God!” Lord Charles ejaculated. “I would have said it was long past midnight.”

“I think we ought to ring up Aunt Kit again, Charlie,” murmured Lady Charles.

“I think we ought to ring up Nigel Bathgate,” said Frid. “Bathgate!” cried Alleyn, jerked to attention by this recurrence of his friend’s name. “Bathgate? But why?”

“He’s a friend of yours, isn’t he, Mr. Alleyn? So he is of ours. As he’s a press-man I thought it would be nice,” said Frid, “to let him in at the death.”

“Frid, darling!” her mother expostulated.

“Well, Mummy darling, it is just that. Shall I ring Nigel up, Mr. Alleyn?”

Alleyn stared at her. “It’s not a matter for us to decide, you know,” he said at last. “He might serve to keep his fellow scavengers at bay. I may say that you will be creating a precedent if—if you actually invite a press-man to your house when…” His voice petered out. He drove his fingers through his hair.

“Yes, I know,” said Lady Charles with an air of sympathy. “We no doubt seem a very unbalanced family, poor Mr. Alleyn, but you will find that there is generally a sort of method in our madness. After all, as Frid points out, it would be a help to Nigel Bathgate who works desperately hard at his odious job and, as you point out, it may save us from masses of avid, red-faced reporters asking us difficult questions about Gabriel and poor Violet. Ring him up, Frid.”

Frid went to the telephone and a uniformed constable came in from the hall and stood inside the door. With the mental sensations usually associated with the gesture of throwing up one’s hands and casting one’s eyes towards heaven, Alleyn joined Fox in the hall. He drew Fox onto the landing and shut the door behind them.

“And what the hell,” he asked, “have you been telling that collection of certifiable grotesques about me?”

“About you, Mr. Alleyn? Me?”

“Yes, you. Sitting there, with them clustered round your great fat knees as if it were a bed-time story. Who do you think you are? Oie-Luk-Oie the Dream God, or what?”

“Well, sir,” said Fox placidly, “they asked me such awkward questions about this case that one way and the other I was quite glad to switch off onto some of the old ones. I said nothing but what was to your credit. They think you’re wonderful.”