“Patch,” said Charlot, “has Mr. Alleyn finished with you?”

“Yes, Mummy.”

“Then go to bed, darling. I’ll come and say good night if I can. But don’t stay awake for me. Run along.”

Patch wandered to the door where she turned. “He hardly asked me anything,” she said. “Only what we were all doing in the dining-room when—”

“Pas pour le jeune homme,” said Frid warningly.

Patch made a rapid grimace at the constable’s chair and opened the door.

“Here, wait a minute,” cried Frid in alarm. But she was too late: Patch had gone.

“Look here,” said Frid to the constable, “can I go after her? I want to ask her something.”

“I’m afraid you can’t, Miss. I can ask the young lady to come back, if it’s any use,” offered the constable, who had risen to his feet.

“I don’t think it is,” said Frid gloomily. “Her French isn’t up to it.” She wandered in a desultory manner round the room.

Lord Charles came in from the hall and went to the fireplace. He leant his arms on the mantelpiece and his head on his arms.

“Well, old man,” said Charlot.

“Well, Immy,” he said without changing his position, “they’ve taken him away. You didn’t know him when he was a young man, did you?”

“No.”

“No. When we were boys we were good friends. It seems a queer thing for him to go away like this.”

“Yes,” said Charlot, “I expect it does.”

He went and sat beside her.

“Well,” said Henry, “what happens now?”

“Examination of witnesses continues, I trust,” said Frid. “Who do you say he’ll ask for next? I’m longing for my turn.”

“Frid, my dear,” said her father, “don’t.”

“Don’t what, Daddy?”

“Don’t be so quite so whatever it is you are being. We’re all rather tired. Immy, ought I to ask if I may see Violet?”

“I don’t think so, darling. Dr. Kantripp says she seems to be much quieter and more sensible. No doubt she’ll—”

The drawing-room door opened slowly. The young constable scrambled to his feet, followed, one after another, by the Lampreys. Framed in the doorway, supported on one hand by a uniformed nurse and on the other by her maid, stood the Dowager Lady Wutherwood.

Roberta had been given a good many frights that evening and perhaps her resistance to shock had been weakened. There is no doubt that the appearance of Lady Wutherwood in the drawing-room doorway struck terror to her heart. It was as if some malicious stage-manager had planned this entrance along the best traditions of Victorian melodrama. By some chance of lighting, the colour of the green-painted doorjamb was reflected in Lady Wutherwood’s face. Her chin was lowered and her cavernously set eyes were in shadow while her mouth, which was wet but which still retained a trace of rouge, caught the light and glittered. The coils of dyed hair had become loosened and hung forward. Perhaps she had thrust Tinkerton aside, for her dress was ill-fastened and much in disarray. She seemed to have no bones. Even her hands showed no clear highlights on fingers and wrists, but hung puffily among the folds of her dress. Propped up by the nurse and maid, her posture was so odd that it suggested to Roberta a horrid notion. She thought Lady Wutherwood looked for all the world as though she dangled by the neck like some ill-managed puppet. Her lips moved and so still was the room that Roberta heard that clicking sound as Lady Wutherwood arranged her mouth for speaking; but when she did speak it was in an unremarkable voice, a voice that held no overtones of tragedy or horror.