“Here!” said Fox. “Do you understand French?”

“Yes, Mr. Fox. I lived at Concarneau until I was fifteen. I didn’t know, Mr. Alleyn, what the ruling was about listening-in under those circumstances. I don’t remember anything in the regulations as to whether it could be put in as evidence. Seeing they didn’t know.”

“We’ll look it up,” said Alleyn drily.

“Yes, sir. Will you see the Dowager Lady Wutherwood, sir?”

“Give me your notes,” said Alleyn, “and three minutes to look at them. Then bring her along. Wait a second. Did they say anything of importance?”

“They argued a good deal, sir. Principally about the two younger gentlemen. The twins. His lordship and Lady Friede wanted them to come clean. Her ladyship seemed to be frightened and rather in favour of nobody knowing which twin went down in the lift. Lord Henry was non-committal. They spoke principally about the motive against themselves, sir. I gather that Lord Charles—Lord Wutherwood—”

“Stick to Lord Charles,” said Fox irritably. “The whole thing’s lousy with lords and ladies. I beg your pardon, Mr. Alleyn.”

“Not a bit, Br’er Fox. Well, Martin?”

“It seems he’s in debt for about two thousand, sir. Pressing, I mean. He asked Lord Wutherwood to lend him two thousand and he refused.”

“Yes, I see.” Alleyn had been looking at the notes. “Well done, Martin. Now go and tell Lady Wutherwood that I shall be very pleased and grateful and all the rest of it, if she’ll be good enough to come in here. Then return to your shorthand. What’s your impression of Lady Wutherwood?”

“Well, sir, she looks very peculiar to me. Either she’s out of her mind, sir, or else she’d like everybody to think she was. That’s how she struck me, sir.”

“Indeed? Well, off you go, Martin.”

The red-headed constable went out and Fox stared at Alleyn. “We get some unexpected chaps in the force these days,” he said. “In your time, sir, you were a bit of a rarity. Now they go round splitting foreign tongues all over the place. Did you know he spoke French?”

“I did, as it happened, Br’er Fox.”

“I must get him to try some on me,” said Fox with his air of simplicity. “I don’t get on as fast as I’d like.”

“You’re getting on very nicely. Here she comes. Or rather, I fancy, here they come. I think I hear the voices of the medical gents.”

The door opened and the curious procession came in.

And now Alleyn faced the woman whom he had previously begun to think of as his principal witness. It was his practice to discourage in himself any imaginative speculation, but on seeing her he could not escape the feeling that with the belated appearance of Lady Wutherwood the case had darkened. She was, he thought, such a particularly odd-looking woman. She sat very still at the foot of the table and stared at him with remarkable fixedness. The presence of Dr. Kantripp, and of the nurse and the maid, lent an air of preposterous consequence to the scene. Lady Wutherwood might almost have been holding some sort of audience. There was no doubt that she was antagonistic, but she had asked to see Alleyn and he decided that he would wait for her to open the conversation; and so it fell out that Lady Wutherwood and Alleyn, for perhaps half a minute, contemplated each other in silence across the long table.