“I know very well,” said Lady Wutherwood, “by what means I may be brought to betray myself into a confession of things I have not done and words I have never uttered. But I remember Marguerite Luondman of Gebweiler and Anna Ruffa of Douzy. As for a solicitor, I have no need or desire for such protection. I am well protected. I am in no danger.”

“In that case,” said Alleyn equitably, “you will not object, perhaps, to answering one or two questions.”

She did not reply. He waited for a moment and had time to notice the scandalized expression of Mr. Fox, and the alert and speculative glances of the two doctors.

“Lady Wutherwood,” said Alleyn, “who took you down in the lift?”

She answered at once: “It seemed to be one of his nephews.”

“Seemed?”

Lady Wutherwood laughed. “Yes,” she said, “seemed.”

“I don’t understand that,” said Alleyn. “Lady Charles Lamprey asked for one of her sons to take you down in the lift, didn’t she?”

Lady Wutherwood nodded.

“And one of them came out of the flat and, in fact, entered the lift and took you down? You saw him come out? And you stood close beside him in the lift? It was one of the twins, wasn’t it?”

“I thought so, then.”

“You thought so, then,” Alleyn repeated and was silent for a moment. Lady Wutherwood laughed again and her laughter, Alleyn thought, was for all the world like the cackle of one of the witches in a traditional rendering of “Macbeth.” This idea startled him and he went back in his mind over the string of inconsequent statements to which she had treated them. He was visited by an extremely odd notion.

“Lady Wutherwood,” he began, “do you think it is possible that somebody impersonated one of the twin brothers?”

She gave him an extraordinary look and, with a movement that startled them all by its abruptness and shocking irrelevancy, wrapped her arms across her breast and hugged herself. Then with a sidelong glance, horridly knowing, she nodded again very slightly.

“Was there any recognizable mark?” asked Alleyn.

Her right hand crept up to her neck and round to the back of it. She moved her head slightly and, catching sight of the nurse, hurriedly withdrew her hand and laid one of her fingers across her lips. And through Alleyn’s thoughts ran the memory of three lines:

You seem to understand me

By each at once her choppy finger laying

Upon her skinny lips.

“Only,” thought Alleyn, “Lady Wutherwood’s finger is not choppy nor are her lips skinny. Damnation, what the devil is all this?” And aloud he said: “He stood with his back towards you in the lift?”

“Yes.”

“And you noticed the mark on the back of his neck?

“I saw it.”

“Just there?” asked Alleyn pointing to the startled Fox.

“Just there. It was a sign. Ssh! He does that sometimes.”

“The Little Master?” asked Alleyn.

“Ssh! Yes. Yes.”

“Do you think it happened before you were there? The attack on your husband, I mean.”