Death of a Peer

CHAPTER X STATEMENT FROM A SMALL BOY

Mike was fast asleep and therefore looked his best. The treachery of sleep is seen in the circumstances of its adding years to the middle-aged and taking them away from children. Mike’s cheeks were filmy with roses, his lips were parted freshly and his lashes made endearing smudges under his delicate eyelids. His mouse-coloured hair was tousled and still moist from his bath. Near to his face one hand, touchingly defenseless, lay relaxed across the handle of a Woolworth magnifying glass. He looked about seven years old and alarmingly innocent. Nanny, scowling hideously, smoothed the bed-clothes and laid a gnarled finger against Mike’s cheek. Mike made a babyish sound and curled down closer in his bed..

“Damn’ shame to wake him,” Alleyn said under his breath.

“Needs must, I suppose,” said Nanny, unexpectedly gracious.. “Michael.”

“Yes, Nanny?” said Mike and opened his eyes.

“Here’s a gentleman to see you.”

“Gosh! Not a doctor!”

“No,” said Nanny grimly, “a detective.”

Mike lay perfectly still and stared at Alleyn. Alleyn sat on the edge of the bed.

“I’m so sorry to rouse you up,” he said civilly, “but you know what these cases are. One must follow the trail while it’s fresh.”

Mike swallowed and then, with admirable nonchalance, said: “I know.”

“I wonder if you’d mind going over one or two points with me.”

“O.K.,” breathed Mike. He uttered a luxurious sigh. “Then it is murder,” he said.

“Well, it looks a bit like it!”

“Golly!” said Mike. “What a whizzer!” He appeared to think deeply for a moment and then said: “I say, sir, have you got a clue?”

“At the moment,” said Alleyn, “I am completely baffled.”

“Jiminy cricket!”

“I know.”

“Well, it wouldn’t be any of us, of course.”

“Of course not,” said Nanny. “It was some good-for-nothing out in the street. One of these Nazzys. The police will soon have them locked up.”

“An outside job,” said Mike deeply.

“That’s what we’re working on at the moment,” agreed Alleyn. “But there are one or two points.” He looked at Mike’s parted lips and brilliant eyes and thought: “I must keep this unreal and how the devil I’m to do it’s a problem. No element of danger but plenty of fictitious excitement.” He said, “As a matter of fact it’s quite possible that the bird has flown to a hide-out miles and miles away from here. We just want to check one or two points and I think you can help us. You were in the flat this afternoon, weren’t you?”

“Yes. I was having a bit of a go with my Hornby train. Giggle helped me. He’s absolutely wizard with trains. Being a motor expert helps, of course.”

“Yes, of course. Where do you do it? Not much room in here, is there?”

Mike shrugged his shoulders. “Hopeless,” he said. “We used the passage. And then, just when he’d got the coupling mended and everything, Giggle had to go.”

“So I suppose you simply carried on without him?”

“As a matter of fac’, I didn’t. Ackshully, Robin was going to play with me. You see I had to give Uncle G. the parcel.” Mike looked out of the corners of his eyes at Nanny. “I say,” he said, “it’s pretty funny to think of, isn’t it? I mean, where is dead?”

“Heaven,” said Nanny firmly. “Your Uncle Gabriel’s as happy as the day’s long. Well content, he is, you may depend upon it.”

“Well, Henry said this afternoon that Uncle G. could go to hell for all he cared.”

“Nonsense. You didn’t hear Henry properly.”

“Where was the parcel?” asked Alleyn.

“In Mummy’s room. Just by the screen inside the door. I couldn’t find it when Robin said Mummy wanted me to give it to Uncle G.”

“When was that?” asked Alleyn, taking out his cigarette case.

“Oh, before. After they’d done their charade. The others were horribly waxy because Uncle G. didn’t look at the charade. Stephen said he was an old—”

“That’ll do, Michael.”

“Well, Nanny, he did. I heard him when I was looking for the parcel.”

“Did you give the parcel up as a bad job?” asked Alleyn.

Mike shrugged again. It was a gesture that turned him momentarily into a miniature of his mother. “Sort of,” he admitted. “I went back to Giggle and the Hornby and then I saw the parcel. We were by the door.”

“Was anyone in the bedroom?”

“Mummy and Aunt V. and Aunt Kit had come in. They were gassing away behind the screen.”

“So what did you do?”

“Oh, I just scooped it up and took it to Uncle G. in the drawing-room. Uncle G. looked as waxy as hell.”

“Michael!”

“Well, sorry, Nanny, but he did. He didn’t say anything. Not thank you or anything like that. He just goggled at me and Daddy told me to put it down and bunk. So I bunked. Patch said they had the manners of hogs and I think they had too. Not Daddy, of course.”

“Don’t speak like that, Michael,” said Nanny “It’s silly and rude. Mr. Alleyn doesn’t want to hear—”

“I say.” Mike sat up abruptly. “You’re not Handsome Alleyn, are you?”

Alleyn’s face turned a brilliant red. “You’ve been reading the lower type of newspapers, young Lamprey.”

“I say, you are! Gosh! I read all about the Gospell murder in the True Detective! A person in my form at school knew a person whose father is a friend of — Gosh, of yours. He bucked about it for weeks. He won’t buck much longer, ha-ha. I say, sir, I’m sorry I mentioned that name. You know — H.A.”

“That’s all right.”

“I suppose you think it’s a pretty feeble sort of nickname to have. At school,” said Mike lowering his voice, “some people call me Potty. Potty Lamprey.”

“One lives down these things.”

“I know. Ackshully, I suppose you wouldn’t remember a person called N. Bathgate. He’s a reporter.”

“Nigel Bathgate? I know him very well indeed.”

Mike achieved an admirable expression of detachment. “So,” he said off-handedly, “as a matter of fac’ do we. He told me he called you Hand — you know — as a sort of joke. In the paper. To make you waxy.”

“He did.”

Mike giggled and gave Alleyn a sidelong glance.

“I suppose there’s not much hope nowadays,” he said, “for anybody to get into detection. I suppose you have to be rather super at everything.”

“Are you thinking of it?”

“As a matter of fac’ I am, rather. But I suppose I’m too much of a fool to be any use.”

“It’s largely a matter of training. What sort of memory have you got?”

“He’s the most forgetful boy I ever had the training of,” said Nanny. Mike gave Alleyn a man-to-mannish look.

“Let’s see how you shape,” Alleyn suggested. “Have a stab at telling me as closely as you can remember just exactly what happened, let’s say from the time you picked up the parcel and onwards. Go along inch by inch and tell me exactly what you saw and heard and smelt for the next fifteen minutes. That’s the sort of stuff you have to do at this game.” He opened his notebook. “We’ll say you’re an expert witness and I’m taking your statement. Off you go. You picked up the parcel? With which hand?”

“With my left hand because I had a Hornby signal in my right.”

“Good. Go on.”

“Everything?”

“Everything.”

“Well, I stepped over the rails. Giggle was fitting two curved bits together. I said I wouldn’t be a jiffy and he said ‘All Right, Master Mike.’ And I walked down the passage past the curtain of Robin’s room. Robin’s room is generally a sort of hall in 26 but Mummy had the curtains put there to make a room and a passage. Is this the right way, sir?”

“Yes.”

“The curtains were shut. They’re a kind of blue woolly stuff. The door at the end of the passage was shut. I opened it and went onto the landing.”

“Did you shut the door?”

“I don’t think so,” said Mike simply. “I hardly ever do. No, I didn’t, because I heard Giggle winding up the engine of the Hornby and I looked back at him.”

“Good. Then?”

“Well, I crossed the landing.”

“Was the lift up?”

“Yes, it was. You can see the light through the glass in the tops of the doors. There wasn’t anybody on the landing or outside the lift. Not standing up, anyway. So I went into the hall of No. 25 and I don’t suppose I shut the door. I’m afraid I’ll be a bit feeble if you say I’ve got to describe the hall because there were all the things the others had had for their charade. They’d just sort of bished them into the cupboard and they were bulging out and there were coats lying on the table and…” Mike stopped and screwed up his eyes.

“What is it?”

“Well, sir, I’m just sort of trying to see.”

“That’s right,” said Alleyn quietly. “You know your brain is really rather like a camera. It takes a photograph of everything you see, only very often you never develop the photgraph. Try to develop the photograph your brain took of the hall.”

Nanny said: “The boy’s getting flushed.”

“I’m not,” said Mike, without opening his eyes. “Honestly, Nanny. Well, in my photograph the light is sort of coming through the window in front of me. Into my eyes. So everything has got its shadow coining my way. There’s a thing of flowers on the round table and a bowler. I think it was Uncle G.’s bowler. And I saw Henry’s gloves. And a scarf and some race glasses and one of those hats people wear in hot places. Wait a bit, sir. There’s something else. It’s sort of on the edge of the picture. Not quite developed, like you said.”

“Yes?”

“I’ll get it in a jiffy, all right. It’s a shining kind of thing. Not ’zackly big but long and bright.”

Nanny uttered a brusque exclamation and made an anxious gesture with her hands as though she fended something away from herself and from Mike.

“Wait a bit,” Mike repeated impatiently. “Don’t tell me. Long and thin and bright.”

He opened his eyes and stared triumphantly at Alleyn. “I’ve got it,” he said. “It was on the edge of the table. One of those long pointed things they keep in the sideboard drawer. A skewer. That’s what it was, sir. A skewer.”

Mike paused and regarded Alleyn with some complacency. Nobody stirred. The nursery clock ticked loudly on the mantelpiece. A little gust of wind shook the window-panes. Down below in Pleassaunce Court a sequence of cars changed gears and accelerated. A paper-seller yelled something indistinguishable and somebody shouted “Taxi!” Nanny’s roughened hands, working together stealthily against her apron, made a faint susurration.

“They used it in their charade,” said Mike. “I heard Frid yelling out for it.”

“The charade?” Alleyn echoed. “Well, never mind. Go on.”

“About the skewer? Well, there’s one thing…”

Mike stopped. His face lost its look of eagerness and, as small boys’ faces can, became extremely blank.

“What’s up?” asked Alleyn.

“I was only wondering. Is the skewer a clue?”

“Anything might be a clue,” said Alleyn carefully.

“I know. Only—”

“Yes?”

Mike asked in a small voice: “What happened to Uncle G.?”

Alleyn took his time over this. “He was hurt,” he said. “Somebody went for him. It’s all over now. Nothing of the sort can possibly happen again.”

Mike said: “What was wrong with his eye?”

“It was hurt. People’s eyes bleed rather easily, you know^ Are you a boxer?”

“A bit. I was only wondering—”

“Yes?”

“About the skewer. You see I sort of remembered. After I tried to give the parcel to Uncle G. I went to the dining-room and after I went to the dining-room I went back with Giggle to the landing because Giggle was going away and we went through the hall and I said good-bye to Giggle because he’s rather a friend of mine, and I saw him go downstairs and I leant on the table and — well I was only just mentioning it because I happened to remember — well, anyway, the skewer wasn’t on the table then.”

“Michael,” said Nanny loudly, “don’t make things up.”

“It wasn’t. I put my hands where it would have been.”

There was another silence. Mike sat up and clasped his arms around his knees. “Shall I go back?” he asked. “Back to where I took the parcel to Uncle G.?”

“Yes,” said Alleyn, “go back.”

“Well, that’s everything I can remember about the first time in the hall. I went through the hall into the drawing-room. Daddy and him were by the fire. So I gave him the parcel. Well, I mean I didn’t give it to him because of what Daddy told me. I mean it was a bit awkward.”

“What was awkward?”

“Uncle G. being in such a stink about something. Gosh, he was in a stink.”

“You mean he was upset?”

“Absolutely livid. Gosh, you should have seen his face! Jiminy cricket!”

“Don’t exaggerate,” said Nanny. “You’re letting your fancy run away with you.”

“I am not,” cried Mike indignantly. “He wants me to tell him ezackly all I can remember and I am telling him. You are silly, Nanny.”

“That will do, Michael.”

“Well, anyway—”

“Never mind,” Alleyn interrupted. “Have you any idea why your uncle was angry?”

Nanny said: “I don’t think Michael ought to answer these questions without his parents say that he may.”

“O Nanny!” cried Mike in accents of extreme provocation. “You are!”

“Then we shall ask them to come in,” said Alleyn. “Bailey.” A figure stepped out of the shadows on the other side of the scrap-covered screen by Mike’s bed. “Will you give my compliments to his lordship and ask him if he would mind coming to the nursery?”

“Very good, sir.”

“Is he another detective?” asked Mike when Bailey had gone.

“He’s a finger-print expert.”

Mike suddenly gave a galvanic leap, ending in a luxurious writhe among the blankets. “I suppose he’s brought his insnufferlater,” he said.

“All his kit,” agreed Alleyn gravely. “What happened when you left the drawing-room?”

“Well, I went to the dining-room and talked to Robin. The others had gone out. And then Giggle came along and said he had to go because Uncle G. was yelling in the lift. So I went to the landing with Giggle and he went downstairs. When he’d gone Uncle G. yelled out for Aunt V. So I bunked into 26. Gosh, he did sound livid. Absolutely waxy. I bet I know why.”

“Are you sure he called out after Giggle had gone?”

“Yes, of course I am. Certain-sure.”

“Did you see anybody else?”

“What? Let’s see. Oh, yes. I saw Tinkerton in the hall. I sort of just spotted her out of the tail of my eye. She was tidying up the wardrobe, I think.”

“Nobody else?”

“No.” Mike thrashed his legs about. “Well, anyway,” he said, “I’ll jolly well tell you why—”

“You wait for your father, Michael,” said Nanny. Somewhat childishly, Mike thrust his fingers in his ears and, fixing a defiant gaze on his nurse, he shouted. “It was because Mr. Grumball and all the other—”

“Michael,” said Nanny in a really terrible voice. “Do you hear what I tell you? Be quiet.” She reached out and pulled Mike’s hands away from his ears. “Be quiet,” she repeated.

Mike flew into a Lamprey rage of some violence. His cheeks flamed and his eyes blazed. He roared out a confused sequence of orders. Nanny was to leave him alone. Must he remind her that he was no longer under her complete authority? Did she realize his age? Why did she continue to treat him like a child? “Like a silly damned kid,” roared poor Mike and, pausing to take breath, glared about him and encountered the cold gaze of his father. Lord Charles had come round the corner of the screen.

“Mike,” he said, “may I ask why you are making an ass of yourself?”

“Overexcited, m’lord,” said Nanny. “I knew how it would be.”

Mike opened his mouth, found nothing to say, and beat on the counterpane with closed fists.

Alleyn, who had risen, said: “You’re not shaping too well at the moment, you know. You won’t make anything of a policeman if you can’t keep your temper.”

Mike stared at Alleyn. Tears welled into his large eyes. He hauled the bed-clothes over his head and turned his face to the wall.

“Oh, damn!” said Alleyn softly.

“What is all this?” asked Lord Charles rather peevishly. Alleyn looked significantly at the crest of mouse-coloured hair which was all that could be seen of Mike, and turned down his thumb.

“I’ve blundered,” he said.

“Come outside,” said Lord Charles.

In the nursery passage, Alleyn closed the door and said: “I’m afraid Michael is upset because your nurse quelled the remarkably steady flow of his narrative. He told me that in your interview with him Lord Wutherwood had been annoyed about something. Nanny very properly suggested that you should be present. Michael, who is an enthusiastic maker of statements, resented her taking a hand.”

“Did he—”

“Yes, I’m afraid he did deliver himself of one rather curious phrase. I’m so sorry he’s upset. If I may I should like to try and mend matters a little. If I could just say good night to him?” Alleyn looked at Lord Charles and added rather drily: “I hope you will come with me, sir.”

“The horse having apparently bolted,” said Lord Charles, “I shall be glad to assist at the ceremony of closing the stable door.”

They returned to the nursery. Nanny had tidied up the bed. Mike lay with the sheet clutched to the lower part of his face. His eyes were tightly shut and his cheeks stained with tears.

“Sorry to wake you up again,” said Alleyn. “I just wanted to ask if you would very kindly lend me that lens of yours. I could do with it.”

Without opening his eyes, Mike scuffled under the pillow and produced his Woolworth magnifying glass. He thrust it up. Alleyn took it. Mike was shaken by a sob and retreated farther under the sheet.

“It’s a jolly good glass,” said a muffled voice.

“I can see that. Thank you so much. Good night, Lord Michael.”

The sheet was thrown back and Mike’s eyes opened accusingly upon his father.

“Daddy!” he said. “It’s not going to be that!”

“Well,” said Lord Charles, “well, yes. I’m afraid — well, yes, Mike, it is.”

“Good lord, that puts the absolute lid on it! Good lord, that’s absolutely frightful! Good lord,” repeated Mike on a note of tragedy, “it’s a damn’ sight worse than Potty!”

Mr. Fox had remained in the drawing-room with the Lampreys and Roberta Grey. Alleyn, on his return with Lord Charles, found Fox sitting in a tranquil attitude on a small chair, with the family grouped round him rather in the manner of an informal conversation piece. Fox had the air of a successful raconteur, the Lampreys that of an absorbed audience. Frid, in particular, was discovered sitting on the floor in an attitude of such rapt attention that Alleyn was immediately reminded of a piece of information gleaned earlier in the evening: Frid attended dramatic classes. On his superior’s entrance, Fox rose to his feet. Frid turned upon Alleyn a gaze of embarrassing brilliance and said: “Oh, but you can’t interrupt him. He’s telling us all about you.” Alleyn looked in astonishment at Fox who coughed slightly and made no remark. Alleyn turned to Lady Charles.

“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.”

“Like hell they do!” muttered Alleyn. “Where’s that doctor?”

“In with the dowager. I strolled along the passage but I couldn’t pick anything up. She seems to be shedding tears.”

“I wish to high heaven he’d give her a corpse-reviver and let her loose on us. I’ll go along and wait for him. I’ve told that P. C. to note down anything they said.”

“I hope he’ll keep his wits about him,” said Fox. “He’ll need ’em.

“He’s rather a bright young man,” said Alleyn. “I think he’ll be all right. I’ll tell you one thing about the Lampreys, Br’er Fox. They’re only mad nor’ nor’-west and then not so that you’d notice. They can tell a hawk from a handsaw, I promise you, or from a silver-plated meat skewer, if it comes to that. Get along to the dining-room. I’ll catch the doctor as he comes out and I’ll join you later.”

But as Alleyn crossed the landing he heard a muffled thump somewhere beneath him. He moved to the stairhead and looked down. Somebody was mounting the stairs, slowly, laboriously. He heard this person cross the landing of the flat beneath. He caught sight of a pancakelike hat, a pair of drooping shoulders, an uneven skirt. This new arrival assisted herself upstairs with her umbrella. That was the origin of the thumping sound. He heard breathing and another faint, sibilant noise. She appeared to be whispering to herself. A sentence of Henry’s came into Alleyn’s memory. He coughed. The toiling figure, now quite close, paid no attention. Alleyn coughed stertorously but to no effect. He moved so that his shadow fell across the stairs. The pancake hat tilted backwards, revealing a few strands of grey hair and a flushed elderly face wearing an expression of exhausted inquiry.

“Oh,” she whispered, “I didn’t see — The lift doesn’t seem to — Oh, I beg your pardon. I thought for a moment you were one of my nephews.”

Alleyn, remembering her name and praying no Lampreys would hear him and come out, said loudly “I’m so sorry if I startled you, Lady Katherine.”

“Not a bit. But I’m afraid I don’t quite — I’ve got such a very bad memory.”

“We haven’t met before,” shouted Alleyn. “I wondered if I might have a word with you.” He saw that she hadn’t heard him and in desperation groped for one of his official cards. Feeling ridiculous, he offered it to her. Lady Katherine peered at it, uttered a little cry of alarm and gazed at Alleyn with an expression of horror.

“Not the police!” she wailed. “It hasn’t come to that? Not already!”

Alleyn wondered distractedly if there was anywhere at all in the flat where he could yell in privacy into the ear of this lady. He decided that the best place would be in the disconnected lift with the doors shut. By a series of inviting gestures he managed to lure her in. She sank onto the narrow seat. He had time to reflect that Bailey and Thompson had finished their investigation of the lift. He leant against the doors and contemplated his witness. She was a little like a sheep, and a rapid association of ideas led him instantly to the White Queen. He bent towards her and she blinked apprehensively.

“I didn’t realize,” he said loudly, “that you knew this had happened.”

“What?”

“You know all about the accident?”

“About what?”

“This tragedy,” shouted Alleyn.

“Yes, indeed. Too distressing! My poor nephew.”

“I’m afraid it had proved to be serious.”

“He told me all about it this afternoon.”

“What!” Alleyn ejaculated.

“All about it, poor fellow.”

“Who did, Lady Katherine? Who told you?”

She shook her head at him. “Very sad,” she said.

“Lady Katherine, who told you what?”

“Why, my nephew, Lord Charles Lamprey, to be sure. Who else? I do hope—” she peered again at the card — “I do hope, Mr. Alleyn, that the police will not be too severe. I’m sure he regrets it very deeply.”

Alleyn swallowed noisily. “Lady Katherine, what did he tell you?”

“About Gabriel and himself. My nephew Wutherwood and my nephew Charles. I was so terrified that it would come to this.”

“To what?”

“Even now,” said Lady Katherine, “after this has happened, I still hope that Gabriel may soften.”

Across Alleyn’s thoughts ran a horrible phrase: “Gabriel shall grow hard and Gabriel shall grow soft.” He pulled himself together, reassorted Lady Katherine’s series of remarks and thought he began to see daylight.

“Of course,” he said, “you left before — I mean when you left, Lord Wutherwood was still living.”

“What did you say?”

“I’m afraid,” roared Alleyn, changing his course again, “I have bad news for you.”

“Very bad news,” agreed Lady Katherine with one of those half-knowledgeable phrases by which the deaf bewilder us. “Very bad indeed.”

Alleyn threw all delicacy overboard. He placed his face on a level with Lady Katherine’s and shouted, “He’s dead.”

Lady Katherine turned very pale and clasped her hands together. “No, no!” she whispered. “You didn’t say — dead? Did you? I don’t hear very well and I thought — Please tell me. It wasn’t that?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“But — Oh, how terrible. And such a grave sin if — Did he lay hands upon himself? Oh, poor Charlie! Poor Immy! And poor children!”

“Good God!” cried Alleyn. “Not Lord Charles! Lord Wutherwood. Lord Wutherwood is dead.”

He saw the colour return in patches to her large, soft cheeks.

“Gabriel?” she said quite loudly. “Gabriel is dead?”

Alleyn nodded violently. For perhaps thirty seconds she said nothing and then on a sort of sigh she whispered astoundingly: “Then I needn’t have taken all this trouble.”