Surfeit of Lampreys

  He was sitting with his back to the hall door. His face was strongly lit and the attention of the Lampreys was fixed upon it. Roberta, watching them, wondered if his assurances brought them any sense of relief. The quiet voice went on, clearly and without emphasis.

  “…so, if I may, I would just like to ask you all to remember that, apart from the distress and sorrow that are the consequences of this crime, innocent people have nothing to fear beyond an exacting and wearisome series of questions. Presently I shall ask to see each of you separately. At the moment I think we shall get along a little quicker if we discuss things together. If Lady Wutherwood and—” Alleyn hesitated, confronted by the embarrassment of twin titles.

  “And Lady Wutherwood. Trap for young players,” said Frid in a sprightly manner.

  “Frid!” said her father.

  “Well, it is, Daddy. Aunt V. is the dowager now, isn’t she? Violet, Lady Wutherwood. Or is she? Mr. Alleyn wants both the Ladies Wutherwood, I expect.”

  “Please,” said Alleyn.

  “I’ll go and ask. I don’t somehow think you’ll have much luck, Mr. Alleyn. My mother will come, of course. I’d better get Nanny while I’m at it. What about Aunt Kit, Daddy?”

  Fox, who had seated himself discreetly in the background, glanced up in surprise and Alleyn said: “Is there someone else?”

  “I can’t imagine,” said Lord Charles with an air of vexation, “why nobody can remember Aunt Kit.”

  “Well, she just popped off,” said Frid. “We do remember her from time to time. Mummy said, about an hour ago, ‘For pity’s sake, what’s become of Aunt Kit?’ Shall I ring her up?”

  “It’s my aunt, Alleyn,” explained Lord Charles apologetically. “Lady Katherine Lobe. She was here this afternoon but I’m afraid this terrible business put her out of our minds. She was with my wife just before it happened. I suppose she must have slipped away without realizing—I quite forgot to say anything about her. I’m so sorry. Shall we ring her up?”

  “I think it might be as well,” said Alleyn. “Her name is Lady Katherine Lobe did you say?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “The commissionaire saw her leave a few minutes before the accident was discovered.”

  “Well,” said Lord Charles, “I call it very odd to go off like that without a word. I hope to heaven that nothing was the matter with her. We’d better ring her up. Frid, darling, will you?”

  “Am I to tell her to come trundling in from Hammersmith?”

  “I’ll send the car,” said Lord Charles. “Tell her I’ll send the car, Frid, and then you’d better ring up Mayling. Mayling’s my chauffeur, Alleyn. He wasn’t here this afternoon so I imagine—”

  “That will do admirably.”

  Frid knelt on a chair beside the desk and dialled a number.

  “Aunt Kit,” said Henry, “is almost quite deaf and not very bright. Shall I go and fetch my mother?”

  “If you please.”

  “And Aunt V.,” Frid reminded Henry. She began talking into the telephone.

  “Tell her about it gently, Frid,” said Lord Charles.

  “She’ll go into a flat spin anyway,” said Patch gloomily.

  Henry went out into the hall. Colin said to nobody in particular: “Isn’t it rather a shame to summon Aunt Kit? I know maiden aunts are fashionable as murderesses but Mr. Alleyn told us not to go by the detective novels. And honestly—Aunt Kit!”

  “Even as a witness,” said Stephen, “she’ll be quite hopeless. She n-never knows what’s going on under her own n-nose even.”

  “Shut up,” hissed Frid. “I can’t hear. What did you say? What? But—oh well, thank you so much. Would you just say Miss Lamprey rang up. She knows our number. No, I’m afraid we don’t but I expect it’s quite all right really. Don’t worry, Gibson. Good night.”

  Frid replaced the receiver and gazed blankly at her father.

  “It’s a bit funny,” she said. “Aunt Kit said she’d be in to dinner and there’s someone coming to see her by appointment and, well, she’d not telephoned or anything but she’s simply not turned up.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  “Two, Two, The Lily-White Boys”

  ALLEYN HAD BEEN confronted with the Lampreys for only some twenty minutes but already he had begun to feel a little as though they were handfuls of wet sand which, as fast as he grasped them, were dragged through his fingers by the action of some mysterious undertow. He sent Fox off to find out, if possible, from the commissionaire when Lady Katherine Lobe had left the flat and what direction she had taken. Privately he instructed Fox to set the machinery of the department at work. Hospitals would be rung up, street accidents reported. And in the end, thought Alleyn, Lady Katherine would arrive home at half past eleven after an impulsive visit to the cinema. In the meantime he concentrated on the Lampreys still in hand.

  Henry came back, bringing his mother and his old nurse. Again there were vague, polite introductions for which Lady Charles did not wait. She advanced with a swift graciousness which Alleyn at once recognized as the fruit of an excellent social technique. They shook hands. Alleyn saw the small New Zealander give her hostess a startled glance and he wondered if Lady Charles Lamprey was usually so pale. But she greeted him with a perfection of manner that sketched with subtlety relief at his arrival, deference to his ability, and a delicate suggestion that they spoke the same language.

  “Please forgive me,” she said, “for keeping you waiting. My sister-in-law—” she made a rueful grimace “—too terribly upset. Henry says you want to see her.”

  “I’m so sorry,” said Alleyn. “I’m afraid I do.”

  “At the moment she simply can’t come. I mean I can’t move her. Her maid may manage her better. She’s going to try.”

  “She must come, Immy,” said Lord Charles.

  “Charlie darling, if you saw her. I mean honestly.”

  “We’ll carry on as we are for the present,” said Alleyn quickly. “Has Dr. Kantripp seen Lady Wutherwood?”

  “Yes. He’s given her something and the nurse is going to stay here to-night. Dr. Kantripp guessed that you would ask to speak to her and said he would look in again later and see if she was up to it. Of course she’d had the most appalling and overwhelming shock.”

  “Of course.”

  “She’s not English,” said Lord Charles uncomfortably. Frid and Henry exchanged glances and grinned.

  “Well,” said Alleyn hurriedly. “To begin with—”

  “Do sit down, everybody,” said Charlot. “Nanny came too in case she was wanted.”

  They sat down.

  As he waited for a moment, collecting his thoughts and the attention of his audience, Alleyn received a sudden and extremely vivid impression of a united family.

  Whatever their qualities of elusiveness, vagueness or apparent flippancy might be, he felt sure these qualities would never be used by the Lampreys against each other. They would always present a united if slightly ridiculous front. Until Lady Charles came in he had thought the children markedly resembled their father. He now saw that they bore in their faces and mannerisms confusing and subtle traces of both their parents. It was odd to see the complete separateness of Roberta Grey. Alleyn’s attention had been arrested by Roberta, by her small, compact figure, her pale face with its pointed chin and dark eyes set so very wide apart, by a certain air of grave watchfulness, by the Quakerish tidiness of her black dress and white collar. She had only arrived yesterday from New Zealand and yet she looked as though she had often sat on that Moroccan stool with her back set against the wall and her hands folded in her lap. And during the few seconds in which these impressions passed through his mind, Alleyn wondered if the Lampreys would close their ranks, and if in that case Roberta Grey would fall in with them. He had taken notes of Fox’s inquiries. He now opened his book and laid it on the arm of his chair. He began to speak.

  “As far as we have gone,” he said, “This is what seems to have happened. Lord Charles Lamprey and Lord W
utherwood were together in this room up to about ten minutes past seven. Lord Wutherwood decided to leave and went out of the room. He first rang the bell in the hall. Your butler, Baskett, answered it. Lord Wutherwood ordered his car. Baskett helped Lord Wutherwood into his coat and so on. I understand you didn’t go out with your brother, sir?”

  “No,” said Lord Charles. “No. We said good-bye in here.”

  “Yes. Baskett then opened the hall door. Lord Wutherwood went out to the lift. Baskett says that he was told not to wait and so returned to the servants’ sitting-room. These notes, you will see, account for the movements, or some of the movements, of five persons during the few minutes after Lord Wutherwood left this room. Now, as Baskett left the hall and returned to the servants’ sitting-room, he heard Lord Wutherwood call loudly for Lady Wutherwood. I should like to know next, if you please, how many of you also heard this call. Lady Charles—please forgive me if I still call you Lady Charles—”

  “It will be much less muddling if you do, Mr. Alleyn.”

  “It will, won’t it? Did you hear this call?”

  “Oh, yes. Gabriel, my brother-in-law, always shouted like that for people.”

  “Where were you, please?”

  “In my bedroom.”

  Alleyn glanced at his note-book.

  “I’ve made a very rough sketch plan of both flats,” he said. “Your room is the second from the lift end of No. 26?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you alone?”

  “When he shouted? No. My sister-in-law and—Good heavens, Charlie, for pity’s sake—”

  “Yes, Immy, I know. Aunt Kit hasn’t got home yet.”

  “Not got home? But honestly, darling, it’s too queer of Aunt Kit. We don’t even know when she left. Why did she vanish like that, do you suppose?”

  “I expect she just slipped away,” said Henry.

  “She probably thought she’d said good-bye,” said Frid. “You know how absent-minded she is.”

  “I expect she did say good-bye, Mummy,” said Patch, “and you didn’t hear her. She talks in a whisper, Mr. Alleyn.”

  “What nonsense!” exclaimed Lady Charles. “Of course I would know she was saying good-bye. For one thing she’d kiss me.”

  “You might have thought she was just being effusive.” said Frid.

  “She’s always kissing people,” agreed Patch.

  “Well, she didn’t suddenly kiss me in the bedroom out of a clear sky,” said Lady Charles positively. “Don’t be absurd, Patch.”

  “Lady Katherine was in your bedroom with Lady Wutherwood then,” Alleyn interposed adroitly, “when you heard the first call?”

  “Yes, she was, and perfectly normal. She didn’t hear Gabriel, of course, because she’s deaf, but Violet did. Violet is my sister-in-law. Lady Wutherwood, you know.”

  “Yes. What did they do?”

  “Violet said she’d better not keep Gabriel waiting. She said she would like to go into the bathroom, so I told her about the one at the end of the passage.”

  Lady Charles, who was sitting next to Alleyn, leant over and looked at his note-book. “Is that your plan?” she said. “Let me see.”

  “Immy, my dear!” protested her husband.

  “Well, Charlie, I’m not going to read any of Mr. Alleyn’s notes and he’d snatch it away from me if there was anything secret in the drawing. There, it’s as clear as daylight. That’s the bathroom, Mr. Alleyn. I told her where it was and off she went. And then Aunt Kit began to whisper—you know how that generation does—only even more so because, as Patch says, she whispers anyway. So she went off to the other place which I see you’ve also got marked very neatly, and now I think of it that’s the last I saw her.”

  “It’s as clear as glass,” Frid interrupted. “She probably whispered: ‘I’ll have to go, Bless you, my dear,’ and you thought she said: ‘Lavatory. I’ll just disappear.—’ ”

  “Anyone would think it was I who was deaf instead of Aunt Kit! She didn’t say anything of the sort. She went down the passage in that direction.”

  “Well, perhaps she’s locked in,” suggested Frid. “It happened to her once before, Mr. Alleyn, in a railway station, and nobody heard her whispering.”

  “Good heavens, I wonder—”

  “No, m’lady,” said Nanny firmly and unexpectedly.

  “Oh. Are you certain, Nanny?”

  With a scarlet face and a formidable frown Nanny said that she was certain.

  “Then, that’s no good,” said Lady Charles. “And then, Mr. Alleyn, I waited for Violet. She was rather a long time and I remember that my brother-in-law shouted again for her. The two girls, Frid and Patch, came in, and then at last she came back and she reminded me that she and Gabriel didn’t like working the lift themselves, so I came along here leaving her on the landing, and asked one of the boys to take them down.”

  It seemed to Alleyn that as Lady Charles reached this point a curious stillness fell upon the room. He looked up quickly. The Lampreys had returned to their former postures. Lord Charles again swung his eyeglass, Henry’s hands were again driven into his trousers pockets, and again the twins stared at the fire while Patch, her chin on her knees, squatted on the floor by Roberta Grey. And Miss Grey still sat erect on her stool. Alleyn was reminded of the childish game of Steps in which, whenever the “he” has his back turned, the players creep nearer, only to freeze into immobility whenever he turns round and faces them. Alleyn felt sure that some signal had passed between the Lampreys, a signal that, by the fraction of a second, he himself had missed. At this hated and familiar sign of guardedness his own attention sharpened.

  “Ah, yes,” he said. “We may as well clear up this point as we come to it.” He looked at the twins. “Mr. Fox tells me that Lord Charles didn’t notice which of you went down in the lift. Which was it?”

  “I did,” said the twins.

  So complete a silence fell upon the room that Alleyn heard a voice in the street below call for a taxi. The fire settled down in the grate with a little sigh and, as clearly as if, instead of sitting stone-still in their chairs, the Lampreys had made a swift concerted movement, Alleyn heard them close their ranks.

  “Hullo,” he said amiably, “a difference of opinion! Or did you both go down in the lift?”

  “I went down, sir,” said the twins. Lord Charles, very white in the face, put his eyeglass away.

  “My dear Alleyn,” he said, “I must warn you that these two idiots have got some ridiculous idea of stonewalling us over this point. I have told them that it is extremely foolish and very wrong. I hope you will convince them of this.”

  “I hope so, too,” said Alleyn. Out of the tail of his eye he saw Lady Charles’s thin hands close on each other. He turned to her. “Perhaps, Lady Charles, you will be able to clear this point up for us,” he said. “Can you tell us who took Lord and Lady Wutherwood down in the lift?”

  “No. I’m sorry. I didn’t notice. One of the twins came out to the landing as soon as I asked for someone to work the lift.” She looked at the twins with a painful nakedness of devotion, made as if to speak to them, and was silent.

  Alleyn waited. Fox returned and went silently to his chair. Nanny cleared her throat.

  “Did anyone else,” asked Alleyn, “notice which twin remained here and which went down in the lift?”

  The twins looked at the fire. Frid made a sudden impatient movement. Henry lit a cigarette.

  “No?” said Alleyn. “Then we’ll go on.”

  There was a sort of stealthy shifting of positions. For the first time they all looked directly at him and he knew that they had expected him to pounce on this queer behaviour of the twins and were profoundly disconcerted by his refusal to do so. He went on steadily.

  “When Lady Charles came and asked for someone to work the lift, Lady Frid and Lady Patricia were in their mother’s bedroom, and their brothers were here in the drawing-room?”

  “Yes,” said Henry.

  “Where had y
ou been before that?”

  “In the dining-room.”

  “All of you?”

  “Yes. All of us. All the children and Roberta. Miss Grey.”

  “While your father and Lord Wutherwood were talking in here?”

  “Yes.”

  “When did you leave the dining-room?”

  “When the girls went out. The twins and I came in here.”

  “And you, Miss Grey?”

  “I stayed in the dining-room with Mike—with Michael.”

  “And Michael,” said Alleyn, “is of course now in bed?”

  “He is,” said Nanny.

  “Were you all in the dining-room when Lord Wutherwood called out?”

  “Yes,” said Henry. “He shouted ‘Violet!’ twice. We were in the dining-room.”

  “At what stage did Michael appear in the dining-room?”

  Henry leant forward and pulled an ash-tray towards him. “Not long before Uncle Gabriel called out. He’d been messing about with his trains in 26.”

  “Right. That’s perfectly clear. We’ve got to the moment when Lady Wutherwood and her escort went into the lift. Did you go out on the landing, Lady Charles?”

  “I stood in the hall door and called out good-bye.”

  “Yes? And then?”

  “I turned back to come in here. I’d just gone to that table over there to get myself a cigarette when I heard—” she only stopped for a second—“when I heard my sister-in-law screaming. We all went out on the landing.”

  “I’ll go on,” said Henry. “We went out to the landing. The lift came up. Aunt Violet was still screaming. Then whichever twin it was opened the lift doors and she sort of half fell out. Then we saw him.”