Death of a Peer

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!”

IV

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.”

CHAPTER XI CONVERSATION PIECE

Roberta had thought that when the two Scotland Yard officials went to the dining-room they would all be able to relax a little, and talk to each other in a normal fashion. It seemed to Roberta that since the appearance of Alleyn and Fox neither herself nor the Lampreys had been real persons. She was conscious, perhaps for the first time in her life, of making a deliberate and strenuous refusal to examine her own thoughts. Near the surface of her mind there waited, with the ominous insistence of images in a nightmare, a sequence of ideas and conjectures; and as, even during the experience of a nightmare, the dreamer may sometimes fight down his own images, so Roberta fought down the rising terrors of her thoughts, thrust them into the background, covered them with other thoughts less menacing to the love that six years ago she had so queerly dedicated to each one of the Lampreys. It seemed to her that the Lampreys themselves had completely withdrawn from her and that, without having had an opportunity to consult in private, they had nevertheless come to some understanding among themselves. She had hoped that when at last she was alone with them they would draw her towards them and, by an exhibition of the devasting frankness that so many of their friends mistook for a sign of flattering confidence, would let her join the common front they were to present to the police…But it appeared that they were not to be alone. Alleyn and Fox left a large policeman behind them and, more than anything else that had happened during that incredible evening, the sight of this stolid figure with scrubbed face and shining buttons, standing inside the drawing-room door, sent an icy thrill of panic through Roberta. Apparently the Lampreys were not so affected. Obeying a murmur from his mother, Colin offered the constable an arm-chair and asked him if he would like to move nearer to the fire at the opposite end of the room. With a glance at the man’s note-book, Colin turned on a table lamp at his elbow. At this astonishing anticipation of his activities the constable turned a deep crimson, put away his note-book and hurriedly took it out again. Colin begged him to take the chair and in some confusion he finally sat down.

Colin rejoined his family at the other end of the room.

“Eh bein,” said Frid, “maintenant, nous parlerons comme si le monsieur n’etait pas la.”

“Frid!” cried her mother. “Attention!” Frid peered down the length of the room and, raising her voice, said to the constable: “I do hope you won’t mind us trying to talk in French. You see, we have got one or two things to discuss and as they are sort of rather private it will be less embarrassing for all of us, won’t it? I mean, you won’t feel that we are too odiously rude, will you?”

The policeman rose, cleared his throat and said: “No, Miss,” and, as though he ardently desired a ruling on the point, cast an anguished look at the door. After a moment’s hesitation he again took the arm-chair offered by Colin, and now all the Lampreys could see of him was the top of his head, which was red.