“When did you move, Lady Jocelyn?”

“Yesterday.”

“Yesterday? And you were moving from-”

“Jocelyn’s Holt-in Surrey. My husband is at the War Office. He found it took too much time going up and down.”

“Yesterday-” Lamb dwelt on the word. “Then where were you during the afternoon?”

“I saw our things off from Jocelyn’s Holt in the morning, and travelled up myself after an early lunch. I got to the flat about three, and spent the rest of the afternoon and evening getting things straight.”

“Anyone with you?”

“I brought one of my maids up from Jocelyn’s Holt. I’m not keeping her here because she’s a young country girl, but she helped me yesterday and stayed the night. I sent her back this afternoon.”

“Will you kindly give me her name and address?”

“Ivy Fossett. She’s down at Jocelyn’s Holt.”

Frank Abbott had been writing down these questions and answers. He wrote down Ivy’s name.

Lamb went on.

“Did you leave the flat at all after you arrived at-what time did you say?”

“It was ten minutes to three. No, I didn’t go out again.”

“You didn’t go to Waterloo Station to keep an appointment with Miss Collins?”

“No, of course I didn’t-I hadn’t any appointment with her. I didn’t go out at all.”

“Can anyone besides Ivy Fossett corroborate that?”

Anne Jocelyn’s colour had risen. She had a puzzled look.

“I don’t know what you mean. My cousin, Mrs. Perry Jocelyn, came in just before four. She stayed to tea and helped me to unpack.”

“How long did she stay?”

“Till just before seven.”

“May I have her address please?”

Abbott wrote it down.

Anne Jocelyn threw out her hands in a sudden gesture.

“Why are you asking me all these questions? What does it matter whether I went out or not? I hadn’t any appointment with Miss Collins, but why should it have mattered if I had?”

Lamb just went on looking at her.

“Miss Collins was under the impression that she had an appointment with you under the clock at Waterloo at a quarter to four yesterday afternoon.”

“But that’s nonsense-”

“She came up from Blackheath to keep that appointment, Lady Jocelyn.”

“But she couldn’t-I wasn’t there. I was here, in this flat, unpacking. I never even wrote to her. How could she have an appointment with me?”

“There are other ways of making an appointment except through the post. There is the telephone, Lady Jocelyn. Miss Collins put her telephone number at the head of the letter she wrote you, didn’t she?”

“I don’t know-she may have done-I really didn’t notice.”

“May I see that letter?”

“Well-I’m afraid I didn’t keep it.”

Still no expression on his face.

“You didn’t keep it. But you hadn’t answered it-had you?”

There was another of those gestures, slight, graceful, just a little foreign.

“Well, she had a shop, you know. I remembered the name-I could have written later. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t at all sure that I wanted to write. There really was nothing that I could tell her about Annie. The whole Joyce connection was-distasteful. And I thought Miss Collins was perhaps-well, a sensation-hunter. If you knew the letters we have had from people who didn’t know us at all!”

“So you destroyed the letter. Can you remember the contents?”

“I think so. It was rather a rigmarole-all about how fond she had been of Annie, and could she come and see me, because she wanted to hear all about her sad death-that sort of thing.”

“Did the letter suggest any special knowledge about Annie Joyce?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Did it suggest that the writer would be able to identify Annie Joyce?”

She let her eyes meet his for a moment, cold under the raised brows.

“No-of course not. What an extraordinary thing to say! How could she identify Annie Joyce? She is dead.”

Lamb said, “Do you mean that Annie Joyce is dead? Or do you mean that Nellie Collins, who might have identified her, is dead?”

She caught her breath.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because I would like to know, Lady Jocelyn.”

She said, her voice lower than it had been at all,

“Annie Joyce is dead.”

Lamb said gravely,

“And so is Nellie Collins.”

CHAPTER 21

I told you she would have a cast-iron alibi.”

Frank Abbott sat back in his chair and waited for Miss Silver’s reaction. It was hardly noticeable. She had begun Johnny’s second stocking and almost finished the ribbing at the top. Her needles did not check nor did her expression change as she replied,

“You are naturally in a hurry to let me know that you were perfectly right.”

He spread out his hands with a laughing gesture.

“Revered preceptress!”

Miss Silver permitted a very faint smile to relax her lips.

“When you have finished talking nonsense, Frank, perhaps you will go on telling me about Lady Jocelyn. It is all very interesting.”

“Well, when we came away from the flat the Chief asked me what I made of her. He has a way of doing that, and when you’ve told him, he doesn’t utter. He may think it’s tripe, or he may think it’s the cat’s whiskers, but he won’t let on-just sticks it away behind that poker face and takes the next opportunity of snubbing you good and hard. I’ve got an idea that the snub is in inverse ratio to the value he sets on your opinion-in fact the bigger the snub, the bigger the compliment. I got Remarks from a Superior Officer to a Subordinate on the Dangers of Swollen Head, all the way down the stairs.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“And pray, what did you make of Lady Jocelyn?”

“Ah-now that is very interesting. I think the Chief thought so too-hence the homily. She opened the door to us herself, and if we’d been Gestapo with death-warrants spilling out of all our pockets, she couldn’t have been more taken aback.”

Miss Silver coughed again.

“She has, after all, been living under the Gestapo for more than three years.”

“So she took occasion to remind us. Grasped the nettle with great firmness and presence of mind, said we’d frightened her dreadfully, and led the way to the drawing-room, where she very nearly passed out when the Chief mentioned that we’d come to ask questions about Miss Nellie Collins, who was dead. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone come so near fainting and not do it. And the only reason she didn’t do it was because she wouldn’t. She made the sort of effort that is painful to watch-it was like seeing a steel spring being coiled up. And she pulled it off. But the really extraordinary thing was the isolation and concentration of the effort-the throat muscles were perfectly tense, but the hands lying in her lap remained quite lax. Odd, you know, and pointing to great powers of control. Only what was it all about? She was horribly frightened when she first saw us, but she was pulling out of that. Then the Chief told her Nellie Collins was dead, and it very nearly knocked her out. I’ll swear she didn’t know it till he told her, and it came as a quite terrific shock. Why? She was frightened before she knew that Nellie Collins was dead-horribly frightened. She hears of the death and nearly faints. I want to know why. If she hadn’t any guilty knowledge, why the initial fright? If she had, why the subsequent shock? What does it matter to her that Nellie Collins should be a road casualty? What’s Hecuba to her, or she to Hecuba?”

Miss Silver gazed at him silently.

“Annie Joyce might have two excellent reasons for shock. Relief, the effects of which are often quite overwhelming, or affection-she may have been really fond of Nellie Collins.”

He said, “Annie Joyce-”

The needles clicked.

“Certainly, my dear Frank. Abnormal interest in Nellie Collins suggests very strongly that it was Annie Joyce who survived, and not Anne Jocelyn. Lady Jocelyn would have no reason to be afraid of any special knowledge which Miss Collins might possess. Annie Joyce impersonating Lady Jocelyn would have every reason to fear it. I can think of no possible reason why Nellie Collins’ death on the road should inflict any shock upon Lady Jocelyn. The news of it would be no more to her than the death of a person just heard of but never encountered. Such things happen every day, and are dismissed with a casual expression of sympathy. We say, ‘How sad!’ and do not think of the incident again. If the death of Nellie Collins inflicted so severe a shock as you have described, I am forced to the conclusion that this shock was inflicted upon Annie Joyce.”