“Please be with Mike, Patch.”

“All right.”

“What is the time?” asked Frid.

“Quarter to eight,” said Nanny from the door. “Come along, Michael and Patricia.”

“Can it be no more than an hour since they came!” said Charlot.

“Aunt Kit got here earlier,” said Colin.

“Aunt Kit!” Charlot looked from one to another of her children. “For pity’s sake, what has become of Aunt Kit?”

“Has anybody seen her?” asked Frid.

Nobody, it appeared, had seen Lady Katherine since the brothers were left alone in the dining-room and Charlot took the aunts to her bedroom.

“We stayed there for about ten minutes I suppose,” said Charlot, “and then she said she wished to ‘disappear.’ She knows the flat quite well so I didn’t lead the way or anything. Stephen — go and see if you can find her.”

Stephen went away but returned to say that unless Aunt Kit was in with the doctor and Lord Charles she was not in the flat.

“Well,” said Henry, “she told you, Mummy, that she wished to disappear and she has.”

“But—”

“Darling,” said Frid jerkily, “we can’t be worried about Aunt Kit. Honestly.”

“At least,” said Stephen, “she had behaved with d-decent reticence. Did you ever hear anything more disgraceful than Aunt V.?”

“Poor thing,” said Charlot.

“I simply can’t feel sorry for her,” said Henry.

“I can only feel sick,” said Stephen. “I feel very sick indeed. Does anyone else?”

“Shut up,” said Colin automatically.

“Here’s Daddy,” said Frid.

Lord Charles came in at the far door. He walked slowly across the room to his family. Charlot made a quick, contained movement with her hands. Her husband stood before her.

“Well, darling?” she asked.

“Immy,” said Lord Charles, “he’s not dead. He’s alive still ”

“Will he live?”

“It doesn’t seem possible.”

“Charlie — if he dies?”

“It seems that if Gabriel dies he will have been murdered.”

There was a dead silence and then Henry said in a strange voice: “Isn’t there a book called It Can’t Happen Here?”

Stephen said: “Of c-course he’s murdered. Of course he’ll die. With that thing through his b-brain, why didn’t he die at once?”

“Shut up,” said Colin.

Lord Charles sat on the arm of his wife’s chair and put his hand on her shoulder. It was the first time Roberta had ever seen him do this. “Where’s Patch?” he asked.

“I sent her away with Mike and Nanny. She — didn’t see, but I thought—”

“Yes. She and Mike will know of course but it might be as well, Imogen, if you told them. The rest of you had better hear the whole story now. Unless Robin—”

Roberta said, “If it’s private of course—”

“Private! My dear child, it will be front-page news in every paper by to-morrow.”

“So it will!” Frid ejaculated. “I say, we ought to tell Nigel Bathgate. It’d be a lovely scoop for him, wouldn’t it?”

“I must say, Frid,” said Henry, “I think that a particularly mad suggestion of yours.”

“I don’t see why. As Daddy says, it will be in all the papers anyway so why not give Nigel a break? I daresay he’d fight off all the other press-men for us. Shall I ring him up, Mummy?”

“Not now, Frid. And yet I don’t know. Nigel might be a sort of protection, Charlie.”

“I really do not consider,” said Lord Charles with emphasis, “that one rings up young journalists, however charming, and tells them that one’s relations have been murderously assaulted! You none of you seem to realize…” He broke off and looked at Roberta who was still hovering doubtfully. “Robin, my dear, we have no secrets from you. I’m only so sorry that you should have been plunged into this nightmare. Stay by all means, if you will.”

“Don’t go away, Robin,” said Henry.

“No, don’t go,” said the others. So Roberta stayed.

Lord Charles beat gently on his wife’s shoulder with his thin hand. Without looking up at him she leant towards him.

“I’m glad it’s Dr. Kantripp,” she said. “He knows us so well. It would have been much worse if he had been a stranger.”

“It would have made no difference.”

“None?” asked Charlot on an indrawn breath.

“Very little, at any rate.”

“What will happen?” she asked.

“A man from the police-station is here. At the moment he is telephoning Scotland Yard. There’s another man in there with Gabriel.”

There was a short silence broken by Charlot.

“Well,” she said, “none of us tried to kill him, of course, so I suppose we simply tell the truth.”

Nobody answered her.

“Don’t we?” Charlot persisted.

“We’ll tell the truth,” said Lord Charles, “certainly.” He looked at his children. “I want you to listen carefully. Your uncle was alone in the lift for some time before he and Aunt Violet were taken down. It seems that he was sitting in the lift with his hat pulled forward and his head bent. Your aunt only discovered that he was hurt after the lift had gone some way down. You all must have heard the return. Now each of you may have to account for your movements after your — after he got into the lift. Try to remember exactly what you did and where you were. If…”

He broke off abruptly. The doctor had come into the room.

Dr. Kantripp was stocky and dark, with a pleasingly ugly face. He looked profoundly unhappy.

“They’re coming,” he said, “immediately.”

“Good,” said Lord Charles.

“Dr. Kantripp,” said Charlot, “will he live?”

“He may — survive for a little, Lady Charles.”

“Will he be able to speak?”

“I think it most unlikely.”

“Pray God he does!”

He looked sharply at her and it would have been impossible to say whether he felt doubt or relief at her exclamation.

“We shall have a second opinion, of course,” he said. “I’ve telephoned Sir Matthew Cairnstock. He’s a brain man. I’ve sent for a nurse.”

“Yes. Will you look at Violet — my sister-in-law? She’s in my room.”

“Yes, certainly.”

“I’ll come if you want me. She asked to be alone with the maid.”

“I see.” Dr. Kantripp hesitated and then said: “They’ll want to talk to the servants, you know.”

“Why the servants, particularly?” asked Lord Charles quickly.

“Well — the instrument. You see it looks as if it came from their part of the world. The kitchen.”

Frid spoke abruptly on a hard, shrill note. “It was a skewer, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Then it wasn’t in the kitchen. It was left on the hall table.”

“Dinner is served, m’lady,” said Baskett from the door. iii

Roberta would never have believed that dinner with the Lampreys could be a complete nightmare. It seemed incredible that they should be there, sitting in silence round the long table, solemnly helping themselves to dishes that repelled them. Charlot left the room twice, the first time to take another look at Lady Wutherwood, the second time to see the nurse and to ask if there was anything she needed for her patient. The specialist arrived at the same time as the men from Scotland Yard. Lord Charles went out to meet them but returned in a few minutes to say Dr. Kantripp was still there and that he, with one of the police, had gone into the room where Lord Wutherwood lay. Only two of the police were in the flat now. They were plain-clothes men, Lord Charles said, and seemed to be very inoffensive fellows. The others had gone but he did not know for how long. Robert wondered if the Lampreys shared her feeling that the flat no longer belonged to them. When they had chopped their savouries into small pieces and pushed them about their plates for a minute or two, Charlot said suddenly: “This is too much. Let’s go into the drawing-room.”

Before they could move, however, Baskett came in and murmured something to Lord Charles.

“Yes, of course,” said Lord Charles. “It had better be in here.” He looked at his wife. “They want to see us all in turn. I suggest they use the dining-room and we go to the drawing-room. In the meantime they want me, Immy. There’s a change in Gabriel’s condition and the doctors think I should be there.”