“A bit conjectural, isn’t it?”

“Before they took the body away, Fox and I made an experiment. We stopped the lift at the uninhabited flat below this one and reconstructed the scene. Luckily rigor was not far advanced. The body fitted the marks exactly. The dent in the bowler tallies with a bit of chromium steel fancy work above the stain. Thompson’s taken some shots of it. The results should be illuminating and calculated to give a tender juryman convulsions. And here, I fancy, comes Miss Tinkerton.” ii

Tinkerton was a thin, ambling sort of woman of about fifty. The only expression observable in her face was one of faint disapproval. She was colourless, not only in complexion, or merely because she gave no impression of character, but all over and in detail. Her eyes, her lashes, her lips, her voice, and her movements, were all without colour. It was as if she existed in a state of having recently uttered the phrase “not quite nice,” and forgotten its inspiration, while her mouth idiotically maintained the form given by the sentiment. She was dressed with great neatness in clothes that, a long time ago, might have belonged to some one else but had since absorbed nonentity. She wore pince nez and a hair net. When Alleyn asked her to sit down, she edged round a chair and, with an air of suspicion, cautiously lowered her rump. She fixed her eyes on the edge of the table.

“Well, Tinkerton,” said Alleyn, “I hope her ladyship has settled down more comfortably.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is she asleep, do you know?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then she won’t need you again, we hope. I’ve asked you to come in here because we want you, if you will, to give us as detailed an account as you can of your movements from the time you came here this afternoon until the discovery of Lord Wutherwood’s injury. We are asking everybody who was in the flat to account as far as possible for their movements. Can you remember yours, do you think?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Right. You arrived with Lord and Lady Wutherwood in their car. We’ll start there.”

But it was a thin account they got from Tinkerton. She did not seem actually to resent the interview, but she maintained a question-and-answer attitude, replying in the most meagre phrases, never responding to Alleyn’s invitation for a running narrative. It seemed that she spent most of the visit with Nanny in her sitting-room, from which she emerged at some vague moment and went to the servants’ hall in Flat 25. By dint of patient and dogged questions, Alleyn discovered that on leaving Nanny’s room she found Giggle and Michael playing trains in the passage, and the rest of the Lamprey children in the hall of Flat 25, dressing themselves for their charade. Tinkerton waited modestly on the landing until they went into the drawing-room and then slipped across into the passage and the servants’ hall where she met Baskett, with whom she enjoyed conversation and a glass of sherry. She also called on cook. She could give no idea of the time occupied by these visits. On being pressed for further information, she said that she washed her hands in Flat 25. From this ambiguous employment she went down the passage towards the hall, meaning to return to Nanny in Flat 26. However she saw Baskett in the hall, putting Lord Wutherwood into his coat. She immediately went into the servants’ sitting-room, heard Lord Wutherwood yell for his wife, collected her handbag, and hurried to the landing in time to see Giggle go downstairs. Alleyn got her to repeat this. “I want to be very clear about it. You were in the passage. You looked into the hall where you caught a glimpse of Lord Wutherwood and Baskett. You went into the servants’ sitting-room, which was close at hand, picked up your bag, went out again, walked along the passage, through the hall, and onto the landing. Did you meet any one?”

“No,” she said. She answered nothing immediately but met each question with an air of obstinate disapproval.

“You simply saw Giggle’s back as he made for the stairs. Any one else?”

“Master Michael was going into the other flat.”

“Where was Lord Wutherwood when you reached the landing?”

“In the lift.”

“Sitting down?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Sure?”

“Yes, sir.”

“All right. Will you go on please?”

Tinkerton primmed her lips.

“What did you do after that?” asked Alleyn patiently.

Tinkerton said huffily that she followed Giggle downstairs. She remembered hearing Lord Wutherwood yell a second time. When he did that she was already some way downstairs. She joined Giggle in the car and remained there with him until the young lady came to fetch them. This came out inch by reluctant inch.

Alleyn made very careful notes, taking her over the stages of her movements several times. She seemed to be perfectly sure of her own accuracy and repeated monotonously that she had seen nobody but Giggle and Michael, as she went along the passage, through the hall, across the landing and downstairs.

“Please think very carefully,” Alleyn repeated. “You saw nobody else? You are absolutely positive?”

“Yes, sir.”

“All right,” said Alleyn, cheerfully. “And now, what did you talk about all the afternoon?” At this sudden change of tone and of tactics, Tinkerton’s air of disapproval deepened. “I really couldn’t say, sir,” she said thinly.

“You mean you don’t remember—”

“I don’t recollect.”

“But you must remember something, Tinkerton. You had a long chat with Lady Charles Lamprey’s nurse, didn’t you? It must have been a long chat, you know, because when you came out Giggle and Master Michael were playing trains and they didn’t do that until some time after your arrival. What did you and Nanny (Mrs. Burnaby, isn’t she?) discuss together?”

Tinkerton primmed her lips again and said several things were mentioned.

“Well, let us hear some of them.”

Tinkerton said: “The young ladies and gentlemen came up.”

“Of course,” said Alleyn amiably, “you would discuss the family. Naturally.”

“They came up,” Tinkerton repeated guardedly.

“In what connection?”

“Mrs. Burnaby brought them up,” said Tinkerton, as if Nanny had suffered from a surfeit of Lampreys and had taken an emetic for it. “Miss Friede’s theatricals. I should,” added Tinkerton, “have said ‘Lady Friede.’ Pardon.”

“I suppose you are all very interested in her theatricals?”

A slightly acid tinge crept over Tinkerton’s face as she agreed that they were.

“And in all the family’s doings, I expect. Did Lord and Lady Wutherwood often pay visits to this flat?”

Not very often it seemed. Alleyn began to feel as if Tinkerton was a bad cork and himself an inefficient corkscrew, drawing out unimportant fragments, while large lumps of testimony fell into the wine and were lost.

“So this visit was quite an event,” he suggested. “Have you been in the London house for long?”

“No.”

“For how long?”

“We have not been there.”

“You mean you arrived in London to-day.” She didn’t answer. “Is that what you mean? Where did you come from?”

“From Deepacres.”

“From Deepacres? That’s in Kent, isn’t it? Did you come straight to this flat?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Had his lordship ever done that before, do you know?”

“I don’t recollect.”

“When were you to return to Deepacres?”

“Her ladyship remarked to his lordship, on the way up, that she would like to stay in Town for a few days.”

“What did he say to that?”

“His lordship did not wish to remain in Town. His lordship wished to return to-morrow.”

“What decision did they come to?” asked Alleyn. Was it imagination, or had he got a slightly firm grip in the cork?

“His lordship,” said Tinkerton, “remarked that he had been dragged up to London and wouldn’t stay away longer than one night.”

“Then,” said Alleyn, “they had come to London solely on account of this visit to the flat?”