Alleyn turned round. His face was scarlet. He stood before her, his hands stretched out. “Lady Charles,” he said, “I fully deserve that you should report me and have me turned out of the force. I’ve done the unforgivable thing — there’s no excuse for me but I do apologize with all my heart.”

“I don’t want you to be turned out of any force. But why did you laugh?”

“It — I’m afraid the explanation will only add to the offence. I — you see—”

“It was at me,” said Lady Charles with conviction. The strain had gone from her voice. “People do laugh at me. But what did I say? Mr. Alleyn, I insist on knowing what it was.”

“It was nothing. There are some people who can’t hold back a nervous laugh when they hear of somebody’s death. Heaven knows a detective officer isn’t one of them, but I’m afraid that if I hear anything very sinister and dramatic related with great empressement it sometimes has that effect on me. It was the way you described Lady Wutherwood as she followed you, muttering. I — it’s no use. I’m abject.”

“I suppose you’re not a relation of ours by any chance,” said Lady Charles thoughtfully.

“I don’t think so.”

“You never know. All the Lampreys laugh at disastrous pieces of news so I thought you might be. We must go into it sometime. I’m a distant Lamprey myself, you know. Nothing hygienically sinister. What was your mother’s maiden name?”

“Blandish,” said Alleyn helplessly.

“I must ask Charlie. Blandish. But in the meantime hadn’t we better go back to poor Violet?”

“By all means.”

“Not that there’s very much more to say. Except that she might have done it instead of going to the lavatory or while I was in the drawing-room, although she would have to be pretty nippy to manage it then.”

“Yes.”

“Is that all?”

“One other question. Can you give the name of the doctor Lady Wutherwood saw before she went to the nursing home?”

“Good heavens, no! It was years ago.”

“Or the nursing-home?”

“It was in Devonshire. Could it have been on Dartmoor or am I thinking of something else?”

“How did you get on, Maman?” asked Frid in French.

“Not so badly,” answered her mother in the same tongue. “I have made him laugh, at least.”

“Laugh!” Lord Charles ejaculated. “Mon Dieu, what at?”

“I had to work for it,” said Charlot wearily. “He thinks I’m a sort of elderly enfant terrible. He thinks he made the most formidable gaffe in laughing at me. He apologized quite charmingly.”

“I hope you didn’t overdo it, Immy.”

“Not I, darling. He hasn’t the faintest inkling of what I was up to. Don’t worry. Soyez tranquil.”

“Soyez tranquil,” wrote P. C. Martin faithfully, on the last page of his note-book and, with, a sigh, took a fresh one from the pocket of his tunic.

“Blast that woman!” said Alleyn in the dining-room. “She was determined to break me up, and, damn her, so she did. I hope she thinks she got away with it.”

“You apologized very nicely, Mr. Alleyn,” said Fox. “I expect she does.”

“We’ll have the twins, Gibson,” said Alleyn.

Chapter XIV

Perjury by Roberta

“You see,” said Alleyn, looking carefully at the twins, “you are not absolutely identical. In almost everybody the distance between the outer corner of the left-hand eye and the left-hand corner of the mouth is not precisely the same as the distance between the outer corner of the right-hand eye and the right-hand corner of the mouth. A line drawn through both eyes and prolonged is hardly ever parallel with a line drawn along the lips and prolonged. You get an open-angled and close-angled side to every face. That’s why reflection in a looking-glass of somebody you know very well always seems distorted and queer. In both of your faces, the close-angle is on the left. But in Lord Stephen the angle is the least fraction more emphatic.”

“Is this the B-B-Bertillon system?” asked Stephen. “P-portrait parle?”

“A version of it,” said Alleyn. “Bertillon paid great attention to ears. He divided the ear into twelve major sections and noticed a great many subdivisions. Yours are not quite identical with your brother’s. And then, of course, there’s that mole on the back of your neck. Lady Wutherwood noticed it in the lift.” He turned to Colin. “So you see you really would be rather foolish if you persisted in saying you went down in the lift. It would be a false statement and the law is not very amiable about false statements.

“Bad luck, Col,” said Stephen with a shaky laugh. “You’re sunk.”

“I think you’re trying to bamboozle us, Mr. Alleyn,” Colin said. “You’ve got a fifty-fifty chance, after all. I don’t believe Aunt V. would have noticed a carbuncle, much less a mole, on anybody’s neck. She’s too dotty. I stick to my statement. I can tell you exactly what happened.”

“I’m sure you can,” said Alleyn politely. “But do you know, I don’t think we want to hear it. You both had plenty of time to put your heads together before the police arrived. I’m sure the stories would tally to a hair’s-breadth, but I don’t think we’ll trouble you for yours. I won’t ask you for a statement. I don’t think we need bother you any longer. Good night.”

“It’s a trap,” said Colin slowly. “I’m not going. You’ll damn well take my statement, whether you like it or not.”

“We’re not allowed to set traps, I promise you, I should be setting a trap if I pretended not to know which of you worked the lift and so encouraged you to carry on with your comedy of errors.”

“Do p-pipe down, Colin,” said Stephen rapidly. “It’s no go. I didn’t want you to do it. Mr. Alleyn, you’re quite right. I didn’t kill Uncle G. but, on my word of honour, I t-took him down in the lift and Colin stayed in the drawing-room. Don’t commit any more p-perjury, Col, for God’s sake, just go b-buzz off.”

The twins, white to the lips, stared at each other. It so chanced that each of them reflected the other’s pose to the very slant of their narrow heads. The impression made by identical twins is always startling to strangers. It is accompanied by a sensation of shifted focus. It seems to us that the physical resemblance must be an outward sign of mental unity. It is easy to believe that twins are aware of each other’s thoughts, difficult to imagine them in dissonance; and Alleyn wondered if these twins were in agreement when Colin suddenly said: “Let me stay here while you talk to Stephen, please. I’m sorry I was objectionable. I’d like to stay.”

Alleyn did not answer and Colin added: “I won’t butt in. I’d just be here, that’s all.”

“He knows everything about it,” Stephen said. “I t-told him.”

“If he first tells us what he did while you were in the lift,” said Alleyn, “he may stay.”

“Please do, Col,” said Stephen. “You’ll only make me look every kind of bloody skunk if you d-don’t.”

“All right,” said Cohn, slowly. “I’ll explain.”

“That’s excellent,” said Alleyn. “Suppose you both sit down.”

They sat on opposite sides of the table, facing each other.

“I’d rather explain first of all,” Colin began, “that it’s not a new sort of stunt, our joining with the same story. It’s a kind of arrangement we’ve always had. When we were kids we fixed it up between us. I daresay it sounds pretty feeble-minded and sort of ‘ “I did it, sir!” said little Eric,’ but it doesn’t strike us like that. It’s just an arrangement. Not over everything but when there’s a really major row brewing. It doesn’t mean that I think Stephen bumped off Uncle G. I know he didn’t. He told me he didn’t. So I know.”

Colin said this with an air of stolid assurance. Stephen looked at him dully. “Well, I didn’t,” he said.

“I know. I was only explaining.”

“Later on,” said Alleyn, “we’ll look for something that sounds a little more like police-court evidence. In the meantime, what did you do?”