“The idea was perfectly magnificent,” he said. “It did look like a cigarette-case. The edges of the bulge weren’t quite sharp enough.”

“Pig!” said Bridget.

“Sorry,” said Alleyn. “Now then. Three or four official questions, if you please. And look here, Miss Bridget, will you let me offer you a very dreary piece of advice? It’s our set-piece for innocent witnesses. Don’t prevaricate. Don’t lose your temper. And don’t try any downright thumping lies, because if you do, as sure as eggs is eggs, you’ll be caught out and it’ll look very nasty indeed for anyone whom you thought you were going to protect. You think Donald is innocent, don’t you?”

“I know he is innocent.”

“Right. Then you have nothing in the wide world to fear. Away we go. Did you sit out in the green sitting-room on the top gallery?”

“Yes. Lots of times.”

“During the supper hour? Between twelve and one?”

Bridget pondered. As he watched her Alleyn looked back at youth and marvelled at its buoyancy. Bridget’s mind bounced from thoughts of death to thoughts of love. She was sorry Bunchy was murdered, but as long as Donald was not suspected she was also rather thrilled at the idea of police investigation. She was sincerely concerned at her mother’s distress and ready to make sacrifices on Lady Carrados’s behalf. But ready to meet all sorrow, anger or fright was her youth, like a sort of pneumatic armour that received momentary impressions of these things but instantly filled out again. Now, when she came to her mother’s indisposition she spoke soberly, but it was impossible to escape the impression that on the whole she was stimulated rather than unnerved by tragedy.

“I was up there with Donald until after most people had gone into the supper-room. We both came down together. That was when I returned her bag to Donna. Donna wasn’t well. She’s awfully tired. She nearly fainted when I found her in the supper-room. She said afterwards it was the stuffiness.”

“Yes?”

“It was a queer sort of night, hot indoors, but when any of the windows were opened the mist came in and it brought a kind of dank chilliness. Donna asked me to fetch her smelling-salts. I ran upstairs to the ladies’ cloakroom. Donna’s maid Sophie was there. I got the smelling-salts from Sophie and ran downstairs. I couldn’t find Donna but I ran into Bunchy who said she was all right again. I had booked that dance with Percy Percival. He was a bit drunk and was making a scene about my having cut him out. So I danced with him to keep him quiet.”

“Did you go up to the green sitting-room again?”

“Not for some time. Donald and I went up there towards the end of the party.”

“Did you at any stage of the proceedings leave your cigarette-case on the pie-crust table in that room?”

Bridget stared at him.

“I haven’t got a cigarette-case; I don’t smoke. Is there something about a cigarette-case in the green sitting-room?”

“There may be. Do you know if anybody overheard Bunchy telephone from that room at about one o’clock?”

“I haven’t heard of it,” said Bridget. He saw that her curiosity was aroused. “Have you asked Miss Harris?” she said. “She was on the top landing a good deal last night. She’s somewhere in the house now.”

“I’ll have a word with her. There’s just one other point. Lord Robert was with your mother when you returned her bag, wasn’t he? He was there when she felt faint?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Did he seem upset in any way?”

“He seemed very concerned about Donna but that was all. Sir Daniel — Donna’s doctor — came up. Bunchy opened a window. They all seemed to want me out of the way. Donna asked for her smelling-salts, so I went and got them. That’s all. What about a cigarette-case? Do tell me.”

“It’s gold with a medallion sunk in the lid and surrounded by brilliants. Do you know it?”

“It sounds horribly grand. No, I don’t think I do.”

Alleyn got up.

“That’s all, then,” he said. “Thank you so much, Miss Bridget. Good-bye.” He had got as far as the door before she stopped him.

“Mr Alleyn!”

“Yes?”

She was standing very erect in the middle of the room, her chin up and a lock of hair falling across her forehead.

“You seem to be very interested in the fact that my mother was not well last night. Why?”

“Lord Robert was with her at the time—” Alleyn began.

“You seem equally interested in the fact that I returned my mother’s bag to her. Why? Neither of these incidents had anything to do with Bunchy Gospell. My mother’s not well and I won’t have her worried.”

“Quite right,” said Alleyn. “I won’t either if I can help it.”

She seemed to accept that, but he could see that she had something else to say. Her young, beautifully made-up face in its frame of careful curls had a frightened look.

“I want you to tell me,” said Bridget, “if you suspect Donald of anything.”

“It is much too soon for us to form any definite suspicion of anybody,” Alleyn said. “You shouldn’t attach too much significance to any one question in police interrogations. Many of our questions are nothing but routine. As Lord Robert’s heir — no, don’t storm at me again, you asked me and I tell you — as Lord Robert’s heir Donald is bound to come in for his share of questions. If you are worrying about him, and I see you are, may I give you a tip? Encourage him to return to medicine. If he starts running night clubs the chances are that sooner or later he will fall into our clutches. And then what?”

“Of course,” said Bridget thoughtfully, “it’ll be different now. We could get married quite soon, even if he was at a hospital or something all day. He will have some money.”

“Yes,” agreed Alleyn, “yes.”

“I mean I don’t want to be heartless,” continued Bridget looking at him quite frankly, “but naturally one can’t help thinking of that. We’re terribly, terribly sorry about Bunchy. We couldn’t be sorrier. But he wasn’t young like us.”

Into Alleyn’s mind came suddenly the memory of a thinning head, leant sideways, of fat hands, of small feet turned inwards.

“No,” he said, “he wasn’t young like you.”

“I think he was stupid and tiresome over Donald,” Bridget went on in a high voice, “and I’m not going to pretend I don’t, although I am sorry I wasn’t friends with him last night. But all the same I don’t believe he’d have minded us thinking about the difference the money would make. I believe he would have understood that.”

“I’m sure he would have understood.”

“Well then, don’t look as if you’re thinking I’m hard and beastly.”

“I don’t think you’re beastly and I don’t believe you are really very hard.”

“Thank you for nothing,” said Bridget and added immediately: “Oh, damn, I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right,” said Alleyn. “Good-bye.”

“Yes, but—”

“Well?”

“Nothing. Only, you make me feel shabby and it’s not fair. If there was anything I could do for Bunchy I’d do it. So would Donald, of course. But he’s dead. You can’t do anything for dead people.”

“If they have been murdered you can try to catch the man that killed them.”

“ ‘An eye for an eye.’ It doesn’t do them any good. It’s only savagery.”

“Let the murderer asphyxiate someone else if it’s going to suit his book,” said Alleyn. “Is that the idea?”

“If there was any real thing we could do—”

“How about Donald doing what his uncle wanted so much? Taking his medical? That is,” said Alleyn quickly, “unless he really has got a genuine ambition in another direction. Not by way of Captain Withers’s night clubs.”

“I’ve just said he might be a doctor, now, haven’t I?”

“Yes,” said Alleyn, “you have. So we’re talking in circles.” His hand was on the door-knob.

“I should have thought,” said Bridget, “that as a detective you would have wanted to make me talk.”

Alleyn laughed outright.

“You little egoist,” he said, “I’ve listened to you for the last ten minutes and all you want to talk about is yourself and your young man. Quite right too, but not the policeman’s cup of tea. You take care of your mother who needs you rather badly just now, encourage your young man to renew his studies and, if you can, wean him from Withers. Good-bye, now, I’m off.”