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. Roberta 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 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.’
‘Of course, Charlie. Shall I tell Violet?’
‘Will you? Bring her to the room. You don’t mind bringing her in?’
‘Of course not,’ said Charlot, ‘if – if she’ll come.’
‘Do you think –?’
‘I’ll see. Come along, children.’
Lord Charles moved quickly to the door and held it open. For as long as Roberta had known the Lampreys he had made the same movement each night after dinner, always reaching the door before his sons and holding it open with a little bow to his wife as she passed him. Tonight they looked into each other’s faces for a moment and then Roberta and Frid followed Charlot to the drawing-room. They left the door open and Roberta saw Lord Charles walk by on his way to his brother. That one glance gave her a vivid, an indelible impression of him. The light from the hall shone on his head making a halo of his thin hair and bright-rimmed silhouette of his face. He wore that familiar air of punctiliousness. The placidity, and the detachment to which she was accustomed still appeared in that mild profile, but, she afterwards thought she had seen a glint of something else, a kind of sharpness so foreign to her idea of Lord Charles that she attributed the impression to a trick of lighting or of her over-stimulated imagination. The hall door slammed. Roberta was left with the others to sit in silence and to wait.
Inspector Fox sat in a corner of the dressing-room, his note-book on his knee, his pencil held in a large, clean hand. He was perfectly still and quite unobtrusive but his presence made itself felt. The two doctors and the nurse were much aware of him and from time to time glanced towards the corner of the room where he sat waiting. A bedside lamp cast a strong light on the patient and a reflected glow on the faces that bent over him. The only sound in the room, a disgusting sound, was made by the patient. On a table close to Fox was a bag. It contained, among a good deal of curious paraphernalia, a silver-plated skewer, carefully packed.
At thirty-five minutes past eight by Fox’s watch there was a slight disturbance. The doctors moved, the nurse’s uniform crackled. The taller of the doctors glanced over his shoulder into the corner of the room.
‘It’s coming, I think. Better send for Lord Charles.’ He pressed the hanging bell-push. The nurse went to the door and in a moment spoke in a low voice to someone outside. Fox left his chair and moved a little nearer the bed.
The patient’s left eye was hidden by a dressing. The right eye was open and stared straight up at the ceiling. From somewhere inside him mingled with the hollow sound of his breathing came a curious noise. His complicated mechanism of speech was trying unsuccessfully to function. The bedclothes were disturbed and very slowly one of his hands crept out. The nurse made a movement which was checked by Fox.
‘Excuse me,’ said Fox, ‘I’d be obliged if you’d let his lordship –’
‘Yes, yes,’ said the tall doctor. ‘Let him be, nurse.’
The hand crept on laboriously out of shadow into light. The finger-tips, clinging to the surface of the neck, crawling with infinite pains, seemed to have a separate life of their own. The single eye no longer stared at the ceiling but turned anxiously in its deep socket as though questing for some attentive face.
‘Is he trying to show us something, Sir Matthew?’ asked Fox.
‘No, no. Quite impossible. The movement has no meaning. He doesn’t know –’
‘I’d
