“I think we ought to ring up Nigel Bathgate,” said Frid.
“Bathgate!” cried Alleyn, jerked to attention by this recurrence of his friend’s name. “Bathgate? But why?”
“He’s a friend of yours, isn’t he, Mr. Alleyn? So he is of ours. As he’s a press-man I thought it would be nice,” said Frid, “to let him in at the death.”
“Frid, darling!” her mother expostulated.
“Well, Mummy darling, it is just that. Shall I ring Nigel up, Mr. Alleyn?”
Alleyn stared at her. “It’s not a matter for us to decide, you know,” he said at last. “He might serve to keep his fellow scavengers at bay. I may say that you will be creating a precedent if — if you actually invite a press-man to your house when…” His voice petered out. He drove his fingers through his hair.
“Yes, I know,” said Lady Charles with an air of sympathy. “We no doubt seem a very unbalanced family, poor Mr. Alleyn, but you will find that there is generally a sort of method in our madness. After all, as Frid points out, it would be a help to Nigel Bathgate who works desperately hard at his odious job and, as you point out, it may save us from masses of avid, red-faced reporters asking us difficult questions about Gabriel and poor Violet. Ring him up, Frid.”
Frid went to the telephone and a uniformed constable came in from the hall and stood inside the door. With the mental sensations usually associated with the gesture of throwing up one’s hands and casting one’s eyes towards heaven, Alleyn joined Fox in the hall. He drew Fox onto the landing and shut the door behind them.
“And what the hell,” he asked, “have you been telling that collection of certifiable grotesques about me?”
“About you, Mr. Alleyn? Me?”