“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?”
“Me?” asked Colin. “Oh, I just stayed in the drawing-room with Henry and my father.”
“What did you talk about?”