“No,” said Alleyn. “Lady Patricia only told us you lay on the floor. She said it was a kind of game. We noticed it took place in that corner where a door has been boarded up. There’s a trace of lip-stick on the carpet close to the crack under the door and a bit of boot polish farther out. It’s difficult to avoid the presumption that your game involved listening to the conversation next door.”
“I say,” said Stephen suddenly, “do you speak French? Yes, I suppose you do. Yes, of course you do.”
“Shut up,” said Colin.
“I haven’t been lying on the carpet,” said Alleyn. “And Mr. Fox only stayed there long enough to catch a phrase, spoken. I think, by you. ‘ Taisez-vous, donc ’!”
“He’s always saying it,” Stephen muttered gloomily. “In English or in French.”
“And a fat lot of notice you take,” Colin pointed out. “If you’d only—”
“We won’t go into that,” said Alleyn. “Now, when this unusual game was ended, and after your brother Michael had come in, you two, with your elder brother, went into the drawing-room, while your sisters went into Flat 26. Did you go together and directly into the drawing-room?”
There was a moment’s silence before Colin answered: “Yes. We all went out together. The girls went first.”
“Henry just had a little snoop d-down the passage.”
“In which direction?”