“Do you find them much changed now you have seen them again?” he asked.
“Not really. At first they seemed rather fashionable and grown-up but that was only for a little while. They are just the same.”
“They haven’t grown up as far as their pockets are concerned,” Alleyn said lightly. But Roberta was ready for this and said that the Lampreys didn’t worry about money, that it meant nothing to them. With a sensation of peril she carried her theme a little further. They would never, she said, do anything desperate to get money.
“But if they are faced with bankruptcy?”
“Something always happens to save them. They know they will fall on their feet. They seem desperately worried and inside themselves they continually forget to be worried.” And seeing that he listened attentively to her, she went on quickly: “Even now this has happened they are not remembering all the time to be alarmed. They know they are all right.”
“All of them?”
Roberta said truthfully: “Perhaps not… Charlot — Lady Charles. She is frightened because Colin pretended he was in the lift and she wonders if that may make you think Stephen is hiding something. But I am sure, inside herself, she knows it will be all right.” Roberta was silent and perhaps she smiled a little to herself for Alleyn said: “Of what were you thinking, Miss Grey?”
“I was thinking that they are like children. You can see them remembering to be solemn about all that has happened and then for a time they are quite frightened. But in a minute or two one of them will think of something amusing to say and will say it.”
“Does Lord Charles do this?”
A cold sensation of panic visited Roberta. Was it, after all, Lord Charles whom they suspected? Again it seemed to her that it was impossible to guess at Lord Charles’s thoughts. He was always politely remote, a background to his family. She discovered that she had no understanding of his reaction to his brother’s murder. She said that of course it was more of a tragedy for him. Lord Wutherwood had been his only brother. She regretted this immediately, anticipating Alleyn’s next question.