“Here, I say, hi!” said Alleyn. “What’s all this about?” Roberta, on the verge of tears, stared at the opposite wall. She felt rather than saw him get up and come round the table towards her. Now he stood above her. In her misery she noticed that he smelt pleasantly. Something like a new book in a good binding, said her brain, which seemed to be thinking frantically in several directions. She would not, she would not cry in front of these men.
“I’m so sorry,” the deep voice was saying. “I see. Look here, Miss Grey, I wasn’t hurling insults at you. Really. I mean it would have been perfectly outrageous if I had suggested…” He broke off. His air of helplessness steadied Roberta. She looked up at him. His face was twisted into a singular grimace. His left eyebrow had climbed half-way up his forehead. His mouth was screwed to one side as if a twinge of toothache bothered him. “Oh damn!” he said.
“It’s all right,” said Roberta, “but you made it sound so low. I suppose it was really.”
“We’re all low at times,” said Alleyn comfortably. “I can see why you wanted to hear the interview. A good deal depended on it. Lord Charles asked his brother to get him out of this financial box, didn’t he?”
Desperate speculations as to the amount of information he had already collected joggled about in Roberta’s brain. If he knew positively the gist of the interview she would do harm in denying Lord Charles’s appeal. If he didn’t know he might yet find out. And what had Lady Katherine told him?
She said: “I may have listened at door cracks but at least I can hold my tongue about what I heard.” And even that sounded bad. If Alleyn had been mistaken, of course she would have said so. “He knows,” she thought desperately. “He knows.”
“You will understand,” Alleyn said, “that from our point of view this discussion between the brothers is important. You see we know why Lord Wutherwood came here. We know what it was hoped would be the result of the interview. I think you would all have been only too ready to tell us if Lord Wutherwood had agreed to help his brother.”
What would Henry and Lord Charles tell him? They had spoken about it in French. She had caught enough of the conversation to realize what they were talking about. What had the twins told him? Had they agreed to lie about it? Why not? Why not, since Uncle G. was dead and could not give them away? But Alleyn could not have asked the twins about the interview or they would have said so on their return. So it was up to her. The word perjury was caught up in her thoughts with a dim notion of punishment. But she could do them no harm. Only herself, because she lied to the police in the execution of their duty. That wasn’t right. Lying statement. False statement. She must speak now. Now. With conviction. She seemed to hover for eternity on the edge of utterance and when her voice did come it was without any conscious order from her brain.
“But,” said Roberta’s voice, “didn’t they tell you? Lord Wutherwood promised to help his brother.”
“Do you speak French, Miss Grey?” asked Alleyn.