“It’s unlikely that he yelled for his wife in what they all agree was his normal voice after he’d got a skewer in his brain.”
“Can you cut that period down a bit further?”
“Lady Katherine told me that she slipped away after Lady Charles crossed the landing. That means that she herself was on the landing and making for the stairs. She looked at the lift but could see nobody inside. With those doors you can’t see anybody who is sitting down. Wutherwood must have been in the lift then but his murderer, unless he sat beside the victim, was not there. Nor, of course, was he on the landing. A moment later Stephen Lamprey came out to work the lift.”
Nigel dabbed his finger on the carbon copy.
“And when Stephen went out on the landing his aunt was there — alone.”
“That is what he gave in his statement,” said Alleyn without emphasis.
“Have you any reason to doubt this statement?”
“At the moment, none.”
“Very well, then. She had been alone on the landing.”
“I thought your argument was that she did it before that, in which case why did she stay on the landing?”