A Christmas Party: A Seasonal Murder Mystery/Envious Casca

The Inspector had barely packed the knife and its sheath away into a case when Sturry entered the room, and stood upon the threshold with an expression of lofty resignation on his face. Hemingway, no respecter of persons, said: ‘Well, what do you want?’

Sturry gave him a quelling look, and replied with meticulous politeness: ‘Mr Joseph, Inspector, desired me to enquire whether you, and the Other Policeman, will be requiring luncheon. If this should be the case, a Cold Collation will be served in the morning-room.’

‘No, thanks,’ said Hemingway, who had no opinion of cold collations at midwinter.

Sturry bowed slightly. His arctic gaze took in the position of the chair which the Sergeant had used to enable him to reach the knives on the wall, and travelled upwards. He acknowledged the disappearance of one of the pair of knives by a pronounced elevation of the eyebrows, and moved forward to restore the chair to its place against the wall. He then plumped up a couple of cushions, looked with contempt at the partially dismantled Christmas tree, and at last withdrew.

The Sergeant, who had been watching him with considerable disfavour, said: ‘I don’t like that chap.’

‘That’s only inferiority complex,’ said Hemingway. ‘You didn’t like being called the Other Policeman.’

‘Snooping round,’ said the Sergeant darkly. ‘He saw the knife had gone all right. He’ll spread that bit of news round the house.’

‘Then we may get some interesting reactions,’ responded Hemingway. ‘Come on! We’ll take the knife back to headquarters, and get a bit of dinner at the same time. I want to think.’

He was unusually silent during the hot and substantial meal provided by the cook at the Blue Dog inn; and the Sergeant, respecting his preoccupation, made no attempt to converse with him. Only when the cheese was set before them did he venture to say: ‘I’ve been thinking about that weapon.’

‘I haven’t,’ said Hemingway. ‘I’ve been thinking about that locked door.’

‘I don’t seem to get any ideas about that,’ confessed the Sergeant. ‘The more I think about it the more senseless it seems.’

‘There must have been a reason for it,’ said Hemingway. ‘A pretty strong one, too. Whoever murdered Nathaniel Herriard, and locked the door behind him, was taking the hell of a chance of being caught in the act. He didn’t do it for fun.’

‘No,’ agreed the Sergeant, thinking it over. ‘It looks as though you’re right there. But what reason could he possibly have had?’

Hemingway did not answer. After a few moments, the Sergeant said slowly: ‘Supposing the murdered man didn’t lock the door himself, in the first place? We’ve no proof that he did, after all. I was just wondering… If the murderer walked into the room, and locked the door behind him –’

‘Old Herriard would have kicked up a rumpus.’

‘Not if it had been his nephew he wouldn’t. He might have thought Stephen wanted to have a straight talk with him, without the valet’s coming in to interrupt them.’

‘Well?’ said Hemingway, showing a faint interest.

‘Well, Stephen, or someone else, killed him. You remember the valet telling us that he came along, and tried the door, and found it locked? Suppose the murderer was still in the room then?’

‘All right, I’m supposing it. So what?’

The Sergeant caressed his chin. ‘I haven’t worked it all out, but it does strike me that he may have thought he’d got to leave that door locked when he left the room.’

‘Why?’

‘Might be the time element, mightn’t it? He may have thought that if anyone was to come along and try the door a minute or two later, and find it unlocked, he’d be whittling down the time of the murder a bit dangerously. I don’t say I quite see –’

‘No, nor anyone else,’ interrupted Hemingway.

‘There might have been a reason,’ persisted the Sergeant doggedly.

‘There might have been half a dozen reasons, but what you seem to forget is that it isn’t all that easy to turn keys from the wrong side of the door. If the door was locked from the outside, the man who did it must have provided himself with a tool for the purpose. He couldn’t have done it extempore, so to speak.’

‘He could, by slipping a pencil through the handle of the key, with a bit of string attached.’

‘He could, but we haven’t any evidence to show that he did. In fact, we’ve plenty of evidence to show that he didn’t.’

‘Were there any finger-prints on the key?’ asked the Sergeant.

‘Old Herriard’s, and the valet’s, considerably blurred. Just what you’d expect.’

The Sergeant sighed. ‘Nothing seems to lead anywhere, does it, sir? I’m blessed if I know how to catch hold of this case.’

‘We’ll go back to the station,’ decided Hemingway. ‘I’m going to have another look at that key.’

The key, however, revealed no new clue. It was a large key, and it had been lately smeared with vaseline. ‘Which makes it still more unlikely that it could have been turned from outside,’ said Hemingway. ‘To start with, I doubt if any oustiti would have gripped such a greasy surface; and to go on with, we’d be bound to see the imprint of the grooving on the grease. It’s disheartening, that’s what it is.’ He scrutinised the handle through a magnifying glass, and shook his head. ‘Nothing doing. I’d say it hasn’t been tampered with in any way.’

‘Which means,’ said the Sergeant weightily, ‘that whoever locked that door did it from the inside.’

‘And then dematerialised himself like the spooks you read about. Talk sense!’

‘What was to stop him hiding in the room until the body had been found, and then slipping out unnoticed, sir?’

‘Nothing at all. In fact, you might have got something there, except for one circumstance. All the members of the household were accounted for at the time of the discovery. Think again!’

‘I can’t,’ said the Sergeant frankly. ‘Seems as though we’ve got to come back to the ventilator.’

‘The more I think of it, the more that ventilator looks to me like a snare and a delusion,’ said Hemingway. ‘It’s a good seven foot above the floor, to start with, and too small to allow an average-sized man to squeeze through it, to go on with.’

‘The valet,’ said the Sergeant.

‘Yes, I’ve thought of him, but I still don’t see it. Even supposing he could have got through, how did he reach the floor?’

‘Supposing he didn’t come in that way, but was there all the time, and escaped through the ventilator?’

‘Worse!’ said Hemingway emphatically. ‘Did he go head first down a ladder?’

‘Not the way I see it,’ said the Sergeant, ignoring this sarcasm. ‘I’ve got an idea he and young Herriard were in this together. It seems to me that if he’d had a chair to stand on he might, if he was clever, have got out through the ventilator. Once his shoulders were through, he could have wormed himself round, and maybe got hold of a drain-pipe, or a bit of that wistaria over the window, to give himself a purchase while he got a leg out. Once he’d got one foot on the ladder he’d be all right.’

‘Seems to me he’d have to be a ruddy contortionist,’ said the Inspector. ‘And what about the chair under the ventilator?’

‘He could have moved that back when the door was forced open. Who’d have noticed? The old fellow would have been taken up with his brother’s body, and if Stephen was in it he doesn’t count.’

‘I can’t see what you want with young Stephen in this Arabian Nights story of yours. Why don’t you let the valet have the whole stage?’ demanded the sceptical Inspector.

‘Because if Stephen wasn’t in it, there wasn’t a motive,’ replied the Sergeant. ‘My idea is that Stephen bribed the valet to help him. I don’t say the valet did the killing: that’s going too far.’

‘Well, I’m glad to know you draw the line somewhere,’ said Hemingway. ‘And don’t you run away with the notion that I’m not pleased with this theory of yours! I’ve always told you that you haven’t got enough imagination, so it’s very gratifying to me to see you taking my words to heart, which is a thing I never thought you did. And if it weren’t for all the circumstances you’ve overlooked, it would be a good theory.’

The Sergeant said in a resigned voice: ‘I know there are some loose ends, but –’

‘Who set the ladder up to be handy?’

‘Either of them.’

‘When?’

‘Any time,’ said the Sergeant, adding after a moment’s reflection: ‘No, perhaps not any time. As soon as it was dark.’

‘Have you ever tried to set a ladder up against a particular window in the dark?’

‘No, sir, I haven’t; but if there was a light in that particular window I’d back myself to do it,’ retorted the Sergeant.

‘You win,’ said Hemingway handsomely. ‘I’ll give you the ladder. And if you can tell me how Ford managed to be in his master’s room and flirting with one of the housemaids at one and the same time, I’ll go straight off and arrest him.’

‘The way I see it, the murder had been committed by the time he came up the backstairs, and went into the sewing-room.’

‘It may have been, but not by him. He was in the servants’ hall.’

‘That’s what he said.’

‘Exactly. And if he was as smart as you seem to think, he wouldn’t have said that if he couldn’t have proved it. You can check up on it: in fact, you must; but if you don’t find that he’s borne out by the other servants I’ll be surprised.’

‘Well, I can’t get it out of my head that he’s the one person who could have gone in and out of the deceased’s room as he pleased, and, what’s more, have left his finger-prints about without occasioning any suspicion. I suppose no one could have monkeyed about with the bedroom windows?’

Hemingway shook his head. ‘You can’t slip a knife-blade in between that kind of casement-window and its frame, if that’s what you’re thinking of.’ He frowned suddenly. ‘I wonder, though?… My lad, we’ll go back to the house! Then you can nose round for a handy garden-ladder, while I have a heart-to-heart with old Joseph Herriard.’

Unaware of the ordeal before him, Joseph had been trying, throughout luncheon, to second Mrs Dean’s attempts to introduce what she called a normal note into the party’s conversation. Having announced brightly that they must try not to be morbid, Mrs Dean had favoured the company with some anecdotes of a winter spent in the south of France; but as these seemed to lack any other point than the introduction of the names of the well-born people she had met in Nice, no discussion was engendered, and the subject petered out. Maud contributed her mite by recalling that the Archduchess Sophia removed the Empress’s children from her care, and shut them up in a wing of the palace. Stephen was heard to groan, and although Mrs Dean, with what Mathilda could not but consider very good manners, showed herself willing to search her memory for further details of the Empress’s ill-starred career, Joseph evidently felt that no one else would have the patience to endure more Imperial reminiscences, and hastily changed the subject.

But neither his nor Mrs Dean’s efforts could avail to keep the talk away from Nathaniel’s murder. It loomed too large in everyone’s minds; and although Stephen was taciturn, and Maud detached, it was not long before it had become the sole topic of any sustained conversation. Even Joseph succumbed, and said, for perhaps the sixth time, that he felt sure someone from outside had committed the murder. This led to a discussion on the possible ways by which anyone could have gained access to Nathaniel’s bedroom, and Valerie propounded the suggestion that there must be a secret passage behind the oak-panelling. This idea, thrown out on the spur of the moment, took such instant possession of her mind that she reiterated her dread of spending another night under this ill-omened roof; and it might even have induced her to consent to share her mother’s bedroom, had she not reflected in time that she would not, in this event, be allowed to smoke in bed, or to read into the small hours.

‘My little girl mustn’t let her nerves run away with her,’ said Mrs Dean bracingly. ‘Who could possibly want to murder you, my pet?’

A glance at Stephen’s face might have provided her with a possible answer, but happily she did not look in his direction.

Paula, somewhat unexpectedly, said: ‘I wonder if there is a way into Uncle’s room which we don’t know about? Is there, Joe?’

‘My dear, don’t ask me!’ said Joseph, laughing at her. ‘You know your old uncle has no taste for antiques! For all I know, the house may be riddled with secret passages, and priest-holes, and hidden doors! Or isn’t it the right period for those delightfully romantic things? Stephen, you’re a bit of an archaeologist! – set your sister’s mind at rest!’

Stephen cast him a smouldering look. ‘I’ve no idea,’ he said shortly.

‘Oh yes, you love to hide your light under a bushel!’ Joseph chaffed him. ‘Trying to make us believe you’re an ignoramus! But he’s no such thing, Mrs Dean, I assure you! In fact – but don’t say I told you so! – he’s a very clever fellow!’

This piece of facetiousness made Stephen scowl more threateningly than ever, and inspired Mottisfont to say in a meaning tone: ‘I’m sure if there is a secret way into Nat’s room, Stephen would know of it.’

‘I don’t know of it,’ Stephen replied.

Joseph’s arch smile vanished. ‘What do you mean by that, Edgar?’

Mottisfont raised his brows. ‘Merely that it’s common knowledge that Stephen shared Nat’s love for the house. I naturally thought he must know its secrets, if there are any. You’re very touchy, Joe!’

‘I don’t care for that kind of edged remark,’ Joseph said. ‘I know this is a period of great strain, Edgar, but we all feel it, some of us perhaps more than you. The least we can do is to refrain from saying malicious things about each other!’

‘I wish you’d rid your mind of the belief that I need your support!’ said Stephen.

Mrs Dean, realising that a woman’s soothing influence was called for, raised a finger, and said: ‘Now, Stevie! I shall have to say what I used to say to my girlies, when they were children: birds in their little nests agree!’

‘Actually, I believe they don’t,’ remarked Roydon.

If anything had been needed to set the seal to Mrs Dean’s disapproval of an impecunious playwright, this would have been enough. Perceiving a faintly purple tinge in her cheeks, Mr Blyth looked at his watch, and said with rare prudence that he must not miss his train.

This had the effect of breaking up the luncheon-party. Joseph bustled off to see whether the car had been brought round to the door; Mrs Dean said that what the young people wanted was a brisk walk to blow away the cobwebs, adding that Valerie must get Stephen to show her round the estate. Valerie, however, protested that it was a foul day, and filthily cold, and that she thought walking in the snow a lousy form of amusement anyway; and by the time her mother had taken her to task over her choice of adjectives, Stephen had vanished, and Paula had marched Roydon off to discuss the forthcoming production of Wormwood.

Mrs Dean had contemplated an afternoon spent tête-à-tête with Maud, who, though obviously stupid, must, she thought, be able to enlighten her on various aspects of the Herriard inheritance; but this plan was frustrated at the outset by Maud herself. She said that she expected Mrs Dean would like to lie down after her tiring morning.

‘Oh dear me, no!’ declared Mrs Dean, with her wide smile. ‘I always say that nothing ever tires me!’

‘You are very fortunate,’ said Maud, gathering up her knitting and a magazine. ‘I can never do without my afternoon rest.’

So that was that. Maud went away, and Mrs Dean was left to the company of Edgar Mottisfont.

Mathilda, meanwhile, had joined Stephen in the billiard-room, and was playing a hundred up with him, in a not very serious fashion. As she chalked the tip of her cue, she said: ‘Far be it from me to interfere with your simple pleasures, Stephen, but I wish you’d let up on Joe. He means so well, you know.’

‘You damn him in four words. Go in off the red.’

‘Leave me to play my own game in my own way,’ said Mathilda severely, but following out his instruction. ‘I find Joe rather pathetic.’

‘Broken-down actor. I don’t.’

‘Thanks, we can all see that. I wish I knew why he is so fond of you.’

‘I can honestly say that I have never, at any time, given him cause to be. If you hit the white fairly fine, and with plenty of running side –’

‘Be quiet! Why do you dislike him so much?’

‘Damned old hypocrite!’ said Stephen savagely. ‘You haven’t had to watch him oiling up to Uncle Nat for two years.’

‘If he’d done you out of your inheritance you might have grounds for your dislike,’ she pointed out.

‘Blast him! I wish he had!’

She could not help laughing. ‘Yes, I can understand that, but really it’s very unworthy of you, Stephen! I admit that his manner is against him, and that his habit of calling you an old bear gives you some excuse for feeling homicidal, but to give him his due he’s treated you remarkably white. I imagine Nat would never have drawn up that will without his persuasion.’

Stephen slammed the red ball into one of the bottom pockets, and straightened his back. ‘Being, as he would tell you, cross-grained, so much altruism nauseates me!’

She retrieved the red ball from the pocket, and spotted it for him. ‘That’s unreasonable. If he were entirely hypocritical, he’d have tried to induce Nat to leave all his money to him.’

He hunched one impatient shoulder. ‘The fellow’s always acting. I can’t stand him.’

‘Well, he can’t help that: it’s second nature. He sees himself in so many rôles. Did you hear him sustaining a spirited dialogue with your prospective mother-in-law?’

‘Did I not!’ he said, grinning. ‘Did you hear him relying on my good nature to keep him out of the workhouse?’

‘No, I missed that. Are he and Maud going to remain on at Lexham?’

‘Not if I know it!’

‘I have an idea Maud doesn’t want to,’ she remarked. ‘What do you make of her, Stephen?’

‘You can’t make anything of a vacuum. Yes, what is it?’

This last sentence was addressed to Sturry, who had entered the room, and was waiting by the door, with a look of patient resignation on his face.

‘I beg your pardon, sir, but I thought you would wish to be informed that the Inspector from Scotland Yard is here again.’

‘Does he want me?’

‘As to that, sir, I could not take it upon myself to say.’

‘Well, all right! you can go,’ Stephen said irritably.

Sturry bowed. ‘Very good, sir. And perhaps I should mention that I have reason to believe that the Inspector Abstracted one of the foreign daggers from this room, and took it away with him before lunch.’

Having delivered himself of this piece of news, he waited to see what the effect of it would be. On the whole, it was disappointing, for although Stephen glanced quickly up at the wall above the fireplace, he made no remark. Mathilda too said nothing, but she did give a faint shudder. Sturry was obliged to be satisfied with this. He withdrew to his own domain, there to regale the more favoured amongst his colleagues with a highly coloured and wholly fictitious account of Mr Stephen’s reactions to his disclosure.

For a minute or two after he had left the room, neither Stephen nor Mathilda spoke. Stephen seemed to be intent only on the game. He finished his break, rather sooner than Mathilda had expected, for he was a good player, leaving her an easy shot.

‘Curious that it should be so beastly to know the actual weapon,’ she said lightly. ‘I suppose we ought to have suspected those daggers.’

He made no reply. She saw that the lowering look had descended on his brow again, and found herself once more wishing that she could fathom the workings of his queer, secluded mind. She said abruptly: ‘Who picked up your cigarette-case?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘I know Valerie had it, but no one could suspect her of having gone into Nat’s room, much less of having stabbed him. And the more I think of it the more incredible it seems that anyone else should have taken the thing upstairs.’

‘Uncle Nat himself,’ he suggested.

‘I don’t believe it. Why should he?’

‘To give it back to me, presumably.’

‘He wasn’t in that kind of a mood when I last saw him,’ Mathilda replied. ‘Besides, if Valerie really left it on the table by her chair, it would have been perfectly safe there. I’ll tell you what, Stephen: there’s some mystery attached to that case, and for the life of me I can’t solve it.’

He seemed disinclined to discuss the matter, merely giving a kind of grunt, and turning away to mark up her score on the board. A horrid little doubt seized her: what did she know of him, after all? It might be proved that he was in financial difficulties; he might have taken Nat’s threats seriously; he might cherish large desires, which he kept hidden in his own guarded heart, and which only a fortune could put within his reach. There was a streak of cruelty in him, of hard ruthlessness, which was betrayed in his treatment of Joseph, and of Valerie. He didn’t care how much he hurt people: he had suffered hurt himself, and that was reason enough for his unkindness to others.

Then her mind veered sharply to the consideration of his sister, and she began to feel that she was living in a world of nightmare. Would Paula be capable of stabbing to death an old man who loved her, merely for the sake of a part in an unknown dramatist’s play? She didn’t know. She had no clue to Paula either; she only knew her as an urgent, unbalanced young woman, always obsessed by the idea of the moment.

Yes, but although Paula had been seen at Nat’s door, how had she contrived to get into a locked room, or, more difficult still, to lock it behind her? Mathilda had no knowledge of the means by which doors could be locked and unlocked from the wrong side, but she knew that there were such means. Yet it seemed unlikely that Paula could have employed any of them, for how could she have acquired the necessary tools?

This led to the question, were they in it together, this odd, frustrated brother and sister? It was too diabolical: Mathilda shied away from the thought, miscued, and straightened herself, saying with a breathless laugh: ‘Oh, damn! You’ll run out now!’

‘I wonder what that Scotland Yard man’s up to?’ Stephen said restlessly.

‘Trying to trace the person who handled that dagger,’ she suggested.

‘He won’t do that.’

The confidence in his tone startled her. She looked at him almost fearfully. ‘How do you know?’

He bent over the table for his shot. ‘Bound to have wiped the finger-prints off it,’ he replied. ‘Any fool would know enough to do that.’

‘I suppose so,’ she agreed. ‘Whoever did it was pretty ingenious. How could anyone have got into the room? And how was the door locked afterwards?’

‘Hell, how should I know?’

‘How should any of us know?’ she asked. ‘This isn’t a house full of crooks! We’re all ordinary people!’

‘Even though one of us is an assassin,’ interjected Stephen.

‘True; but although I’m not personally acquainted with any assassins –’

‘You are personally acquainted with one assassin, my girl.’ He saw how quickly her eyes leaped to his, and added, with one of his mocking smiles: ‘Since someone in this house is one.’

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘It’s rather hard to realise that. I was going to say that I’ve always imagined that a murderer could be quite an ordinary person. Not like a confirmed thief, I mean. Which of us, for instance, would know how to open a locked door? Of course, I suppose one of the servants might be a crook, but I don’t quite see why any of them should have wanted to murder Nat. They none of them gain anything by his death.’

‘True,’ said Stephen uncommunicatively.

‘Could there be anything in that idea of Valerie’s? Is there a sliding panel, or anything of that kind?’

‘I’ve never heard of it.’

She sighed: ‘No; it does seem rather fantastic. But someone got into that room somehow, and if it wasn’t through the door or the window, how was it?’

‘Go and present Valerie’s idea to the Inspector. It ought to go with a swing, I should think.’

There was a satirical note in his voice, but the Inspector, recalling the oak wainscoting at the Manor, had already thought of this solution, and was occupied at that very moment in sounding the panels in Nathaniel’s room. Since two of the walls were outside ones, and one separated the room merely from the bathroom, only that abutting on to the upper hall called for investigation. The closest scrutiny and the most careful tapping revealed nothing; nor was there any moulding to hide a convenient spring to release a sliding panel. The Inspector was forced to abandon this line of investigation, and to turn his attention to the windows.

These were casement, with leaded panes. They fitted closely into their frames, which were also of lead, the windows overlapping the frames sufficiently to make it impossible for the fastenings to be moved by a knife inserted from outside. They were at no great distance from the ground, and the Inspector judged that a gardener’s ladder would be amply tall enough to reach them. They were built out into a square bay, with a window-seat running beneath them, the whole being hidden at night by long curtains, drawn right across the bay. The Inspector went thoughtfully downstairs in search of Joseph.

The footman volunteered to find him, and ushered Hemingway into the morning-room. Here Joseph soon joined him, an expression of anxiety on his rubicund countenance.

‘Sorry to disturb you again, sir, but I’d like a little talk with you, if you don’t mind,’ said Hemingway.

‘Of course! Can you tell me anything yet, Inspector? This suspense is dreadful! I expect you’re inured to this sort of thing, but to me the thought that my brother’s murderer may be in the house even now is horrible! Haven’t you discovered anything?’

‘Yes, I’ve discovered the weapon that killed your brother,’ replied Hemingway.

Joseph grasped a chairback. ‘Where? Please don’t keep anything from me!’

‘Over the fireplace in the billiard-room,’ said Hemingway.

Joseph blinked at him. ‘Over – ?’

‘One of a pair of knives stuck up beside a stag’s head.’

‘Oh! Yes, yes, I know! Then you didn’t discover it in anyone’s possession!’

‘No; I’m sorry to say that I didn’t,’ said Hemingway.

‘Sorry? Oh! Yes, I expect you must be. Of course! Only one can’t help shrinking from the thought that this ghastly thing might be brought home to someone one knows – one of one’s guests, perhaps!’

‘That’s all very well, sir, but you want to know who killed your brother, don’t you?’ said Hemingway reasonably.

Joseph threw him a wan smile. ‘Alas, it isn’t as simple as that, Inspector! Part of me yearns to bring my brother’s murderer to justice; but the other part – the incurably sentimental, foolish part! – dreads the inevitable discovery! You assure me that the murder was committed by someone staying in the house. Consider what frightful possibilities this must imply! The servants? I cannot think it. My nephew? my niece? The very thought revolts one! A lifelong friend, then? An innocent child, hardly out of the schoolroom? Or an unfortunate young playwright, struggling gallantly to fulfil his destiny? How can I want any of these to be found guilty of murder? Ah, you think me a muddleheaded old fool! I pray for your sake you may never go through the mental torment I writhe under now!’

The Inspector fully appreciated the fine delivery of these lines, but he was shrewd enough to realise that with the slightest encouragement Joseph would turn a police investigation into a drama centred about his own ebullient personality, and he took a firm line at once, saying prosaically: ‘Well, that’s very kind of you, sir, I’m sure. But it’s no use us arguing about who did it, or who you don’t think could have done it. All I want you to do, if you’ll be so good, is to cast your mind back to what happened when you and your nephew entered Mr Herriard’s room after the murder had been committed.’

Joseph shuddered, and covered his eyes with his hand. ‘No, no, I cannot!’

‘Well, you can have a try, can’t you, sir?’ said Hemingway, as one humouring a child. ‘After all, it only happened yesterday.’

Joseph let his hand fall. ‘Only – yesterday! Is it possible? Yet it seems as though a lifetime had passed between then and now!’

‘You can take it from me that it hasn’t,’ said Hemingway, somewhat tartly. ‘Now, when you went upstairs to call your brother down to dinner, you found his valet outside the room, didn’t you?’

‘Yes. It was he who gave me the first premonition that something was wrong. He told me that he could get no answer to his knocking, that the door was locked. I remember that so distinctly – so appallingly distinctly!’

‘And what did you do then?’

Joseph sat down on a chair, and rested one elbow on the table. ‘What did I do? I tried the door, I called to my brother. There was no answer. I was alarmed. Oh, I had no suspicion of the dreadful truth! I thought he had been taken ill, fainted, perhaps. I called to Stephen.’

‘Why did you want him particularly, sir?’

Joseph made one of his little vague gestures. ‘I don’t know. Instinctively one wishes for support. I knew too that my strength would not avail to break down the door. He and Ford burst open the lock, and I saw my poor brother, lying on the floor, as though asleep.’

‘What happened next, sir?’

‘How can I tell you?’ Joseph demanded. ‘One’s heart stood still! The world span round. I suppose one knew then, intuitively, that the worst had happened. Yet one clutched at a frail thread of hope!’

‘And what about Mr Stephen, sir? Did he clutch at it too?’ asked Hemingway, unimpressed.

‘I think he must have. I recall that he sent Ford at once for some brandy. But an instant later he had realised the awful truth. As I dropped to my knees beside my brother’s body, he said: “He’s dead.”’

‘It didn’t take him long to discover that, did it?’

‘I think his instinct must have told him. I could not at first believe it! I told Stephen to fetch a mirror. I would not believe it. But Stephen was right. Only he thought that Nat had had a stroke. He said so at once, and for a few moments I was mercifully permitted to think so too.’

‘And then?’

‘Let me think!’ Joseph begged, pressing his fingers to his temples. ‘It was all a nightmare. It seemed – it still seems – unreal, fantastic! Ford came back with the brandy. Stephen took it from him, sent him away to ring up the doctor.’

‘Oh!’ said Hemingway. ‘So Ford was hardly in the room at all, what with one thing and another?’

‘No. There was nothing he could do. While he was still in the room I had made my ghastly discovery. I was glad to hear Stephen telling him to leave us. At that moment I could not bear that a stranger should be present.’

‘What discovery was this, sir?’

‘I found that there was blood upon my hand!’ said Joseph, in shuddering accents. ‘Blood from my brother’s coat, where I had touched it! Then, and then only, I saw the little rent, and knew that Nat had been done to death!’

The Inspector, quite carried away by all this, murmured, ‘Foully done to death,’ before he could stop himself, and then had to cough, to smother his own words. Fortunately, Joseph did not seem to have heard him. Lost in admiration of his own performance, thought Hemingway, wondering how a man who was undoubtedly unnerved could yet dramatise his emotions with such morbid relish.

‘Very upsetting for you, sir,’ he said. ‘I’m sure I don’t want to make you dwell on it more than I need, but I do want to know what happened when Ford had gone off to ring up the doctor. When Inspector Colwall came here he found the doors locked, and all the windows shut.’

‘Yes, that’s what makes it so inexplicable!’ said Joseph.

‘Did you yourself see that the windows were shut, sir?’

‘No, but my nephew did. I was too overcome! It had not even occurred to me that we ought to look at the windows. But my nephew was a tower of strength! He thought of everything, just as one had always felt sure he would, in an emergency!’

‘He looked at the windows, did he, sir?’

‘Yes, I’m sure he did. I seem to remember that he walked over to them, putting back the curtains. Ah yes! and he asked me if I realised that the doors were both locked, and all the windows shut!’

‘You didn’t look at the windows yourself, sir?’

‘No, why should I? It was enough that one of us had seen that they were shut. I didn’t care: I think I was half-stunned!’

‘Then I take it that it wasn’t you who ascertained that the bathroom door also was locked?’

‘Stephen saw to everything,’ Joseph said. ‘I don’t know where I should have been without him!’

The Inspector, who was fast coming to the conclusion that no one at the Manor, including himself, would be in the present predicament but for the activities of Mr Stephen Herriard, agreed heartily, and said that he would not trouble Joseph any further. Then he went off to find Ford.

Ford, twice questioned by the police already, was nervous, and inclined to be sullen, but when he was asked if he had tried the bathroom door in his efforts to get into his master’s room on the previous evening, he replied readily that he had, and that it had been locked. Paula, interrupted in the middle of a discussion with Roydon on the advisability of rewriting a part of the second act of Wormwood, said impatiently that of course she had not tried the bathroom door, and turned her shoulder to the Inspector. He withdrew, and was fortunate enough to encounter Valerie, crossing the hall towards the staircase. She gave a start on seeing him, and eyed him with mingled trepidation and suspicion.

‘You’re just the person I was waiting to see, miss,’ said Hemingway pleasantly.

‘It’s no use: I don’t know anything about it!’ Valerie assured him.

‘No, I don’t suppose you do,’ he replied, surprising her exactly as he had meant to. ‘It isn’t likely a young lady like you would be mixed up in a murder.’

She gave an audible sigh of relief, but still watched him suspiciously. Correctly divining that she would not object to familiarity, if it were judiciously mixed with flattery, he said: ‘If you don’t mind my saying so, miss, it’s a bit of a surprise to me to find anyone like you here.’

She responded instinctively. ‘I don’t know what you mean! Do you think I’m so extraordinary?’

‘Well, it isn’t every day of the week that I meet a beautiful young lady, all in the way of business,’ said the Inspector unblushingly.

She giggled. ‘Good gracious, I didn’t know that policemen paid one compliments!’

‘They don’t often get the chance,’ answered Hemingway. ‘You’re engaged to be married to Mr Stephen Herriard, aren’t you, miss?’

This brought a cloud to her brow. ‘Yes, in a way I suppose I am,’ she admitted.

‘You don’t sound very sure about it!’ he said, cocking an intelligent eyebrow.

‘Oh, I don’t know! Only I never thought a thing like this would happen. It sort of changes everything. Besides, I utterly loathe this house, and Stephen adores it.’

‘Ah, he’s got a taste for antiques, I daresay!’ said Hemingway, very much on the alert.

‘Well, I think it’s all completely deathly, and I simply won’t be buried alive here.’

‘I wouldn’t take on about that, if I were you, miss. I expect Mr Stephen will be only too glad to live wherever you want.’

She opened her eyes at him. ‘Stephen? Oh gosh, no! He’s the most foully obstinate person I’ve ever met! You simply can’t move him once he’s made up his mind.’

‘I can see you’ve been having a pretty uncomfortable time,’ said Hemingway sympathetically.

Valerie, already smarting from the sense of her own wrongs, and further aggrieved by her parent’s attitude of bracing common sense, was only too glad to have found someone to whom she could unburden herself. She drew nearer to the Inspector, saying: ‘Well, I have. I mean, I’m one of those frightfully highly-strung people. I just can’t help it!’

The Inspector now had a certain cue, and responded instantly to it. ‘I could see at a glance that you were a mass of nerves,’ he said brazenly.

‘That’s just it!’ said Valerie, immensely gratified. ‘Only none of these people realise it, or care a damn about anyone but themselves. Except Uncle Joe: he’s nice; and I rather like Willoughby Roydon too. But the rest have been simply foul to me.’

‘Jealous, I wouldn’t wonder,’ nodded Hemingway.

She laughed, and patted her curls. ‘Well, I can’t imagine why they should be! Besides, Stephen’s as bad as the others. Worse if anything!’

‘Perhaps he’s jealous too, in a different way. I know I would be.’

‘Oh, Stephen’s not in the least like that!’ she said, brushing the suggestion aside. ‘He doesn’t care what I do. No, honestly he doesn’t! In fact, he doesn’t behave as though he cared for me a bit, in spite of having brought me down here to get to know his uncle. Of course, I oughtn’t to be saying this to you,’ she added, with a belated recollection of their respective positions.

‘You don’t want to worry about what you say to me,’ said the Inspector. ‘I daresay it’s a relief to be able to get it off your chest. I can see you’ve been through a lot.’

‘I must say, I think you’re frightfully decent!’ she said. ‘It’s been sheer hell ever since Mr Herriard was killed; and that other Inspector was too brutal for words! – I mean, absolute Third Degree! All about Stephen’s filthy cigarette-case!’

‘I’m surprised at Inspector Colwall!’ said Hemingway truthfully. ‘What did you happen to do with the case, if you don’t mind my asking?’

‘I didn’t do anything with it. I mean, I simply took a cigarette out of it, and put the case down on the table in the drawing-room, and never thought of it again until all this loathsome fuss started. Only Mathilda Clare – who’s quite the ugliest woman I’ve ever laid eyes on – practically accused me of having had the case all the time. Of course, she was simply out to protect Stephen, Willoughby says. Because Mr Mottisfont said, who was likely to pick up the case except Stephen himself? which is perfectly true, of course. And if you ask me, Mathilda Clare deliberately tried to throw the blame on to me because she knew Mr Herriard didn’t like me!’

‘Now that’s a thing I can’t believe!’ said the Inspector gallantly.

‘No; but he didn’t, all the same. In fact, that’s why I came here. It was my mother’s idea, actually, that I should have a chance to get to know Mr Herriard. Personally I think he was a woman-hater.’

‘If he didn’t like you, he must have been. Didn’t he want his nephew to marry you?’

‘Well, no, as a matter of fact he didn’t. Only I feel sure I could have got round him, if only Stephen hadn’t made everything worse by annoying him over something or other. Of course, that’s just like Stephen! He would! I did try to make him be sensible, because Uncle Joe dropped a word in my ear, but it was no use.’

‘What sort of a word?’ asked Hemingway.

‘Oh, about Mr Herriard’s will! He didn’t actually say everything was left to Stephen, but I sort of gathered it.’

‘I see. Did you tell Mr Stephen?’

‘Yes; but he only laughed, and said he didn’t care.’

‘He seems to be a difficult kind of young man to have to do with,’ said Hemingway.

She sighed. ‘Yes, and I don’t really – Oh well! Only I wish I’d never come here!’

‘I’m sure I don’t blame you,’ said Hemingway, wondering how to get rid of her, now that he had extracted the information he wanted.

This problem was solved for him by Mathilda, who came into the hall at that moment from the passage leading to the billiard-room. Valerie flushed guiltily, and ran upstairs. Mathilda’s cool, shrewd gaze followed her, and returned, enquiringly, to the Inspector’s face. ‘I seem to have scared Miss Dean,’ she remarked, strolling across the hall towards him. ‘Was she being indiscreet?’

He was slightly taken aback, but hid it creditably. ‘Not at all. We’ve just been having a pleasant little chat,’ he replied.

‘I can readily imagine it,’ Mathilda said.