A Christmas Party: A Seasonal Murder Mystery/Envious Casca

The Sergeant, returning from his visit to Galloway’s cottage, came in with a face of settled gloom, and told his chief that it was just as they had feared. Galloway had taken the key home with him, and it was even now hanging up on one of the hooks of his kitchen-dresser.

‘So it doesn’t look as though our man got in through the window at all,’ he said. ‘I suppose you haven’t discovered anything fresh, have you, sir?’

When he learned what the Inspector had, in fact, discovered, he was interested, but inclined to agree with Colwall’s view, that beyond eliminating one of the suspects it was not likely to prove to be of much use. ‘If you ask me, sir, the man who did this job isn’t the sort to lose his head,’ he said.

‘I didn’t ask you, but you’re quite at liberty to have your own opinions,’ said Hemingway tartly. ‘I’ve already had the satisfaction of proving that he can make a silly mistake: well, now we’ll see if he can’t be rattled a bit. So far he’s had it all his own way: he shall have it my way, and see how he likes it.’

‘Are you going up there again this evening, sir?’

‘No,’ said Hemingway, ‘I’m not. This is where I put in a bit of quiet thinking, while that lot up at the Manor wonders what I’m up to. There’s nothing like suspense for shaking a man’s nerve.’

The Sergeant grinned. ‘You wouldn’t, I suppose, be thinking of the turkey they’ve got roasting at the Blue Dog, would you, Chief?’ he ventured.

‘If I have any insubordinate talk from you,’ said Hemingway severely, ‘I’ll give you a job to do up at the Manor that’ll keep you there till midnight. It wasn’t the turkey I was thinking of at all.’

‘I’m sorry!’ apologised the Sergeant.

‘So I should think. It was the ham,’ said Hemingway.

The inmates of the Manor were, accordingly, left to their own devices, if not to peace. Peace did not flourish under the same roof as Mrs Dean, and by the time she had bullied Joseph, Mottisfont, Roydon, and her own daughter into playing paper-games, and had driven both the young Herriards and Mathilda into taking refuge in the billiard-room, an atmosphere of even greater unrest pervaded the household.

Christmas dinner, with all the associations which turkey and plum-pudding conjured up, inspired Maud to remark that she wished Nathaniel had not been murdered at such an awkward time, because although it seemed almost heartless to eat Christmas fare there was nothing else to be done, since there it was, and would only go bad if left. She added that they had better not set light to the pudding this year; and Sturry, approving this decree, added his mite towards the drive for sobriety by removing the sprig of holly from the pudding.

Everyone went to bed early, but no one looked next morning as though the long night’s rest had been of much benefit. Mottisfont said several times that he could not think what the police were hanging fire for, by which observation he was understood to mean that he thought Stephen ought by this time to have been in the County gaol. Valerie said that she had hardly closed her eyes all night, on account of the ghastly dreams which had haunted her. Roydon looked pale, and wondered audibly when the police would allow them all to go home.

Breakfast was not served until nine o’clock, and before anyone had reached the toast-and-marmalade stage, Sturry entered, rather in the manner of a Greek chorus, to announce the arrival of doom in the person of Inspector Hemingway. The Inspector, he said with relish, would like to have a Word with Mr Stephen.

The inside of Mathilda’s mouth felt dry suddenly and the muscles of her throat unpleasantly constricted. Joseph drew in his breath sharply.

‘He might have let me finish my breakfast,’ said Stephen, laying down his napkin. ‘Where is he?’

‘I showed the Inspector into the library, sir.’

‘All right,’ Stephen said, and got up.

Paula thrust back her chair, and rose, in one of her jerky, impetuous movements. ‘I’m coming with you!’ she said abruptly.

‘Get on with your breakfast: I don’t want you,’ Stephen said.

‘I don’t care a damn what you want!’ she said. ‘I’m your sister, aren’t I?’

He took her by the shoulders, and thrust her into her chair again. ‘Get this, and get it good!’ he said roughly. ‘You’re to keep out of this!’

‘There’s no more reason for him to suspect you than me! Uncle accused me of wanting to murder him, not you!’

‘You keep your misguided trap shut,’ said Stephen. ‘You’re a good kid, but boneheaded.’ His sardonic gaze flickered over the other members of the house-party, taking in Joseph’s look of misery, Mathilda’s white rigidity, the thinly-veiled satisfaction in Mottisfont’s eyes, the relief in Roydon’s. He gave a short laugh, and went out.

The Inspector was looking out of the window when Stephen entered the room, but he turned at the sound of the opening door, and said: ‘Good-morning, sir. Looks like the thaw has set in properly.’

Stephen eyed him in some surprise. ‘How true!’ he said. ‘Shall we cut the cackle?’

‘Just as you like, sir,’ Hemingway replied, ‘What I came for was to give you back your cigarette-case.’

He held it out as he spoke, and had the satisfaction of seeing that he had succeeded in startling this uncomfortably brusque young man.

‘What the hell!’ Stephen demanded, his eyes lifting from the case to Hemingway’s face. ‘What kind of a damned silly joke do you imagine you’re playing?’

‘Oh, I’m not playing any joke!’ responded Hemingway.

Stephen took the case, and stood holding it, ‘I thought this was your most valuable piece of evidence?’

‘Yes, so did I,’ agreed Hemingway. ‘And I don’t mind admitting that it’s very disappointing for me to have to give it up. But there it is! A detective’s life is one long disappointment.’

Stephen smiled, in spite of himself. ‘Would you like to explain a little? Why do I get my case back? I thought you had me booked for the County gaol.’

‘I don’t deny that’s about what I thought too,’ Hemingway admitted. ‘And if only you’d left a finger-print or two on that case of yours, I daresay I’d have had the handcuffs on you by now.’

‘Didn’t I?’ said Stephen, frowning in a little perplexity.

‘Not one!’ said Hemingway cheerfully.

Stephen glanced down at the case, turning it over in his hand. ‘I don’t seem to be very bright this morning. Am I to infer that my finger-prints had been wiped off?’

‘That’s about the size of it, sir.’

He encountered a very hard, direct look. ‘Mind telling me if there were any finger-prints on it at all?’

‘No,’ said Hemingway; ‘I’m not one to make a lot of mystery. There weren’t any.’

‘Oh!’ said Stephen. Again he looked at the case, his frown deepening. ‘A plant, in fact!’

The Inspector fixed him with a bright, enquiring gaze. ‘Got any ideas about that, sir?’

Stephen slipped the case into his pocket. After a moment’s hesitation, he said: ‘No. Not immediately. When I do get an idea –’

‘Now, you don’t want to go taking the law into your own hands, sir!’ interrupted the Inspector. ‘What do you think I’m here for? If you know anything, you tell me, and don’t start any rough-houses on your own, because though I can’t say I’d blame you, I’d have to take you up for disturbing the peace, which, properly speaking, isn’t my line of business at all.’

Stephen laughed. ‘What would you do if you found that someone had tried to do the dirty on you to this tune, Inspector?’

The Inspector coughed. ‘Report it to the proper quarters,’ he said firmly.

‘Well, I’d rather rub his damned nose in it!’ said Stephen.

‘As long as you don’t go farther than that, I’ve no objection,’ said Hemingway, with the utmost cordiality. ‘And if you want a bit of advice, don’t go leaving any more of your things about! It puts highly unsuitable ideas into people’s heads, besides setting the police off on wild-goose chases, which is a very reprehensible thing to do, let me tell you!’

‘Sorry!’ Stephen said. ‘Very annoying for you: you must now be back exactly where you started.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that!’ Hemingway replied.

‘No, I don’t suppose you would: not to me, at any rate. If it’s all the same to you, I’d now like to go back and finish my breakfast.’

The Inspector signifying that it was quite the same to him, Stephen returned to the dining-room, where the rest of the party was still seated at the table. Every face turned towards him as he entered, some asking a mute, anxious question, some avidly curious. He sat down in his place, and told Sturry, who had found an excuse to come back into the room, to bring him some fresh coffee.

‘Gosh, I quite thought you’d be under arrest by now!’ said Valerie, putting into words what everyone else had been thinking.

‘I know you did, my pretty one,’ Stephen answered.

‘What happened, Stephen?’ Mathilda asked him, in a low voice.

He favoured her with one of his twisted smiles, and took out his cigarette-case, and opened it, and selected a cigarette. As he tapped it on the case, every eye became riveted on it. Mathilda looked quickly up at him, but saw that he was not paying any heed to her, but rather letting his challenging gaze wander round the table, dwelling for a moment on Roydon’s face, travelling on to Mottisfont’s, and resting there for a moment.

Again it was Valerie who found her voice first. ‘Why, that’s your cigarette-case! The one the police took!’

‘As you say.’

‘Do you mean they’ve given it back to you?’ asked Roydon, in bewildered accents.

‘Yes,’ said Stephen. ‘They’ve given it back to me.’

‘I never heard of such a thing!’ exclaimed Mottisfont. ‘It can’t be the same case! You’re trying to pull our legs, for some reason best known to yourself! The police would never have relinquished the real case!’

‘I’d give it to you to look at, only that the Inspector warned me to be more careful with my property in future,’ said Stephen. ‘When I leave my things about, they have an odd way of transporting themselves – isn’t that nicely put? – into quite different parts of the house.’

‘What the devil do you mean by that?’ demanded Mottisfont, half-rising from his chair.

‘Do you believe in poltergeists?’ asked Stephen, still smiling, but not very pleasantly.

‘Stephen!’ Joseph said, his voice trembling with emotion. ‘Stephen, my boy! Does it mean that they don’t suspect you after all?’

‘Oh, I gather that I am wholly cleared!’ Stephen replied.

It was not to be expected that Joseph would greet such news as this in a restrained manner. He bounced up out of his chair, and came round the table to clasp his nephew’s hands. ‘I knew it all along!’ he said. ‘Thank God, thank God! Stephen, old boy, you don’t know what a weight it is off my mind! If – if the worst had happened, it would have been my fault! Oh yes, it would! I know that. My dear, dear boy, if it were not for that one great sorrow hanging over us, this would be a red-letter day indeed!’

‘But I don’t understand!’ Paula said. ‘Why are you in the clear? Are you sure it isn’t some kind of a trick?’

‘No, there’s no trick about it,’ he answered.

‘Why should there be a trick?’ Joseph said. ‘Can it be that you doubted Stephen’s innocence? Your own brother!’

‘How did it come to be in Uncle’s room?’ Paula asked, disregarding Joseph. ‘You may as well tell us, Stephen! We must all have guessed!’

‘Clever, aren’t you? I’m a child in these matters myself, but I gathered from the Inspector that in his opinion it was planted there.’

Paula flashed a look round the table. ‘Yes! That has always stood out a mile!’ she declared.

‘I don’t believe it!’ Mottisfont said, reddening angrily. ‘That’s what you chose to hint from the outset, but I consider it a monstrous suggestion! Are you daring to imply that one of us murdered Nat, and tried to fasten the crime onto you?’

‘It’s so obvious, isn’t it?’ Stephen said.

Joseph, who had been looking from one to the other, with an expression of almost pathetic bewilderment on his face, was so shocked that his voice sank quite three tones. ‘It couldn’t be true!’ he uttered. ‘It’s too infamous! too terrible for words! It was Nat himself who took your case up! It must have been! Good God, Stephen, you couldn’t believe a thing like that of anyone here – staying with us – invited here to – No, I tell you! It’s too horrible!’

At any other time Mathilda could have laughed to see Joseph’s roseate illusions so grotesquely shattered. As it was, the situation confronting them seemed to her to be too grim to admit of laughter. She said in a studiedly cool voice: ‘What gave the Inspector this idea?’

‘The absence of any finger-prints on the case,’ answered Stephen.

It took a minute or two for the company to assimilate the meaning of this, nor did it seem from Maud’s blank face, or from Joseph’s puzzled frown, that its full import had been universally realised. But Roydon had realised it, and he said: ‘It’s the meanest thing I ever heard of! I hope you don’t imagine that any of us would stoop so low?’

‘I don’t know at all,’ said Stephen. ‘I shall leave it to the Inspector to find out.’

‘That’s all very well!’ struck in Paula. ‘But if there were no finger-prints on the case, how is he to find out?’

‘He seems quite optimistic about it,’ Stephen replied.

It now seemed good to Valerie to declare in agitated tones that she could see what they were all getting at, but if anyone thought she had killed Mr Herriard they were wrong, and she wished that she had never been born.

Mrs Dean, whom Stephen’s announcement had cast into a mood of bitter reflection, was forced to wrench herself from her thoughts to frustrate an attempt on her daughter’s part to break into strong hysterics. Valerie cast herself on the scented bosom in a storm of noisy tears, saying that everyone had been beastly to her ever since she had set foot in this beastly house; and, with the exception of Joseph, who fussed about in an agitated and useless manner, the rest of the party lost no time in dispersing.

Maud told Mathilda, on her placid way to the morning-room, that she thought it was a good thing Stephen was not going to marry Valerie, since she seemed an uncontrolled girl, not at all likely to make him comfortable. She seemed to have no comment to make on the new and lurid light thrown on to Nathaniel’s murder, and Mathilda was unable to resist the impulse to ask her if she had grasped the meaning of what Stephen had told them.

‘Oh yes!’ Maud said. ‘I always thought something like that must have happened.’

Mathilda fairly gasped. ‘You thought it? You never said so!’

‘No, dear. I make a point of not interfering,’ Maud explained.

‘I must confess it hadn’t occurred to me that any of us could be quite so base!’ Mathilda said.

Maud’s face was quite inscrutable. ‘Hadn’t it?’ she said, uninterested and unsurprised.

Valerie, meanwhile, had been led upstairs, gustily sobbing, by her mother, who vented her own annoyance at having so precipitately jettisoned Stephen on Joseph, telling him that although she was never one to make trouble she felt bound to say that her girlie had been treated at Lexham with a total lack of consideration.

Poor Joseph was stricken to incoherence by the injustice of this accusation, and could only gaze after the matron in shocked bewilderment. He was recalled to a sense of his surroundings by the entrance of the servants, to clear the table, and went away to look for someone with whom he could discuss the latest developments of the case.

He was fortunate enough to find Mathilda, and at once took her by the arm and led her off to the library. ‘I’m getting old, Tilda – too old for this kind of thing!’ he told her. ‘Yesterday I thought that if only the cloud could be lifted from Stephen, nothing else would matter. Today I find myself with a possibility so horrible – Tilda, who, I ask of you, could bear such a grudge against Stephen?’

‘It might not be so much a question of a grudge as an instinct of pure sauve qui peut,’ she pointed out.

‘No one but a snake in the grass could do such a thing!’

She said dryly: ‘Anyone capable of stabbing his host in the back would surely be quite capable of throwing the blame on to someone else.’

‘Mottisfont?’ he said. ‘Roydon? Paula? How can you think such a thing of any one of them?’

‘I envy you your touching faith in human nature, Joe.’

She was sorry, however, that she had said that, for Joseph took it as a cue, and said in a very noble way that he thanked God he had got faith in human nature. While she did not doubt that his trusting disposition had sustained a severe shock, and could even be sorry for his distress, she was in no mood to tolerate play-acting, and soon shook him off. Between his relief at knowing Stephen to be exonerated and his dread of discovering that his beloved niece, or his old friend Mottisfont, or poor young Roydon was the guilty party, he was so spiritually torn that the optimism of a lifetime seemed to be in danger of deserting him.

Of the three people now, presumably, equally suspected of having murdered Nathaniel, Paula showed the most coolness. She discussed, with a cold-bloodedness worthy of Stephen, the chances of Roydon’s having done the deed, and said that, speaking from an artistic point of view, she hoped that he hadn’t, since he had a Future before him.

‘I imagine I must be out of the running,’ she said, walking about the room in her usual restless way. ‘No one could suspect me of trying to throw the blame on to my own brother! If there had been any bequests to them in Uncle’s will, I should have said that one of the servants had done it, probably Ford; but as it is they none of them had the slightest motive.’ She turned her brilliant gaze upon Mathilda, adding impulsively: ‘If one wasn’t a suspect oneself, wouldn’t it be interesting, Mathilda? I think I could actually enjoy it!’

‘Neither Joe nor I are suspects, and I can assure you we aren’t enjoying it!’ said Mathilda.

‘Oh, Joe! He’s an escapist,’ said Paula scornfully. ‘But you! You ought to be able to appreciate a situation that shows us all up in the raw!’

‘I don’t think,’ said Mathilda, ‘that I care for seeing my friends in the raw.’

‘I believe that this experience will be very valuable to me as an artist,’ said Paula.

But Mathilda had never felt less inclined to listen to a dissertation on the benefits of experience to an actress, and she very rudely told Paula to try it on the dog.

It was now nearly eleven o’clock, and all the discomforts of a morning spent in a country house with nothing to do were being suffered by Lexham’s unwilling guests. Outside, a grey sky and melting snow offered little inducement to would-be walkers; inside, a general hush brooded over the house; and everyone was uneasily aware of Scotland Yard’s presence. While suspicion had centred upon Stephen, everyone else had been ready to discuss the murder in all its aspects; now that Stephen had apparently been exonerated, and the field was left open for his successor, an uneasy shrinking from all mention of the crime was visible in everyone except Paula. Even Mrs Dean did not speak of it. She joined Maud in the morning-room presently, and, without receiving the slightest encouragement, favoured her with the story of her life, not omitting a list of her unsuccessful suitors, the personal idiosyncrasies of the late Mr Dean, and all the more repulsive details of two confinements and a miscarriage.

Roydon, who had mumbled something about getting a breath of fresh air, had gone up to his room, on leaving the breakfast-table, thus making an enemy of the second housemaid, who had only just made his bed, and wanted to bring in the vacuum-cleaner. Being a well-trained servant, she withdrew, and went off to complain bitterly to the head-housemaid about visitors who knew no better than to come up before they were wanted, putting one all behind with one’s work. The head-housemaid said it was funny, him coming up to his room at this hour; and on these meagre grounds a rumour spread rapidly through the servants’ quarters that that Mr Roydon was looking ever so queer, and behaving so strange that no one wouldn’t be surprised to hear that it was him all the time who had done in the master.

All this made a very agreeable subject for conversation at the eleven-o’clock gathering for tea in the kitchen and the hall; and when one of the under-gardeners joined the kitchen-party with a trug of vegetables for the cook, he was able to enliven the discussion by recounting that it was a funny thing, them speaking of young Roydon like they were, for he had himself just seen him going off for a walk on his own. He had come upon him down by the potting-sheds and the manure-heap, and he had somehow thought it was queer, finding him there, and Roydon hadn’t half started when he had seen him coming round the corner of the shed. Adjured by two housemaids, one tweeny, and the kitchenmaid, all with their eyes popping out of their heads, to continue this exciting narrative, he said that it was his belief young Roydon had been burning something in the incinerator, because he had been standing close to it, for one thing, and for another he’d take his oath he’d heard someone putting the lid on it.

This was so well received, with such delighted shudders from the tweeny, accompanied by exclamations of Go on, you never! from the two housemaids, that the gardener at once recalled that he had thought Roydon’s manner queer-like at the time, and said to himself that that bloke wasn’t up to no good, messing about where he had no call to be.

In due course, an echo of these highly-coloured recollections reached Inspector Hemingway’s ears, by way of his Sergeant, who, by means of a little flattery, had managed to put himself on excellent terms with the female part of the staff. The Inspector, with the simple intention of unnerving the household, was spending the morning pervading the house with a notebook, a foot-rule, and an abstracted frown. His mysterious investigations were in themselves entirely valueless, but succeeded in making everyone but Maud and Mrs Dean profoundly uneasy. Mottisfont, for instance, took instant and querulous objection to his presence in his room, and fidgeted about the house, complaining to anyone who could be got to listen to him of the unwarrantable licence taken by the police. Breaking in upon the two ladies in the morning-room, he tried to enlist their support, but Mrs Dean said that she was sure she had no secrets to hide; and Maud merely expressed the hope that in the course of his investigations the Inspector might find her missing book.

The Inspector had not found the book, and, if the truth were told, he had begun to share the opinions of the rest of the household with regard to it. Since he had first encountered Maud, he had met her five times, and had on each occasion not only to sustain an account of when and where she last remembered to have had the book in her hand, but anecdotes culled from it as well. He darkly suspected that it had been hidden by the other members of the house-party, and told his Sergeant that he didn’t blame them.

When the kitchen-gossip about Roydon was reported to him, he was not inclined to set much store by it, but he told the Sergeant that he had better keep a sharp eye on Roydon.

The Sergeant did more than this: he went down the garden to the potting-sheds, and took a look at the incinerator.

This was a large galvanised-iron cylinder, mounted on short legs, and with a chimney running up the centre, through the lid. In theory, by setting light to a little paper, stuffed into the gap left between the sides of the cylinder and its base, any amount of refuse, thrown in the top, would be slowly consumed into the finest ash. In practice, the fire thus kindled usually died out before half the contents of the cylinder had been burnt, so that what came out at the bottom was not ash, but charred and very often revolting scraps of refuse.

From the languid wisp of smoke arising from the chimney, the Sergeant correctly assumed that the fire was burning but sluggishly this morning. He lifted the lid, and found that the incinerator had been stuffed full of kitchen-waste. Somewhere below the unappetising surface the fire, judging by the smell, was smouldering. The Sergeant looked round for a handy stick, and, finding one, began to poke about amongst the rubbish. After turning over some grape-fruit rinds, a collection of grocers’ bags, cartons, and egg-boxes, the outer leaves of about six cabbages, and the contents of several wastepaper-baskets, his stick dug up a blood-stained handkerchief, obviously thrust down beneath the litter, but as yet untouched by the fire.

The Sergeant, who had really not expected to find anything of interest in the incinerator, could scarcely believe his eyes. If he had not been a very methodical young man, he would have hurried back to the house immediately, to lay his find before his superior, so excited did he feel. For the handkerchief was not only generously splashed with blood: it also bore an embroidered R in one corner. It was dirty, from its contact with the kitchen-refuse, but the Sergeant felt no repulsion at handling it. He shook some used tea-leaves out of it, folded it carefully, and put it in his pocket. Then he went on poking amongst the rubbish until he had satisfied himself that no other gruesome relics were hidden in the noisome depths of the incinerator. To make quite sure, he raked the bottom out, not, judging by the smother of ash, before it was time. The fire was not burning evenly, and from one side of the cylinder some charred remnants fell out amongst the ash, including a scorched and blackened book. The boards of this had been consumed, and the outer pages crumbled away when touched, but when the Sergeant, idly curious, stirred what remained with his stick, he saw that although the edges had been burnt the inner pages were still perfectly legible. Coronation in Hungary, he read, across the top of one right-hand page. Opposite, heading the left page, he saw in the same capital italics: Empress Elizabeth.

A grin dispelled the natural solemnity of his countenance. He picked up the sad remnant of Maud’s book, and took it back to the house with him, to show to the Inspector.

Confronted with the handkerchief, Hemingway showed a disappointing absence of enthusiasm.

‘It’s Roydon’s all right,’ the Sergeant pointed out. ‘It’s got his initial in the corner, and he’s the only R in the house, sir. The blood’s dry, too, you see.’

‘There’s enough of it, at all events,’ remarked Hemingway, dispassionately surveying the handkerchief.

‘I figure he must have wiped that knife with it, sir.’

‘You may be right.’

‘And there’s no doubt he put it in the incinerator this morning, just as the gardener said.’

‘Took his time about getting rid of it, didn’t he?’

The Sergeant frowned. ‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘But maybe he didn’t think it was vital to destroy it while Stephen Herriard was still under suspicion. After all, if he murdered old Herriard, and planted that cigarette-case in the room, he’d be pretty sure he’d diverted suspicion from himself, wouldn’t he? It was you letting it be known that Stephen was more or less in the clear that sort of stampeded him, like you thought it might.’

‘Ah!’ said Hemingway, stirring the handkerchief with his pencil.

A little crestfallen, the Sergeant said: ‘You don’t think it’s important, Chief?’

‘I don’t say that. It may be. Of course, I’m not an expert, but I’d have liked these highly lavish bloodstains to have gone a bit browner. However, I’ll see Roydon as soon as he comes in, and if I don’t get anything out of him we’ll get this tested. Anything else?’

‘Yes,’ said the Sergeant, his slow grin spreading once more over his face. ‘This!’

Hemingway saw the mutilated book in his hand, and ejaculated: ‘You aren’t going to tell me – Well, I’ll be damned!’ He took the book from the Sergeant, and flicked over the scorched pages. ‘I told you so!’ he said. ‘Someone in this house couldn’t take it. I’m bound to say I couldn’t either. Well, it’s your find, my lad. You can give it back to the old lady, and get the credit for a piece of smart detection.’

‘Thank you, Chief, but considering the state it’s in it doesn’t seem to me there’s going to be much credit attached to it!’ Ware retorted. ‘I’d just as soon you gave it back to her.’

‘The mistake you made was in rescuing the thing at all,’ said Hemingway. ‘It just serves you right. You go and give it back to Mrs Herriard, and don’t let me have any backchat about it either!’

The Sergeant sighed, and went off to find Maud. She had by this time escaped from Mrs Dean’s toils, and was knitting in the library, exchanging desultory remarks with Mathilda. Joseph was seated on the broad window-seat with Paula, trying to amuse her with anecdotes of his career on the stage. Paula, who was far too profound an egotist to see anything pathetic in his reminiscences, did not even pretend to be interested. Beyond saying Oh! once or twice in an abstracted voice, she paid no heed to him. Her face wore its most brooding look, and it was obvious that her mind was solely occupied with her own stage-career.

The Sergeant coughed to draw attention to himself, and trod over to Maud’s chair. ‘Beg pardon, madam, but I think you said you’d lost a book?’

‘Yes, indeed I have,’ said Maud. ‘I told the Inspector about it, and he promised to keep a look-out for it.’

Feeling absurdly guilty, the Sergeant proffered the wreck he was holding. ‘Would this be it, madam?’

For almost the first time in their acquaintanceship, Mathilda watched Maud’s face register emotion. Her pale eyes stared at the book, and her jaw sagged. It was a moment before she could find her voice. ‘That?’ she said. ‘Oh no!’

‘I’m afraid it’s got a bit damaged,’ said the Sergeant apologetically.

This tactful understatement made Mathilda choke. Almost shrinkingly Maud took the book, and looked at it. ‘Oh dear!’ she said distressfully. ‘Oh dear, dear, dear! It is my book! Joseph, look what has happened! I cannot understand it!’

Joseph, who had already crossed the room to her side, said tut-tut, in a shocked voice, and asked the Sergeant where he had found it.

‘Well, sir, I’m sure I don’t know how it got there, but it fell out of the bottom of the incinerator.’

A stifled gasp from Mathilda brought Joseph’s head round. He was looking suitably grave, but when he met her brimming eyes his gravity vanished, and he gave a sudden chuckle.

‘I must say, Joseph, I don’t know what you find to laugh at!’ said Maud.

‘I’m sorry, my dear! It was just a piece of foolishness. It’s most annoying for you – really, very tiresome indeed! But never mind! After all, we have things so much more serious to worry about, haven’t we?’

This well-meant comfort entirely failed in its object. ‘No, Joseph, I cannot agree with you. I was particularly interested in the Empress’s life, and, as you see, all the first and last pages have been burnt away. And, what is more, it is a book from the lending-library, and I shall have to pay for it.’ A slight flush reddened her plump cheeks; she sat very straight in her chair, and, directing an accusing stare upon the Sergeant, said: ‘I should like to know who threw my book into the incinerator!’

The Sergeant knew himself to be blameless in every respect, but his feeling of guilt grew under the indignant old lady’s gaze. ‘I couldn’t say, madam. Perhaps it was thrown away by accident.’

‘That would be it!’ exclaimed Joseph, seizing gratefully this explanation. ‘No doubt it got picked up with the newspapers, or – or fell into a wastepaper-basket, and that’s how it happened.’

‘I shall ask the servants,’ said Maud, rising from her chair. ‘If that is what happened, it is most careless, and they will have to pay for it.’

‘I shouldn’t, if I were you,’ said Paula. ‘They’ll give notice in a bunch. Besides, I’ll bet Stephen did it.’

Joseph shot her an anguished look. ‘Paula! Must you?’

Maud halted in her tracks. ‘Stephen?’ she said. ‘Why should Stephen destroy my book?’

‘No reason at all, my dear!’ said Joseph. ‘Of course he didn’t!’

‘Well!’ Maud said. ‘I have always thought him a very tiresome young man, making a great deal of trouble through nothing but ill-temper, but I never supposed he would be wantonly destructive!’

At that moment Stephen walked into the room. Paula said: ‘Stephen, did you chuck Aunt Maud’s book into the incinerator?’

‘No, of course I didn’t,’ he answered. ‘How many more times am I to tell you that I never touched the damned thing?’

‘Well, someone did.’

His lips twitched. ‘Oh no, not really?’

Maud mutely held out what remained of the Life of the Empress Elizabeth. Stephen took one look, and burst out laughing. The Sergeant seized this opportunity to escape from the room, and went back to tell his superior that from the looks of it Stephen Herriard had done it.

‘Young devil!’ said Hemingway.

Meanwhile, Maud, quite incensed by Stephen’s laughter, was delivering herself of her opinion of him. It was evident that she was very much put out. Stephen said, with unaccustomed penitence, that he was sorry he had laughed, but that he was guiltless of having tampered with the book. Mathilda did not believe him, but she saw that Maud was really upset, and at once supported Joseph’s theory that the book had been thrown away by accident. Maud reiterated her resolve to question the servants, and Paula said impatiently, ‘What on earth’s the use of making a fuss about it now that the damage is done? If you ask Sturry whether he put your book in the incinerator, he’ll give notice on the spot.’

‘You go and ask him,’ Stephen advised Maud. ‘You can’t do any harm, because he’s just given me notice.’

This announcement provoked an outcry. Joseph wanted to know what could have induced the man to do such a silly thing; Mathilda ejaculated: ‘Snake!’ and Paula said he would be a good riddance.

‘I think very badly of him for giving notice at such a time as this!’ said Joseph. ‘It is very selfish of him, very selfish indeed!’

‘It is annoying, because I meant to give him the boot before he could do it,’ said Stephen. ‘What’s more, he’ll be wanted to swear to Uncle Nat’s will, before it’s admitted to probate.’

‘Why?’ asked Paula.

Stephen made a slight, contemptuous gesture towards his uncle. Joseph said: ‘I’m afraid that’s my fault, my dear. It’s so long since I read my law that I’ve become shockingly rusty. I very stupidly forgot that it’s usual to insert an Attestation Clause. It doesn’t really matter, only it means that both witnesses will be wanted before we can get probate.’

‘Well, he can go and swear his piece before a Commissioner for Oaths,’ said Stephen. ‘Not that it’s necessary. As long as we know where to find him, he can still do his swearing even though he isn’t any longer employed here.’

‘You make him swear before he leaves!’ advised Mathilda. ‘I wouldn’t put it past him to try to put a spoke in your wheel somehow!’

‘My dear, what a dreadful thing to say!’ exclaimed Joseph. ‘He may have his faults, but we’ve no reason to think him dishonest!’

‘He loathes Stephen,’ Mathilda said obstinately.

‘Nonsense, Tilda! You really mustn’t say such things!’

‘Do, for God’s sake, stop looking at everyone through rose-coloured spectacles!’ said Stephen. ‘Sturry’s hated me ever since I told Uncle Nat he was watering the port, and you know it!’

‘Well, but that isn’t to say that he would deliberately try to harm you, old man!’ protested Joseph.

‘You see to it that he goes and swears whatever it is he’s got to swear,’ said Mathilda.

‘All right, I will. It’ll annoy him,’ said Stephen.

‘All this,’ said Maud, ‘has nothing to do with the Life of the Empress Elizabeth!’

‘If you put it like that,’ said Stephen, ‘nothing so far has had anything to do with that thrice-accursed female!’

‘I do not know why you should speak of the Empress in that rude way,’ said Maud, with tremendous dignity. ‘You know nothing about her.’

‘No one who has been privileged to live under the same roof with you for the past three days,’ said Stephen, losing patience, ‘can claim to know nothing about the Empress!’

This outrageous remark very nearly precipitated a quite unlooked-for crisis. Maud’s bosom swelled, and she was just about to utter words which her fascinated audience felt would have been shattering to anyone less hardened than Stephen, when Sturry entered the room with the cocktail-tray. Even under the stress of powerful emotion Maud knew that a lady never permitted herself to quarrel in front of the servants; and instead of scarifying Stephen, she held out the Life of the Empress to Sturry, and asked him if he knew how it had found its way into the incinerator.

Looking outraged, Sturry disclaimed all knowledge. Maud requested him to make enquiries amongst the staff, to which he bowed, without, however, vouchsafing any reply.

‘Just a moment!’ said Stephen, as Sturry was about to withdraw. ‘I’m informed that you and Ford will be required to swear to the signature of the late Mr Herriard’s will. In the existing circumstances, it will be more convenient for you to do so before a Commissioner for Oaths than to wait until the will’s admitted to probate. I’ll run you into the town tomorrow, and you can do so then.’

Sturry cast him a cold look. ‘Might I enquire, sir, the nature of the oath required of me?’

‘It’s only a formality,’ Stephen answered. ‘You have merely to swear that Mr Herriard signed his will in your presence.’

Sturry drew in his breath with a sucking sound, and said with an air of quiet triumph: ‘I regret, sir, I could not see my way to do that.’

No one had really believed Mathilda’s grim prognostication, and a startled silence fell upon the company. Joseph broke it. ‘Come, come, Sturry!’ he said. ‘Is that quite worthy of you? Of course you must do it! The Law requires it of you.’

‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ Sturry said, with careful courtesy, ‘but I understood Mr Stephen to say that I should be required to swear that the late Mr Herriard signed his will in my presence.’

‘Well?’ said Stephen harshly.

‘I regret, sir, that I could not reconcile it with my conscience to do that.’

‘But, Sturry!’ gasped Joseph.

‘What the devil do you mean?’ demanded Stephen. ‘You witnessed the signature, didn’t you?’

‘In a manner of speaking, sir, yes. But if it comes to taking my oath I feel myself bound to state that neither Ford nor myself was present when the late Mr Herriard signed his will.’

‘But, Sturry, that’s absurd!’ Joseph cried, very much flustered. ‘You may not have been actually in the room, but you know very well that I brought the document straight out to you, in the upper hall, and you both knew what it was, and signed it! I mean, it’s the silliest quibble to say Mr Herriard didn’t sign it in your presence! You know how ill he was, and how much he disliked having a lot of people in his room! I told you exactly what you were doing, and you must have known perfectly well that Mr Herriard had signed it, for there was his signature for you to see!’

‘I am not aware, sir, that I should be obliged to Go on Oath about it,’ replied Sturry inexorably. ‘I regret to appear Disobliging, sir, but I trust you will Appreciate my Position.’

He then bowed again, and left the room, softly closing the door behind him.

‘That,’ said Stephen, ‘has properly torn it!’

‘You fool, Joe!’ Mathilda exclaimed, jumping up from her chair. ‘Don’t you know how important it is that the witnesses should actually see the signing of a will?’

‘But Tilda – but Stephen – !’ stammered Joseph. ‘I never thought – it was difficult enough to get Nat to draw the will up at all! If I’d tried to make him agree to having Ford and Sturry in to watch him doing it – well, you know what Nat was! Of course I know that technically one ought to see the actual signing, but in this case – I mean, no one is going to contest the will! I’m sure it will be all right. I shall simply have to explain the circumstances, and –’

‘You’ll be clever if you can explain how Ford and Sturry saw through a wall,’ interrupted Stephen.

‘Do you really mean that the will is no good, just because the witnesses didn’t watch Uncle signing it?’ Paula asked incredulously.

‘Yes, my sweet, that is just what I mean,’ Stephen replied. ‘In plain words, your Uncle Joseph has mucked it.’