SWNOVELS A Christmas Party: Chapter 6
His words were followed by a rather stunned silence. He smoked for a moment, looking round in malicious amusement at the various countenances turned towards him. It was impossible to read the thoughts behind them; they looked shut-in, suddenly guarded, even a little furtive. He said cordially: ‘Really, no one would know which was the actor amongst us! we’re damned good, all of us.’
Maud looked at him, expressionless, but said nothing. Edgar Mottisfont said angrily: ‘A remark – a remark in the worst of bad taste!’
‘Herriard,’ Mathilda said succinctly.
Joseph came in with Paula. She looked pale, exchanged a glance with her brother, and asked him curtly for a cigarette. He put his hand in his pocket, withdrew it again, and nodded to the box on the table. Joseph had gone over to his wife, and had taken her hand in both of his. ‘My dear, we are bereaved indeed,’ he said, with a solemn depth of tone which made Mathilda feel an insane desire to giggle.
‘Stephen says that Nathaniel has been murdered,’ Maud said calmly. ‘It seems very strange.’
The inadequacy of this comment, although typical of Maud, momentarily robbed Joseph of the power to display deeper emotions. He looked disconcerted, and said that he could see that the shock had numbed her. The rest of the company perceived that whatever feelings of grief or of horror might inhabit Joseph’s inmost soul he would not for long be able to resist the opportunity thus afforded him to seize the centre of a tragic stage. Already he was seeing himself, Mathilda thought, as the chief mourner, the brave mainstay of a stricken household.
Attention swerved away from him to Valerie. Fright had enlarged the pupils of her lovely eyes; her mouth drooped; she said in a soft wail: ‘I wish I hadn’t come! I want to go home!’
‘But you can’t go home,’ Stephen replied. ‘You’ll be wanted by the police, like the rest of us.’
Tears spangled her lashes. ‘Oh, Stephen, don’t let them! I don’t know anything! I can’t be of any use, and I know Mummy would not like me to be here!’
‘Nobody could possibly suspect you!’ Roydon said, looking noble, and glaring at Stephen.
‘My poor child!’ Joseph said, creditably, everyone felt, in face of so much folly. ‘You must be brave, my dear, and calm. We must all be brave. Nat would have wished it.’
A certain pensiveness descended upon the company, as each member of it pondered this pronouncement. Mathilda felt that Joseph would soon succeed in making them forget the real Nathaniel, and accept instead the figment of his rose-coloured imagination. She said: ‘What do we do now?’
‘We have already sent for the doctor,’ Joseph said, with a glance of fellowship thrown in his nephew’s direction. ‘There is nothing that we can do.’
‘We can have dinner,’ said Paula, brusquely putting into words the unworthy thought in more than one mind.
There was an outcry. Valerie said that it made her sick to think of eating; Mottisfont remarked that it was hardly the time to think of dinner.
‘How much longer do you want to wait?’ asked Stephen. ‘It’s already past nine.’
Mottisfont found Stephen so annoying that he could hardly keep his animosity out of his voice. Stephen made him feel a fool, and some evil genius always prompted him to follow up one ineptitude with another. He now said: ‘Surely none of us means to have dinner tonight!’
‘Why not tonight, if we mean to eat tomorrow?’ Stephen enquired. ‘When will it be decent for us to eat again?’
‘You make a mock of everything!’
Joseph stepped forward, laying one hand on Stephen’s shoulder, the other on Mottisfont’s. ‘Oh, my dear people, hush!’ he said gently. ‘Don’t let us forget – don’t let us allow our nerves to get the better of us!’
‘I will ring the bell,’ said Maud, doing so.
‘Have you sent for the police?’ Paula asked her brother.
‘We won’t talk of that, dear child,’ said Joseph, with misplaced optimism.
Paula’s words appeared to let loose pent-up excitement. Even Mathilda heard herself saying: ‘But who could it have possibly been?’ In the middle of this valueless babel, Sturry came in, his countenance schooled to an expression of rigid gloom. He stood by the door, a mute at the funeral.
‘Ah, here is our good Sturry!’ said Joseph, drawing him into the family circle by this affectionate address.
Sturry would not be so drawn. He stood immovable, despising people who did not know their places. ‘You rang, sir?’ he asked frigidly.
‘Yes, yes!’ Joseph said. ‘You have heard the terrible news? I need not ask you!’
‘No, sir. The news was conveyed to the Hall by Ford. I am extremely sorry to hear of the occurrence, sir.’
‘Ah, Sturry, you must feel it too! What a tragedy! What a terrible shock!’
‘Indeed yes, sir,’ Sturry replied, conveying by these simple words some impression of the affront he had suffered. No one could feel that he would have engaged himself to wait on Nathaniel if he could have foreseen these vulgar events. It seemed reasonable to suppose that he would hand in his notice at the first opportunity.
A little damped, Joseph said: ‘You had better serve dinner. The master would not have wanted his guests to make any difference, would he?’
‘Very good, sir,’ said Sturry, declining to give an opinion on this moot point.
He withdrew, but the shreds of his disapproval remained behind. Remembering the overwrought questions and exclamations which his entrance had interrupted, Nathaniel’s guests felt uneasily that they had lapsed into bad form. Mottisfont cleared his throat, and remarked that one hardly knew what to do.
‘I know!’ Valerie said. ‘I mean, I’ve simply never dreamed of such a thing happening to me! Oh, Stephen, Mummy will be utterly furious! I do think I ought to go home!’
‘The trains are very infrequent over Christmas,’ stated Maud. ‘And, of course, when there is snow they get held up.’
‘Oh, I couldn’t go by train!’ Valerie said. ‘Stephen brought me in his car.’
‘Sorry,’ said Stephen. ‘I can’t leave.’
‘But, Stephen, you could come back, couldn’t you? I don’t want to be a nuisance, or anything, but actually my nerves aren’t awfully strong, and the least little thing like this upsets me for weeks! Literally!’
He returned no answer. His look of derision had given place to one of strain; even her absurdity failed to conjure up his familiar mocking devil. It was left for Roydon to respond to her. ‘I wish I could take you home,’ he said. ‘I can see you’re one of those tremendously highly-strung people whose awareness is almost hyper-acute.’
‘Actually, Mummy says I simply live on my nerves,’ Valerie confided.
‘You haven’t a nerve in your whole insensate body!’ said Paula, with shattering effect.
Valerie had never sustained such an insult in her life. She flushed poppy-red; her eyes flashed becomingly, and it seemed as though the tension was to be relieved by a very satisfying exchange of personalities between the two ladies.
Sturry came back into the room to announce dinner. The quarrel petered out; and Nathaniel’s guests filed out of the room in depressed silence.
Sturry had swept away the knives and forks from Nathaniel’s place at the head of the table. This vacancy struck everyone immediately, and brought his death suddenly and foolishly nearer. Joseph was inspired to exclaim: ‘It will seem strange to me, and melancholy, to see another in Nat’s place. It must come: I know it, and I shall accept it bravely, but I can’t help feeling glad that for just this one evening I see only Nat’s empty chair.’
No comment seemed to be required; indeed, it would have been impossible for anyone except Stephen, Mathilda reflected, to have made any. Half expecting him to utter some blistering remark, she glanced across the table towards him. A wryness about his mouth informed her that the tactlessness of the reminder had not gone unobserved, but he gave no other sign of having heard Joseph.
Joseph whispered: ‘Help me, Tilda! We must be natural! We must try not to let this horror get on top of us!’
What he hoped she might be able to do she had no idea. An attempt to inaugurate a conversation upon any other subject than Nathaniel’s death would be regarded as callous, and must fail. She began to drink her soup, ignoring Joseph.
Valerie, growing momently more temperamental, refused soup, saying that it seemed awful to be sitting at dinner with Mr Herriard dead upstairs.
‘You don’t drink soup because you think it’s bad for your figure. You told us so,’ said Paula.
‘Some people think a great deal of the Hay Diet,’ suddenly remarked Maud. ‘I daresay it is very good, though I myself have never had any trouble with my digestion. But Joseph has to be more careful. Rich food never agrees with him.’
Sturry, who had been conferring with the footman in the doorway, approached Joseph’s chair, and bent over it, murmuring bodingly: ‘Dr Stoke, sir.’
Joseph leaned forward. ‘Stephen, my boy! The doctor!’
‘You’d better take him up,’ said Stephen.
‘You don’t wish to be present? You have a right to be there.’
‘Thanks, not in the middle of dinner.’
Joseph put back his chair, and rose, with what was felt to be a gallant attempt at a smile. ‘It shall be as you like, old fellow. I understand.’
‘I imagine you might.’
‘Hush! No bitter words tonight!’ Joseph said, as he left the room.
He found the doctor in the hall, handing his coat and hat to the footman. ‘Stoke!’ he said. ‘You know why you have been sent for? I needn’t tell you.’
‘Herriard’s man told me that there had been an accident to his master,’ the doctor replied. He looked narrowly at Joseph, and said in a sharper voice: ‘Nothing serious, I trust?’
Joseph made a hopeless gesture. ‘Dead!’ he said.
‘Dead!’ The doctor was plainly startled. ‘Good God, what has happened?’
‘A terrible thing, Stoke,’ Joseph said, shuddering. ‘I will take you to him.’
‘Is he in his own room?’ Stoke asked, picking up his bag.
He was a spare, active man, and he ran up the broad stairs ahead of Joseph. Ford was sitting on a chair outside Nathaniel’s door; the doctor glanced frowningly at him, and passed into the room. When he saw the position of Nathaniel’s body, he went quickly up to it, and dropped on to his knees. The briefest of inspections convinced him that his patient was indeed dead; he looked up, as Joseph came into the room, and asked curtly: ‘The valet spoke of an accident. How did this happen?’
Joseph averted his eyes from Nathaniel’s body, saying in a low tone: ‘Look at his back, Stoke!’
The doctor looked quickly down. Stephen had left Nathaniel lying much as he had found him, on his left side, exposing the little bloodstained rent in his coat.
There was a short silence; Joseph turned his back upon the doctor’s activities, and gazed down into the dying embers in the grate.
The doctor rose from his knees. ‘I suppose you realise that this is a case of murder?’ he said.
Joseph bowed his head.
‘The police must be notified at once.’
‘It has already been done. They should be here any minute now.’
‘I will wait for them.’
‘It has been such a ghastly shock!’ Joseph said, after an uncomfortable pause.
The doctor assented. He looked as though he too had suffered a shock.
‘I suppose you don’t know who – ?’ he asked, leaving the sentence unfinished.
Joseph shook his head. ‘I almost feel I’d rather not know. If one could be sure he didn’t suffer!’
‘Oh, probably hardly at all!’ Stoke said reassuringly.
‘Thank you. It’s a relief to know that. I suppose he must have died immediately.’
‘Well, within a very short time, anyway,’ conceded Stoke.
Joseph sighed, and relapsed into silence. This lasted until the arrival of a police inspector, with various satellites. Stephen brought them upstairs, and Joseph roused himself from his abstraction, greeting the Inspector, whom he knew, with a forced smile, and saying: ‘You know Dr Stoke, don’t you?’
The room seemed suddenly to be overfull of people. Joseph confided to Stephen that it seemed a desecration. The police-surgeon and Dr Stoke conferred together over Nathaniel’s body, and the Inspector, who looked as though he did not like being brought to a murder-case on Christmas Eve, began to ask questions.
‘I can’t tell you anything,’ Stephen said. ‘The last time I saw him alive was downstairs in the drawing-room, at about seven-thirty.’
‘I understand it was you who broke into the room, sir, and discovered the body?’
‘His valet and I. Our finger-prints will be found all over the place.’
‘Mine too,’ Joseph said unhappily. ‘One doesn’t think, when a thing like this happens.’
The Inspector’s eyes dwelled on the brandy decanter, and the glass beside it. Stephen said: ‘No. False scent. The brandy was brought to revive my uncle before we realised he was dead. I drank it.’
‘Very understandable, sir, I’m sure. When you came in, was the deceased lying as at present?’
‘Not quite,’ Stephen said, after a moment’s reflection. ‘He was rather more on his face, I think.’
‘I wonder if you would be so good, sir, as to replace the body as you found it?’
Stephen hesitated, distaste in his face. Joseph said pleadingly: ‘Inspector, this is terribly painful for my nephew! Surely –’
‘Shut up!’ Stephen said roughly, and went to Nathaniel’s body, and arranged it. ‘More or less like that.’
‘Do you agree with that, sir?’ the Inspector asked Joseph.
‘Yes, yes!’ Joseph said. ‘His head was on his arm. We never dreamed – we thought he had fainted!’
The Inspector nodded, and asked who slept in the next bedroom, which lay beyond Nathaniel’s bathroom. He was told that it was a single spare-room which Roydon had been put into, and took a note of this. Having scrutinised the windows, both in the bedroom and in the bathroom, and looked meditatively at the half-open ventilator, he ascertained that these had not been tampered with since the finding of Nathaniel’s body, and at last suggested that further questions might best be answered in some other room.
Both Joseph and Stephen were glad to get away from the scene of the crime, and they led the Inspector downstairs to the morning-room, leaving the photographer, the finger-print experts, and the ambulance-men in possession.
The morning-room fire had been allowed to go out, and the room felt chilly. The Inspector said that it was of no consequence, and he would be obliged to question everyone in the house. Joseph gave a groan, and ejaculated: ‘Those poor young people! If they could have been spared this horror!’
The Inspector did not waste his breath answering this; he knew his duty, and he had no time to spare for irrelevancies. He should have been filling his children’s stockings by right, not taking depositions at Lexham Manor. It wasn’t as though the case was likely to do him much good, he reflected. He wasn’t the Detective-Inspector, but merely deputising for that gentleman, who was in bed with influenza. The Chief Constable, a nervous man, would be bound to call in Scotland Yard, he thought, and some smart London man would get all the credit for the case. He waited for Joseph to lower the hand with which he had covered his eyes before saying: ‘Now, sir, if you please! I understand you have a number of guests staying in the house? If I might have their names?’
‘Our Christmas party!’ Joseph said tragically.
‘We shall at least be spared your rollicking festivities,’ Stephen said.
The Inspector glanced at him rather narrowly. That was a queer way to speak of his uncle’s murder, he thought. It didn’t do to set too much store by what people said in moments of shock, but if he were asked he would be bound to admit that he hadn’t taken a fancy to young Herriard, not by a long chalk.
Joseph caught his glance, and rushed to Stephen’s support. ‘My nephew’s very much upset,’ he said. ‘It’s been a dreadful blow – and I’m afraid the modern youth makes a point of hiding its feelings under a mask of flippancy.’
Stephen grimaced, but allowed this explanation to pass without comment. He dived a hand into his pocket for his pipe and his tobacco-pouch, and began to fill the pipe, while Joseph told the Inspector about the other guests.
Joseph had a kind word for everybody. Roydon was a most promising playwright, a great friend of his niece. The niece? Ah yes! this young man’s sister: an actress, and quite her poor dead uncle’s favourite. Then there was Miss Dean – a smile towards Stephen – his nephew’s fiancée. He might say that this party had really been arranged on her account. She had never stayed with them before, and they had so much wanted to get to know her. Miss Clare, too! a cousin, quite a persona grata in the house. Remained only Edgar Mottisfont, Nathaniel’s partner, and close friend for many years. There were, of course, the servants, but he was quite sure none of them could have had anything to do with the murder.
This was unpromising stuff, but the Inspector did not allow himself to be unduly cast-down. He wanted to know whether there had been any quarrel between the deceased and any of his guests.
‘Oh no, no! Not what I should call a quarrel!’ Joseph said quickly. ‘I’m afraid all we Herriards are inclined to be testy, but there has been nothing of a serious nature. Nothing – nothing to warrant this dreadful thing!’
‘But there has been quarrelling, sir?’
‘Just a few family tiffs! What I call the give and take of family life. My brother was a sufferer from lumbago, and you know what that does to a man’s temper, Inspector. There may have been a little crossness here and there, but we knew that Uncle Nat’s bark was worse than his bite, didn’t we, Stephen?’
Not even his own predicament, which he must have known to be dangerous, could induce Stephen to join forces with Joseph. He said ‘Did we?’ in a non-committal tone which did much to destroy the good impression Joseph was making.
The Inspector turned towards him. ‘Would you say that there had been a quarrel, sir?’
‘No, I wouldn’t. I’d say my uncle had quarrelled with every one of us, with the exception of Miss Clare.’
‘Did you have words with him, sir?’
‘Many,’ said Stephen coolly.
‘Stephen, don’t be silly, old man!’ Joseph interposed. ‘Whatever may have passed between you and Nat earlier in the day, I for one can bear witness to the fact that you and he were on the friendliest terms by teatime! Inspector, this stupid fellow loves to make himself out to be a regular old bear, but I saw him with my own eyes link arms with my brother as they came in to tea, and no one could have been nicer to him thereafter than he was! Indeed, I noticed it particularly, and was so happy to see it!’
The Inspector’s appraising gaze travelled from his face to Stephen’s. ‘But there had been a quarrel between you and the deceased today, sir?’
Stephen shrugged. ‘Well, I hadn’t been thrown out of the house.’
‘I should like a plain answer, if you please, sir.’
‘Yes, then,’ Stephen said.
‘But, Stephen, you’re giving a false impression!’ Joseph said. ‘We all know you and Nat rubbed one another up the wrong way, but he was very fond of you, and you of him!’
‘You’d better examine my uncle,’ Stephen told the Inspector roughly. ‘He apparently knows all the answers.’
‘Was your quarrel of a serious nature, sir?’
‘I’ve already told you that I wasn’t thrown out of the house.’
‘Am I to take it that at the time the deceased was last seen alive you were on friendly terms with him?’
‘Temporary truce,’ said Stephen.
‘When did you last set eyes on the deceased, sir?’
Stephen took a moment to think this over. ‘Not sure of the time. I left the drawing-room when Roydon had finished reading his play. Probably about half-past seven.’
‘When you state that you left the drawing-room, am I to understand that you left the deceased there?’
‘Everyone was there.’
‘And between that time, and the time when you discovered his body, you did not see him?’
‘No.’
‘What were you doing during that period?’
‘Changing, in my room.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ said the Inspector, making a note.
‘Done with me?’ Stephen asked. ‘Dinner – probably spoilt by now, of course – is still before me, I would respectfully point out to you.’
Cold-blooded devil! thought the Inspector. He said: ‘That will be all for the present.’
Stephen walked out of the room. Joseph, who had been watching him with a good deal of anxiety, smiled at the Inspector, and said: ‘He doesn’t mean the things he says, you know. The fact of the matter is he’s very like my poor brother. Both of them hasty-tempered, and bitter-tongued. A quick flare-up, and all over. Nothing sulky!’
The Inspector received this information politely if not very enthusiastically. He asked Joseph when he had last seen Nathaniel.
‘Miss Clare and I must have been the last people to have seen him alive,’ Joseph answered. ‘Everyone else had gone upstairs. I was going up with him. I wanted to have a talk with him. Alas, that I did not!’
‘How was that, sir?’
Joseph looked momentarily disconcerted, but apparently decided that since his tongue had betrayed him he must make the best of it. ‘To tell you the truth, Inspector, my brother was in a very bad temper, and I wanted to smooth him down! But he said he didn’t want to talk. Well, I mustn’t conceal anything, must I? I had stupidly left a step-ladder on the stairs, and my brother knocked it over, and – yes, he was very cross with me indeed! So I thought it wisest to let him cool off. Miss Clare and I went upstairs together a few minutes later.’
‘What had put Mr Herriard in a bad temper, sir?’
‘Oh, a mere nothing! Mr Roydon had been reading his play to us, and my brother didn’t like it.’
‘That doesn’t seem to be much of a reason, sir.’
Joseph gave an unhappy laugh. ‘I’m afraid it was quite enough reason for him, Inspector. That’s just the sort of thing that did upset him.’
The Inspector pondered this, and at length produced: ‘If he didn’t like to have it read to him, sir, why was it read?’
Complications were clearly arising. Joseph said: ‘Mr Roydon is a guest in the house. It would have been very difficult to have forbidden him to read his play, wouldn’t it?’
‘Seems queer-like to me, sir,’ was all the Inspector vouchsafed. ‘I’d like to see this Mr Roydon, please.’
‘Certainly, but I’m sure he knows nothing about the crime. I mean, it would be too preposterous! My brother had never laid eyes on him before he came down here yesterday. Shall I send him in to you?’
‘Yes, please,’ said the Inspector.
He was clearly an unresponsive man. His stolid manner and frozen stare quite put poor Joseph out. He went away, looking unhappy, to find Roydon.
The house-party was in the dining-room, where Stephen, unmoved by the late gruesome events, was eating his interrupted dinner. Everyone else had reached the coffee stage, and, with the exception of Maud, was plying him with eager questions. They all turned, as Joseph came in, and Paula asked if the police had finished.
‘Alas, my poor child, I’m afraid it will be a long time before they do that!’ said Joseph, with a heavy sigh. ‘They have only just begun. Willoughby, the Inspector wants to see you. He is in the morning-room.’
Roydon at once flushed, and his voice jumped up an octave. ‘What on earth does he want to see me about? I can’t tell him anything!’
‘No, that’s what I assured him. I am afraid he is a stupid sort of a man. It came out that you had been reading your play to us – dear me, it seems already as though that was in another life!’
‘Did you tell him so?’ said Stephen, looking up under his brows.
Joseph’s absurdly cherubic countenance set into worried lines. ‘Well, yes, but I never dreamed he’d take me up as he did!’
Paula’s eyes stabbed him. ‘Did you tell him that Willoughby wanted Uncle Nat’s backing?’
‘Of course I didn’t! I didn’t say a word about that. It’s quite irrelevant, and I don’t think there’s the least need to mention it.’
Roydon stubbed out his cigarette, and got up. ‘I suppose I’d better go along and see the man,’ he said. ‘Not that I can throw the least light on the affair, but that’s by the way!’
He went out, and Stephen, watching him critically, said to his sister: ‘Are you vitally concerned in your boy-friend’s fate? With any luck, I should say he’ll incriminate himself good and proper.’
‘He had nothing to do with it!’ Paula said.
‘How do you know?’ jeered Stephen.
She stared at him. ‘Well, I don’t know,’ she said slowly. ‘I don’t know who did it.’
‘I should like to think that someone quite unconnected with any of us was the guilty man,’ said Joseph. ‘May we not assume that, children, and try not to say bitter, hurtful things to one another?’
The only person to respond to this appeal was Mathilda, who said handsomely that he at least could not be accused of this vice. He threw her a grateful smile, but shook his head, saying that he was afraid he was a very imperfect mortal.
‘As though I hadn’t had enough to put me off my food already!’ growled Stephen.
Valerie, who had been fidgeting with her coffee-spoon, let it fall into the saucer, and exclaimed: ‘I wonder it doesn’t make you sick to think of eating anything! I think you’re the most callous person I’ve ever met in all my life!’
‘I shouldn’t be surprised,’ agreed Stephen.
‘And if the police want to question me, it’s no earthly use, because I don’t know a thing about it, and my nerves just won’t stand it! I feel as though I’m going mad!’
‘Oh, do shut up!’ said Paula.
‘I won’t shut up! I didn’t come here to be insulted, and I don’t see why I should be expected to put up with it!’
‘Leave her alone, Paula,’ ordered Stephen, getting up, and walking over to the sideboard, where some chocolate mousse had been left for him.
‘I’m not doing anything to her. If she doesn’t like my behaviour she can leave the room, can’t she?’ said Paula, becoming belligerent.
‘I wish I could leave the house!’ cried Valerie.
‘I believe it is still snowing,’ remarked Maud, as unperturbed by this bickering as by all the other events of the day.
‘I don’t care! I’d rather walk all the way to London than stay here now!’
‘It’s an engaging thought,’ said Stephen. ‘Orphan of the Storm.’
‘Oh, you can laugh at me! but if you think I could possibly sleep a wink here you’re mistaken! I simply shan’t dare to close my eyes all night. I shall be petrified!’
‘Well, really, I don’t think that’s very sensible,’ objected Mathilda. ‘What do you suppose is going to happen to you?’
‘You wouldn’t understand,’ said Valerie, adding in a lofty tone: ‘I expect you’re one of those lucky people who just haven’t got any nerves, and don’t feel a thing. But the thought of Mr Herriard, lying there in that room – Oh, I simply can’t bear it!’
‘You won’t have to,’ said Stephen. ‘The body will be removed to the police-mortuary. Probably has been by this time.’
This brutal truth made Joseph wince. He said: ‘Stephen, Stephen!’ in an imploring voice.
‘I think,’ said Maud, getting up, ‘that I shall go and sit in the drawing-room with my book.’
Joseph glanced at her with humorous affection. ‘Yes, my dear, do that!’ he said. ‘Try to put it all out of your mind! How I wish that I could do the same! But I am afraid the Inspector will want to see you.’
‘Oh yes!’ she said, uninterested.
‘There is nothing to be afraid of, you know. He is quite human.’
‘I am not afraid, thank you, Joseph,’ she replied placidly.
Paula barely waited until she had left the room before ejaculating: ‘If I’ve got to listen to extracts from that ghastly book on top of everything else, I think my nerve will crack!’
‘Keep calm, sister: Aunt has lost the book.’
‘Stephen!’ exclaimed Joseph. ‘No, that’s too bad of you! If you’ve hidden it, you must give it back to her at once.’
‘I haven’t touched it,’ said Stephen curtly.
Neither Mathilda nor Paula believed this, but as Joseph showed signs of pressing the point, they intervened to prevent an explosion. Mathilda said that no doubt it would turn up; and Paula wondered how Roydon was getting on with the Inspector.
He was not, as a matter of fact, getting on very well. Policemen represented to him, quite irrationally, his personal enemies. He did not like them; they made him nervous, in much the same way that butlers did, so that he felt that his clothes were shabby and his hands too large. To conceal this discomfort, he assumed a grand manner, and was inclined to overact his unconcern. He said: ‘Ah, Inspector, you want a word with me, don’t you? I’m quite ready to tell you anything I know, of course, but I’m afraid that won’t be much. I’m only down for the week-end, as I daresay you’ve heard. In fact, I hardly knew Mr Herriard.’
He ended on his nervous laugh. He hadn’t meant to say all that; he knew it must have sounded artificial, but somehow he was unable to stop himself. To occupy his hands, he lit a cigarette, and began to smoke it, rather too fast. He wished the Inspector would stop staring at him so unblinkingly. As though he were a wild beast in a show! he thought resentfully.
The Inspector asked him for his name and address, and slowly wrote these down in his notebook. ‘Were you acquainted with the deceased previous to your arrival here?’ he asked.
‘No. Well, naturally I knew of him, but I hadn’t actually met him. I came down with Miss Herriard. She invited me.’
‘I understand you are occupying the bedroom next to the deceased’s?’
‘Oh well, yes, in a way I suppose I am!’ conceded Roydon. ‘Only there’s a bathroom in between, so naturally I didn’t hear anything, if that’s what you mean.’
‘When you left the drawing-room after tea, did you go straight upstairs to your room?’
‘Yes. At least, no! Now I come to think of it, Miss Clare and I went into the library. As far as I remember, Miss Herriard joined us there. It was after that that I went up to change. I’ve no idea where Mr Herriard was by that time. I never saw him again after I left the drawing-room.’
The Inspector thanked him, and requested him to ask Miss Herriard to come to him.
Paula was not afraid of policemen. She answered the Inspector’s questions impatiently; and when he asked her if she had had any quarrel with Nathaniel, said that no one could possibly live for half a day with Nathaniel without quarrelling with him. But when the Inspector wanted to know why she had quarrelled with her uncle, she replied haughtily that it was none of his business.
This did nothing to prejudice him in her favour, and since under his remorseless probing she very soon lost her temper it was not long before he had learnt that she had wanted Nathaniel to give her money for some undivulged purpose, and that he had refused.
‘But if you think that that’s got anything to do with the murder you’re a fool!’ Paula said. ‘I shouldn’t have told you, only that the whole house knows it, so that you were bound to find it out sooner or later. Do you want to know anything else?’
‘Yes, miss, I want to know what you did when you left the drawing-room after tea.’
‘Oh, I don’t know!’ she said. ‘Do you think I keep a record of my movements?’
‘Did you go straight upstairs?’
She condescended to give the matter a little thought. ‘No; I went into the library. I went upstairs later, with Mr Roydon.’
‘Did you go to your own room?’
‘Of course! Where else should I go?’
‘And you did not come out of it again until you joined the rest of the party downstairs?’
‘No,’ she replied briefly.
He let her go, and sent for Edgar Mottisfont. If she had been belligerent, and Roydon patronising, Mottisfont provided a contrast to them both by using an ingratiating manner. That he was nervous was plain to be seen, but they were all nervous, the Inspector thought, and no wonder. Mottisfont seemed more shocked than any of them, reiterating his horror, and his incomprehension. He had been intimately acquainted with Nathaniel for close on thirty years; for many years he had spent Christmas with Nathaniel. Nothing like this, he said, unconscious of absurdity, had ever happened before.
‘I understand there had been some unpleasantness,’ the Inspector said.
‘He was a hard man. Out of touch with the younger generation, you know. It was Miss Herriard’s fault for bringing Roydon here. She should have known better! However, that’s not my affair. I’ve never pretended to understand that couple. Seemed to take a delight in annoying their uncle! I don’t know why Herriard put up with them, but there’s no doubt he was fond of them, in his way.’
‘May I ask, sir, if Miss Herriard had any particular reason for bringing Mr Roydon here?’
Mottisfont seemed to feel that he had said too much. He replied evasively: ‘You’d better ask her. It had nothing to do with me.’
‘There was no quarrel between yourself and Mr Herriard?’
As he put the question, the Inspector knew that there had been a quarrel. It was as though a curtain was drawn swiftly over Mottisfont’s face, shutting him in. He had been a little off his guard, talking querulously about the young Herriards, but now he was wary again, trying to make up his mind, the Inspector guessed, what he should say. Probably he didn’t know who might have overheard his quarrel; didn’t dare lie; didn’t want to tell the truth. All the same, these nervous witnesses! The Inspector waited, keeping his gaze steady on Mottisfont’s face.
The weak grey eyes behind Mottisfont’s spectacles shifted. ‘Not a quarrel. Oh, dear me, no! Nothing of that sort! Why, we’ve been in partnership for twenty-five years! What an idea! We merely disagreed about a matter purely concerned with the business. Herriard was more or less of a sleeping-partner, you know, but very fond of interfering with the actual running of the business, if you gave him the chance. A little old-fashioned: didn’t move with the times. Many’s the battle-royal we’ve waged! But I think I may claim to have been able to handle him!’
Considering him: weak eyes, harassed brow, peevish mouth; and remembering Nathaniel’s dominant personality, the Inspector disbelieved him, but he did not press the matter. He thought the whole pack of them were lying, one way or another, some to shield others, some from fear. No sense in getting oneself bogged in a swamp of misstatements until he’d heard what the experts, busy in Nathaniel’s room upstairs, had gleaned. He seemed, therefore, to accept Mottisfont’s statements, and asked the inevitable question: ‘When you left the drawing-room, where did you go?’
He’d known what the answer would be, of course. Mottisfont had gone up to his room, to change for dinner, and had not come out of it again until he had joined the rest of the party in the drawing-room.
The Inspector dismissed him, suppressing a sigh. Alibis were the bane of a detective’s life, but he felt he would have welcomed one now. Gave one something to catch hold of, in a manner of speaking. You might have a chance of disproving an alibi: more of a chance, at any rate, than of disproving that these people had all been in their own rooms when Nathaniel was killed.
Consulting his notebook, the Inspector sent for Miss Dean.
As soon as Valerie came into the room, he saw that she was badly frightened. He did not think, critically surveying her, that she would be capable of stabbing anyone, but he thought she could be scared into talking, and felt more hopeful.
Her first words were an agitated disclaimer of any knowledge at all of the crime, and a demand to be allowed to go home at once. He told her that she had nothing to be afraid of, if she was quite frank with him.
She said: ‘But I don’t know anything! I went straight up to my room to change. I never had any quarrel with Mr Herriard! I can’t think why you should want to question me. I should have thought Miss Herriard was the person who could tell you most. It was all her fault!’
‘What makes you say that, miss?’
‘Because it was! Of course, they’ll all be furious with me for saying so, but I don’t see why I should sacrifice myself to protect them! She wanted Mr Herriard to let her have two thousand pounds to finance Mr Roydon’s play – though I’m absolutely certain he had nothing to do with it, because he’s not that kind of person at all. But Paula was furious because Mr Herriard didn’t like Willoughby’s play, silly old fool, and she had a simply frantic row with him, and absolutely slammed out of the room. Actually, it’s a marvellous play, but Mr Herriard was definitely moth-eaten, and he rather loathed it. Besides which he was in a stinking temper already, because I rather think he’d been having a row with Mr Mottisfont.’
‘What about?’ asked the Inspector quickly.
‘Oh, I don’t know, only Mr Mottisfont was utterly sunk in gloom – of course, he’s wet all round the edges too – and everything was ghastly, one way and another.’
‘In what way, miss?’
‘Oh, on account of Stephen’s being in one of his foul moods, and Paula doing nothing but stride about the place in a temper, and Mathilda Clare thinking herself very clever, and completely monopolising Stephen, just as though she were the only person who counted! And she isn’t even moderately good-looking. In fact, she’s haggish.’
There did not seem to be very much to be made of this, although the disclosure that Paula wanted money for Roydon’s play would bear looking into, the Inspector thought.
‘The only person who’s been in the least decent,’ pursued Valerie, now fairly launched on a flood of grievances, ‘is Uncle Joseph. I wish I’d never come, and I know my mother will be utterly livid when she hears what’s happened! It isn’t as if it was even any use my coming, because I never had a chance to get to know Mr Herriard, which was the whole idea. I think he was a woman-hater.’
‘Indeed, miss? Didn’t you and him get on together?’
‘Well, we never had a chance, what with one thing and another. I must say, I thought he was frightfully rude, but Stephen was just about as tactless as he could be, goodness knows why! and Paula would keep on about Willoughby’s play, when anyone could see it was only making Mr Herriard worse.’
She continued in this strain for several minutes, leaving the Inspector with the impression that the household contained few, if any, persons who would have been unwilling to have murdered Nathaniel.
This somewhat irresponsible testimony was contradicted by Maud, who when summoned to the morning-room came in with the deliberate tread of all stout persons, and betrayed neither alarm nor any particular interest.
Maud baffled the Inspector. She answered readily any questions put to her, but her face told him nothing, and she seemed either to be very stupid or very much too clever. She said that she had been in her bedroom from the time she had left the drawing-room until she had returned to it, just before dinner. The Inspector had expected that: it would be quite a shock, he reflected bitterly, if any of these people said anything else. Maud said that no doubt her husband could corroborate her statement, since he had been in his dressing-room, next door. The Inspector nodded, and asked her if there had been much unpleasantness in the house.
Maud’s pale eyes stared at him. ‘I didn’t notice anything,’ she said.
In face of what he had heard from the other witnesses, this startled the Inspector. He looked suspiciously at Maud, and said: ‘Come, come, Mrs Herriard! Isn’t it a fact that there had been a good deal of quarrelling going on between the deceased and certain members of the house-party?’
‘I daresay,’ said Maud indifferently. ‘I didn’t pay any attention. My brother-in-law was a very quarrelsome man.’
‘Oh!’ said the Inspector. ‘Then you wouldn’t say that there had been anything out of the ordinary in the way of unpleasantness?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘There is always unpleasantness in this house. Mr Herriard was very disagreeable.’
The Inspector coughed. ‘You’ve lived here for some time, haven’t you, madam?’
‘Two years,’ she said, without a change in her expression.
‘Then I may take it that you know most of the ins and outs of the place, as one might say?’
‘I never interfered,’ said Maud.
‘No, madam, I’m sure…Would you say that there had been any serious trouble between the deceased and any of his guests?’
‘No. There is usually trouble when my husband’s nephew and niece visit Lexham. They do not try to please their uncle. The Herriards are like that.’
‘Quarrelsome, do you mean?’
‘Yes. Mr Herriard liked it.’
‘He liked having his relations quarrel with him?’ asked the Inspector incredulously.
‘I don’t think he minded. He never seemed to like people who were civil to him. He was very rude himself, very. He didn’t mean anything by it.’
‘Would you say that there had been serious trouble over this play which Miss Herriard wanted her uncle to spend money on?’
‘Oh no!’ Maud said calmly. ‘He didn’t care about the play, that’s all. I didn’t either.’
‘Did he refuse to put up any money?’
‘I expect so. I daresay he would have in the end, however. He was very fond of Paula. It was a stupid moment for her to have chosen, that’s all.’
‘Why was it a stupid moment, madam?’
Her eyes slowly turned towards him again. ‘Mr Herriard was annoyed about the party.’
‘In what way?’
‘He didn’t want a party.’
‘But if he didn’t want it, why did he have it?’
‘It was my husband’s doing. He is not at all like his brother. He thought it would be a good thing. But Mr Herriard very much disliked Miss Dean, and that upset him.’
The Inspector pricked up his ears. ‘He disliked Miss Dean? He didn’t want his nephew to marry her?’
‘No. But I don’t suppose he will. I always thought he had made a mistake. I expect he stuck to it to annoy his uncle.’
This seemed fantastic to the Inspector. ‘Stuck to it to annoy his uncle?’
‘He likes annoying people,’ said Maud.
This matter-of-fact opinion, stated with a simplicity that could not but carry weight, confused the Inspector’s mind. He began to perceive that he had to deal with extraordinary people, and it was with misgiving that he presently confronted Mathilda Clare.
His first thought was that she was no beauty, his second that she had very shrewd eyes. Her indefinable air of expensive chic slightly alarmed him, but he found her perfectly easy to get on with, if not very helpful.
She corroborated Maud’s testimony. She had never yet, she told him, stayed at Lexham Manor without finding herself pitchforked into the middle of a family quarrel. ‘Though I’m bound to say,’ she admitted, ‘that things weren’t usually as sultry as they have been this Christmas. That was Joseph Herriard’s fault. He meant it all for the best, but he’s one of those tactless creatures who spend their whole lives putting their feet into it. This time he’s surpassed himself, for not content with getting Miss Dean into the home he allowed Miss Herriard to bring Mr Roydon here.’
‘I understand that Mr Roydon came to get Mr Herriard to finance a play of his?’
‘That was the general idea,’ admitted Mathilda. ‘But Mr Herriard thought not.’
‘Very upsetting for Mr Roydon,’ said the Inspector invitingly.
‘Not at all. He is now determined to let the play stand on its merits.’
‘Oh! And Miss Herriard?’
‘Miss Herriard,’ responded Mathilda coolly, ‘treated the assembled company to a dramatic scene – she’s an actress, good in emotional rôles. I wasn’t present, but I’m told that she and Mr Herriard had a really splendid quarrel, and enjoyed themselves hugely.’
‘Seems a funny way to enjoy yourself, miss.’
‘It would seem funny to you or to me, Inspector, but not, believe me, to a Herriard.’
He shook his head dubiously, and asked, without much hope, where she had been between seven-thirty and dinner-time.
‘Changing in my room,’ she replied. ‘Joseph Herriard will bear me out. His dressing-room communicates with my bathroom, and we not only went upstairs together, but he chat – talked to me all the time I was changing. What’s more, we came downstairs together. That’s my alibi, Inspector.’
He thanked her gravely, refusing to be drawn, and said that he would like to interview the servants.
‘Just ring the bell,’ said Mathilda, rising, and walking to the door. ‘You will then be able to start on the butler.’
She rejoined her fellow-guests in the drawing-room. ‘Well?’ said Stephen.
‘I did what I could for you,’ she replied. ‘He’s now about to pump Sturry.’
‘That ought to finish us,’ he said grimly. ‘Sturry was listening outside the door when the storm broke.’