‘It is very unfortunate,’ stated Maud. ‘I wish I could remember where I laid it down. I always read for twenty minutes in bed before I put the light out. It is very calming to the mind. I had just got to the part about Rudolph. The one who committed suicide.’
‘What do you find so calming about that?’ asked Stephen, over his shoulder.
‘It takes one’s mind off things,’ she answered vaguely.
It said much for Joseph’s kindliness, Mathilda thought, that with no more than a sigh, immediately suppressed, he got up from his chair, and offered to help in the search for the book. Mathilda was afraid that he would ask Stephen for it, but although he did glance speculatively at that unresponsive profile he appeared to feel the moment to be unpropitious, and said nothing. It seemed rather unfair that he, upon whom the brunt of the evening’s burden had fallen, should be obliged to undertake a singularly futile search singlehanded, so Mathilda got up, and offered to assist him. Maud thanked her placidly, and went back to her seat by the fire.
‘She might have put it down in the billiard-room,’ Mathilda suggested. ‘She came in there just before tea, didn’t she?’
The billiard-room yielded no clue to the book’s whereabouts, but the sight of the Christmas tree, glittering under the lights, brought home to Mathilda and to Joseph the gruesome nature of the events of the day. Joseph swallowed twice, and made a tragic gesture towards the coloured balls and the twinkling tinsel.
‘What are you going to do about it?’ asked Mathilda. ‘It does seem a trifle out of place, doesn’t it?’
Joseph blew his nose. ‘It must be taken away. Oh, Tilda, is this all my fault? Was I wrong to coax Nat into giving this party? I meant it to be so different!’
‘I don’t see that you could have known that Nat would be murdered,’ she replied.
He shook his head, putting out a hand to finger one of the icicles that depended from a laden branch.
‘Joe, did he make a will?’
He raised his eyes. ‘Yes. I don’t know whether it’s still in existence, though. Perhaps it would be better if he’d destroyed it.’
‘Why?’
‘It was when he had pleurisy, in the spring,’ Joseph said. ‘I persuaded him to make a will. I thought it right, Tilda! If only one could see into the future!’
‘Was it in Stephen’s favour?’
He nodded. After a moment, she said: ‘Well, Stephen didn’t know it, anyway.’
He glanced up quickly, and down again.
‘Unless you told him,’ she added.
‘I? No, I never said so! Not in so many words! But when I saw what sort of a mood he was in, I did rather hint to Valerie that a word from her might be advantageous. She may tell the Inspector so. She’s such a thoughtless child! And you know what an impression Stephen must be giving the police by that silly, boorish manner he puts on! Oh, Tilda, I feel worried to death!’
She was silent for a moment. ‘Did the police ask you who was the heir?’ she said presently.
‘Yes, but I think I shelved the question. I gave them the name of Nat’s solicitor.’
‘Do you suppose that the will is in his charge?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said reluctantly. ‘If it isn’t, I shall have to say where I think it might be. I mean, I can’t do Stephen out of his inheritance, can I? Besides, they’d be bound to find it sooner or later. I don’t know what to do for the best.’
Mathilda felt strongly inclined to advise him not to meddle, but she refrained. He said: ‘I wish you’d exert your influence, Tilda! Don’t let him alienate the police through sheer perversity! He won’t listen to me.’
‘I expect he knows his own business best,’ she said shortly. ‘In any event, I have no influence over him.’
‘Sometimes I fear that no one has,’ said Joseph, with one of his gusty sighs. ‘It’s as though he was born cussed! Now, what in the world can have possessed him to hide poor Maud’s book? That’s the sort of silly, schoolboy mischief that puts people against him so!’
Mathilda thought that anyone less schoolboyish or mischievous than Stephen would have been hard to find, but she merely observed that Stephen denied all knowledge of the book’s whereabouts.
‘Oh well, perhaps I’m wronging him!’ said Joseph, visibly brightening. ‘Anyway, it doesn’t seem to be in this room.’
They returned to the library, their arrival synchronising with that of Valerie, who had apparently derived some benefit from a protracted and expensive telephone-call to her mother. She announced that Mummy was coming down to Lexham on the following day.
‘Oh, my God!’ said Stephen audibly.
‘I’m sure she must want to be with you at such a time,’ said Joseph hastily. ‘We shall be very glad to have her, shan’t we, Maud? One only wishes that her visit were taking place under happier circumstances.’
‘Mummy says she’s sure it will all be cleared up satisfactorily, and we just mustn’t worry!’ said Valerie.
This valuable piece of advice plunged everyone into a state of profound gloom. After thinking it over, Mottisfont said that he didn’t see how it could be cleared up satisfactorily.
‘No,’ said Stephen cordially. ‘Not when you consider that one of us is an assassin.’
‘I find that remark gratuitously offensive!’ said Mottisfont.
‘Why?’ asked Stephen.
‘Now, now!’ Joseph intervened. ‘We mustn’t let this thing get on top of our nerves! I myself feel convinced that Nat was murdered by someone from outside.’
‘You would,’ said Stephen.
‘Damn it all, why not?’ demanded Mathilda.
He shrugged. ‘Windows all latched on the inside.’
‘But the ventilator was open!’ Joseph reminded him. ‘An agile man might have got in that way, I believe. Of course, it wouldn’t have been easy, but although you may not believe it I used to be a bit of an athlete in my younger days, and I’m pretty sure I could have done it.’
‘You couldn’t do it now, Joe,’ said Mathilda. ‘Too much enbonpoint.’
‘Ah, you love to make fun of your poor old uncle!’ he said, shaking his fist at her. ‘Yet when I was a young man I was as slim as Roydon there. I well remember when I was playing Romeo once – But what am I about, telling stories of my youth when our minds are full of graver matters? Maud, my dear, we will have a thorough search for your book tomorrow, I promise. You have had a wearing day: you should be in bed, you know.’
‘I daresay I may have left it upstairs,’ she said, winding up her knitting-wool. ‘I do not want anyone to worry about it. I expect it will turn up.’ She rose, said good night in a general way, and departed.
‘I shall follow her example,’ said Mathilda. ‘Are you coming up, Valerie?’
Valerie replied reluctantly that she supposed she would have to, but that the thought of having a policeman in the house was too ghoulish to permit of her closing her eyes all night.
‘I shouldn’t worry. I believe policemen are a very moral set,’ said Mathilda unkindly. ‘Lock your door, if you’re nervous.’
‘I do think you’re the limit!’ exclaimed Valerie, giggling.
‘I don’t suppose any of us will sleep much,’ remarked Mottisfont, when she had left the room. ‘I know I shan’t. I feel as though I’d had a knock-out. Nat! It still doesn’t seem possible!’
‘Personally,’ said Roydon, with ill-assumed indifference, ‘I feel pretty done-in, and I daresay I shall sleep like a log. After all, it’s different for me. I mean, it isn’t as though I knew Mr Herriard.’
This implication, that he stood aloof from the crime and its consequences, did nothing to advance his popularity with the three other men. Even Joseph shook his head in a foreboding way; and Mottisfont went so far as to say that they were all in it, one just as much as another.
‘I’m afraid I can hardly agree with you!’ said Roydon, in a head-voice. ‘I don’t want to cast any aspersions on anyone, but I had no quarrel with Mr Herriard!’
Stephen yawned. ‘That you and I did. I wonder if I’m as boring as the rest of you? Perhaps I’d better go to bed. What’s the name of Uncle Nat’s solicitor, Joe?’
‘Filey, Blyth, and Blyth,’ answered Joseph. ‘But John Blyth has always handled poor Nat’s affairs.’
‘Know his home address?’
‘No; but I expect it’s in the Telephone Directory, for I’m nearly sure he lives in London. Why? Do you think we ought –’
‘I’ll ring him up in the morning,’ Stephen said, and lounged out.
Mottisfont watched him go, his expression one of open dislike. ‘Taking a lot on himself, isn’t he?’ he said disagreeably.
Joseph, who had looked a little surprised, rallied, and said briskly: ‘Nonsense! Stephen knows what a muddle-headed old fellow I am. Quite right of him! Good gracious, Edgar, I hope you aren’t trying to make me jealous of my own nephew! That would be rather too much of a good thing!’
‘Oh, as long as you don’t mind, I suppose it has nothing to do with me!’ said Mottisfont.
‘Stephen and I understand one another,’ said Joseph, becoming the indulgent uncle again. ‘Now, I think we had better all go to bed, don’t you? We are a little overwrought, and, indeed, how could we fail to be? Perhaps the night will bring counsel.’ He went to the door, but looked back as he opened it to say with a wistful smile: ‘We feel the blank in our lives already, don’t we? Perhaps I more than anyone. To go to bed without that good night to Nat! It will be long before I can accustom myself to it.’
Mottisfont and Roydon both suffered the Englishman’s inevitable reaction to such indecent pathos. Mottisfont reddened, and coughed; Roydon stared at his feet, and muttered: ‘Quite!’ Joseph sighed, and said: ‘But I mustn’t intrude my private grief upon you. We’ve all got to keep stiff upper lips, haven’t we?’
Neither of his listeners could lower himself sufficiently to respond adequately to this, so Joseph went away with a heavy tread and another sigh.
‘Well, considering I never heard Mr Herriard say a decent word to him – !’ began Roydon.
Mottisfont resented Joseph’s attempt to play upon his emotions quite as profoundly as Roydon, but he had known the Herriards for many years, and he was not going to join a long-haired playwright in running them down. He said repressively: ‘The Herriards take a good deal of knowing. They’ve all got sharp tongues, except Joe, but I’ve never set any store by that. You can’t judge by appearances.’
‘It seems to me that they all play into one another’s hands!’ said Roydon. ‘In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me to discover that Stephen’s filthy rudeness to Joseph Herriard is just so much eyewash! You can’t help noticing how they all hang together, once it comes to the pinch!’
Mottisfont had been thinking much the same thing, but he was not going to admit it. He merely said that there was nothing surprising in families hanging together, and made for the door.
Roydon followed him upstairs, remarking in a disgruntled way that it wasn’t his idea of a Christmas party.
He was by no means alone in this view of the matter. The Chief Constable, receiving Inspector Colwall’s report on the case, said that this was the sort of thing that would happen when Bradford was sick.
‘Yes, sir,’ agreed Inspector Colwall, swallowing the insult.
‘Christmas Eve, too!’ said the Chief Constable, in an exasperated tone. ‘To my mind, it’s a case for Scotland Yard.’
‘Perhaps you’re right, sir,’ responded the Inspector, thinking of the complexities of the case, the lack of evidence, and the difficulties of dealing with the kind of witness he had found at Lexham Manor.
‘And that being so,’ said the Chief Constable, ‘I’ll get on to London right away.’
The Inspector was in complete agreement over this. If Scotland Yard was to take over the case, he for one did not want to be told that the scent had been allowed to grow cold, and that the Yard should have been called in days earlier. That was the kind of thing that happened when the local police tried to solve their cases, and failed; and it didn’t do a man any good to be made to look like a fool who’d been trying to make things difficult for Scotland Yard.
So the Chief Constable put through a call to London, and was connected in due course with a calm person who said he was Detective-Superintendent Hannasyde. The Chief Constable gave him the particulars of the case, and after asking several questions Superintendent Hannasyde said that he would send a good man down to assist him next morning.
That was polite of the Superintendent, but when his words were repeated to Inspector Colwall, the Inspector only said, Yes, in a dispirited tone. The good man from Scotland Yard would automatically take charge of the case, and very likely tick everyone off into the bargain, he thought, uneasily aware of his own shortcomings as a detective. He went off duty in a frame of mind almost as gloomy as anyone’s at Lexham Manor, and very nearly as resentful as that of the good man from Scotland Yard, who, far from feeling any elation at being given a promising case to handle, told his subordinate that it was just his luck to be sent into the wilds of Hampshire on Christmas Day.
Sergeant Ware, an earnest young man, ventured to say that the case sounded as though it might be interesting.
‘Interesting!’ said Inspector Hemingway. ‘It sounds to me like a mess. I don’t like the lay-out, I don’t like the locality, and if I don’t find a whole crowd of suspects, all telling a lot of silly lies for no reason at all, my instinct’s wrong, and that’s all there is to it.’
‘Well, perhaps it is, this time,’ suggested Ware.
The Inspector fixed him with a bright and fulminating eye. ‘Don’t you get insubordinate with me, my lad!’ he warned him. ‘I’m never wrong.’
The Sergeant grinned. He had worked with Inspector Hemingway many times, and had almost as great a respect for his foibles as for his undoubted ability.
‘And don’t stand there smirking as though you were off on a Cheap Day Excursion, because if I were to burst a bloodvessel you’d very likely get blamed for it!’
‘Why should I, sir?’ asked Ware, diverted.
‘Because that’s the way things turn out in the Force,’ said the Inspector darkly.
Nine
THERE WAS NO APPARENT REASON TO SUPPOSE, ON THE
following morning, that Inspector Hemingway was regarding the case with a less jaundiced eye. On the journey into Hampshire, he spoke bitterly and at length on the subject of the play which he had been helping to produce in his hometown, and which was to be performed on Boxing Day. He saw no prospect of being present upon this interesting occasion, and the trend of his remarks led Ware to infer that without his masterful hand upon the reins the play had little chance of succeeding, if, indeed, it could be performed at all.
The Drama was one of the Inspector’s pet hobby-horses, and the Sergeant sat back in his corner of the railway compartment, and resigned himself to the inevitable. The expression of interest which concealed his almost total inattention did not deceive the Inspector for an instant. ‘Yes, I know you aren’t listening,’ he said. ‘If you listened more, you’d be a better detective, besides being a lot more respectful to your superiors. The trouble with you young chaps is that you think you’ve got nothing to learn.’
The Sergeant had never been disrespectful to his superiors in all his blameless life, and his painstaking efforts to broaden his knowledge were notorious, but he attempted no protest. Merely he grinned, and said that he had never been much of a one for the theatre.
‘You needn’t tell me!’ said Hemingway disgustedly. ‘I’ll bet you spend all your off-time at the pictures!’
‘Well, I don’t, sir. I was brought up very strict. I generally do a bit of carpentering.’
‘That’s worse,’ said Hemingway.
After a discreet pause, the Sergeant ventured to enquire what were his chief ‘s impressions
of the case they were bound for.
‘It’s a great mistake to start off with a lot of preconceived ideas,’ replied Hemingway. ‘Which is why you’ll never see me do such a thing. It’ll be time enough for me to go getting impressions when I’ve had a look at the dramatis personae. Not that I want to look at them, mind you! From what the Superintendent told me, you’d find it hard to pick out a set of people I wouldn’t rather not look at.’
‘Sounds to me as though it might be an interesting sort of a case,’ suggested the Sergeant, in cajoling accents. ‘Stands to reason it’s going to be a teaser, or the locals wouldn’t have called us in.’
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