‘Well, don’t!’ said Stephen ungratefully. ‘Mind telling me precisely where this was found, Inspector?’
‘It was lying on the floor, half under the chair by the fire.’
‘Oh, then the thing’s perfectly plain!’ said Joseph, still labouring in Stephen’s defence. ‘I expect it slipped out of your pocket, old man, and in the agitation of the moment you didn’t notice it. When you were bending over poor Nat. That would be it!’
‘The case was not found anywhere near the body of the deceased, sir,’ interpolated the Inspector.
‘Oh! Well, I daresay it got kicked across the room,’ said Joseph, in a despairing way. ‘I’m sure we were all so much upset that anything could have happened! Stephen, why don’t you say something? There’s nothing in this! We all know that! There’s no need to be silly about it! All the Inspector wants to know is –’
‘So far, I’ve had damned little chance of saying anything,’ said Stephen. ‘If you’ve quite finished handing out a line of talk which wouldn’t convince a half-wit, I will state two facts. I don’t know how my case got into my uncle’s room. It did not fall out of my pocket, possibly because my agitation didn’t lead me to stand on my head, but more certainly because I hadn’t it on me when I entered the room.’
The Inspector took no trouble to conceal his scepticism. Joseph plunged again into deep waters. ‘Depend upon it, my brother took it upstairs with him! Really, there’s no need –’
‘And dropped it on the floor, sir?’
‘Pushed it under the chair, apparently,’ said Stephen. ‘Or is that what I’m supposed to have done, Inspector?’
‘I wouldn’t say that,’ answered the Inspector. ‘It might have fallen off the chair – if someone sitting there thought he’d put it in his pocket, but happened to drop it into the chair instead, and then got up. Someone a bit careless, maybe.’
‘I object to that!’ Joseph interrupted. ‘That’s deliberately
twisting a perfectly innocent remark of mine to mean something I never intended, and which is absurd – quite absurd!’
‘Shut up!’ said Stephen. ‘I admit it’s my case; I accept your statement that it was found in my uncle’s room. So what, Inspector?’
‘You’d better consider your position, sir.’
Mathilda, who had preserved a somewhat ominous silence throughout this interchange, moved forward. ‘Quite finished?’ she enquired. ‘Because if so I’ll speak my little piece. I saw Mr Stephen Herriard give his cigarette-case to Miss Dean before ever he left the drawing-room after tea.’
Stephen laughed. Valerie said furiously: ‘You shan’t put it on to me! I never had his beastly case! I left it on the table! I don’t know what became of it! He probably picked it up before he went out of the room. You’re the filthiest, meanest beast I ever met, Mathilda Clare!’
‘And you, my little pet,’ said Mathilda, with great cordiality, ‘are a bitch!’
Eight
THE INSPECTOR LOOKED A GOOD DEAL TAKEN ABACK BY THIS
exchange of compliments. It did not fit in with his ideas of how the gentry behaved, and he made no attempt to cope with the situation. Roydon seemed to share his feelings, but Paula, who had stalked into the library at the outset of hostilities, said in approving accents: ‘Good for you, Mathilda!’
As usual it was Joseph who had to intervene. He shook his head at Mathilda, although with a sympathetic twinkle in his eye, and suggested to Valerie that she was overwrought.
‘She’s trying to make you think I murdered Mr Herriard!’ said Valerie tearfully.
‘My dear child, no one could possibly think anything so absurd!’ Joseph assured her. ‘Nobody as pretty as you could be suspected of hurting a fly!’
She was a little mollified by this tribute, and when Roydon said emphatically ‘Hear, hear!’ she threw him a pathetic smile, and said: ‘Oh, I don’t know about that, but I don’t even remember Stephen’s giving me his case, and I certainly never took it out of the room. It’s much more likely that I simply tossed it back to him.’
‘Oh, it is, is it?’ said Mathilda. ‘Why “tossed”?’
Valerie’s face turned crimson. ‘I don’t know. I –’
‘Yes, you do. You know perfectly well that Stephen threw his case over to you. So let’s have less of this convenient aphasia!’
Valerie flung round to face Stephen. ‘Are you going to stand there allowing that woman to insult me?’ she demanded.
‘Where on earth did you dig out a line like that?’ enquired Paula.
‘She’s got a lousy taste in literature,’ Stephen explained. ‘Mathilda, I forbid you to insult my intended.’
‘You and who else?’ retorted Mathilda crudely.
‘Children, children!’ implored Joseph.
The Inspector cleared his throat. ‘If you please, ladies! Miss Dean, is it a fact that Mr Stephen Herriard gave his cigarette-case to you before he went up to change?’
‘I tell you I don’t know! I simply don’t remember! Anyway, I never took it out of the room!’
Maud, who had come into the library behind Paula, said in her flattened voice: ‘You asked him for a cigarette, dear, and he threw his case over to you.’
‘You’re all against me!’ Valerie declared, tears spangling the ends of her lashes.
‘No, dear, but it is always better to speak the truth. I have often thought it a pity that girls should smoke so much. It is very bad for the complexion, but I make it a rule never to interfere in what doesn’t concern me.’
‘Let that be a lesson to you!’ Paula said to Valerie, quite in Stephen’s manner.
The Inspector, possibly feeling that of all the women present Maud was the most rational, turned to her, and asked: ‘Did you see what Miss Dean did with the case, madam?’
‘No,’ Maud replied. ‘I expect something happened to divert my attention. Not that I was watching particularly, because there was no reason why I should.’
‘If she had given the case back to Mr Herriard, do you think you would have noticed it?’
‘Oh no, I don’t suppose I should!’
‘She didn’t give it back to him,’ Mathilda said.
‘Well, what did she do with it, miss?’
‘I don’t know. Like Mrs Herriard, I didn’t notice.’
‘I simply put it on the table!’ Valerie said. ‘Willoughby was in the middle of reading his play. I don’t know what became of it afterwards.’
‘Look here, miss!’ said the Inspector patiently. ‘We’ll get this settled once and for all, if you please! Did Mr Herriard give you his case, or did he not?’
‘I don’t call it giving me his case just because I asked him for a cigarette, and he hadn’t the decency to get up and hand me one, but just chucked his case at me! And I don’t see why –’
‘He did throw his case to you?’
‘Yes, but –’
‘Then don’t keep on saying you don’t remember!’ said the Inspector severely. ‘Now then, sir: are you sure you hadn’t got the case on you when you left the room?’
‘Perfectly.’
‘That’s true!’ Joseph exclaimed. ‘Now I come to think of it, you asked him for a cigarette, Paula, when we came down from poor Nat’s room, and he put his hand in his pocket, as though to pull out his case, and then just nodded to the box –’ He stopped short, as the infelicitous nature of his testimony apparently dawned on him. ‘Not that that proves anything!’ he added, in a hurry.
‘No, sir,’ agreed the Inspector dryly, and turned from him to Valerie again. ‘You say you put the case down on the table, miss –’
‘I didn’t say I actually did! I only said I most probably did!’ replied Valerie, who seemed to have decided that her only safety lay in prevarication. ‘And it’s no use badgering me, because –’
‘Valerie, my child!’ Joseph said, taking one of her hands, and holding it between both of his. ‘The Inspector only wants to get at the truth of what happened! You mustn’t think that you’ll be
incriminating anyone just by telling him quite frankly what you did with Stephen’s case.’
‘I don’t care about that,’ said Valerie, stating a self-evident fact. ‘But I know quite well Mathilda’s trying to put it onto me, and it isn’t fair!’
‘No, no; Tilda never had any such idea, had you, Tilda? She knows you couldn’t have done it.’
It now seemed good to Paula to pour oil on sinking flames. ‘Indeed!’ she ejaculated. ‘How, may I ask, does she know that?’
‘Good God, Paula, she hasn’t got the guts, let alone the ingenuity!’ replied Mathilda.
‘Mathilda! Paula!’ expostulated Joseph despairingly. ‘No, really! Really, my dears!’
‘Oh yes, I’ve no doubt you both think I’m a fool!’ said Valerie. ‘Just because I don’t do the things you do! But as a matter of fact I very nearly went to college, and I should have, only that it seemed the most frightful waste of time!’
‘I think that was very sensible of you,’ remarked Maud, without any malice at all. ‘I daresay it’s all very well for some people, but I never went to college, and look at me!’
Quite a number of those present obeyed this behest, in a fascinated kind of way. The Inspector, feeling that the command of the situation was slipping out of his grasp, cleared his throat, and said loudly: ‘No one, least of all the police, wants to put anything on to an innocent person; but I warn you, Miss Dean, you don’t do yourself any good by refusing to speak the truth. Did you put Mr Herriard’s case down on the table?’
After this question had been relayed in a gentler form by Joseph, and Roydon had made a rather involved speech, the gist of which seemed to be that it was the height of injustice to expect nervous subjects to speak the truth, Valerie was induced to admit that she had put the case down on the table. Nobody remembered having seen it there, but that, as Mathilda delicately suggested, was hardly surprising, since everyone’s attention had been fully occupied by Roydon’s reading, and the exciting scene that had followed it.
The Inspector then went to look at the table in question, everybody tramping after him, and it was found to be a Chippendale piecrust table, which Sturry preferred to designate as an Incidental Table. It bore a small bowl of flowers, an ashtray, and a silver match-box, and Sturry, questioned, stated that when he had entered the drawing-room before dinner, to make sure that James, the footman, had Set it to Rights, no cigarette-case had been visible. James was equally sure that it had not been on the table when he had emptied the ashtray, so that left everyone, as Mathilda kindly pointed out, exactly where they were before this exhaustive enquiry had been inaugurated.
‘No, miss, there I cannot agree with you,’ said the Inspector darkly.
‘The fact is, anyone could have picked it up without attracting the least attention,’ she said.
Edgar Mottisfont took instant exception to this. ‘I don’t see that at all!’ he said. ‘Are you suggesting that someone tried to steal Stephen’s case? Why should anyone but Stephen have picked it up? We all knew it didn’t belong to us!’
Joseph said, as angrily as anyone of his mild temper could: ‘Edgar, do think before you speak! What – I ask you – are you trying to insinuate? What reason have you to try to stab Stephen in the back?’
‘I wasn’t trying to stab him in the back!’ retorted Mottisfont. ‘All I said was –’
‘What you meant us to infer was obvious!’ said Joseph. ‘I should have thought that after all the years you’ve known Stephen –’
‘I don’t say that he stabbed Nat!’ said Mottisfont, a spot of colour on his cheekbone. ‘It’s not my business to find out who did that! I’m only saying that the most likely person to have picked up the case was its owner! Of course, I know very well you Herriards always stick together, but I’m not a Herriard – I’m just a plain man, and I object to the fantastic idea you’re trying to foster, that someone else pocketed a valuable case which didn’t belong to them!’
‘Edgar, old friend, if anything I’ve said gave you the impression that I was in league with Stephen against you –’
‘Nothing I have said could have given you that impression,’ interpolated Stephen.
‘Hush, Stephen! – if I’ve given you that impression, I heartily beg your pardon! I never for one moment meant to insinuate that you had touched the case!’
It was generally felt that Joseph had now surpassed himself; but it was plain, from his guileless countenance, that he had no notion of having said anything that might have been more felicitously expressed. Mathilda would have allowed the matter to rest. Stephen, however, said sardonically: ‘Why stop there? Whom do you suspect of having taken my case?’
‘Stephen! Why will you always take me up wrongly? I don’t suspect anyone! Good gracious, how could I possibly –’
‘This is the most useless discussion I’ve ever taken part in!’ declared Paula. ‘Are we to sit up all night while you and Joe make fools of yourselves? I’m tired to death, and I’m going to bed!’
This last announcement was flung at the Inspector’s head. He said nothing to dissuade her. He was feeling tired too; he wanted to consider the case quietly; and he could not think that a prolongation of his investigations into the nightwatches would yield any very valuable results. Like many laymen, he had a deep faith in the skill of specialists, and his dependence was now placed on the findings of the police experts. He said formally that he had no further questions to put to anyone.
Valerie at once reiterated her demand to be allowed to go home, and her conviction that she would be unable to sleep a wink if compelled to remain at Lexham. The Inspector, having informed her that her presence was necessary to the conduct of the case, very meanly left her fellow-guests to convince her that a journey to London from Lexham at eleven o’clock on Christmas Eve would be most difficult to accomplish, and rejoined his assistants in the morningroom. Twenty minutes later, the police-cars were heard to start up in the drive, and Valerie, until she discovered that a constable had been left to mount guard over the premises all night, showed signs of recovering her equilibrium.
Maud, whose stagnant calm had been to all outward appearances undisturbed by the shocking events of the day, exasperated everyone by resuming her search for the Life of the Empress of Austria; Paula, saying that she must be alone or go mad, swept upstairs to her room; and Stephen gratified Mathilda, but revolted everyone else, by saying that a drink was clearly called for. Even Joseph said that it did not seem to be quite the moment for carousing: an expression which had the effect of driving everyone else instantly over to Stephen’s side. Mottisfont said that he thought they had all earned a drink. Upon reflection, he said that that wasn’t quite what he had meant, but when Stephen asked him with false amiability what he had really meant, he found himself unable to explain, and foundered in a morass of unfinished sentences.
Sturry, gathering that his superiors were determined to debauch themselves, apologised in a quelling way for having forgotten, under the stress of circumstances, to bring the usual tray into the drawing-room, and went away to rectify his omission.
Valerie, who had been silent for quite ten minutes, suddenly announced her intention of ringing up her mother. No one put forward any objection, though from the look which descended on to Stephen’s face it was generally inferred that he was not in favour of the operation.
When Valerie had left the room, Mathilda moved across to Stephen’s side, and asked softly: ‘Who’s the heir?’
He shrugged.
‘You?’
‘I don’t know. Don’t think he made a will.’
‘Joe’s been hinting all day that he did.’
‘Oh – Joe!’
‘He ought to know, if anyone does.’
‘The answer being that no one does. Sorry you’ve been let in for this.’
‘Don’t waste any pity on me: I’ve got an unbreakable alibi,’ she replied lightly. ‘Far be it from me to cast any aspersions on your word, Stephen, but there is one appeal I should like to ad
dress to you in the name of us all.’
He looked at her with a suddenly lowering expression on his brow. ‘Well?’
‘If you purloined Maud’s book, do for God’s sake give it back to her!’
He gave a laugh, but it seemed to her that it was perfunctory. ‘I haven’t got her book.’
‘Don’t quibble!’ said Mathilda severely.
‘I’m sick of the damned book!’ he snapped. ‘I’ve already told you once that I don’t know where it is!’
He got up, as he spoke, and walked away to the other end of the room. She saw that his nerves were on edge, and was sorry that she had teased him. Sturry came in with a tray of drinks, and set it down on a side-table. Maud asked him if he had seen the book she was reading. Sturry said in a very despising way that he had not noticed it, but would make enquiries.