‘Let me point out to you that there is no fire in this room, and that you could both discuss me in greater comfort elsewhere!’ snapped Stephen.
Mrs Dean’s eyes might acquire a steely look, but her smile remained. She said: ‘You conceited boy, to think I should waste my time discussing you! I have much more important things to do! Indeed, I must unpack the few bits and pieces I brought with me, and just tidy myself a little after the journey.’
Joseph at once offered to escort her to her room, and led her away before Stephen could say something even more outrageous. In the hall, Valerie, now clad in the navy-blue suit which her mother thought more proper to the occasion than primrose-yellow, was flirting mildly with Roydon. As Roydon’s mind was preoccupied with the possible consequences of Nathaniel’s murder, the flirtation was a desultory affair, but the sight of her daughter, tête-à-tête with a young man whom one glance assured her was ineligible, made Mrs Dean intervene at once. She said that she wanted her girlie to come up and help her to unpack.
‘Oh, Mummy, why on earth?’ said Valerie petulantly. ‘The housemaid will do all that.’
‘No, my pet; you know Mummy never likes the servants to meddle with her things,’ said Mrs Dean. ‘Come along!’
‘Oh, all right!’ said Valerie sulkily. ‘See you later, Willoughby!’
Once in the seclusion of the Blue Room, which was a spacious if somewhat sombre apartment over the library, Mrs Dean wasted no time in beating about the bush, but asked abruptly: ‘Who is that young man, Val?’
‘Willoughby? He’s a playwright. He’s written the most marvellous play called Wormwood. He read it to us yesterday.’
‘I’ve never heard of him,’ said Mrs Dean.
‘Well, he hasn’t actually had anything put on yet, but
he’s frightfully brilliant, and I expect Wormwood will run for simply years!’
‘I’m sure I hope it may,’ responded Mrs Dean. ‘But you know you can’t afford to waste your time on penniless young writers, my pet, and I didn’t quite like to see you being so friendly with him.’
‘Oh, Mummy, what absolute rot! As though I couldn’t be friends with other men just because I’m engaged!’
‘You must let Mother know best, my pet. You don’t want to make Stephen jealous, now, do you?’
‘I don’t care,’ said Valerie sullenly. ‘Besides, I don’t believe he would be. He simply pays no attention to me. The only person he’s more or less decent to is that sickening Clare-woman. And she isn’t even moderately good-looking, Mummy!’
‘Is she the one who went off to church with Mrs Herriard? Such manners! I wonder what Mrs Herriard was before she was married? I’m sure my little girl has nothing to fear from anyone as plain as Miss Clare. You mustn’t be silly, childie. I can see it’s high time Mother came to keep an eye on you. I’ve no doubt you’ve been getting on the wrong side of Stephen. He isn’t the sort you can play tricks with.’
‘Well, if it wasn’t for being frightfully rich, I don’t think I would marry Stephen,’ said Valerie, in a burst of frankness.
‘Hush, dear! I suppose there’s no doubt that Stephen will inherit all this?’
‘Oh, I don’t know, except that Uncle Joe practically told me he would! Only I simply couldn’t live here all the year round, Mummy: I should go mad!’
‘Time enough to think of that later.’ Mrs Dean glanced round the room. ‘His uncle must have been worth a fortune. You don’t run a place like this on twopence-ha’penny a year. But I don’t like the sound of this murder, Val. Of course, we don’t know, and very likely everything will turn out satisfactorily, but I couldn’t let my girlie marry a murderer.’
‘I wouldn’t be able to, would I?’ asked Valerie, opening her lovely eyes very wide.
‘Of course not, my pet, but it was the engagement I was thinking of. Only one doesn’t wish to do anything in haste. Mother has to think of Mavis too, you know.’
‘I don’t see what Mavis has got to do with my marrying Stephen.’
‘Now, don’t be silly, childie!’ said Mrs Dean, somewhat tartly. ‘Heaven knows it isn’t easy to find an eligible husband for one daughter, let alone two! Your meeting Stephen at the Crewes’ was a piece of very good luck – not that I would want either of my chicks to marry without love, naturally – and young men who are heirs to fortunes don’t crop up every day of the week by any means. We shall just have to wait.’
‘I don’t believe Stephen ever would have proposed to me if you hadn’t sort of made him,’ said Valerie discontentedly. ‘In fact, in a way I rather wish he hadn’t.’
‘You know Mother doesn’t like her girlies to talk in that vulgar way. And she doesn’t like to see that sulky look, either. You must just trust her to do what’s best, and be your own bright self, my pet.’
‘I don’t see how anyone could possibly be bright in this house. It’s a ghastly place. Paula says it’s evil.’
‘Nonsense!’ said Mrs Dean. ‘Now, run along, and don’t let Mother hear any more of that kind of rubbish!’
Valerie departed with something very like a flounce, but reappeared a minute later with whitened cheeks, and quickened breath. ‘Mummy!’ she gasped. ‘The most frightful thing! Someone has arrived! Two of them! I saw them from the top of the stairs!’
‘Good gracious, Val, why shouldn’t people arrive? Who are they?’
‘It’s an Inspector from Scotland Yard! I heard him say so to Sturry! Oh, Mummy, can’t we go home? Can’t you get me out of this?’
‘Come inside, and shut the door!’ commanded Mrs Dean. ‘Now, just you drink this glass of water, and stop being silly! I’m not at all surprised that Scotland Yard has been called in. There’s nothing for you to worry about. No one thinks you had anything to do with the murder.’
‘Yes, they do, because of that foul cigarette-case!’
‘What cigarette-case?’
‘Stephen’s. He sort of threw it to me in the drawingroom, and later it was found in Mr Herriard’s bedroom. But I never put it there!’
‘Of course you didn’t, and the police will realise that just as Mother does. You must just tell them all you know, and stop worrying. Remember, Mother is here to take care of you!’
‘I know I shall die if I have to answer any more questions! That policeman yesterday was utterly brutal, and this one’s bound to be worse!’ said Valerie fatalistically.
Her bugbear, at this moment, was taking stock of Joseph and of Stephen, both of whom had emerged from the billiard-room to receive him. Joseph had a piece of tinsel in his hand, and explained that he was engaged in dismantling the Christmas tree. ‘We have no heart for it now!’ he said.
‘You ought to send it to your local hospital,’ said Hemingway helpfully. ‘They’d very likely be glad of it.’
‘There!’ cried Joseph. ‘Why didn’t I think of that? It’s just what my brother would have wished, too! It shall be done! What say you, Stephen?’
‘Do what you like with the damned thing!’ said Stephen shortly.
The Inspector looked at him with quick interest. ‘Mr Stephen Herriard?’ he asked.
Stephen nodded. ‘Yes. What do you want to do? Visit the scene of the crime, or interrogate us all again?’
‘If it’s all the same to you, sir, I’d like to visit the scene of the crime first. Perhaps you’d take me up? I understand it was you who discovered Mr Herriard’s body?’
‘Go with my uncle,’ said Stephen. ‘He discovered it too, and can tell you quite as much as I can.’
‘Stephen!’ begged Joseph.
‘Oh, that’s all right with me, sir!’ said Hemingway cheerfully. ‘Very understandable that the gentleman shouldn’t wish to go into the room again.’
Joseph sighed. ‘Very well, Inspector, I’ll take you.’
Joseph followed him to the staircase. He cast a knowledgeable eye over this noble erection, and remarked that he didn’t know when he’d seen a finer one.
‘No; it is supposed to be a perfect example o
f the Cromwellian,’ said Joseph, with an effort. ‘I’m afraid I’m a vandal in these matters. My brother was very proud of the house.’
‘Went in for antiques, did he?’
‘Yes, it was quite a hobby of his.’ Joseph glanced over his shoulder, summoning up a brave smile. ‘I used to tease him about it! And now this has happened!’
‘I daresay you feel it more than most,’ sympathised the Inspector.
‘Perhaps I do. One doesn’t like to be egotistical, but the younger generation have all their lives before them. I feel very much alone now.’
They had mounted the stairs by now, and while the constable who had been left in charge at the Manor cut the tapes that sealed the door of Nathaniel’s room, the Inspector took stock of his surroundings. He wanted to know who occupied the various rooms opening on to the main hall, and he asked to be shown the backstairs and the sewing-room. By the time he had looked at these, the door into Nathaniel’s room had been opened, and the constable was waiting for him to enter.
The room had not been touched since the removal of Nathaniel’s body, and Joseph winced perceptibly at the sight of his dress-clothes, still laid out upon a chair. He turned away, shading his eyes with his hand, while the Inspector’s trained gaze absorbed every detail of the room.
The Inspector had studied the photographs taken of the corpse, but when Joseph seemed to have recovered a little from his emotion, he asked him to describe the position in which he had found his brother. He asked more questions, and Joseph soon warmed to his narrative, and might even, by unkind persons, have been thought to have been enjoying himself considerably. His own and Stephen’s shock lost nothing in the telling; he had a good memory, and was able with very little prompting to reconstruct the scene of the crime for Hemingway. He even presented him with two separate theories to account for the position in which Stephen’s cigarette-case had been found, which, as Hemingway afterwards remarked to his Sergeant, was excessive.
‘Nice old chap,’ said the Sergeant.
‘He’s nice enough, but he’ll very likely drive me mad before I’m through with this,’ returned Hemingway. ‘If I get a line on any of his blessed relatives, he’ll lie awake all night, thinking up a set of highly unconvincing reasons to account for their doings. Anything strike you about this case?’
The Sergeant stroked his chin. ‘I’d say it was a fair stinker,’ he volunteered.
‘Stinker!’ ejaculated Hemingway. ‘It couldn’t have happened!’
‘But it did happen,’ the Sergeant pointed out.
‘Yes, that’s what makes me wish I’d never joined the Force,’ said Hemingway. He walked into the bathroom, and gazed up at the ventilator. ‘If that was the only thing open, and they’re all agreed it was, it looks as though it has a very important bearing on the case. Hand me that stool, will you?’
The Sergeant brought the cork-topped stool to him, and he climbed onto it, to inspect the ventilator more closely.
‘If anyone got in that way, he’d have had to be a small man,’ said Ware. ‘The young fellow we saw downstairs couldn’t have done it.’
‘No one could have got in without scratching the paint with his shoes.’
‘Rubber soles,’ suggested the Sergeant.
‘You may be right. Assume someone did get in this way. How?’
‘I was thinking he might have climbed up by a ladder. There’s bound to be one in the gardener’s shed, for pruning the fruit trees.’
‘That doesn’t interest me. What I want to know is, how did he set about oozing through this highly improbable aperture once he had climbed up the ladder?’
The Sergeant considered the ventilator, and sighed. ‘I see what you mean, sir.’
‘Well, that’s something, anyway. Head first, that’s how he must have got in, and nothing to catch hold of inside. The inference is he squirmed in, dropped on to his head on the floor, picked himself up, not a penny the worse for wear, and walked in to murder the old man, who hadn’t heard a sound.’
‘The door may have been shut. He may have been deaf.’
‘He’d need to be stone-deaf. Talk sense!’
‘I don’t see how anyone got in by that ventilator, sir,’ said the Sergeant, after thinking it over. ‘Looks as though he must have come in through the door after all.’
Hemingway got down from the stool, and returned to the bedroom. ‘Very well. We’ll take it that he did. For what it’s worth, the body was found lying with its back to the door.’
The Sergeant frowned. ‘Well, sir, what is it worth?’
‘Nothing at all,’ replied Hemingway. ‘You can say that someone stole into Nathaniel’s room without his knowing it, and stabbed him in the back; and you can just as easily say that he was facing the other way when he was stabbed, and staggered round before collapsing. May have been trying to get to that bell by the fireplace. I had a talk with the policesurgeon, and he tells me that a stab to the right of the spine, in the lumbar region, wouldn’t kill a man instantaneously. So the position of the body doesn’t help us much.’
‘Was the door locked before the murder, sir?’
‘Nobody knows, seeing that nobody knows when he was murdered. If I was one to let my imagination run away with me, which I’m not, I should say Nathaniel locked the door himself.’
‘Why, sir?’
‘On the evidence. You should always listen to evidence. Half the time it’s a pack of lies, but you never know. In this case, all the witnesses say that Nathaniel was in a raging temper; and Brother Joseph admits that he was trying to smooth the old boy down, and getting ticked off for his pains. Followed him half-way up the stairs, he did. Now, if you were Nathaniel in a temper, being followed about by Joseph, what would you do?’
‘I don’t rightly know,’ said the Sergeant, staring.
‘Then all I can say is you’ve taken more of a fancy to Joseph than I have. If I had a wind-bag like that on my tail, I’d lock my door, and very likely shove a heavy piece of furniture against it as well.’
The Sergeant smiled, but ventured to say: ‘That’s guesswork, sir.’
‘It is, which is why we won’t treat it as more than a possibility,’ responded Hemingway, moving over to the door. ‘If I’m right, and Nathaniel locked this door himself, we haven’t got to consider whether the murderer used a pencil and a bit of string to lock the door behind him, because he couldn’t have unlocked it that way. What’s more, they did have the sense to examine the door for signs of rubbing.’
‘Wouldn’t hardly notice on these oak doors, would it?’ suggested the Sergeant. ‘Not like soft paintwork which the string would cut into.’
‘No; but you’d be bound to see some trace under a magnifying-glass. Which would lead one to suppose that the murderer found the door locked, and turned the key from the outside.’
‘With an oustiti,’ nodded the Sergeant. ‘That’s what I was thinking. Only there aren’t any scratches on the key. If it weren’t for that, I’d say an oustiti must have been used.’
‘That, and about half a dozen other reasons,’ interrupted his superior scathingly. ‘You aren’t dealing with a professional burglary, my lad: this is an amateur-job; and whoever heard of an amateur having a tool out of a professional’s kit?’
‘I thought of that, but I don’t know but what he might have come by it,’ argued the Sergeant.
‘He might, but the odds are he didn’t,’ retorted Hemingway. ‘Not one layman out of a hundred would know there was a tool for turning keys from the wrong side, let alone the name of it.’
‘Most people know there is a tool for doing that,’ persisted the Sergeant. ‘I don’t say they’d know the name, but –’
‘No; they’d just walk into the nearest ironmonger’s and ask for a pair of forceps shaped a bit like eyebrow-pluckers to open locked doors with, I suppose,’ said Hemingway, with awful sarcasm.
The Sergeant reddened, but said: ‘Well, that’s an idea, anyway. Suppose the key was turned with a pair of eyebrow-pluckers???
?
‘I’m not going to suppose anything of the sort,’ replied Hemingway. ‘For one thing, they wouldn’t be anywhere near strong enough, nor pliable enough; and for another, the grooving on them would be horizontal, instead of vertical, and wouldn’t give them any grip on the key. Try again!’
‘Well, sir, it’s all very well, but if an oustiti wasn’t used, what was? The murderer got into the room somehow. That we do know. Or if the door wasn’t locked before the murder, it was after, and there’s no sign the key was turned by the old pencil-and-string trick. It beats me.’
‘You’re a great help,’ said Hemingway. ‘Ever asked yourself why the murderer took such precious care to lock the door after him?’