Stephen slammed the red ball into one of the bottom pockets, and straightened his back. ‘Being, as he would tell you, cross-grained, so much altruism nauseates me!’
She retrieved the red ball from the pocket, and spotted it for him. ‘That’s unreasonable. If he were entirely hypocritical, he’d have tried to induce Nat to leave all his money to him.’
He hunched one impatient shoulder. ‘The fellow’s always acting. I can’t stand him.’
‘Well, he can’t help that: it’s second nature. He sees himself in so many rôles. Did you hear him sustaining a spirited dialogue with your prospective mother-in-law?’
‘Did I not!’ he said, grinning. ‘Did you hear him relying on my good nature to keep him out of the workhouse?’
‘No, I missed that. Are he and Maud going to remain on at Lexham?’
‘Not if I know it!’
‘I have an idea Maud doesn’t want to,’ she remarked. ‘What do you make of her, Stephen?’
‘You can’t make anything of a vacuum. Yes, what is it?’
This last sentence was addressed to Sturry, who had entered the room, and was waiting by the door, with a look of patient resignation on his face.
‘I beg your pardon, sir, but I thought you would wish to be informed that the Inspector from Scotland Yard is here again.’
‘Does he want me?’
‘As to that, sir, I could not take it upon myself to say.’
‘Well, all right! you can go,’ Stephen said irritably.
Sturry bowed. ‘Very good, sir. And perhaps I should mention that I have reason to believe that the Inspector Abstracted one of the foreign daggers from this room, and took it away with him before lunch.’
Having delivered himself of this piece of news, he waited to see what the effect of it would be. On the whole, it was disappointing, for although Stephen glanced quickly up at the wall above the fireplace, he made no remark. Mathilda too said nothing, but she did give a faint shudder. Sturry was obliged to be satisfied with this. He withdrew to his own domain, there to regale the more favoured amongst his colleagues with a highly coloured and wholly fictitious account of Mr Stephen’s reactions to his disclosure.
For a minute or two after he had left the room, neither Stephen nor Mathilda spoke. Stephen seemed to be intent only on the game. He finished his break, rather sooner than Mathilda had expected, for he was a good player, leaving her an easy shot.
‘Curious that it should be so beastly to know the actual weapon,’ she said lightly. ‘I suppose we ought to have suspected those daggers.’
He made no reply. She saw that the lowering look had descended on his brow again, and found herself once more wishing that she could fathom the workings of his queer, secluded mind. She said abruptly: ‘Who picked up your cigarette-case?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘I know Valerie had it, but no one could suspect her of having gone into Nat’s room, much less of having stabbed him. And the more I think of it the more incredible it seems that anyone else should have taken the thing upstairs.’
‘Uncle Nat himself,’ he suggested.
‘I don’t believe it. Why should he?’
‘To give it back to me, presumably.’
‘He wasn’t in that kind of a mood when I last saw him,’ Mathilda replied. ‘Besides, if Valerie really left it on the table by her chair, it would have been perfectly safe there. I’ll tell you what, Stephen: there’s some mystery attached to that case, and for the life of me I can’t solve it.’
He seemed disinclined to discuss the matter, merely giving a kind of grunt, and turning away to mark up her score on the board. A horrid little doubt seized her: what did she know of him, after all? It might be proved that he was in financial difficulties; he might have taken Nat’s threats seriously; he might cherish large desires, which he kept hidden in his own guarded heart, and which only a fortune could put within his reach. There was a streak of cruelty in him, of hard ruthlessness, which was betrayed in his treatment of Joseph, and of Valerie. He didn’t care how much he hurt people: he had suffered hurt himself, and that was reason enough for his unkindness to others.
Then her mind veered sharply to the consideration of his sister, and she began to feel that she was living in a world of nightmare. Would Paula be capable of stabbing to death an old man who loved her, merely for the sake of a part in an unknown dramatist’s play? She didn’t know. She had no clue to Paula either; she only knew her as an urgent, unbalanced young woman, always obsessed by the idea of the moment.
Yes, but although Paula had been seen at Nat’s door, how had she contrived to get into a locked room, or, more difficult still, to lock it behind her? Mathilda had no knowledge of the means by which doors could be locked and unlocked from the wrong side, but she knew that there were such means. Yet it seemed unlikely that Paula could have employed any of them, for how could she have acquired the necessary tools?
This led to the question, were they in it together, this odd, frustrated brother and sister? It was too diabolical: Mathilda shied away from the thought, miscued, and straightened herself, saying with a breathless laugh: ‘Oh, damn! You’ll run out now!’
‘I wonder what that Scotland Yard man’s up to?’ Stephen said restlessly.
‘Trying to trace the person who handled that dagger,’ she suggested.
‘He won’t do that.’
The confidence in his tone startled her. She looked at him almost fearfully. ‘How do you know?’
He bent over the table for his shot. ‘Bound to have wiped the finger-prints off it,’ he replied. ‘Any fool would know enough to do that.’
‘I suppose so,’ she agreed. ‘Whoever did it was pretty ingenious. How could anyone have got into the room? And how was the door locked afterwards?’
‘Hell, how should I know?’
‘How should any of us know?’ she asked. ‘This isn’t a house full of crooks! We’re all ordinary people!’
‘Even though one of us is an assassin,’ interjected Stephen.
‘True; but although I’m not personally acquainted with any assassins –’
‘You are personally acquainted with one assassin, my girl.’ He saw how quickly her eyes leaped to his, and added, with one of his mocking smiles: ‘Since someone in this house is one.’
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘It’s rather hard to realise that. I was going to say that I’ve always imagined that a murderer could be quite an ordinary person. Not like a confirmed thief, I mean. Which of us, for instance, would know how to open a locked door? Of course, I suppose one of the servants might be a crook, but I don’t quite see why any of them should have wanted to murder Nat. They none of them gain anything by his death.’
‘True,’ said Stephen uncommunicatively.
‘Could there be anything in that idea of Valerie’s? Is there a sliding panel, or anything of that kind?’
‘I’ve never heard of it.’
She sighed: ‘No; it does seem rather fantastic. But someone got into that room somehow, and if it wasn’t through the door or the window, how was it?’
‘Go and present Valerie’s idea to the Inspector. It ought to go with a swing, I should think.’
There was a satirical note in his voice, but the Inspector, recalling the oak wainscoting at the Manor, had already thought of this solution, and was occupied at that very moment in sounding the panels in Nathaniel’s room. Since two of the walls were outside ones, and one separated the room merely from the bathroom, only that abutting on to the upper hall called for investigation. The closest scrutiny and the most careful tapping revealed nothing; nor was there any moulding to hide a convenient spring to release a sliding panel. The Inspector was forced to abandon this line of investigation, and to turn his attention to the windows.
These were casement, with leaded panes. They fitted closely into their frames, which were also of lead, the windows overlapping the frames sufficiently to make it impossible for the fastenings to be moved by a knife inserted from
outside. They were at no great distance from the ground, and the Inspector judged that a gardener’s ladder would be amply tall enough to reach them. They were built out into a square bay, with a window-seat running beneath them, the whole being hidden at night by long curtains, drawn right across the bay. The Inspector went thoughtfully downstairs in search of Joseph.
The footman volunteered to find him, and ushered Hemingway into the morning-room. Here Joseph soon joined him, an expression of anxiety on his rubicund countenance.
‘Sorry to disturb you again, sir, but I’d like a little talk with you, if you don’t mind,’ said Hemingway.
‘Of course! Can you tell me anything yet, Inspector? This suspense is dreadful! I expect you’re inured to this sort of thing, but to me the thought that my brother’s murderer may be in the house even now is horrible! Haven’t you discovered anything?’
‘Yes, I’ve discovered the weapon that killed your brother,’ replied Hemingway.
Joseph grasped a chairback. ‘Where? Please don’t keep anything from me!’
‘Over the fireplace in the billiard-room,’ said Hemingway.
Joseph blinked at him. ‘Over – ?’
‘One of a pair of knives stuck up beside a stag’s head.’
‘Oh! Yes, yes, I know! Then you didn’t discover it in anyone’s possession!’
‘No; I’m sorry to say that I didn’t,’ said Hemingway.
‘Sorry? Oh! Yes, I expect you must be. Of course! Only one can’t help shrinking from the thought that this ghastly thing might be brought home to someone one knows – one of one’s guests, perhaps!’
‘That’s all very well, sir, but you want to know who killed your brother, don’t you?’ said Hemingway reasonably.
Joseph threw him a wan smile. ‘Alas, it isn’t as simple as that, Inspector! Part of me yearns to bring my brother’s murderer to justice; but the other part – the incurably sentimental, foolish part! – dreads the inevitable discovery! You assure me that the murder was committed by someone staying in the house. Consider what frightful possibilities this must imply! The servants? I cannot think it. My nephew? my niece? The very thought revolts one! A lifelong friend, then? An innocent child, hardly out of the schoolroom? Or an unfortunate young playwright, struggling gallantly to fulfil his destiny? How can I want any of these to be found guilty of murder? Ah, you think me a muddleheaded old fool! I pray for your sake you may never go through the mental torment I writhe under now!’
The Inspector fully appreciated the fine delivery of these lines, but he was shrewd enough to realise that with the slightest encouragement Joseph would turn a police investigation into a drama centred about his own ebullient personality, and he took a firm line at once, saying prosaically: ‘Well, that’s very kind of you, sir, I’m sure. But it’s no use us arguing about who did it, or who you don’t think could have done it. All I want you to do, if you’ll be so good, is to cast your mind back to what happened when you and your nephew entered Mr Herriard’s room after the murder had been committed.’
Joseph shuddered, and covered his eyes with his hand. ‘No, no, I cannot!’
‘Well, you can have a try, can’t you, sir?’ said Hemingway, as one humouring a child. ‘After all, it only happened yesterday.’
Joseph let his hand fall. ‘Only – yesterday! Is it possible? Yet it seems as though a lifetime had passed between then and now!’
‘You can take it from me that it hasn’t,’ said Hemingway, somewhat tartly. ‘Now, when you went upstairs to call your brother down to dinner, you found his valet outside the room, didn’t you?’
‘Yes. It was he who gave me the first premonition that something was wrong. He told me that he could get no answer to his knocking, that the door was locked. I remember that so distinctly – so appallingly distinctly!’
‘And what did you do then?’
Joseph sat down on a chair, and rested one elbow on the table. ‘What did I do? I tried the door, I called to my brother. There was no answer. I was alarmed. Oh, I had no suspicion of the dreadful truth! I thought he had been taken ill, fainted, perhaps. I called to Stephen.’
‘Why did you want him particularly, sir?’
Joseph made one of his little vague gestures. ‘I don’t know. Instinctively one wishes for support. I knew too that my strength would not avail to break down the door. He and Ford burst open the lock, and I saw my poor brother, lying on the floor, as though asleep.’
‘What happened next, sir?’
‘How can I tell you?’ Joseph demanded. ‘One’s heart stood still! The world span round. I suppose one knew then, intuitively, that the worst had happened. Yet one clutched at a frail thread of hope!’
‘And what about Mr Stephen, sir? Did he clutch at it too?’ asked Hemingway, unimpressed.
‘I think he must have. I recall that he sent Ford at once for some brandy. But an instant later he had realised the awful truth. As I dropped to my knees beside my brother’s body, he said: “He’s dead.”’
‘It didn’t take him long to discover that, did it?’
‘I think his instinct must have told him. I could not at first believe it! I told Stephen to fetch a mirror. I would not believe it. But Stephen was right. Only he thought that Nat had had a stroke. He said so at once, and for a few moments I was mercifully permitted to think so too.’
‘And then?’
‘Let me think!’ Joseph begged, pressing his fingers to his temples. ‘It was all a nightmare. It seemed – it still seems – unreal, fantastic! Ford came back with the brandy. Stephen took it from him, sent him away to ring up the doctor.’
‘Oh!’ said Hemingway. ‘So Ford was hardly in the room at all, what with one thing and another?’
‘No. There was nothing he could do. While he was still in the room I had made my ghastly discovery. I was glad to hear Stephen telling him to leave us. At that moment I could not bear that a stranger should be present.’
‘What discovery was this, sir?’
‘I found that there was blood upon my hand!’ said Joseph, in shuddering accents. ‘Blood from my brother’s coat, where I had touched it! Then, and then only, I saw the little rent, and knew that Nat had been done to death!’
The Inspector, quite carried away by all this, murmured, ‘Foully done to death,’ before he could stop himself, and then had to cough, to smother his own words. Fortunately, Joseph did not seem to have heard him. Lost in admiration of his own performance, thought Hemingway, wondering how a man who was undoubtedly unnerved could yet dramatise his emotions with such morbid relish.
‘Very upsetting for you, sir,’ he said. ‘I’m sure I don’t want to make you dwell on it more than I need, but I do want to know what happened when Ford had gone off to ring up the doctor. When Inspector Colwall came here he found the doors locked, and all the windows shut.’
‘Yes, that’s what makes it so inexplicable!’ said Joseph.
‘Did you yourself see that the windows were shut, sir?’
‘No, but my nephew did. I was too overcome! It had not even occurred to me that we ought to look at the windows. But my nephew was a tower of strength! He thought of everything, just as one had always felt sure he would, in an emergency!’
‘He looked at the windows, did he, sir?’
‘Yes, I’m sure he did. I seem to remember that he walked over to them, putting back the curtains. Ah yes! and he asked me if I realised that the doors were both locked, and all the windows shut!’
‘You didn’t look at the windows yourself, sir?’
‘No, why should I? It was enough that one of us had seen that they were shut. I didn’t care: I think I was halfstunned!’
‘Then I take it that it wasn’t you who ascertained that the bathroom door also was locked?’
‘Stephen saw to everything,’ Joseph said. ‘I don’t know where I should have been without him!’
The Inspector, who was fast coming to the conclusion that no one at the Manor, including himself, would be in the present predicame
nt but for the activities of Mr Stephen Herriard, agreed heartily, and said that he would not trouble Joseph any further. Then he went off to find Ford.
Ford, twice questioned by the police already, was nervous, and inclined to be sullen, but when he was asked if he had tried the bathroom door in his efforts to get into his master’s room on the previous evening, he replied readily that he had, and that it had been locked. Paula, interrupted in the middle of a discussion with Roydon on the advisability of rewriting a part of the second act of Wormwood, said impatiently that of course she had not tried the bathroom door, and turned her shoulder to the Inspector. He withdrew, and was fortunate enough to encounter Valerie, crossing the hall towards the staircase. She gave a start on seeing him, and eyed him with mingled trepidation and suspicion.