A Christmas Party: A Seasonal Murder Mystery/Envious Casca
A Christmas Party: Chapter 13

While these various encounters had been taking place, Mrs Dean had been usefully employing her time in conversation with Edgar Mottisfont. Like Valerie, he too was suffering from a sense of wrong, and it did not take Mrs Dean long to induce him to confide in her. The picture he painted of Stephen’s character was not flattering, nor did his account of the circumstances leading up to the murder lead her to look hopefully upon the outcome of the police investigation. Really, the case seemed to be much blacker against Stephen than Joseph’s story had led her to suppose. She began to look rather thoughtful, and when Mottisfont told her bluntly that if he were Valerie’s father he would not let her marry such a fellow, she said vaguely that nothing had been settled, and Valerie was full young to be thinking of marriage.

It was really a very awkward situation for a conscientious parent to replace herself in. No one had informed her of the actual size of Nathaniel Herriard’s fortune, but she assumed it to be considerable, and it was a well-known fact that rich young men were not easily encountered in these hard times. But if Stephen should be convicted of having murdered his uncle, as seemed to be all too probable, the money would never come to him, and Valerie would reap nothing but the obvious disadvantages of having been betrothed to a murderer.

While Mottisfont talked, and her own lips formed civil replies, her mind was busy over the problem. Not even to herself would she admit that she had jockeyed Stephen into proposing to Valerie, but she had not spent several hours at Lexham without realising that his brief infatuation had worn itself out. She would not put it beyond Stephen, she thought, to jilt Valerie, if he were not first arrested for murder. The trouble was that although Valerie was as pretty as a picture she lacked the intelligence to hold the interest of a man of Stephen’s type. Mrs Dean faced that truth unflinchingly. The child hadn’t enough sense to see on which side her bread was buttered. She demanded flattery, and assiduous attentions, and if she did not get them from her betrothed she would be quite capable of throwing him over in a fit of pique.

When, shortly before teatime, Mrs Dean went up to her room, she was still thinking deeply; and when she heard her daughter’s voice raised outside her door in an exchange of badinage with Roydon, she called her into the room, and asked her if she had been with Stephen all the afternoon.

‘No, and I don’t know where he is,’ said Valerie, studying her reflection in the mirror. ‘Probably getting off with Mathilda Clare. I’ve had a simply foul afternoon, doing nothing, except for listening to Paula reciting bits of Willoughby’s play, and talking to the Inspector.’

‘Talking to the Inspector? What did he want?’ demanded Mrs Dean.

‘Oh, nothing much! I must say, he was a lot more human than I’d expected. I mean, he absolutely understood about the hateful position I’m in.’

‘Did he ask you any questions?’

‘Yes, about what I did with Stephen’s mouldy cigarette-case, but not a bit like that other one did. He didn’t disbelieve every word I said, for instance, or try to bully me.’

Mrs Dean at once felt that Inspector Hemingway was a man to beware of, and set herself to discover just what information he had extracted from her daughter. By the time she had elicited from Valerie a more or less accurate description of her conversation with him, she was looking more thoughtful than ever. There could be no doubt that the Inspector’s suspicions were centred on Stephen, and, taking the terms of Nathaniel Herriard’s will and the damning evidence of the cigarette-case into account, there seemed to be little chance of his escaping arrest.

She was a woman who prided herself on her power of making quick decisions, and she made one now. ‘You know, darling,’ she said, ‘I don’t feel quite at ease about this engagement of yours.’

Valerie stopped decorating her mouth to stare in astonishment at her parent. ‘Why, it was you who were so keen on it!’ she exclaimed.

‘That was when I thought it was going to be for your happiness,’ said Mrs Dean firmly. ‘All Mother cares about is her little girl’s happiness.’

‘Well, I must say I’ve utterly gone off the idea of marrying him,’ said Valerie. ‘I mean, money isn’t everything, is it? and anyway, I always did like Jerry Tintern better than Stephen, and you can’t call him a pauper, can you? Only I don’t see how I can get out of it now, do you? It would look rather lousy of me if I broke it off just when he’s in a jam, and it would be bound to get about, and people might think I was a foul sort of person.’

This admirable, if inelegantly phrased, piece of reasoning almost led Mrs Dean to hope that her daughter was acquiring a modicum of sense. She said briskly: ‘No, pet, it would never do for you to jilt Stephen; but I am sure he will understand if I explain to him that as things are now I cannot allow my baby to be engaged to him. After all, he is a gentleman!’

‘You mean,’ said Valerie, slowly assimilating the gist of this, ‘that I can put the blame on to you?’

‘There’s no question of blame, my pet,’ said Mrs Dean, abandoning hope of dawning intelligence in her first-born. ‘Merely Mother doesn’t feel it right for you to be engaged to a man under a cloud.’

‘Oh, Mummy, how too Victorian! I don’t mind about that part of it! The point is I don’t really like Stephen, and I know he’d be a hellish husband.’

‘Now, you know Mother doesn’t like to hear that sort of talk!’ said Mrs Dean repressively. ‘Just give Mother your ring, and leave it to her to do what’s best!’

Valerie drew the ring somewhat regretfully from her finger, remarking with a sigh that she supposed she would have to return it to Stephen. ‘I rather loathe giving it back,’ she said. ‘If he says he’d like me to keep it, can I, Mummy?’

‘One of these days I hope my little girl will have many rings, just as fine as this one,’ said Mrs Dean, firmly removing the ring from Valerie’s grasp.

Upon this elevated note the conversation came to an end. Valerie returned to the all-absorbing task of reddening her lips, and Mrs Dean sallied forth in search of Stephen.

She was prepared to expend both tact and eloquence upon her delicate mission, but she found that neither was required. Stephen, looking almost benign, met her more than half-way. He wholeheartedly agreed that under the existing circumstances he had no right to expect a sensitive child to go on being engaged to him, cheerfully pocketed the ring, and acquiesced with maddening readiness in Mrs Dean’s hope that he and Valerie might remain good friends. In fact, he went further, announcing with a bland smile that he would be a brother to Valerie, a remark which convinced Mrs Dean that, fortune or no fortune, he would have made a deplorable son-in-law.

She was not the woman to give way to indignation when it would clearly serve her interests better to control her spleen, and as she was obliged to remain at Lexham until the police saw fit to give Valerie permission to go, she came down to tea with her invincible smile on her lips, and only a steely light in her eyes to betray her inner feelings.

The news of the broken engagement had by that time spread through the house, and was received by the several members of the party with varying degrees of interest and emotion. Mottisfont said that he did not blame the girl; Roydon, who, in spite of writing grimly realistic plays, was a romantic at heart, was inclined to deplore such disloyalty in one so lovely; Paula said indifferently that she had never expected the engagement to come to anything; Maud greeted the tidings with apathy; Mathilda warmly congratulated Stephen; and Joseph, rising as usual to the occasion, insisted on regarding his nephew as one whose brave spirit had been shattered by treachery. When he encountered Stephen, he went towards him, and clasped one of his hands before Stephen could frustrate him, and said in a voice deepened by emotion: ‘My boy, what can I say to you?’

Stephen rightly understood the question to be rhetorical, and made no reply; and after squeezing his hand in a very feeling way, Joseph said: ‘She was never worthy of you! Nothing one can say can bring you comfort now, my poor boy, but you will replace, as so many, many of us have found before you, that Time proves itself a great healer.’

‘Thanks very much,’ said Stephen, ‘but you are wasting your sympathy. In your own parlance, Valerie and I are agreed that we were never suited to one another.’

If he entertained any hope of thus quelling Joseph’s embarrassing partisanship he was speedily disillusioned, for Joseph at once smote him lightly on the shoulder, saying: ‘Ah, that’s the way to take it, old man! Chin up!’

Mathilda, who was a witness of this scene, feared that Stephen would either be sick or fell his uncle to the ground, so she hastily intervened, saying that she thought both parties ought to be congratulated on their escape.

Joseph was quite equal to dealing with Mathilda. He smiled at her, and said gently: ‘Ah, Tilda, there speaks one who has not known what it is to suffer!’

‘Oh, do for God’s sake put a sock in it!’ said Stephen, in a sudden explosion of wrath.

Joseph was not in the least offended. ‘I know, old chap, I know!’ he said. ‘One cannot bear to have one’s wounds touched. Well! We must forget that there ever was a Valerie, and turn our faces to the morrow.’

‘As far as I am concerned,’ said Stephen, ‘the morrow will probably see my arrest on a charge of murder.’

Mathilda found herself quite unable to speak, so horrible was it to hear her unexpressed fear put crudely into words. Joseph, however, said: ‘Hush, my boy! You are overwrought, and no wonder! We are not even going to consider such a frightful possibility.’

‘I have not had your advantages. I have not spent a lifetime learning to bury my head in the sand,’ said Stephen brutally.

Mathilda found her voice. ‘What makes you think that, Stephen? How can the police know who murdered Nat until they discover how anyone contrived to get into that room?’

‘You’d better ask them,’ he replied. ‘I shall be hanged by my own cigarette-case and Uncle Nat’s will. Jolly, isn’t it?’

‘I will not believe it!’ Joseph said. ‘The police aren’t such fools! It isn’t possible that they could arrest you on such slender evidence!’

‘Do you call a hundred and sixty thousand pounds or so slender evidence?’ demanded Stephen. ‘I should call it a pretty strong motive myself.’

‘You knew nothing of that! Over and over again I’ve told them so!’

‘Yes, my dear uncle, and if you had not previously told Valerie that I was the heir I daresay the Inspector might listen to you. As it is, I have just sustained a cross-examination which leaves me with the conviction that not one word I said was believed.’

‘But you are still at large,’ Mathilda pointed out.

‘Being given rope to hang myself, no doubt.’

‘Don’t be absurd!’ she said sharply. ‘I don’t believe any of this! They’ll have to replace out how Nat was murdered behind locked doors before they can arrest you!’

‘From the trend of the questions put to me,’ said Stephen, ‘I infer that I entered the room through one of the windows.’

‘But they were all shut!’ Joseph said.

‘A pity I didn’t get you to verify that fact,’ said Stephen. ‘The police have only my word for it.’

Joseph smote his brow with one clenched fist. ‘Fool that I was! But I never thought – never dreamed – Oh, if one could but look into the future!’

Maud, who came into the room at that moment, overheard this wish, and said: ‘I am sure it would be very uncomfortable. I once had my fortune told, and I remember that it quite upset me, for I was told that I should travel far across the seas, and I am not at all fond of foreign travel, besides suffering from sea-sickness.’

‘Well, that is a very valuable contribution to our discussion,’ said Stephen, with suspicious amiability. ‘On the whole I prefer the Empress.’

At the sound of this word Maud’s placid countenance clouded over a little. ‘It is a most extraordinary thing where that book can have got to,’ she said. ‘I am sure I have looked everywhere. However, the Inspector, who is a very civil and obliging man, has promised to keep his eyes open, so I daresay it will turn up.’

Mathilda’s ever-lively sense of humour overcame the gloom induced by Stephen’s morbid prognostications, and she burst out laughing. ‘You haven’t really told the Inspector to look for your book, have you?’ she asked.

‘After all, dear,’ said Maud mildly, ‘it is a detective’s business to look for things.’

‘My dear, you shouldn’t have taken up the Inspector’s time with such a trivial matter!’ said Joseph, a little shocked. ‘You must remember that he is engaged on far, far more important work.’

Maud was unimpressed. Seating herself in her accustomed chair by the fire, she said: ‘I do not think that it will do anyone any good to know who killed Nat, Joe, for as he is dead there is nothing to be done about it, and it will only create a great deal of unpleasantness to pry into the affair. Like Hamlet,’ she added. ‘Simply upsetting things. But the Life of the Empress of Austria belongs to the lending library, and if it is lost I shall be obliged to pay for it. Besides, I hadn’t finished it.’

This was so unanswerable that beyond begging her, rather feebly, not to waste the Inspector’s time in such an absurd fashion, Joseph allowed the matter to drop. The rest of the party began to assemble in the room for tea, and everyone’s attention was diverted from the major anxiety of the moment by Valerie’s simple but effective way of carrying off what could only be regarded as a difficult situation. Surveying the company with cornflower blue eyes of limpid innocence, she said: ‘Oh, I say, has Stephen told you that we’re unengaged? I expect you probably think it’s fairly lousy of me to call it off just because the police think he murdered Mr Herriard, but actually it wasn’t me at all, but Mummy. And anyway, we’d completely gone off each other, so it doesn’t matter.’ She smiled in a dazzling way, and added: ‘The funny thing is that I like him much more now that we’re not engaged. As a matter of fact, I was loathing him before.’

‘Both sentiments, let me tell you, are entirely reciprocated,’ said Stephen, grinning.

‘I’m afraid,’ said Joseph sadly, ‘that you haven’t learnt yet, my dear, what it is to care for someone.’

‘Oh gosh, yes, I have. I’ve been simply madly in love often and often. I mean, utterly over at the knees!’ Valerie told him.

‘Young people nowadays,’ pronounced Maud, ‘do not attach so much importance to engagements as they did when I was a girl. It was considered to be very fast to be engaged more than once.’

‘How quaint!’ said Valerie. ‘I expect I shall be engaged dozens of times.’

‘Well, when you get married, I will give you a handsome wedding present,’ said Stephen.

‘Oh, Stephen, you are a lamb! I do hope they don’t go and convict you!’ said Valerie, with a naïve sincerity that robbed her words of offence.

She then settled down to flirt with Roydon, in which agreeable occupation she was uninterrupted until her mother came into the room, radiating brassy good-humour and a somewhat overpowering scent.

It took a strong-minded hostess to prevent Mrs Dean usurping the centre of the stage, and as Maud was not strong-minded, and refused to look upon herself as a hostess, that forceful lady at once assumed the functions of a doyenne. Seating herself in a commanding position, she encouraged conversation, directed people to suitable chairs, and suggested that in spite of the tragic circumstances under which they had all met they ought to try to get up a few quiet games to play after dinner. ‘After all, we must not forget that it is Christmas Day, must we?’ she asked, with a toothy smile. ‘It does no good to sit and brood. Of course, there must not be anything rowdy, but I know some very good paper-games which I know you young people will enjoy.’

This suggestion smote everyone dumb with dismay. Paula was the first to recover the power of speech, and said, with her customary forthrightness: ‘I abominate paper-games!’

‘Lots of people say that to begin with,’ said Mrs Dean, ‘but they always join in in the end.’

‘Mummy’s absolutely marvellous at organising things,’ explained Valerie, quite unnecessarily.

‘No one,’ said Paula, tossing back her hair, ‘has ever yet succeeded in organising me!’

‘If you were one of my girlies,’ said Mrs Dean archly, ‘I should tell you not to be a silly child.’

The expression on Paula’s face was so murderous that Mathilda, feeling that she had borne enough emotional stress during the past twenty-four hours, got up, on a murmured excuse, and left the room. She had barely crossed the hall when she was joined by Stephen.

‘Did your nerve fail you?’ he asked.

‘Badly. She behaves like a professional hostess at a hydro.’

‘Paula will settle her hash,’ he said indifferently.

‘I’ve no doubt she will, but I’m not feeling strong enough to watch the encounter. Let it be understood, Stephen, that if there are to be Quiet Games I shall go to bed with a headache!’

‘There won’t be. I may not be master in this house for very long, but I am tonight.’

‘I make all allowances for your perverted sense of humour, but I wish you wouldn’t talk like that!’

He laughed, and pushed open the library door. ‘Go in. I’ll send for tea here.’

‘Do you think we ought to? It’ll look rather rude.’

‘Who cares?’

‘Not you, I know. I’m past caring.’

He rang the bell, regarding her with an expression in his eyes hard to read. ‘Can’t you take it, Mathilda?’

‘Not much more of it, at all events. There’s a good deal to be said for Maud’s point of view. This kind of thing is sheer hell. What did that policeman say to you?’

He shrugged. ‘Just what you’d expect. I rather fancy that he came to me fresh from an illuminating chat with Sturry.’

‘I detest Sturry!’ Mathilda said.

‘Yes, so do I. If I get out of this imbroglio, I shall sack him. I caught him with his ear to the keyhole yesterday, when Uncle was favouring us with his opinion of Roydon’s play. He won’t forgive that in a hurry.’

‘I’ve always thought he was the sort who’d stab you in –’ She broke off short, colour flooding her face.

‘Go on!’ he encouraged her. ‘Why not say it? My withers will be wholly unwrung.’

She shook her head. ‘Can’t. It’s too grim. I suppose Sturry gave the Inspector a garbled account of what Nat said to you.’

‘Not much need to garble it. Uncle said he wouldn’t have me in the house again.’

‘We all know he didn’t mean it!’

‘You try telling that to Inspector Hemingway. I think I’m for it, Mathilda.’

She said, with sudden, irrational fury: ‘It’s a judgment on you for being such a silly, damned fool! Why the hell do you have to quarrel with everyone?’

He did not reply, for the footman came in just then, in answer to the bell. He gave a brief order for tea to be brought to them, and for a moment or two after the man had gone away stood staring down into the fire.

‘Sorry!’ Mathilda said, surprised to replace herself oddly shaken. ‘I didn’t mean it.’

He gave a short laugh, as though he thought what she had said to be of no account. ‘Do you think I did it, Mathilda?’

She took a cigarette from her case, and lit it. ‘In spite of all the evidence piling up against you, no.’

‘Thanks. I imagine you’re practically alone in your opinion.’

‘There is one person besides myself who knows you didn’t do it.’

‘Very neat,’ he approved. ‘Ever been watched by the police? Most unnerving performance.’

‘I suppose we’re all under supervision.’

‘Not you, my girl: you’re not a suspect.’

She decided that her cigarette tasted of garbage, and pitched it into the fire. ‘It’s you who can’t take it, Stephen. You talk as though Black Maria was at the door, but I maintain that the police haven’t got enough evidence even to detain you.’

‘I hope you’re right. I may add in passing that if I’d wanted to murder anyone I’d have started on Joe.’

‘I admit that he’s a bit trying. It’s a depressing reflection that overflowing affection should arouse the worst in normal breasts. If you come to think of it, it’s all his fault. The ghastly result of good intentions! If it hadn’t been for Joseph, I don’t suppose Nat would have made his will, and I’m sure he wouldn’t have thrown this party. But for him, Valerie wouldn’t have known that you were the heir, and Roydon wouldn’t have maddened Nat by reading his play to him. Trivial circumstances, whose appalling consequences no one could have foreseen, and all, by a fiendish turn of fate, combining to put you on the spot! It’s enough to make one turn cynic! But they haven’t anything like enough on you yet, Stephen!’

Oddly enough, Inspector Hemingway had reached much the same conclusion, although he did not share Mathilda’s unreasoning faith in Stephen. He had found him very much on his guard during his brief interview with him, and although he realised that this was understandable, it did not prejudice him in Stephen’s favour. Stephen was reticent, and he weighed every question before answering it. The Inspector, not a bad judge of men, thought him remarkably cold-blooded, and was inclined to the opinion that of all the ill-assorted persons gathered together at Lexham, he was the one most capable of committing murder. But in spite of what certain of his superiors thought an unholy predilection for all the more turgid aspects of psychology, the Inspector was far too good a detective to allow his theories to run away with him. He might (and very often did) talk in the airiest fashion, advancing opinions wholly unsubstantiated by fact, and indulging flights of the purest fantasy, but anyone rash enough to assume from this that he had attained his present position more by luck than solid worth would very soon have discovered that appearances, in Inspector Hemingway’s case, were more than ordinarily deceptive.

He was profoundly dissatisfied with Stephen Herriard’s evidence; he mistrusted the valet; and, in spite of being so far unable to prove it, still suspected that there might have been collusion between the two. With this in his mind, he had already dispatched Ford’s finger-prints to London, and had obtained from him the names and addresses of his last two employers. These had been given so readily that it did not seem probable that this line of investigation would prove fruitful, but the Inspector was not the man to leave any stone unturned.

Questioned, Ford had stated that he had firmly shut all the windows in Nathaniel’s bedroom on the previous afternoon, adding that he did so every day, the late Mr Herriard having had no opinion of the beneficial effects of night-air. This was borne out by Sturry, who said that while he was quite unable to account for the activities of the valet or any of the housemaids, it was his rule to close all the sitting-room windows at five o’clock precisely throughout the winter. ‘Such,’ he said, ‘being the late Mr Herriard’s orders.’

Hemingway accepted this statement, but bore in mind two distinct possibilities. If the valet had been Stephen’s partner in crime, no reliance could be placed on the truth of his statements; if he had not, Stephen, who had left the drawing-room some time before Nathaniel, might have been able to have gone up to his uncle’s room unobserved, and to have opened one of the windows there.

That it would have been impossible for anyone to have climbed up to the windows without a ladder, the Inspector had already ascertained; it now remained to discover whether there was a ladder upon the premises.

He had told his Sergeant to replace this out for him, and by the time he had brought his interview with Stephen to an end, Ware was waiting to report the result of his investigations to him.

‘There’s nothing of that sort in the house, sir: only a pair of housemaid’s steps, and they wouldn’t have reached, not anywhere near. But I snooped around the outhouses, like you told me, and I found one all right.’

‘Good!’ said Hemingway. ‘Where is it?’

‘Well, that’s it, sir: I can’t get at it. There’s a disused stable near the garage, and the chauffeur tells me that the head-gardener keeps his tools in it, and such-like. Only he went off home yesterday at noon, and he won’t be back till the day after tomorrow, and no one seems to know where he keeps the key. There’s a small window, but that’s bolted. I saw the ladder when I peered through it.’

‘He’s probably got a special place for the key: most of them have.’

‘Yes, but I’ve hunted high and low, and I can’t replace it. The chauffeur thinks he keeps it on him, because he won’t have people borrowing his tools, nor getting at the apples he’s got stored in the loft.’

‘Where does he live?’ Hemingway asked.

‘Village about two miles to the north of this place.’

‘Seems to me I’d better have another little chat with the Lord High Everything Else.’

Correctly deducing that his superior was referring to the butler, Sergeant Ware at once went off to replace this personage. But Sturry, when informed that Inspector Hemingway had need, for unspecified reasons, of a ladder, was not helpful. He said that he regretted there was nothing of that nature in the house. His tone did not imply regret, but rather an unexplained contempt of ladders.

The Inspector knew well that Sturry was trying to put him in his place, but beyond thinking that he would have made a perfect stage-butler, and had clearly missed his vocation, he paid little heed to his forbidding manner. ‘I didn’t suppose you had one in the house,’ he said, ‘but I’ve seen an orchard, and my reasoning powers, which are a lot keener than you might think, tell me that there must be a ladder somewhere on the estate.’

‘No doubt you would be referring to Mr Galloway’s ladder,’ said Sturry tolerantly.

‘No doubt!’ said the Inspector. ‘Who’s Mr Galloway?’

‘Mr Galloway, Inspector, is the head-gardener, a very respectable man. The late Mr Herriard employed two under-gardeners, and a Boy, but they, if I may say so, Do Not Count.’

The Inspector gathered from the gracious bestowal of a title upon the head-gardener that he was a person to be reckoned with, but being wholly uninterested in the niceties of social distinctions in the servants’ hall he said disrespectfully: ‘Well, where does this Galloway keep his ladder?’

‘Mr Galloway,’ said Sturry, impersonating an iceberg, ‘keeps all his tools under Lock and Key. Being Scotch,’ he added, in explanation of this idiosyncrasy.

‘Where does he keep the key?’

‘I am sure I could not take it upon myself to say,’ said Sturry repressively.

‘Well, what happens when he’s off duty, and someone wants a pair of clippers, or something?’

‘That,’ said Sturry, ‘is an eventuality which Mr Galloway does not Hold With, him being very particular, and Gentlemen notoriously careless with tools.’

The Inspector eyed him smoulderingly. ‘Did you ever read the story of the frog that burst?’ he asked ominously.

‘No,’ replied Sturry, meeting his gaze squarely.

‘You should,’ said the Inspector.

Sturry bowed. ‘I will bear it in mind, if ever I should have the leisure,’ he said, and withdrew in what Hemingway was forced to admit was good order.

‘I’m sorry for you, my lad,’ Hemingway told his Sergeant. ‘It looks as though you’ll have to go and call on this Galloway, and replace out if he’s got the key of the stables on him. I’ll have a look at the place first, though.’

Together they left the house, and made their way through the melting snow to the stableyard. A modern garage had been built on one side of this, with a flat above it for the chauffeur; at right angles to it a rather dilapidated building presented forbiddingly shut doors, and small windows, thickly coated on the inside with dust and cobwebs. One permitted a peep into an old harness-room; another enabled the Inspector to obtain a restricted view into the stable, and there, sure enough, laid flat along one wall, was a substantial ladder, quite tall enough to reach to the upper storey of the Manor.

Having felt under the door-sill, looked for a cache under the penthouse roof, and even searched two potting-sheds and a row of glass-houses, the Inspector, baulked in his quest for the key, looked carefully at the stable-window. It was a small sash-window, and although it would not have required any great degree of skill to have slipped a knife-blade between the two halves, and to have forced back the bolt, even the most confirmed optimist must have rejected this solution. It was plain that the window had not been opened for many a long day. Had any further proof than the undisturbed dust been needed, it would have been found in the presence, on the interior, of a cobweb of great size and antiquity.

‘And now,’ said Hemingway, ‘you’ll replace that the gardener’s had the key on him ever since midday yesterday. A fine sort of case this is!’

The Sergeant said, hiding a grin: ‘I thought you liked them difficult, sir.’

‘So I do,’ retorted Hemingway. ‘But I like something you can catch hold of! Here, every time I think I’ve got a line on something, it slips out of my grasp like something in a bad dream. If there’s a sliding panel in that room, I’ll eat my hat; I’d go to the stake no one tampered with that door-key; and now it begins to look as though the window wasn’t touched either. It’s witchcraft, that’s what it is, or else I’m getting past my job.’

‘It is a fair stinker,’ agreed the Sergeant. ‘No use thinking about the chimney, I suppose?’ The Inspector cast him a look of dislike.

‘Or the roof,’ suggested the Sergeant. ‘There are attics above the bedrooms, and there are dormer-windows. Could a chap have got through the one over Mr Herriard’s room, and reached the window below?’

‘No, he couldn’t,’ said Hemingway crossly. ‘I’ve already looked into that, which just shows you the sort of state I’m getting into, for a more fatheaded idea I’ve never met. You’ll have to go off and interview this gardener, but you can drop me at the station first.’

‘All right, sir. But I can’t help feeling that I shall replace he’s had the key all the time.’

‘If you didn’t, I should very likely drop down in a fit,’ responded Hemingway.

They drove back to the police-station in depressed silence. Hemingway alighted there and went into the building. He found Inspector Colwall fortifying himself with very strong tea, and thankfully accepted a cup of this beverage.

‘How are you getting on?’ asked Colwall.

‘I’m not,’ replied Hemingway frankly. ‘It reminds me of the Hampton Court maze more than of anything else. It doesn’t matter what path you take: you always replace yourself back at the starting-point again. Seems to me I’m trying to catch up with a regular Houdini. Handcuffs and locked chests would be nothing to this bird.’

‘I don’t mind telling you I was glad to hand over the case to you,’ confided Colwall. ‘Of course, detection isn’t, properly speaking, my line.’

‘It won’t be mine by the time I’m through with this,’ said Hemingway, sipping his tea. ‘Here I’ve got no fewer than four hot suspects, and three possibles, all without alibis, and most of them with life-size motives, and I’m damned if I see my way to bringing it home to any of them.’

‘Four hot suspects?’ said Colwall, working it out in his mind.

‘Young Stephen, his sister, Mottisfont, and Roydon,’ said Hemingway.

‘You don’t reckon the fair young lady could have done it?’

‘I’ve put her in as a possible, but I wouldn’t lay a penny on her myself.’

‘Who are your other possibles, if you don’t mind my asking?’

‘The valet and the butler.’

Colwall seemed a little surprised. ‘Sturry? What makes you think he might have had a hand in it?’

‘Vulgar prejudice,’ responded Hemingway promptly. ‘He handed me a very dirty look this afternoon, so very likely I’ll pin the murder on to him, if all else fails.’

Inspector Colwall recognised a joke, and laughed. ‘You do talk!’ he said. ‘Myself, I had a hunch it was young Herriard. Ugly-tempered chap, he is.’

‘He’s got the biggest motive,’ conceded Hemingway. ‘Though murder isn’t always committed for high stakes, mind you! Not by a long chalk. There’s young Roydon, wanting money to back his play.’

‘Yes; I went into that before you came down, but it seemed to me a bit unlikely. Of course, Miss Herriard could have done it, I suppose. I shouldn’t think she’d stick at much.’

‘I’m quite willing to arrest her, or Mottisfont, if you’ll just tell me how either of them got into the room,’ said Hemingway.

Colwall shook his head. ‘It’s a mystery, that’s what it is. You don’t think the old lady had anything to do with it, do you?’

‘What, Mrs Joseph Herriard?’ exclaimed Hemingway. ‘Talk about far-fetched ideas! No, I don’t. What would she do it for?’

‘I don’t know,’ Colwall confessed. ‘It only struck me that she hadn’t got an alibi either, and neither you nor I ever suspected her at all. I suppose she might have had a motive.’

‘Well, it hasn’t come to light,’ said Hemingway. ‘What’s more, it won’t help me if it does. I’ve plenty of motives already, not to mention one damaging piece of evidence, in the shape of Stephen’s cigarette-case. Not that it’s any good to me, unless I can discover how the murder was committed.’

‘No, I see that,’ agreed Colwall. ‘And there was a good deal of uncertainty about the cigarette-case, wasn’t there? Seems young Herriard had lent it to Miss Dean, and anyone might have picked it up.’

‘Yes, I’ve heard all that, but I don’t think much of it,’ said Hemingway. ‘People don’t go picking up cigarette-cases that don’t belong to them: at least, not in that kind of society, they don’t. It was identified as Stephen’s, and he owned it; and I haven’t so far heard that anyone else’s finger-prints were found on it.’

‘No, they weren’t,’ said Colwall. ‘There weren’t any finger-prints on it at all, as I remember.’

Hemingway set down his cup and saucer. ‘There must have been some prints! Do you mean they were too blurred to be identified?’

Colwall stroked his chin. ‘I remember seeing the report on it last night, and I’m pretty certain it said there were no marks on it at all.’

‘Look here!’ Hemingway said. ‘On their own admissions, young Herriard and Miss Dean both handled that case! Are you telling me they left no prints?’

‘Well, I’m only repeating what was on the report,’ said Colwall defensively.

‘And you saw that report, and never thought to mention that there was a curious circumstance attached to it! Why wasn’t I shown it?’

‘You could have seen it if you’d asked for it. There just wasn’t anything to it. We’d established that the case belonged to Stephen Herriard; the experts didn’t replace any finger-prints on it; and that’s all there was to it.’

‘I should have known better than to have taken anyone’s word for it!’ said Hemingway in bitter accents. ‘Didn’t it strike you that it was highly unusual, not to say suspicious, that there weren’t any finger-prints on the case?’

‘I suppose,’ said Colwall, whose brain moved slowly, ‘it must have been wiped.’

‘Yes,’ retorted Hemingway. ‘That’s just what I suppose, too! And if you think young Herriard dropped it, all accidental-like, first taking the precaution of wiping his finger-prints off it, all I can say is that you’ve got a nice, unsuspicious nature, Inspector!’

Colwall bridled a little at this, but as the inference of Hemingway’s words sank into his mind, he flushed, and said: ‘Of course, it’s your business to spot things like that. I don’t deny that what with one thing and another it just didn’t occur to me that it was funny, not replaceing any prints on the case. Couldn’t have got wiped off in young Herriard’s pocket, could they?’

‘No,’ Hemingway said positively. ‘They might have got a bit blurred, but you’d be bound to replace some trace. Ever cleaned a bit of silver, and tried to get your own finger-prints off it? It takes some elbow-grease, I give you my word.’

‘That’s right, it does,’ nodded Colwall. ‘Same with brasswork. But this was a gold case. One of those large, flat ones, with a monogram on it.’

‘I ought to have had a look at it in the first place,’ Hemingway said, annoyed with himself. ‘Come on! Let’s go and have a talk with your expert!’

But no expert was needed to convince him that the cigarette-case had been wiped clean of all betraying marks. It was still held in the crutch in which it had been placed upon discovery, and its smooth golden surface showed no smudge or blemish.

‘Might just have come out of the shop,’ grunted Colwall. ‘Looks like new, barring a few scratches. Well, none of my men destroyed any prints, that I will answer for!’

‘I don’t suppose they did. This case has been carefully polished.’

‘Well, that has torn it!’ Colwall said. ‘Do you figure it was planted in the room to throw suspicion on young Herriard?’

‘That’s about the size of it,’ said Hemingway. ‘One thing’s certain: he didn’t leave it there himself.’

‘Then it pretty well clears him,’ said Colwall regretfully. ‘I must say, I thought all along it was him. A bit disheartening, isn’t it?’

‘I wouldn’t say that,’ replied Hemingway, who seemed to have recovered his cheerfulness. ‘In fact, I regard it as a highly promising development.’

‘I don’t see how you make that out,’ said Colwall, staring at him.

‘I was beginning to think that this was going to be the one case where the guilty party didn’t once slip up. Well, he did slip up,’ said Hemingway, pointing an accusing finger at the cigarette-case. ‘Just like a lot of others before him, trying to be too clever. The way I see it, planting this case was an unrehearsed effect. If he’d thought of it when he worked out the rest of his details, I daresay he’d have arranged for us to have found Stephen’s finger-prints on the case. We can take it that Miss Dean’s testimony was correct: she put the case down on the table at her elbow. Our unknown friend saw it there, and thought it would make a nice piece of evidence against Stephen. He picked it up, and probably slipped it into his pocket, either forgetting not to touch it with his bare hand, or not having the time to handle it through his handkerchief. But when it came to planting it, he wasn’t the man to forget that he mustn’t leave any prints on it, so he polished it good and hard. Well, it’s restored my belief in the fundamental stupidity of murderers. They all slip up sooner or later, though I admit this one’s sharper than most.’

‘That’s all very well, but I don’t see how it’s going to help you.’

‘You never know,’ said Hemingway, lifting the cigarette-case out of the crutch, and regarding it with a loving eye.

‘What are you going to do with it?’ asked Colwall.

‘Give it back to young Stephen,’ replied Hemingway coolly.

‘Give it back to him?’

‘That’s right. Then I’ll sit back to watch results.’

‘What results do you expect?’ asked Colwall, out of his depth.

‘I haven’t the least idea, but I hope they’ll be helpful, because this case is beginning to get on my nerves.’

‘Yes, but I don’t see –’

‘Up to now,’ interrupted Hemingway, ‘it must have been obvious to one and all that the hot favourite for the nine-o’clock-in-the-morning stakes was young Herriard, which was a highly satisfactory state of affairs for the real murderer, not calling for any exertion on his part. All he had to do was to lie low, and act natural. Well, now I’m going to let it be deduced that I don’t fancy Stephen after all. Throwing the lead, so to speak. If I know anything about the minds of murderers, I ought to get some interesting reactions.’