‘You’re just the person I was waiting to see, miss,’ said Hemingway pleasantly.
‘It’s no use: I don’t know anything about it!’ Valerie assured him.
‘No, I don’t suppose you do,’ he replied, surprising her exactly as he had meant to. ‘It isn’t likely a young lady like you would be mixed up in a murder.’
She gave an audible sigh of relief, but still watched him suspiciously. Correctly divining that she would not object to familiarity, if it were judiciously mixed with flattery, he said: ‘If you don’t mind my saying so, miss, it’s a bit of a surprise to me to find anyone like you here.’
She responded instinctively. ‘I don’t know what you mean! Do you think I’m so extraordinary?’
‘Well, it isn’t every day of the week that I meet a beautiful young lady, all in the way of business,’ said the Inspector unblushingly.
She giggled. ‘Good gracious, I didn’t know that policemen paid one compliments!’
‘They don’t often get the chance,’ answered Hemingway. ‘You’re engaged to be married to Mr Stephen Herriard, aren’t you, miss?’
This brought a cloud to her brow. ‘Yes, in a way I suppose I am,’ she admitted.
‘You don’t sound very sure about it!’ he said, cocking an intelligent eyebrow.
‘Oh, I don’t know! Only I never thought a thing like this would happen. It sort of changes everything. Besides, I utterly loathe this house, and Stephen adores it.’
‘Ah, he’s got a taste for antiques, I daresay!’ said Hemingway, very much on the alert.
‘Well, I think it’s all completely deathly, and I simply won’t be buried alive here.’
‘I wouldn’t take on about that, if I were you, miss. I expect Mr Stephen will be only too glad to live wherever you want.’
She opened her eyes at him. ‘Stephen? Oh gosh, no! He’s the most foully obstinate person I’ve ever met! You simply can’t move him once he’s made up his mind.’
‘I can see you’ve been having a pretty uncomfortable time,’ said Hemingway sympathetically.
Valerie, already smarting from the sense of her own wrongs, and further aggrieved by her parent’s attitude of bracing common sense, was only too glad to have found someone to whom she could unburden herself. She drew nearer to the Inspector, saying: ‘Well, I have. I mean, I’m one of those frightfully highly-strung people. I just can’t help it!’
The Inspector now had a certain cue, and responded instantly to it. ‘I could see at a glance that you were a mass of nerves,’ he said brazenly.
‘That’s just it!’ said Valerie, immensely gratified. ‘Only none of these people realise it, or care a damn about anyone but themselves. Except Uncle Joe: he’s nice; and I rather like Willoughby Roydon too. But the rest have been simply foul to me.’
‘Jealous, I wouldn’t wonder,’ nodded Hemingway.
She laughed, and patted her curls. ‘Well, I can’t imagine why they should be! Besides, Stephen’s as bad as the others. Worse if anything!’
‘Perhaps he’s jealous too, in a different way. I know I would be.’
‘Oh, Stephen’s not in the least like that!’ she said, brushing the suggestion aside. ‘He doesn’t care what I do. No, honestly he doesn’t! In fact, he doesn’t behave as though he cared for me a bit, in spite of having brought me down here to get to know his uncle. Of course, I oughtn’t to be saying this to you,’ she added, with a belated recollection of their respective positions.
‘You don’t want to worry about what you say to me,’ said the Inspector. ‘I daresay it’s a relief to be able to get it off your chest. I can see you’ve been through a lot.’
‘I must say, I think you’re frightfully decent!’ she said. ‘It’s been sheer hell ever since Mr Herriard was killed; and that other Inspector was too brutal for words! – I mean, absolute Third Degree! All about Stephen’s filthy cigarette-case!’
‘I’m surprised at Inspector Colwall!’ said Hemingway truthfully. ‘What did you happen to do with the case, if you don’t mind my asking?’
‘I didn’t do anything with it. I mean, I simply took a cigarette out of it, and put the case down on the table in the drawing-room, and never thought of it again until all this loathsome fuss started. Only Mathilda Clare – who’s quite the ugliest woman I’ve ever laid eyes on – practically accused me of having had the case all the time. Of course, she was simply out to protect Stephen, Willoughby says. Because Mr Mottisfont said, who was likely to pick up the case except Stephen himself ? which is perfectly true, of course. And if you ask me, Mathilda Clare deliberately tried to throw the blame on to me because she knew Mr Herriard didn’t like me!’
‘Now that’s a thing I can’t believe!’ said the Inspector gallantly.
‘No; but he didn’t, all the same. In fact, that’s why I came here. It was my mother’s idea, actually, that I should have a chance to get to know Mr Herriard. Personally I think he was a woman-hater.’
‘If he didn’t like you, he must have been. Didn’t he want his nephew to marry you?’
‘Well, no, as a matter of fact he didn’t. Only I feel sure I could have got round him, if only Stephen hadn’t made everything worse by annoying him over something or other. Of course, that’s just like Stephen! He would! I did try to make him be sensible, because Uncle Joe dropped a word in my ear, but it was no use.’
‘What sort of a word?’ asked Hemingway.
‘Oh, about Mr Herriard’s will! He didn’t actually say everything was left to Stephen, but I sort of gathered it.’
‘I see. Did you tell Mr Stephen?’
‘Yes; but he only laughed, and said he didn’t care.’
‘He seems to be a difficult kind of young man to have to do with,’ said Hemingway.
She sighed. ‘Yes, and I don’t really – Oh well! Only I wish I’d never come here!’
‘I’m sure I don’t blame you,’ said Hemingway, wondering how to get rid of her, now that he had extracted the information he wanted.
This problem was solved for him by Mathilda, who came into the hall at that moment from the passage leading to the billiard-room. Valerie flushed guiltily, and ran upstairs. Mathilda’s cool, shrewd gaze followed her, and returned, enquiringly, to the Inspector’s face. ‘I seem to have scared Miss Dean,’ she remarked, strolling across the hall towards him. ‘Was she being indiscreet?’
He was slightly taken aback, but hid it creditably. ‘Not at all. We’ve just been having a pleasant little chat,’ he replied.
‘I can readily imagine it,’ Mathilda said.
Thirteen
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 find 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 jocke
yed 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 cigarettecase, 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 find, 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, an
d 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.’
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