Джорджетт Хейер - Envious Casca

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!"

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?"