Джорджетт Хейер - Envious Casca

"Stephen and I understand one another," said Joseph, becoming the indulgent uncle again. "Now, I think we had better all go to bed, don't you? We are a little overwrought, and, indeed, how could we fail to be? Perhaps the night will bring counsel." He went to the door, but looked back as he opened it to say with a wistful smile: "We feel the blank in our lives already, don't we? Perhaps I more than anyone. To go to bed without that good night to Nat! It will be long before I can accustom myself to it."

Mottisfont and Roydon both suffered the Englishman's inevitable reaction to such indecent pathos. Mottisfont reddened, and coughed; Roydon stared at his feet, and muttered: "Quite!" Joseph sighed, and said: "But I mustn't intrude my private grief upon you. We've all got to keep stiff upper lips, haven't we?"

Neither of his listeners could lower himself sufficiently to respond adequately to this, so Joseph went away with a heavy tread and another sigh.

"Well, considering I never heard Mr. Herriard say a decent word to him - !"began Roydon.

Mottisfont resented Joseph's attempt to play upon his emotions quite as profoundly as Roydon, but he had known the Herriards for many years, and he was not going to join a long-haired playwright in running them down. He said repressively: "The Herriards take a good deal of knowing. They've all got sharp tongues, except Joe, but I've never set any store by that. You can't judge by appearances."

"It seems to me that they all play into one another's hands!" said Roydon. "In fact, it wouldn't surprise me to discover that Stephen's filthy rudeness to Joseph Herriard is just so much eyewash! You can't help noticing how they all hang together, once it comes to the pinch!"

Mottisfont had been thinking much the same thing, but he was not going to admit it. He merely said that there was nothing surprising in families hanging together, and made for the door.

Roydon followed him upstairs, remarking in a disgruntled way that it wasn't his idea of a Christmas party.

He was by no means alone in this view of the matter. The Chief Constable, receiving Inspector Colwall's report on the case, said that this was the sort of thing that would happen when Bradford was sick.

"Yes, sir," agreed Inspector Colwall, swallowing the insult.

"Christmas Eve, too!" said the Chief Constable, in an exasperated tone. "To my mind, it's a case for Scotland Yard."

"Perhaps you're right, sir," responded the Inspector, thinking of the complexities of the case, the lack of evidence, and the difficulties of dealing with the kind of witness he had found at Lexham Manor.

"And that being so," said the Chief Constable, "I'll get on to London right away."

The Inspector was in complete agreement over this. If Scotland Yard was to take over the case, he for one did not want to be told that the scent had been allowed to grow cold, and that the Yard should have been called in days earlier. That was the kind of thing that happened when the local police tried to solve their cases, and failed; and it didn't do a man any good to be made to look like a fool who'd been trying to make things difficult for Scotland Yard.

So the Chief Constable put through a call to London, and was connected in due course with a calm person who said he was Detective-Superintendent Hannasyde. The Chief Constable gave him the particulars of the case, and after asking several questions Superintendent Hannasyde said that he would send a good man down to assist him next morning.

That was polite of the Superintendent, but when his words were repeated to Inspector Colwall, the Inspector only said, Yes, in a dispirited tone. The good man from Scotland Yard would automatically take charge of the case, and very likely tick everyone off into the bargain, he thought, uneasily aware of his own shortcomings as a detective. He went off duty in a frame of mind almost as gloomy as anyone's at Lexham Manor, and very nearly as resentful as that of the good man from Scotland Yard, who, far from feeling any elation at being given a promising case to handle, told his subordinate that it was just his luck to be sent into the wilds of Hampshire on Christmas Day.

Sergeant Ware, an earnest young man, ventured to say that the case sounded as though it might be interesting.

"Interesting!" said Inspector Hemingway. "It sounds to me like a mess. I don't like the lay-out, I don't like the locality, and if I don't find a whole crowd of suspects, all telling a lot of silly lies for no reason at all, my instinct's wrong, and that's all there is to it."

"Well, perhaps it is, this time," suggested Ware.

The Inspector fixed him with a bright and fulminating eye. "Don't you get insubordinate with me, my lad!" he warned him. "I'm never wrong."

The Sergeant grinned. He had worked with Inspector Hemingway many times, and had almost as great a respect for his foibles as for his undoubted ability.

"And don't stand there smirking as though you were off on a Cheap Day Excursion, because if I were to burst a blood-vessel you'd very likely get blamed for it!"

"Why should I, sir?" asked Ware, diverted.

"Because that's the way things turn out in the Force," said the Inspector darkly.

There was no apparent reason to suppose, on the following morning, that Inspector Hemingway was regarding the case with a less jaundiced eye. On the journey into Hampshire, he spoke bitterly and at length on the subject of the play which he had been helping to produce in his hometown, and which was to be performed on Boxing Day. He saw no prospect of being present upon this interesting occasion, and the trend of his remarks led Ware to infer that without his masterful hand upon the reins the play had little chance of succeeding, if, indeed, it could be performed at all.

The Drama was one of the Inspector's pet hobbyhorses, and the Sergeant sat back in his corner of the railway compartment, and resigned himself to the inevitable. The expression of interest which concealed his almost total inattention did not deceive the Inspector for an instant. "Yes, I know you aren't listening," he said. "If you listened more, you'd be a better detective, besides being a lot more respectful to your superiors. The trouble with you young chaps is that you think you've got nothing to learn."

The Sergeant had never been disrespectful to his superiors in all his blameless life, and his painstaking efforts to broaden his knowledge were notorious, but he attempted no protest. Merely he grinned, and said that he had never been much of a one for the theatre.

"You needn't tell me!" said Hemingway disgustedly. "I'll bet you spend all your off time at the pictures!"

"Well, I don't, sir. I was brought up very strict. I generally do a bit of carpentering."

"That's worse," said Hemingway.

After a discreet pause, the Sergeant ventured to enquire what were his chief's impressions of the case they were bound for.

"It's a great mistake to start off with a lot of preconceived ideas," replied Hemingway. "Which is why you'll never see me do such a thing. It'll be time enough for me to go getting impressions when I've had a look at the dramatis personae. Not that I want to look at them, mind you! From what the Superintendent told me, you'd find it hard to pick out a set of people I wouldn't rather not look at."

"Sounds to me as though it might be an interesting sort of a case," suggested the Sergeant, in cajoling accents. "Stands to reason it's going to be a teaser, or the locals wouldn't have called us in."

"That's where you're very likely wrong," said the disillusioned Inspector. "Whenever we get called in to a crime in classy country surroundings, you may bet your life it's because the Chief Constable plays golf with half the suspects, and doesn't want to handle the thing himself."