Джорджетт Хейер - Envious Casca

"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 half stunned!"

"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 predicament 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.

"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."