Джорджетт Хейер - Envious Casca

"I know; but he's the one man who's got an alibi from the moment Herriard went upstairs to the moment when he was found dead!"

"When you put it to me like that, I can't make out why I didn't suspect him at the outset," said Hemingway imperturbably.

The Sergeant said almost despairingly: "He was talking to Miss Clare through the communicating door into the bathroom. You aren't going to tell me you suspect her of being mixed up in it?"

"No, I'm not. What I am going to tell you, though, is that when you get a bunch of suspects only one of whom has had the foresight to provide himself with an alibi, you want to keep a very sharp eye on that one. I admit I didn't, but that was very likely because you distracted me."

The Sergeant swallowed something in his throat. "Very likely," he agreed bitterly.

"That's right," said Hemingway. "You stop giving me lip, and think it over. Whichever way you turn in this case, you come up against Joseph. You must have noticed it. Take the party itself! Whose bright idea was that? You can ask any of the people up at the Manor, and they'll all give you the same answer: Joseph! I never met the late Nathaniel when he was alive, but I've heard enough about him to be pretty sure he wasn't the kind of man who liked Christmas parties. No, it was kind old Uncle Joseph who thought it would be nice to have a real old-fashioned Christmas, with a lot of goodwill floating around, and everyone making up old quarrels, and living happily ever after. Young Stephen wasn't on good terms with Nathaniel, on account of his bit of fluff; Paula had been worrying the life out of him to put up the cash for Roydon's play; Mottisfont had been getting his goat by selling arms to China, in a highly illegal fashion. So Joseph gets the bright idea of asking all three of them, plus two of the causes of the trouble, down to Lexham. You can say he was being well-meaning but tactless, if you like; on the other hand, you can widen your horizon a bit, and ask yourself if he wasn't perhaps getting together all the people most likely to quarrel with Nathaniel, to act as cover for himself."

"Why, sir, he's nothing but a soft old fool!" protested his Sergeant "I've met his sort many times!"

"That's what he wanted you to think," said Hemingway. "What you're forgetting is that he's been an actor. Now, I know a bit about the stage. In fact, I know I lot about it. Joseph can tell me all he likes about playing Hamlet, and Othello, and Romeo: I don't believe him, and what's more, I never did. He's got Character-part written all over him. He was the poor old father who couldn't pay the rent in The Wicked Baron, or What Happened to Girls in the 'Eighties; he was the butler in about half a hundred comedies; he was the First Gravedigger in Hamlet; he was -"

"All right, I get it!" the Sergeant said hurriedly.

"And if I'm not much mistaken," pursued Hemingway, "his most successful role was that of the kind old uncle in a melodrama entitled Christmas at Lexham Manor, or Who Killed Nat Herriard? I'm bound to say it's a most talented performance."

"I don't see how you make that out, sir, really I don't! If he'd got his brother to make a will leaving everything to him, there might be some grounds for suspecting him. But he didn't: he got him to leave his money to Stephen Herriard."

"That's where he was cleverer than what you seem to be, my lad. In spite of having started life in a solicitor's office, he forgot the little formality of providing witnesses to see that will signed. You don't need to know much about law to know you've got to have the signature to a will properly witnessed. You heard Miss Herriard telling me that he also forgot to put in some clause or other. What she meant was an Attestation Clause. That meant that the witnesses to the will would have to swear to Nathaniel's having signed it in their presence before it was admitted to probate. So if Stephen didn't get convicted of the murder, Joseph had still got a trump-card up his sleeve. In due course, by which I mean when the case had been nicely packed up one way or another, it would transpire that the will wasn't in order after all."

"Yes, but it didn't transpire in due course," objected the Sergeant. "It transpired today, and the case isn't anything like packed up."

"No," said Hemingway. "It isn't. I told you I had a hunch things had been happening just a bit too quickly for someone. Kind Uncle Joseph hadn't reckoned with the Lord High Everything Else. For some reason, which I haven't yet had time to discover, something brought the matter up, and Sturry blew the gaff. I don't fancy Joseph wanted that at all. He wouldn't like Sturry cutting in ahead of his cue."

The Sergeant scratched his head. "It sounds plausible, the way you tell it, sir, but I'd say it was too cunning for a chap like Joseph Herriard."

"That's because you think he's just a ham actor with a heart of gold. What you ought to bear in mind is the possibility that he's a darned good actor, without any heart at all. You go back over all we've heard about this Christmas party! You picked up plenty of stuff from the servants yourself."

"I don't know that I set much store by what they said," said the Sergeant dubiously.

"I don't set a bit of store by any of the information they thought they were giving. But they told you a lot they didn't set any store by themselves, and that was valuable. What about Joseph hanging up paper-streamers, and bits of holly all over the house, until Nathaniel was fit to murder him?"

"Well, what about it?" asked the Sergeant, staring.

"It all fits in," Hemingway said. "Kind old Uncle Joseph going to a lot of trouble to make things bright and cheerful for a set of people whom even he must have known wouldn't like it any more than Nathaniel did. Kind old Uncle Joseph, in fact, working his brother up into a rare state of bad temper. He got on Nathaniel's nerves. He meant to. He did everything he knew Nathaniel didn't like, from decorating the house to clapping him on the back when he had lumbago."

"Yes, but he's the sort of chap who always does put his loot into it," interposed the Sergeant.

"That's what you were meant to think," said Hemingway. "You wait a bit, because I'm going to show you that kind Uncle Joseph's tactlessness is the predominant feature in this case. Piecing together all the information we've picked up, what do we get?"

Joseph trying to keep the peace," answered the Sergeant promptly.

"Not on your life we don't! Joseph throwing oil on the flames, more like. A man who wants to keep the peace doesn't invite a set of highly incompatible people down to stay with a bad-tempered old curmudgeon who's already got his knife into most of them."

"But everyone says he was always trying to smooth rows over!"

"Thanks, I've heard him doing that for myself, and anything more calculated to make an angry person look round for a hatchet I've yet to see!" retorted Hemingway. "Why, he even got on my nerves! But I haven't finished, not anything like. Having got the whole party into a state when anything might have happened, he does a bit more pseudo-balm-spreading by hinting to Stephen's blonde that Stephen's due to inherit his uncle's fortune, and it's up to her to keep him quiet. Looked at your way, that's more of his peacemaking; looked at my way, it's a nail in Stephen's coffin. No man could be as big a fool as to think that what you said to that girl wouldn't come out at the wrong moment. He was making sure that we should discover that Stephen had reason to think he was the heir."

"Look here, sir, that's going too far!" the Sergeant exclaimed. "The one thing that does stand out a mile is that he fair dotes on his nephew! Why, look at the way he would stick to it the murder had been done from outside! And the way he kept on saying that his brother must have taken Stephen's cigarette-case up to his room himself!"