‘On Christmas Eve!’ Joseph groaned, as though he found this an added torture. ‘Oh, Paula, Paula!’
She flashed round upon him. ‘Why do you say that? Do you suppose I had anything to do with this?’
‘Oh, my dear, no!’ he said, shocked. ‘Of course you didn’t!’
‘Who did? Have you any idea?’
‘I can’t think, my dear. It’s too hideous! I try to realise it, to pull myself together –’
‘This house! This wicked, horrible house!’ She burst out, looking wildly round. ‘You laughed at me when I told you it was evil!’
‘My dear, you’re overwrought!’ he said, looking somewhat taken aback. ‘The house can’t have killed poor Nat!’
‘Its influence! Acting on us all, impelling one of us –’
‘Hush, Paula, hush!’ he said. ‘That’s nonsense! There, my poor child, there! Come away! It isn’t fit for you to be here.’ He put his arm round her, and felt how tense she was, yet trembling a little.
‘It wasn’t one of us,’ she said, speaking with difficulty. ‘It couldn’t have been. Someone through the window – robbery, perhaps. The door was locked!’
‘Paula dear, did Ford tell you that?’
‘I knew it! I tried to get in, before I went downstairs! He wouldn’t answer when I knocked.’
‘Oh, Paula, why didn’t you tell us?’ he exclaimed.
‘I didn’t think anything of it. Only that he was sulking. We’d had a row. You know what he was! Besides, I did tell you, when you asked me to go up and call him.’
‘Too late!’ he said tragically.
‘It must always have been. I suppose he was dead when I knocked on the door.’
He winced. ‘Paula dear, not that hard voice!’
There was a look of Stephen in her face as she answered: ‘It’s no use expecting me to sentimentalise. I’m honest, anyway. I didn’t like him. I don’t even care that he’s dead. He was mean and tyrannical.’
This was very shocking to Joseph. He looked really pained, and rather anxious too, and said: ‘We mustn’t let ourselves become hysterical, Paula. You don’t mean that. No, no, your old uncle knows you better than that!’
She shrugged. ‘I hate being idealised.’
He took one of her thin hands, and fondled it. ‘Gently, my dear, gently! We must keep our heads, you know.’
She understood this to mean that she must keep hers, and said: ‘You mean that the police will think I did this, because of my quarrel with him? All right! Let them!’
‘No, my dear, they could never suspect a girl of your age, I feel sure. But don’t talk unkindly of poor Nat! And, Paula! try to make Stephen guard his tongue too! We know how little that manner of his means, but others don’t, and some of the things he says – only for effect, the silly fellow! but I dread his doing it before the police! Oh dear, I never thought when I planned this party that it would end like this. I meant it all to be so jolly and happy!’
‘We’d better go downstairs,’ she said abruptly.
He heaved a sigh. ‘I suppose it’s foolish of me, but I don’t like to leave him here alone.’
It was plain from her expression that she thought this very foolish, so after looking down at Nathaniel’s body for a moment he accompanied her out of the room, saying in a melancholy tone: ‘My last leave-taking! Perhaps it will not be for so long, after all.’
Ford was standing at the head of the stairs, conversing in whispers with one of the housemaids. The girl, after the manner of her kind, was torn between excitement and a conventional impulse to burst into tears. She scuttled away when she saw Joseph. Paula flushed, and said through her teeth: ‘Gossip already! That’s what we shall have to face!’
Joseph pressed her arm admonishingly, told the valet to mount guard over Nathaniel’s bedroom, and escorted his niece downstairs. ‘Stephen will have broken the terrible news to them by now,’ he said.
Stephen had indeed performed this office. Having notified the local police-station, five miles distant, he had walked into the drawing-room, where the rest of the party was still assembled, in varying degrees of impatience and uneasiness, and had said at his most sardonic: ‘No use waiting for Uncle Nat. As you’ve no doubt guessed, he’s dead.’
‘Dead?’ Mathilda exclaimed, after a moment’s stupefied silence. ‘Are you joking?’
‘I am not. To put it plainly, someone stuck a knife in his back.’
Valerie gave a scream, and clutched at the nearest support, which happened to be Roydon’s arm. He paid no heed to her, but stood staring at Stephen, with his jaw dropping.
Mottisfont said in an angry, querulous tone: ‘I don’t believe it! This is one of your mistaken ideas of humour, Stephen, and I don’t like it!’
Maud’s hands were still clasped in her lap. She sat still, a plump, upright little figure, with a rigid back. Her pale eyes studied Stephen, travelled on to Mottisfont, to Roydon, to Valerie, and sank again.
‘It’s true?’ Mathilda said stupidly.
‘Unfortunately for us, quite true.’
‘You mean he’s been murdered,’ said Roydon, as though the words stuck in his throat.
‘Oh no! I can’t bear it!’ Valerie whimpered. ‘It’s too ghastly!’
Mottisfont passed a hand across his mouth. He asked in a voice which he tried hard to keep level: ‘Who did it?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ Stephen replied. He took a cigarette from
the box on the table, and lit it. ‘Interesting problem, isn’t it?’ he drawled.
Six
HIS WORDS WERE FOLLOWED BY A RATHER STUNNED
silence. He smoked for a moment, looking round in malicious amusement at the various countenances turned towards him. It was impossible to read the thoughts behind them; they looked shut-in, suddenly guarded, even a little furtive. He said cordially: ‘Really, no one would know which was the actor amongst us! we’re damned good, all of us.’
Maud looked at him, expressionless, but said nothing. Edgar Mottisfont said angrily: ‘A remark – a remark in the worst of bad taste!’
‘Herriard,’ Mathilda said succinctly.
Joseph came in with Paula. She looked pale, exchanged a glance with her brother, and asked him curtly for a cigarette. He put his hand in his pocket, withdrew it again, and nodded to the box on the table. Joseph had gone over to his wife, and had taken her hand in both of his. ‘My dear, we are bereaved indeed,’ he said, with a solemn depth of tone which made Mathilda feel an insane desire to giggle.
‘Stephen says that Nathaniel has been murdered,’ Maud said calmly. ‘It seems very strange.’
The inadequacy of this comment, although typical of Maud, momentarily robbed Joseph of the power to display deeper emotions. He looked disconcerted, and said that he could see that the shock had numbed her. The rest of the company perceived that whatever feelings of grief or of horror might inhabit Joseph’s inmost soul he would not for long be able to resist the opportunity thus afforded him to seize the centre of a tragic stage. Already he was seeing himself, Mathilda thought, as the chief mourner, the brave mainstay of a stricken household.
Attention swerved away from him to Valerie. Fright had enlarged the pupils of her lovely eyes; her mouth drooped; she said in a soft wail: ‘I wish I hadn’t come! I want to go home!’
‘But you can’t go home,’ Stephen replied. ‘You’ll be wanted by the police, like the rest of us.’
Tears spangled her lashes. ‘Oh, Stephen, don’t let them! I don’t know anything! I can’t be of any use, and I know Mummy would not like me to be here!’
‘Nobody could possibly suspect you!’ Roydon said, looking noble, and glaring at Stephen.
‘My poor child!’ Joseph said, creditably, everyone felt, in face of so much folly. ‘You must be brave, my dear, and calm. We must all be brave. Nat would have wished it.’
A certain pensiveness descended upon the company, as each member of it pondered this pronouncement. Mathilda felt that Joseph would soon succeed in making
them forget the real Nathaniel, and accept instead the figment of his rose-coloured imagination. She said: ‘What do we do now?’
‘We have already sent for the doctor,’ Joseph said, with a glance of fellowship thrown in his nephew’s direction. ‘There is nothing that we can do.’
‘We can have dinner,’ said Paula, brusquely putting into words the unworthy thought in more than one mind.
There was an outcry. Valerie said that it made her sick to think of eating; Mottisfont remarked that it was hardly the time to think of dinner.
‘How much longer do you want to wait?’ asked Stephen. ‘It’s already past nine.’
Mottisfont found Stephen so annoying that he could hardly keep his animosity out of his voice. Stephen made him feel a fool, and some evil genius always prompted him to follow up one ineptitude with another. He now said: ‘Surely none of us means to have dinner tonight!’
‘Why not tonight, if we mean to eat tomorrow?’ Stephen enquired. ‘When will it be decent for us to eat again?’
‘You make a mock of everything!’
Joseph stepped forward, laying one hand on Stephen’s shoulder, the other on Mottisfont’s. ‘Oh, my dear people, hush!’ he said gently. ‘Don’t let us forget – don’t let us allow our nerves to get the better of us!’
‘I will ring the bell,’ said Maud, doing so.
‘Have you sent for the police?’ Paula asked her brother.
‘We won’t talk of that, dear child,’ said Joseph, with misplaced optimism.
Paula’s words appeared to let loose pent-up excitement. Even Mathilda heard herself saying: ‘But who could it have possibly been?’ In the middle of this valueless babel, Sturry came in, his countenance schooled to an expression of rigid gloom. He stood by the door, a mute at the funeral.
‘Ah, here is our good Sturry!’ said Joseph, drawing him into the family circle by this affectionate address.
Sturry would not be so drawn. He stood immovable, despising people who did not know their places. ‘You rang, sir?’ he asked frigidly.
‘Yes, yes!’ Joseph said. ‘You have heard the terrible news? I need not ask you!’
‘No, sir. The news was conveyed to the Hall by Ford. I am extremely sorry to hear of the occurrence, sir.’
‘Ah, Sturry, you must feel it too! What a tragedy! What a terrible shock!’
‘Indeed yes, sir,’ Sturry replied, conveying by these simple words some impression of the affront he had suffered. No one could feel that he would have engaged himself to wait on Nathaniel if he could have foreseen these vulgar events. It seemed reasonable to suppose that he would hand in his notice at the first opportunity.
A little damped, Joseph said: ‘You had better serve dinner. The master would not have wanted his guests to make any difference, would he?’
‘Very good, sir,’ said Sturry, declining to give an opinion on this moot point.
He withdrew, but the shreds of his disapproval remained behind. Remembering the overwrought questions and exclamations which his entrance had interrupted, Nathaniel’s guests felt uneasily that they had lapsed into bad form. Mottisfont cleared his throat, and remarked that one hardly knew what to do.
‘I know!’ Valerie said. ‘I mean, I’ve simply never dreamed of such a thing happening to me! Oh, Stephen, Mummy will be utterly furious! I do think I ought to go home!’
‘The trains are very infrequent over Christmas,’ stated Maud. ‘And, of course, when there is snow they get held up.’
‘Oh, I couldn’t go by train!’ Valerie said. ‘Stephen brought me in his car.’
‘Sorry,’ said Stephen. ‘I can’t leave.’
‘But, Stephen, you could come back, couldn’t you? I don’t want to be a nuisance, or anything, but actually my nerves aren’t awfully strong, and the least little thing like this upsets me for weeks! Literally!’
He returned no answer. His look of derision had given place to one of strain; even her absurdity failed to conjure up his familiar mocking devil. It was left for Roydon to respond to her. ‘I wish I could take you home,’ he said. ‘I can see you’re one of those tremendously highly-strung people whose awareness is almost hyper-acute.’
‘Actually, Mummy says I simply live on my nerves,’ Valerie confided.
‘You haven’t a nerve in your whole insensate body!’ said Paula, with shattering effect.
Valerie had never sustained such an insult in her life. She flushed poppy-red; her eyes flashed becomingly, and it seemed as though the tension was to be relieved by a very satisfying exchange of personalities between the two ladies.
Sturry came back into the room to announce dinner. The quarrel petered out; and Nathaniel’s guests filed out of the room in depressed silence.
Sturry had swept away the knives and forks from Nathaniel’s place at the head of the table. This vacancy struck everyone immediately, and brought his death suddenly and foolishly nearer. Joseph was inspired to exclaim: ‘It will seem strange to me, and melancholy, to see another in Nat’s place. It must come: I know it, and I shall accept it bravely, but I can’t help feeling glad that for just this one evening I see only Nat’s empty chair.’
No comment seemed to be required; indeed, it would have been impossible for anyone except Stephen, Mathilda reflected, to have made any. Half expecting him to utter some blistering remark, she glanced across the table towards him. A wryness about his mouth informed her that the tactlessness of the reminder had not gone unobserved, but he gave no other sign of having heard Joseph.
Joseph whispered: ‘Help me, Tilda! We must be natural! We must try not to let this horror get on top of us!’
What he hoped she might be able to do she had no idea. An attempt to inaugurate a conversation upon any other subject than Nathaniel’s death would be regarded as callous, and must fail. She began to drink her soup, ignoring Joseph.
Valerie, growing momently more temperamental, refused soup, saying that it seemed awful to be sitting at dinner with Mr Herriard dead upstairs.
‘You don’t drink soup because you think it’s bad for your figure. You told us so,’ said Paula.
‘Some people think a great deal of the Hay Diet,’ suddenly remarked Maud. ‘I daresay it is very good, though I myself have never had any trouble with my digestion. But Joseph has to be more careful. Rich food never agrees with him.’
Sturry, who had been conferring with the footman in the doorway, approached Joseph’s chair, and bent over it, murmuring bodingly: ‘Dr Stoke, sir.’
Joseph leaned forward. ‘Stephen, my boy! The doctor!’
‘You’d better take him up,’ said Stephen.
‘You don’t wish to be present? You have a right to be there.’
‘Thanks, not in the middle of dinner.’
Joseph put back his chair, and rose, with what was felt to be a gallant attempt at a smile. ‘It shall be as you like, old fellow. I understand.’
‘I imagine you might.’
‘Hush! No bitter words tonight!’ Joseph said, as he left the room.
He found the doctor in the hall, handing his coat and hat to the footman. ‘Stoke!’ he said. ‘You know why you have been sent for? I needn’t tell you.’
‘Herriard’s man told me that there had been an accident to his master,’ the doctor replied. He looked narrowly at Joseph, and said in a sharper voice: ‘Nothing serious, I trust?’
Joseph made a hopeless gesture. ‘Dead!’ he said.
‘Dead!’ The doctor was plainly startled. ‘Good God, what has happened?’
‘A terrible thing, Stoke,’ Joseph said, shuddering. ‘I will take you to him.’
‘Is he in his own room?’ Stoke asked, picking up his bag.
He was a spare, active man, and he ran up the broad stairs ahead of Joseph. Ford was sitting on a chair outside Nathaniel’s door; the doctor glanced frowningly at him, and passed into the room. When he saw the position of Nathaniel’s body, he went quickly up to it, and dropped on to his knees. The briefest of inspections convinced him that
his patient was indeed dead; he looked up, as Joseph came into the room, and asked curtly: ‘The valet spoke of an accident. How did this happen?’
Joseph averted his eyes from Nathaniel’s body, saying in a low tone: ‘Look at his back, Stoke!’
The doctor looked quickly down. Stephen had left Nathaniel lying much as he had found him, on his left side, exposing the little bloodstained rent in his coat.
There was a short silence; Joseph turned his back upon the doctor’s activities, and gazed down into the dying embers in the grate.