‘What do you mean, “just turned the handle”?’ asked Hemingway.

‘Sort of gently, Inspector, in case Mr Herriard didn’t want to be disturbed. The door wouldn’t open.’

‘So then what did you do?’

‘Nothing. I mean, I just waited by the backstairs, like I told the other Inspector.’

‘Oh, you did, did you? Well, it seems a funny thing that a man’s valet, expecting to help his master to dress, and getting no answer to his knock on the door, and finding the door locked, should walk off without so much as thinking that the business was a bit odd.’

Ford stammered: ‘I did think it was unusual. Well, not as much as that, but it hadn’t ever happened quite like that before. But Mr Herriard didn’t always have me in to help him to dress. Only when his lumbago was troubling him, so to speak.’

‘Which I’m told it was,’ said Hemingway swiftly.

Ford swallowed. ‘Yes, sir, but –’

‘So you might have thought you’d be wanted for a certainty, mightn’t you? A man with lumbago, for instance, isn’t going to bend down to tie up his shoe-laces.’

‘No,’ admitted Ford sulkily. ‘But it’s my belief Mr Herriard put it on.’

‘Never had lumbago at all?’

‘I wouldn’t go as far as to say that. He did have it sometimes pretty bad, but it wasn’t always as bad as he liked to make out. If he was put out over anything, he’d carry on as though he was a cripple.’

‘Did he have you in to help him to dress yesterday morning?’

‘Yes, he did, but –’

‘But what?’

‘Nothing, sir, only I didn’t think he had it badly. It was mostly temper.’

‘Bad-tempered man, wasn’t he?’

‘Well, that’s it, Inspector. He was a fair Tartar when anyone had got his dander up. You never knew how to take him,’ Ford explained eagerly. ‘I know it sounds funny, me not liking to go into his room last night until he rang for me, but I give you my word this is a funny kind of a house, and you had to watch your step with Mr Herriard. If he was in a good mood you could go in and out as anyone would expect to in my position; but if he had one of his black fits on him you couldn’t do right, and that’s a fact.’

Hemingway said sympathetically: ‘I get it. Violent kind of man, was he?’

The valet grinned. ‘I believe you!’

The Inspector, who had once read Ford’s original testimony, had a disconcertingly good memory, and, having lured the valet into making this admission, pounced on it. ‘Oh! Then how is it that you told Inspector Colwall that he wasn’t a hard master, but that you got on well with him, and liked the place?’

Ford changed colour, but said staunchly: ‘Well, it was true enough. I wouldn’t call him hard exactly. He was all right when no one had upset him. I’ve been here nine months, anyway, and not given in my notice, which is more than any of his other valets did, by all accounts. He liked me, you see. I never had any unpleasantness. Not to say real unpleasantness.’