‘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.