‘Being given rope to hang myself, no doubt.’

‘Don’t be absurd!’ she said sharply. ‘I don’t believe any of this! They’ll have to find out how Nat was murdered behind locked doors before they can arrest you!’

‘From the trend of the questions put to me,’ said Stephen, ‘I infer that I entered the room through one of the windows.’

‘But they were all shut!’ Joseph said.

‘A pity I didn’t get you to verify that fact,’ said Stephen. ‘The police have only my word for it.’

Joseph smote his brow with one clenched fist. ‘Fool that I was! But I never thought – never dreamed – Oh, if one could but look into the future!’

Maud, who came into the room at that moment, overheard this wish, and said: ‘I am sure it would be very uncomfortable. I once had my fortune told, and I remember that it quite upset me, for I was told that I should travel far across the seas, and I am not at all fond of foreign travel, besides suffering from sea-sickness.’

‘Well, that is a very valuable contribution to our discussion,’ said Stephen, with suspicious amiability. ‘On the whole I prefer the Empress.’

At the sound of this word Maud’s placid countenance clouded over a little. ‘It is a most extraordinary thing where that book can have got to,’ she said. ‘I am sure I have looked everywhere. However, the Inspector, who is a very civil and obliging man, has promised to keep his eyes open, so I daresay it will turn up.’

Mathilda’s ever-lively sense of humour overcame the gloom induced by Stephen’s morbid prognostications, and she burst out laughing. ‘You haven’t really told the Inspector to look for your book, have you?’ she asked.

‘After all, dear,’ said Maud mildly, ‘it is a detective’s business to look for things.’

‘My dear, you shouldn’t have taken up the Inspector’s time with such a trivial matter!’ said Joseph, a little shocked. ‘You must remember that he is engaged on far, far more important work.’

Maud was unimpressed. Seating herself in her accustomed chair by the fire, she said: ‘I do not think that it will do anyone any good to know who killed Nat, Joe, for as he is dead there is nothing to be done about it, and it will only create a great deal of unpleasantness to pry into the affair. Like Hamlet,’ she added. ‘Simply upsetting things. But the Life of the Empress of Austria belongs to the lending library, and if it is lost I shall be obliged to pay for it. Besides, I hadn’t finished it.’

This was so unanswerable that beyond begging her, rather feebly, not to waste the Inspector’s time in such an absurd fashion, Joseph allowed the matter to drop. The rest of the party began to assemble in the room for tea, and everyone’s attention was diverted from the major anxiety of the moment by Valerie’s simple but effective way of carrying off what could only be regarded as a difficult situation. Surveying the company with cornflower blue eyes of limpid innocence, she said: ‘Oh, I say, has Stephen told you that we’re unengaged? I expect you probably think it’s fairly lousy of me to call it off just because the police think he murdered Mr Herriard, but actually it wasn’t me at all, but Mummy. And anyway, we’d completely gone off each other, so it doesn’t matter.’ She smiled in a dazzling way, and added: ‘The funny thing is that I like him much more now that we’re not engaged. As a matter of fact, I was loathing him before.’