Hemingway accepted this statement, but bore in mind two distinct possibilities. If the valet had been Stephen’s partner in crime, no reliance could be placed on the truth of his statements; if he had not, Stephen, who had left the drawing-room some time before Nathaniel, might have been able to have gone up to his uncle’s room unobserved, and to have opened one of the windows there.

That it would have been impossible for anyone to have climbed up to the windows without a ladder, the Inspector had already ascertained; it now remained to discover whether there was a ladder upon the premises.

He had told his Sergeant to find this out for him, and by the time he had brought his interview with Stephen to an end, Ware was waiting to report the result of his investigations to him.

‘There’s nothing of that sort in the house, sir: only a pair of housemaid’s steps, and they wouldn’t have reached, not anywhere near. But I snooped around the outhouses, like you told me, and I found one all right.’

‘Good!’ said Hemingway. ‘Where is it?’

‘Well, that’s it, sir: I can’t get at it. There’s a disused stable near the garage, and the chauffeur tells me that the head-gardener keeps his tools in it, and such-like. Only he went off home yesterday at noon, and he won’t be back till the day after tomorrow, and no one seems to know where he keeps the key. There’s a small window, but that’s bolted. I saw the ladder when I peered through it.’

‘He’s probably got a special place for the key: most of them have.’

‘Yes, but I’ve hunted high and low, and I can’t find it. The chauffeur thinks he keeps it on him, because he won’t have people borrowing his tools, nor getting at the apples he’s got stored in the loft.’

‘Where does he live?’ Hemingway asked.

‘Village about two miles to the north of this place.’

‘Seems to me I’d better have another little chat with the Lord High Everything Else.’

Correctly deducing that his superior was referring to the butler, Sergeant Ware at once went off to find this personage. But Sturry, when informed that Inspector Hemingway had need, for unspecified reasons, of a ladder, was not helpful. He said that he regretted there was nothing of that nature in the house. His tone did not imply regret, but rather an unexplained contempt of ladders.

The Inspector knew well that Sturry was trying to put him in his place, but beyond thinking that he would have made a perfect stage-butler, and had clearly missed his vocation, he paid little heed to his forbidding manner. ‘I didn’t suppose you had one in the house,’ he said, ‘but I’ve seen an orchard, and my reasoning powers, which are a lot keener than you might think, tell me that there must be a ladder somewhere on the estate.’

‘No doubt you would be referring to Mr Galloway’s ladder,’ said Sturry tolerantly.