‘Yes, but it didn’t transpire in due course,’ objected the Sergeant. ‘It transpired today, and the case isn’t anything like packed up.’

‘No,’ said Hemingway. ‘It isn’t. I told you I had a hunch things had been happening just a bit too quickly for someone. Kind Uncle Joseph hadn’t reckoned with the Lord High Everything Else. For some reason, which I haven’t yet had time to discover, something brought the matter up, and Sturry blew the gaff. I don’t fancy Joseph wanted that at all. He wouldn’t like Sturry cutting in ahead of his cue.’

The Sergeant scratched his head. ‘It sounds plausible, the way you tell it, sir, but I’d say it was too cunning for a chap like Joseph Herriard.’

‘That’s because you think he’s just a ham actor with a heart of gold. What you ought to bear in mind is the possibility that he’s a darned good actor, without any heart at all. You go back over all we’ve heard about this Christmas party! You picked up plenty of stuff from the servants yourself.’

‘I don’t know that I set much store by what they said,’ said the Sergeant dubiously.

‘I don’t set a bit of store by any of the information they thought they were giving. But they told you a lot they didn’t set any store by themselves, and that was valuable. What about Joseph hanging up paper-streamers, and bits of holly all over the house, until Nathaniel was fit to murder him?’

‘Well, what about it?’ asked the Sergeant, staring.

‘It all fits in,’ Hemingway said. ‘Kind old Uncle Joseph going to a lot of trouble to make things bright and cheerful for a set of people whom even he must have known wouldn’t like it any more than Nathaniel did. Kind old Uncle Joseph, in fact, working his brother up into a rare state of bad temper. He got on Nathaniel’s nerves. He meant to. He did everything he knew Nathaniel didn’t like, from decorating the house to clapping him on the back when he had lumbago.’

‘Yes, but he’s the sort of chap who always does put his foot into it,’ interposed the Sergeant.

‘That’s what you were meant to think,’ said Hemingway. ‘You wait a bit, because I’m going to show you that kind Uncle Joseph’s tactlessness is the predominant feature in this case. Piecing together all the information we’ve picked up, what do we get?’

‘Joseph trying to keep the peace,’ answered the Sergeant promptly.

‘Not on your life we don’t! Joseph throwing oil on the flames, more like. A man who wants to keep the peace doesn’t invite a set of highly incompatible people down to stay with a bad-tempered old curmudgeon who’s already got his knife into most of them.’

‘But everyone says he was always trying to smooth rows over!’

‘Thanks, I’ve heard him doing that for myself, and anything more calculated to make an angry person look round for a hatchet I’ve yet to see!’ retorted Hemingway. ‘Why, he even got on my nerves! But I haven’t finished, not anything like. Having got the whole party into a state when anything might have happened, he does a bit more pseudo-balm-spreading by hinting to Stephen’s blonde that Stephen’s due to inherit his uncle’s fortune, and it’s up to her to keep him quiet. Looked at your way, that’s more of his peacemaking; looked at my way, it’s a nail in Stephen’s coffin. No man could be as big a fool as to think that what you said to that girl wouldn’t come out at the wrong moment. He was making sure that we should discover that Stephen had reason to think he was the heir.’