‘Too late!’ he said tragically.

‘It must always have been. I suppose he was dead when I knocked on the door.’

He winced. ‘Paula dear, not that hard voice!’

There was a look of Stephen in her face as she answered: ‘It’s no use expecting me to sentimentalise. I’m honest, anyway. I didn’t like him. I don’t even care that he’s dead. He was mean and tyrannical.’

This was very shocking to Joseph. He looked really pained, and rather anxious too, and said: ‘We mustn’t let ourselves become hysterical, Paula. You don’t mean that. No, no, your old uncle knows you better than that!’

She shrugged. ‘I hate being idealised.’

He took one of her thin hands, and fondled it. ‘Gently, my dear, gently! We must keep our heads, you know.’

She understood this to mean that she must keep hers, and said: ‘You mean that the police will think I did this, because of my quarrel with him? All right! Let them!’

‘No, my dear, they could never suspect a girl of your age, I feel sure. But don’t talk unkindly of poor Nat! And, Paula! try to make Stephen guard his tongue too! We know how little that manner of his means, but others don’t, and some of the things he says – only for effect, the silly fellow! but I dread his doing it before the police! Oh dear, I never thought when I planned this party that it would end like this. I meant it all to be so jolly and happy!’

‘We’d better go downstairs,’ she said abruptly.

He heaved a sigh. ‘I suppose it’s foolish of me, but I don’t like to leave him here alone.’

It was plain from her expression that she thought this very foolish, so after looking down at Nathaniel’s body for a moment he accompanied her out of the room, saying in a melancholy tone: ‘My last leave-taking! Perhaps it will not be for so long, after all.’

Ford was standing at the head of the stairs, conversing in whispers with one of the housemaids. The girl, after the manner of her kind, was torn between excitement and a conventional impulse to burst into tears. She scuttled away when she saw Joseph. Paula flushed, and said through her teeth: ‘Gossip already! That’s what we shall have to face!’

Joseph pressed her arm admonishingly, told the valet to mount guard over Nathaniel’s bedroom, and escorted his niece downstairs. ‘Stephen will have broken the terrible news to them by now,’ he said.

Stephen had indeed performed this office. Having notified the local police-station, five miles distant, he had walked into the drawing-room, where the rest of the party was still assembled, in varying degrees of impatience and uneasiness, and had said at his most sardonic: ‘No use waiting for Uncle Nat. As you’ve no doubt guessed, he’s dead.’

‘Dead?’ Mathilda exclaimed, after a moment’s stupefied silence. ‘Are you joking?’

‘I am not. To put it plainly, someone stuck a knife in his back.’