‘In what way, miss?’

‘Oh, on account of Stephen’s being in one of his foul moods, and Paula doing nothing but stride about the place in a temper, and Mathilda Clare thinking herself very clever, and completely monopolising Stephen, just as though she were the only person who counted! And she isn’t even moderately good-looking. In fact, she’s haggish.’

There did not seem to be very much to be made of this, although the disclosure that Paula wanted money for Roydon’s play would bear looking into, the Inspector thought.

‘The only person who’s been in the least decent,’ pursued Valerie, now fairly launched on a flood of grievances, ‘is Uncle Joseph. I wish I’d never come, and I know my mother will be utterly livid when she hears what’s happened! It isn’t as if it was even any use my coming, because I never had a chance to get to know Mr Herriard, which was the whole idea. I think he was a woman-hater.’

‘Indeed, miss? Didn’t you and him get on together?’

‘Well, we never had a chance, what with one thing and another. I must say, I thought he was frightfully rude, but Stephen was just about as tactless as he could be, goodness knows why! and Paula would keep on about Willoughby’s play, when anyone could see it was only making Mr Herriard worse.’

She continued in this strain for several minutes, leaving the Inspector with the impression that the household contained few, if any, persons who would have been unwilling to have murdered Nathaniel.

This somewhat irresponsible testimony was contradicted by Maud, who when summoned to the morning-room came in with the deliberate tread of all stout persons, and betrayed neither alarm nor any particular interest.

Maud baffled the Inspector. She answered readily any questions put to her, but her face told him nothing, and she seemed either to be very stupid or very much too clever. She said that she had been in her bedroom from the time she had left the drawing-room until she had returned to it, just before dinner. The Inspector had expected that: it would be quite a shock, he reflected bitterly, if any of these people said anything else. Maud said that no doubt her husband could corroborate her statement, since he had been in his dressing-room, next door. The Inspector nodded, and asked her if there had been much unpleasantness in the house.

Maud’s pale eyes stared at him. ‘I didn’t notice anything,’ she said.

In face of what he had heard from the other witnesses, this startled the Inspector. He looked suspiciously at Maud, and said: ‘Come, come, Mrs Herriard! Isn’t it a fact that there had been a good deal of quarrelling going on between the deceased and certain members of the house-party?’

‘I daresay,’ said Maud indifferently. ‘I didn’t pay any attention. My brother-in-law was a very quarrelsome man.’

‘Oh!’ said the Inspector. ‘Then you wouldn’t say that there had been anything out of the ordinary in the way of unpleasantness?’