‘Shut up!’ said Stephen. ‘I admit it’s my case; I accept your statement that it was found in my uncle’s room. So what, Inspector?’

‘You’d better consider your position, sir.’

Mathilda, who had preserved a somewhat ominous silence throughout this interchange, moved forward. ‘Quite finished?’ she enquired. ‘Because if so I’ll speak my little piece. I saw Mr Stephen Herriard give his cigarette-case to Miss Dean before ever he left the drawing-room after tea.’

Stephen laughed. Valerie said furiously: ‘You shan’t put it on to me! I never had his beastly case! I left it on the table! I don’t know what became of it! He probably picked it up before he went out of the room. You’re the filthiest, meanest beast I ever met, Mathilda Clare!’

‘And you, my little pet,’ said Mathilda, with great cordiality, ‘are a bitch!’

Eight

The Inspector looked a good deal taken aback by this exchange of compliments. It did not fit in with his ideas of how the gentry behaved, and he made no attempt to cope with the situation. Roydon seemed to share his feelings, but Paula, who had stalked into the library at the outset of hostilities, said in approving accents: ‘Good for you, Mathilda!’

As usual it was Joseph who had to intervene. He shook his head at Mathilda, although with a sympathetic twinkle in his eye, and suggested to Valerie that she was overwrought.

‘She’s trying to make you think I murdered Mr Herriard!’ said Valerie tearfully.

‘My dear child, no one could possibly think anything so absurd!’ Joseph assured her. ‘Nobody as pretty as you could be suspected of hurting a fly!’

She was a little mollified by this tribute, and when Roydon said emphatically ‘Hear, hear!’ she threw him a pathetic smile, and said: ‘Oh, I don’t know about that, but I don’t even remember Stephen’s giving me his case, and I certainly never took it out of the room. It’s much more likely that I simply tossed it back to him.’

‘Oh, it is, is it?’ said Mathilda. ‘Why “tossed”?’

Valerie’s face turned crimson. ‘I don’t know. I –’

‘Yes, you do. You know perfectly well that Stephen threw his case over to you. So let’s have less of this convenient aphasia!’

Valerie flung round to face Stephen. ‘Are you going to stand there allowing that woman to insult me?’ she demanded.

‘Where on earth did you dig out a line like that?’ enquired Paula.

‘She’s got a lousy taste in literature,’ Stephen explained. ‘Mathilda, I forbid you to insult my intended.’

‘You and who else?’ retorted Mathilda crudely.

‘Children, children!’ implored Joseph.

The Inspector cleared his throat. ‘If you please, ladies! Miss Dean, is it a fact that Mr Stephen Herriard gave his cigarette-case to you before he went up to change?’

‘I tell you I don’t know! I simply don’t remember! Anyway, I never took it out of the room!’

Maud, who had come into the library behind Paula, said in her flattened voice: ‘You asked him for a cigarette, dear, and he threw his case over to you.’