‘I don’t know,’ he said reluctantly. ‘If it isn’t, I shall have to say where I think it might be. I mean, I can’t do Stephen out of his inheritance, can I? Besides, they’d be bound to find it sooner or later. I don’t know what to do for the best.’

Mathilda felt strongly inclined to advise him not to meddle, but she refrained. He said: ‘I wish you’d exert your influence, Tilda! Don’t let him alienate the police through sheer perversity! He won’t listen to me.’

‘I expect he knows his own business best,’ she said shortly. ‘In any event, I have no influence over him.’

‘Sometimes I fear that no one has,’ said Joseph, with one of his gusty sighs. ‘It’s as though he was born cussed! Now, what in the world can have possessed him to hide poor Maud’s book? That’s the sort of silly, schoolboy mischief that puts people against him so!’

Mathilda thought that anyone less schoolboyish or mischievous than Stephen would have been hard to find, but she merely observed that Stephen denied all knowledge of the book’s whereabouts.

‘Oh well, perhaps I’m wronging him!’ said Joseph, visibly brightening. ‘Anyway, it doesn’t seem to be in this room.’

They returned to the library, their arrival synchronising with that of Valerie, who had apparently derived some benefit from a protracted and expensive telephone-call to her mother. She announced that Mummy was coming down to Lexham on the following day.

‘Oh, my God!’ said Stephen audibly.

‘I’m sure she must want to be with you at such a time,’ said Joseph hastily. ‘We shall be very glad to have her, shan’t we, Maud? One only wishes that her visit were taking place under happier circumstances.’

‘Mummy says she’s sure it will all be cleared up satisfactorily, and we just mustn’t worry!’ said Valerie.

This valuable piece of advice plunged everyone into a state of profound gloom. After thinking it over, Mottisfont said that he didn’t see how it could be cleared up satisfactorily.

‘No,’ said Stephen cordially. ‘Not when you consider that one of us is an assassin.’

‘I find that remark gratuitously offensive!’ said Mottisfont.

‘Why?’ asked Stephen.

‘Now, now!’ Joseph intervened. ‘We mustn’t let this thing get on top of our nerves! I myself feel convinced that Nat was murdered by someone from outside.’

‘You would,’ said Stephen.

‘Damn it all, why not?’ demanded Mathilda.

He shrugged. ‘Windows all latched on the inside.’

‘But the ventilator was open!’ Joseph reminded him. ‘An agile man might have got in that way, I believe. Of course, it wouldn’t have been easy, but although you may not believe it I used to be a bit of an athlete in my younger days, and I’m pretty sure I could have done it.’

‘You couldn’t do it now, Joe,’ said Mathilda. ‘Too much enbonpoint.’

‘Ah, you love to make fun of your poor old uncle!’ he said, shaking his fist at her. ‘Yet when I was a young man I was as slim as Roydon there. I well remember when I was playing Romeo once – But what am I about, telling stories of my youth when our minds are full of graver matters? Maud, my dear, we will have a thorough search for your book tomorrow, I promise. You have had a wearing day: you should be in bed, you know.’