Mottisfont and Roydon both suffered the Englishman’s inevitable reaction to such indecent pathos. Mottisfont reddened, and coughed; Roydon stared at his feet, and muttered: ‘Quite!’ Joseph sighed, and said: ‘But I mustn’t intrude my private grief upon you. We’ve all got to keep stiff upper lips, haven’t we?’

Neither of his listeners could lower himself sufficiently to respond adequately to this, so Joseph went away with a heavy tread and another sigh.

‘Well, considering I never heard Mr Herriard say a decent word to him – !’ began Roydon.

Mottisfont resented Joseph’s attempt to play upon his emotions quite as profoundly as Roydon, but he had known the Herriards for many years, and he was not going to join a long-haired playwright in running them down. He said repressively: ‘The Herriards take a good deal of knowing. They’ve all got sharp tongues, except Joe, but I’ve never set any store by that. You can’t judge by appearances.’

‘It seems to me that they all play into one another’s hands!’ said Roydon. ‘In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me to discover that Stephen’s filthy rudeness to Joseph Herriard is just so much eyewash! You can’t help noticing how they all hang together, once it comes to the pinch!’

Mottisfont had been thinking much the same thing, but he was not going to admit it. He merely said that there was nothing surprising in families hanging together, and made for the door.

Roydon followed him upstairs, remarking in a disgruntled way that it wasn’t his idea of a Christmas party.

He was by no means alone in this view of the matter. The Chief Constable, receiving Inspector Colwall’s report on the case, said that this was the sort of thing that would happen when Bradford was sick.

‘Yes, sir,’ agreed Inspector Colwall, swallowing the insult.

‘Christmas Eve, too!’ said the Chief Constable, in an exasperated tone. ‘To my mind, it’s a case for Scotland Yard.’

‘Perhaps you’re right, sir,’ responded the Inspector, thinking of the complexities of the case, the lack of evidence, and the difficulties of dealing with the kind of witness he had found at Lexham Manor.

‘And that being so,’ said the Chief Constable, ‘I’ll get on to London right away.’

The Inspector was in complete agreement over this. If Scotland Yard was to take over the case, he for one did not want to be told that the scent had been allowed to grow cold, and that the Yard should have been called in days earlier. That was the kind of thing that happened when the local police tried to solve their cases, and failed; and it didn’t do a man any good to be made to look like a fool who’d been trying to make things difficult for Scotland Yard.

So the Chief Constable put through a call to London, and was connected in due course with a calm person who said he was Detective-Superintendent Hannasyde. The Chief Constable gave him the particulars of the case, and after asking several questions Superintendent Hannasyde said that he would send a good man down to assist him next morning.