‘You needn’t tell me!’ said Hemingway disgustedly. ‘I’ll bet you spend all your off-time at the pictures!’

‘Well, I don’t, sir. I was brought up very strict. I generally do a bit of carpentering.’

‘That’s worse,’ said Hemingway.

After a discreet pause, the Sergeant ventured to enquire what were his chief’s impressions of the case they were bound for.

‘It’s a great mistake to start off with a lot of preconceived ideas,’ replied Hemingway. ‘Which is why you’ll never see me do such a thing. It’ll be time enough for me to go getting impressions when I’ve had a look at the dramatis personae. Not that I want to look at them, mind you! From what the Superintendent told me, you’d find it hard to pick out a set of people I wouldn’t rather not look at.’

‘Sounds to me as though it might be an interesting sort of a case,’ suggested the Sergeant, in cajoling accents. ‘Stands to reason it’s going to be a teaser, or the locals wouldn’t have called us in.’

‘That’s where you’re very likely wrong,’ said the disillusioned Inspector. ‘Whenever we get called in to a crime in classy country surroundings, you may bet your life it’s because the Chief Constable plays golf with half the suspects, and doesn’t want to handle the thing himself.’

Events were to prove him to be to a certain extent justified. Almost the first thing that the Chief Constable said to him was: ‘I’m not going to pretend I’m not glad to hand over this business to you, Inspector. Very awkward case: most astounding! I’ve known the murdered man for years. Know his brother too. I don’t like it.’

‘No, sir,’ said the Inspector.

‘What’s more,’ said the Chief Constable, ‘it’s a damned queer business! Can’t see myself how the murder can possibly have been committed. Of course, our Detective-Inspector’s away, sick. This is Inspector Colwall, who’s had charge of the case up till now.’

‘Glad to know you,’ said Hemingway, mentally writing Colwall down as a painstaking man who had probably missed every vital point in the case.

‘Inexplicable!’ pronounced Major Bolton, but not, it was gathered, with reference to Hemingway’s polite remark. ‘You’d better go through it from the start. Take a chair!’

Hemingway obeyed this invitation, nodded to his Sergeant to follow his example, and turned a bright, enquiring eye upon the Major.

‘The murdered man,’ said Major Bolton, ‘was a wealthy bachelor. He bought Lexham Manor some years ago. Sort of show-place: oak panelling, and that kind of thing. Cost a packet: never could make out why he wanted it. Not that sort of man, on the face of it. Made his money in trade. Head of a firm of importers, but been a sleeping-partner for some years now. East Indian stuff: spices, and that kind of thing. Mind you, I’m not saying he was a self-made man! Perfectly respectable family, and all that. Don’t know anything about his parents: believe the father was a country solicitor. There were three children: Nathaniel, the murdered man, Matthew, and Joseph. Matthew doesn’t come into it. Dead for years. His widow’s in America, with her third husband. Never met the lady myself, but I know her children. They’re both in it, up to the neck. Couple of years ago, Joseph – bit of a rolling-stone: no harm in him, but a feckless sort of a fellow – came home from wherever he’d been – South America, I believe, but that’s nothing: he’s been all over the world at one time or another – and took up his residence at Lexham Manor. Never had much use for Nat Herriard myself, but to give him his due, he treated his family well. Better than any of ’em deserved, if you ask me. Not that there’s anything against Joseph. What you might call a well-meaning ass. Sort of Peter Pan, if you get my meaning. Got a wife. Gossip says he picked her up out of the chorus. Don’t know anything about that. Colourless kind of woman. Pretty once, run to fat now. Never could make anything of her. Either deep as the devil, or a born fool. Know the type?’