After a few minutes, Mathilda laid down her book. ‘You seem worried, Mr Mottisfont.’

‘Well, who wouldn’t be?’ he demanded, coming to the fire. ‘I don’t know how you can go on as though nothing had happened! Apart from anything else, Stephen’s manner –’

‘Oh, Stephen!’ she said. ‘You ought to know him by now, surely!’

‘Ill-mannered cub!’ he muttered. ‘Taking things into his own hands, without so much as a by-your-leave! I call it thoroughly officious, and why on earth he must needs drag Nat’s solicitor down here on Christmas Day, God alone knows! Anxious to get his hands on Nat’s will, I suppose. Indecent, I call it!’

‘The solicitor ought to come at once,’ she replied rather shortly. ‘The police are bound to want to go through Nat’s papers, for one thing.’

It struck her that he winced slightly at this. He said: ‘They aren’t likely to find anything.’

‘You never know,’ Mathilda said.

‘Everyone knows that Nat was a hot-tempered old – a hot-tempered man who said a lot of things he didn’t mean. Why, I, for instance, have had dozens of quarrels with him! They always blew over. That’s what the police don’t understand. They’ll go picking on things that have no bearing on the murder at all, and try to make out a case from them against some unfortunate person who had nothing to do with it.’

She had a strong suspicion that the unfortunate person he had in mind was himself. ‘Oh, I shouldn’t think they’d do that!’ she said, in a reassuring tone. ‘After all, they must have realised by now that Nat quarrelled with everyone.’

‘Yes, but –’ He stopped, reddening, and took off his glasses, and began to polish them. ‘I haven’t any opinion of that Inspector we had here last night. Unimaginative fool, I thought. Rather offensive too. What do you think of his locking Nat’s study? As though any of us would dream of touching anything in it! Very uncalled-for! Sheer officialdom!’

Mathilda now felt reasonably certain that there was in existence some document which Mottisfont wanted to get his hands on. She returned a noncommittal answer, and was relieved of the necessity of sustaining any more of a difficult dialogue by the entrance of Roydon.

Edgar Mottisfont looked at him in an exasperated kind of way, but Roydon seemed to have come in search of Mathilda, and took no notice of him. ‘Oh, there you are, Miss Clare! Are you really going to church?’

‘Yes,’ said Mathilda firmly.

‘Well, could I have a word with you before you go? It isn’t important! – at least, it doesn’t really matter – but I thought I’d like to.’

Mathilda reflected that fright had had an appalling effect upon Mr Roydon’s powers of self-expression. ‘All right, as long as it hasn’t anything to do with the murder,’ she said.

‘Oh no, nothing to do with that!’ he assured her.

‘I suppose you want me to go?’ said Mottisfont.

Roydon disclaimed, not very convincingly, but Mottisfont said with a short laugh that he knew how to take a hint, and left the room.