‘Indeed, yes,’ said Mathilda, watching her extract an enamelled case from her handbag, and take from it a fat Egyptian cigarette with a gold tip.

‘I expect,’ said Mrs Dean, ‘you are all quite disorganised, and no wonder! On Christmas Eve, too! Tell me all about it! You know that Val was only able to give me the barest details.’

Luckily for Mathilda, who did not feel equal to obeying this behest, Joseph came down the stairs again just then, saying that Maud was dressing for church, and would be with them in a few minutes. Mathilda said that she too must get ready for church, and made good her escape. As she rounded the bend in the stairs, she heard Mrs Dean say in confiding accents: ‘And now, dear Mr Herriard, tell me just what happened!’

Ten

By the time that Maud, dressed in her outdoor clothes, had come downstairs into the hall, Mrs Dean had drawn from Joseph an account of Nathaniel’s murder, and was looking considerably startled. It was plain that she had not, from Valerie’s agitated telephone communication, grasped to what an extent Stephen might be implicated in the crime. She heard Joseph out with the proper expression of horror and sympathy on her face, but behind the conventionality of her speech and bearing a very busy brain was working fast.

‘I’m prepared to go to the stake on my conviction that Stephen had nothing whatsoever to do with it!’ Joseph told her.

‘Of course not,’ she said mechanically. ‘What an idea! Still, it’s all very dreadful. Really, I had no suspicion! We must just wait and see, mustn’t we?’

At this moment Maud appeared from above, descending the stairs in her unhurried way. No greater contrast to Mrs Dean’s somewhat flamboyant smartness could have been found than in Maud’s plump, neat figure. She might, in the days of her youth, have adorned the second row of the chorus, but in her sedate middle-age she presented the appearance of a Victorian lady of strict upbringing. There was nothing skittish either in the style or the angle of the high-crowned hat she wore on her head. She carried a Prayer-book in one hand, and an umbrella in the other; and on her feet were a pair of serviceable black walking-shoes, with laces. Mrs Dean, running experienced eyes over her correctly deduced that the frumpish fur coat, which made her look shorter and fatter than ever, was made of rabbit, dyed to resemble musquash.

‘Ah!’ cried Joseph, jumping up. ‘Here is my wife! Maud, this is dear little Valerie’s mother!’

Maud tucked her umbrella under one arm, and extended a nerveless hand. ‘How-do-you-do?’ she said, politely unenthusiastic. ‘I am just on my way to church, but Joseph will see to everything.’

Joseph, Mathilda, and Paula had all assumed, on Mrs Dean’s arrival, that Maud would abandon her expedition to church, but Maud, although she listened to their representations, had no such intention. To Joseph’s plea that she should bear in mind her duties as hostess, she replied that she did not consider herself to be a hostess.