While Joseph bore the step-ladder away to safety in the billiard-room, Mathilda went back into the library to pick up her handbag. She had reached the top of the stairs before he overtook her, but he did overtake her, and, tucking a hand in her arm, said that he did not know what they would any of them do without her.
"No soft soap, thanks, Joe," replied Mathilda. "I'm not going to be the sacrifice."
"Sacrifice indeed! What an idea!" He lowered his voice, for they had reached the door of Nathaniel's room. "My dear, help me to save my poor party!"
"No one can save your party. You might do a bit towards it by removing all paper festoons and mistletoe from his outraged sight."
"Sh!" Joseph said, with an absurdly nervous glance towards Nathaniel's shut door. "You know Nat! That was only just his way. He doesn't really mind my decorations. I'm afraid the trouble is more difficult to deal with than that. To tell you the truth, Tilda, I wish Paula hadn't brought that young man here."
"We all wish that," said Mathilda, coming to a halt outside her own bedroom. "But don't you worry, Joe! He may have added to Nat's annoyance, but he isn't the cause of it."
He sighed. "I did so hope that Nat would have taken to Valerie!"
"You're an incurable optimist."
"I know, I know, but one had to try to ease things for poor old Stephen! I must confess I am a little bit disappointed in Valerie. I've tried to make her realise just how things are, but - well, she doesn't co-operate, does she?"
"That, Joe, is meiosis," said Mathilda dryly.
"And now there's this bother with Mottisfont," he went on, a worried frown creasing his brow.
"What's he been up to?"
"Oh, my dear, don't ask me! You know what an impractical old fool I am about business! He seems to have done something that Nat very much disapproves of, but I don't know all the ins and outs of it. I only know what Mottisfont told me, which was really nothing but hints, and very mysterious. But there! Nat's bark is always worse than his bite, and I daresay it will all blow over. What we've got to do is to think of some way of keeping Nat in a good humour. I don't think this is quite the moment for me to approach him about Mottisfont's affairs."
Joe," said Mathilda earnestly, "you can count me out in your benevolent schemes, but I'll give you a piece of advice! Don't approach Nat about anyone's affairs!"
"They all look to me, you see," he said, with one of his whimsical smiles.
She supposed that he really did see himself as a general mediator, but she was feeling tired, and this resumption of his peacemaking role exasperated her. "I haven't noticed it!" she said.
He looked hurt, but nothing could seriously impair his vision of himself. A couple of minutes later, Mathilda, turning on the taps in the bathroom they both shared, could hear him humming to himself in his dressingroom. He hummed the first few phrases of an old ballad inaccurately and incessantly, and Mathilda, who had an ear for music, thumped on the door leading from the bathroom to his dressing-room, and begged him either to learn the ditty or to gag himself. Then she was sorry, because, finding that by raising his voice a trifle he could easily converse with her, he became very chatty, and favoured her with some sentimental reminiscences of his careless youth. Occasionally he would interrupt himself to ask her if she was listening, but he did not seem to need the stimulus of intelligent comment, and, indeed, went on talking happily for quite some time after she had left the bathroom. However, he was not at all offended by the discovery that for quite ten minutes his conversation had reached her only as an indistinguishable burble of sound, but laughed good-humouredly, and said, Alas, he found himself living very much in the past nowadays, and feared he must be turning into a dreadful old bore. After that he returned to his Victorian ballad, alternately humming and singing it until Mathilda began to nourish thoughts of homicide.
She called out to him: "Are you sure you never appeared in Grand Opera, Joe? What a Siegfried you'd have made! Figure and all!"
"Naughty, naughty!" he replied, with an archness which made her understand Stephen's brutality to him. "Tilda dear, are you dressed yet?"
"Nearly. Why?"
"Don't go down without me! I've got an idea!"
"You're not laying your head together with mine, Joe: don't think it!"
He only laughed at this, but he must have kept an ear cocked, for when she opened her door a few minutes later, he instantly emerged from his room, rubbing his hands together, and saying gleefully: "Ah, you can't fox your old uncle, you bad girl!"
"Let me point out to you, Joe, that you're not my uncle, and that even my best friends don't call me a girl."
He linked arms with her. "Wasn't it the Immortal Bard who wrote, To me, dearfriend,you never can be old?"
Mathilda closed her eyes for an anguished moment. "If we are going to quote at one another, I warn you, you'll come off the worst!" she said. "I know a song which runs, Your parents missed a golden opportunity: They should of course have drowned you in a bucket as a child."
He squeezed her arm, chuckling. "Oh, that tongue of yours, Tilda! Never mind! I don't care a bit! not a little bit! Now, just you listen to the plan I've made! You're going to play Piquet with Nat after dinner."
"Not on your life."
"Yes, yes, you are! I had thought of Bridge again, but that would mean Mottisfont, and he doesn't seem to be a very strong player, and you know how seriously Nat takes his game! And then I suddenly remembered those grand battles you and he had the last time you stayed here, and how much he enjoyed them. I suggest that after dinner you should challenge Nat to a rubber, while I keep the others amused in the billiard-room. Charades or Clumps, or one of those other good, old-fashioned round games."
"If the choice lies between Piquet and a good, old fashioned round game, you've sold your idea, Joe. I'll co-operate."
He beamed with gratitude, and might, she felt, have patted her on the back had they not by this time reached the drawing-room.
Neither Stephen nor Mottisfont had as yet come downstairs, but the other three guests had assembled, and were standing about, drinking cocktails, while Maud, who said that she never touched spirits, was hunting ineffectively for the Life of the Empress, which she remembered having laid down somewhere, though she wasn't sure where. She rather unwisely asked Paula if she had seen it, and Paula, who was wrapped in gloomy reflection, came to earth with a start, and a gesture of insupportable irritation.
"I?" she said. "What, in God's name, should I want with your book?"
"I only wondered, dear," said Maud mildly. "I remember having it here after lunch. Or did I take it up with me when I went for my rest?"
Paula threw her an exasperated glance, and began to pace about the room, once more wrapped in her dark thoughts.
Valerie, after making several vain attempts to flirt with Roydon, who seemed as dejected as Paula, flounced over to the fire, looking sulky. Here Joseph joined her, paying her a few fulsome compliments, and really doing his best, Mathilda thought, to entertain her.
But Valerie did not want to flirt with Joseph; Valerie was finding the party very dull, and since she did not belong to a generation trained to be polite to its elders she snubbed Joseph, and told Maud that she hadn't seen her book and wouldn't know it from another if she did see it.
Roydon brought a cocktail to Mathilda, and lingered undecidedly beside her. After a few desultory remarks, he suddenly said in a burst of confidence: "I've been thinking over what you've said, and I've come to the conclusion you're right. I shall try it out again. After all, I haven't tried Henry Stafford. He might like it. He put on Fevered Night, you know, and it only ran for a week. I shan't bother about backers any more. You're quite right: the play is strong enough to stand on its own legs."
Mathilda could not recall having made such a statement, but she was glad that Roydon, who, so short a time since, had been in despair over Nathaniel's refusal to back his play, had recovered his optimism, and she cordially applauded his decision. Edgar Mottisfont then came in, saying that he hoped he hadn't been keeping everyone waiting, and was chatty, in a determined way, until Joseph asked him if he had seen Nat or Stephen. This seemed to bring the memory of his interview with Nathaniel unpleasantly to mind, and he said No, he hadn't seen either of them, and relapsed into a depressed silence.
Stephen lounged in a few minutes later, similarly taciturn, and everybody glanced at the clock, and wished that Nathaniel would hurry up.
At half-past eight, Sturry appeared to announce dinner, saw that his master was not present, and went away again, looking affronted. Joseph said hopefully that he was sure Nat would be down in a minute, but when ten minutes had elapsed, he said that Nat must have forgotten the time, and suggested to Stephen that he should go upstairs to fetch his uncle down.
Stephen was pouring himself out another glass of sherry, and replied with his customary brusqueness that if Joe was so anxious for Nat's presence he had better go and fetch him for himself.
"Come, come, Stephen!" said Mottisfont. "Not very civil of you, eh, my boy?"
"Oh, I don't pay any heed to that old bear of a nephew of mine!" Joseph said sunnily. "Stephen and I understand one another. Paula dear, suppose you were just to run up, and tap on your uncle's door?"
"No, thank you!" Paula said, with an angry little laugh. "I've already tried that, because I wanted to speak to him, but he wouldn't even answer."
Stephen grinned. "No flies on Uncle Nat. Let's go in to dinner."
Valerie looked as though Nathaniel's absence from his board would be a relief to her, but said: "Oh, but we can't, without Mr. Herriard, can we?"
"What a nice sense of convention you have, my pretty!" said Stephen.
"You're a set of lazybones!" Joseph told them. "I see I shall have to trot up myself."
"I didn't phrase it quite like that, but you've interpreted my meaning correctly," said Stephen.
Paula gave an unwilling laugh, but said, as Joseph left the room: "You're in a sweet mood, brother!"
"Matching yours, sister," he replied, smiling at her with an amiability belied by his shut teeth.
"I think I'm suffering from an overdose of Herriard," said Mathilda.
Maud, who had abandoned the search for her book, and was seated in her usual place beside the fire, looked up fleetingly from Stephen and his sister to Mathilda. Her face was expressionless, but she moved her plump little hands, clasping them in her lap rather tightly.
"I wonder how you stand it, Maud," Mathilda said.
"I'm used to it, dear," Maud replied.
Joseph's voice was heard calling to Stephen from the head of the stairs. "Stephen, old chap, just come here a minute, will you?"
Edgar Mottisfont said: "Oh dear! I hope nothing's wrong!"
"What should be wrong?" said Stephen, strolling to the door. "What do you want, Joe?"
"Come up, my boy, will you?"
He shrugged, and went out.
"What can be the matter?" wondered Valerie. "Do you suppose Mr. Herriard's ill, or something?"
"Why? Why should he be? He was perfectly well when I saw him last," said Mottisfont.
"My lumbago," murmured Mathilda.
Stephen, leisurely mounting the stairs, found Joseph, and Nathaniel's valet, Ford, standing outside Nathaniel's door. They both looked worried. Stephen said, "Well, what's wrong?"
"Stephen, my boy, I don't quite like it," Joseph replied. "Nat doesn't answer my knock and Ford tells me he didn't answer his, half an hour ago."
"So what?" retorted Stephen. "Perhaps he's fed up with the human race, and who shall blame him?"
"Don't joke, old chap! I'm afraid something must be wrong. I think we ought to break down the door."
"There isn't a sound to be heard, sir," Ford said, his ear to the crack. "I've called repeatedly, Mr. Stephen." Stephen raised his brows. "Oh? Uncle Nat! Uncle Nat, are you all right?"
There was no answer. Frowning, Stephen set his shoulder to the door. Under the combined efforts of himself and Ford, the lock burst at last, and both men were precipitated into the room.
It was a large, wainscoted apartment, with a fourposter bed, and heavy black oak furniture. The curtains had been drawn across the windows, and the lights were turned on. A red fire glowed in the hearth, and not far from it, beside a ladder-back chair, Nathaniel Herriard lay on the floor, with his head on his arm, as though asleep.
"Good God, he must have fainted!" Stephen exclaimed, striding forward, and dropping to his knees beside Nathaniel. "Get some brandy, Ford! Don't stand there staring!"
Joseph came bustling up in a twitter of concern. "Oh dear, how can this have happened? Nat, old man, Nat!"
"It's no use yapping at him," Stephen said, looking rather white. "He's dead."
"Stephen!" gasped Joseph. "Dead. Nonsense! He can't be! He's fainted, that's all!"
Stephen rose from his knees. "Feel him," he said crudely.
"No, no, no, I won't believe it!" Joseph stammered, in his turn kneeling beside Nathaniel's body, and picking up one of his lifeless hands. "Fetch a mirror! If we hold it in front of his lips -"
"You fool, can't you see he's dead?" Stephen snapped.
Joseph gave a moan, and began distractedly to chafe the hand he held. "But how could he be? He wasn't ill, Stephen! Nat, my dear Nat!"
"I don't know. Stroke, I suppose. What do we do now?"
"A doctor, quickly! No, no, he can't be dead!"
"Yes, I suppose we ought to send for a doctor," Stephen said, his voice jumpy under its studied nonchalance. "Ford had better ring up. Cheerful Christmas party, yours, Joe."
"Don't!" Joseph begged, in broken tones.
The valet came hurrying back into the room with the brandy decanter, and a glass, but was checked on the threshold by Stephen, who said: "That won't be wanted. He's dead. Go and ring up his doctor, will you?"
"Dead, sir?" said Ford, turning a sickly colour. "Not the master, Mr. Stephen?"
"Who else, fool? On second thoughts, you can give me that brandy. Go and get hold of a doctor, and be quick about it, see?"
"Ford!" Joseph said, in a strangled voice. "Say nothing of this to anyone!"
"Why not?" demanded Stephen. "They've got to know. Not proposing to carry on with your blasted festivities, are you?"
"Stephen, Stephen, you are in the presence of death!"
"That's what I told you," Stephen replied hardly, pouring himself out some brandy. "Unnerving, isn't it?"
"Go, Ford!" Joseph said. "Just tell Dr Stoke that Mr. Herriard has met with an accident, and beg him to come at once!"
"Why the euphemism?" enquired Stephen, as the stricken valet withdrew.
Joseph said, hushed: "Come here a moment, my boy. It wasn't a stroke. Oh, my God, Stephen, Nat has been murdered!"
"Have you gone mad?" Stephen demanded, the brandy half-way to his lips.
"Look!" said Joseph, holding up his hand.
The palm of it was stained with blood. Stephen set down his glass with a jarring sound on the mantelpiece, and came back to Nathaniel's body. "How - ? Where - ? What the devil are you driving at?"
Joseph dragged his handkerchief from his pocket, and passed it over his face. "I was trying to straighten him," he said unsteadily. "I felt something sticky on his back. He's been stabbed, Stephen! My brother Nat!"
"Damn it, he was in here with the door locked!" Stephen said. "He can't have been stabbed!"
"Look!" Joseph said, averting his face. "You must forgive me, but I can't. Stupid of me, but I can't. Not again!"
"The brandy's on the table," Stephen said, turning Nathaniel's body on to its face. "My God, you're right!"
Joseph rose from his knees, tottered to the table, and sank into a chair by it, dropping his head in his hands, and groaning. Nathaniel's coat, over the lower lumbar region, was sticky with congealing blood. There was a slit in the material, clotted round the edges with blood. Stephen said curtly: "He must have bled internally. Hardly any outside. Now we are in a mess!"
"It doesn't seem possible! I can't believe it! Nat, of all people!"
"Here, have some brandy!" Stephen said, fetching his glass from the mantelpiece.
Joseph gulped down the neat spirit, and achieved a wan smile. "Yes, yes, we must be calm! We must try to think. This is a terrible business, Stephen. One's brain seems to be numb. Those young people downstairs, making merry in their innocence, while here, in this room, you and I confront -"
"Can it!" said Stephen brutally. "Merriment is not the predominant note of this sanguinary party, and you know it! And as for innocence - I wonder who the devil did this?"
This reflection seemed to pull Joseph together. He sat up, and gave a gasp. "One had not thought of that! I suppose the shock of it - Stephen, this is appalling! Who could have done so terrible a thing?"
Stephen walked over to the windows, and twitched the curtains apart. After a brief inspection, he turned, and said: "Do you realise that the door was locked, and every window shut?"
Joseph, who was wandering about the room in a distracted way, blinked at him. "The bathroom! That's how the murderer must have got in!"
Stephen's eyes went swiftly to the door leading into the bathroom. It stood ajar, and a light showed beyond it. He walked into the room. A bath had been prepared for Nathaniel; his towels were laid over the hot rail; the bathmat had been spread on the floor. The door was locked, and only the ventilator above the casement window was open.
"That door's locked too," Stephen said, returning to the bedroom. "Work that out, if you can!"
"The door locked?"Joseph said blankly. "Are you sure, Stephen?"
"Of course I'm sure!"
Ford came back into the room. "The doctor will be round immediately, sir. And Miss Paula's coming up, sir. I couldn't stop her. Well, I didn't rightly know what to say, Mr. Joseph."
"Stephen, this is no sight for a woman!" Joseph exclaimed. "She mustn't come in!"
Stephen threw him a contemptuous glance, and made no movement to intercept his sister's entrance.
Paula came in in her usual tempestuous way, saying: "What is it? Why don't you come down? What is all the mystery?"
"That will be a puzzle for the police," replied Stephen.
She saw Nathaniel's body, and her eyes narrowed. She stood staring down at it for a moment, growing a little pale, and then asked in a tight voice: "Is he dead?"
"Oh yes!" Stephen answered. "What killed him?"
"You have the wrong word. Not what: who."
She looked at him, something hard and anxious in her eyes. "Was he murdered, then?"
"Stabbed in the back."
She shuddered. "How horrible! How horrible!"
There was a silence. Joseph broke it. "You oughtn't to be here, Paula," he said feebly.
"Why not?"
"Dewy girlhood," Stephen explained.
"Oh!" She hunched a scornful shoulder. "What are we to do?"
"I suppose we ought to notify the police. In fact, I may as well do so at once," Stephen said, moving to the door.
"On Christmas Eve!" Joseph groaned, as though he found this an added torture. "Oh, Paula, Paula!"
She flashed round upon him. "Why do you say that? Do you suppose I had anything to do with this?"
"Oh, my dear, no!" he said, shocked. "Of course you didn't!"
"Who did? Have you any idea?"
"I can't think, my dear. It's too hideous! I try to realise it, to pull myself together -"
"This house! This wicked, horrible house!" She burst out, looking wildly round. "You laughed at me when I told you it was evil!"
"My dear, you're overwrought!" he said, looking somewhat taken aback. "The house can't have killed poor Nat!"
"Its influence! Acting on us all, impelling one of us -"
"Hush, Paula, hush!" he said. "That's nonsense! There, my poor child, there! Come away! It isn't fit for you to be here." He put his arm round her, and felt how tense she was, yet trembling a little.
"It wasn't one of us," she said, speaking with difficulty. "It couldn't have been. Someone through the window - robbery, perhaps. The door was locked!"
"Paula dear, did Ford tell you that?"
"I knew it! I tried to get in, before I went downstairs! He wouldn't answer when I knocked."
"Oh, Paula, why didn't you tell us?" he exclaimed.
"I didn't think anything of it. Only that he was sulking. We'd had a row. You know what he was! Besides, I did tell you, when you asked me to go up and call him."
"Too late!" he said tragically.
"It must always have been. I suppose he was dead when I knocked on the door."
He winced. "Paula dear, not that hard voice!"
There was a look of Stephen in her face as she answered: "It's no use expecting me to sentimentalise. I'm honest, anyway. I didn't like him. I don't even care that he's dead. He was mean and tyrannical."
This was very shocking to Joseph. He looked really pained, and rather anxious too, and said: "We mustn't let ourselves become hysterical, Paula. You don't mean that. No, no, your old uncle knows you better than that!"
She shrugged. "I hate being idealised."
He took one of her thin hands, and fondled it. "Gently, my dear, gently! We must keep our heads, you know."
She understood this to mean that she must keep hers, and said: "You mean that the police will think I did this, because of my quarrel with him? All right! Let them!"
"No, my dear, they could never suspect a girl of your age, I feel sure. But don't talk unkindly of poor Nat! And, Paula! try to make Stephen guard his tongue too! We know how little that manner of his means, but others don't, and some of the things he says - only for effect, the silly fellow! but I dread his doing it before the police! Oh dear, I never thought when I planned this party that it would end like this. I meant it all to be so jolly and happy!"
"We'd better go downstairs," she said abruptly.
He heaved a sigh. "I suppose it's foolish of me, but I don't like to leave him here alone."
It was plain from her expression that she thought this very foolish, so after looking down at Nathaniel's body for a moment he accompanied her out of the room, saying in a melancholy tone: "My last leave-taking! Perhaps it will not be for so long, after all."
Ford was standing at the head of the stairs, conversing in whispers with one of the housemaids. The girl, after the manner of her kind, was torn between excitement and a conventional impulse to burst into tears. She scuttled away when she saw Joseph. Paula flushed, and said through her teeth: "Gossip already! That's what we shall have to face!"
Joseph pressed her arm admonishingly, told the valet to mount guard over Nathaniel's bedroom, and escorted his niece downstairs. "Stephen will have broken the terrible news to them by now," he said.
Stephen had indeed performed this office. Having notified the local police-station, five miles distant, he had walked into the drawing-room, where the rest of the party was still assembled, in varying degrees of impatience and uneasiness, and had said at his most sardonic: "No use waiting for Uncle Nat. As you've no doubt guessed, he's dead."
"Dead?" Mathilda exclaimed, after a moment's stupefied silence. "Are you joking?"
"I am not. To put it plainly, someone stuck a knife in his back."
Valerie gave a scream, and clutched at the nearest support, which happened to be Roydon's arm. He paid no heed to her, but stood staring at Stephen, with his jaw dropping.
Mottisfont said in an angry, querulous tone: "I don't believe it! This is one of your mistaken ideas of humour, Stephen, and I don't like it!"
Maud's hands were still clasped in her lap. She sat still, a plump, upright little figure, with a rigid back. Her pale eyes studied Stephen, travelled on to Mottisfont, to Roydon, to Valerie, and sank again.
"It's true?" Mathilda said stupidly.
"Unfortunately for us, quite true."
"You mean he's been murdered," said Roydon, as though the words stuck in his throat.
"Oh no! I can't bear it!" Valerie whimpered. "It's too ghastly!"
Mottisfont passed a hand across his mouth. He asked in a voice which he tried hard to keep level: "Who did it?"
"I've no idea," Stephen replied. He took a cigarette from the box on the table, and lit it. "Interesting problem, isn't it?" he drawled.