"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 leveclass="underline" "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.
Chapter Six
His words were followed by a rather stunned silence. He smoked for a moment, looking round in malicious amusement at the various countenances turned towards him. It was impossible to read the thoughts behind them; they looked shut-in, suddenly guarded, even a little furtive. He said cordially: "Really, no one would know which was the actor amongst us! we're damned good, all of us."
Maud looked at him, expressionless, but said nothing. Edgar Mottisfont said angrily: "A remark - a remark in the worst of bad taste!"
"Herriard," Mathilda said succinctly.
Joseph came in with Paula. She looked pale, exchanged a glance with her brother, and asked him curtly for a cigarette. He put his hand in his pocket, withdrew it again, and nodded to the box on the table. Joseph had gone over to his wife, and had taken her hand in both of his. "My dear, we are bereaved indeed," he said, with a solemn depth of tone which made Mathilda feel an insane desire to giggle.
"Stephen says that Nathaniel has been murdered," Maud said calmly. "It seems very strange."
The inadequacy of this comment, although typical of Maud, momentarily robbed Joseph of the power to display deeper emotions. He looked disconcerted, and said that he could see that the shock had numbed her. The rest of the company perceived that whatever feelings of grief or of horror might inhabit Joseph's inmost soul he would not for long be able to resist the opportunity thus afforded him to seize the centre of a tragic stage. Already he was seeing himself, Mathilda thought, as the chief mourner, the brave mainstay of a stricken household.
Attention swerved away from him to Valerie. Fright had enlarged the pupils of her lovely eyes; her mouth drooped; she said in a soft waiclass="underline" "I wish I hadn't come! I want to go home!"
"But you can't go home," Stephen replied. "You'll be wanted by the police, like the rest of us."
Tears spangled her lashes. "Oh, Stephen, don't let them! I don't know anything! I can't be of any use, and I know Mummy would not like me to be here!"
"Nobody could possibly suspect you!" Roydon said, looking noble, and glaring at Stephen.
"My poor child!" Joseph said, creditably, everyone felt, in face of so much folly. "You must be brave, my dear, and calm. We must all be brave. Nat would have wished it.
A certain pensiveness descended upon the company, as each member of it pondered this pronouncement. Mathilda felt that Joseph would soon succeed in making them forget the real Nathaniel, and accept instead the figment of his rose-coloured imagination. She said: "What do we do now?"
"We have already sent for the doctor," Joseph said, with a glance of fellowship thrown in his nephew's direction. "There is nothing that we can do."
"We can have dinner," said Paula, brusquely putting into words the unworthy thought in more than one mind.
There was an outcry. Valerie said that it made her sick to think of eating; Mottisfont remarked that it was hardly the time to think of dinner.
"How much longer do you want to wait?" asked Stephen. "It's already past nine."
Mottisfont found Stephen so annoying that he could hardly keep his animosity out of his voice. Stephen made him feel a fool, and some evil genius always prompted him to follow up one ineptitude with another. He now said: "Surely none of us means to have dinner tonight!"
"Why not tonight, if we mean to eat tomorrow?" Stephen enquired. "When will it be decent for us to eat again?"
"You make a mock of everything!"
Joseph stepped forward, laying one hand on Stephen's shoulder, the other on Mottisfont's. "Oh, my dear people, hush!" he said gently. "Don't let us forget - don't let us allow our nerves to get the better of us!"
"I will ring the bell," said Maud, doing so.
"Have you sent for the police?" Paula asked her brother.
"We won't talk of that, dear child," said Joseph, with misplaced optimism.
Paula's words appeared to let loose pent-up excitement. Even Mathilda heard herself saying: "But who could it have possibly been?" In the middle of this valueless Babel, Sturry came in, his countenance schooled to an expression of rigid gloom. He stood by the door, a mute at the funeral.
"Ah, here is our good Sturry!" said Joseph, drawing him into the family circle by this affectionate address.
Sturry would not be so drawn. He stood immovable, despising people who did not know their places. "You rang, sir?" he asked frigidly.
"Yes, yes!" Joseph said. "You have heard the terrible news? I need not ask you!"
"No, sir. The news was conveyed to the Hall by Ford. I am extremely sorry to hear of the occurrence, sir."
"Ah, Sturry, you must feel it too! What a tragedy! What a terrible shock!"
"Indeed yes, sir," Sturry replied, conveying by these simple words some impression of the affront he had suffered. No one could feel that he would have engaged himself to wait on Nathaniel if he could have foreseen these vulgar events. It seemed reasonable to suppose that he would hand in his notice at the first opportunity.
A little damped, Joseph said: "You had better serve dinner. The master would not have wanted his guests to make any difference, would he?"
"Very good, sir," said Sturry, declining to give an opinion on this moot point.
He withdrew, but the shreds of his disapproval remained behind. Remembering the overwrought questions and exclamations which his entrance had interrupted, Nathaniel's guests felt uneasily that they had lapsed into bad form. Mottisfont cleared his throat, and remarked that one hardly knew what to do.
"I know!" Valerie said. "I mean, I've simply never dreamed of such a thing happening to me! Oh, Stephen, Mummy will be utterly furious! I do think I ought to go home!"
"The trains are very infrequent over Christmas," stated Maud. "And, of course, when there is snow they get held up.:
"Oh, I couldn't go by train!" Valerie said. "Stephen brought me in his car."
"Sorry," said Stephen. "I can't leave."
"But, Stephen, you could come back, couldn't you? I don't want to be a nuisance, or anything, but actually my nerves aren't awfully strong, and the least little thing like this upsets me for weeks! Literally!"
He returned no answer. His look of derision had given place to one of strain; even her absurdity failed to conjure up his familiar mocking devil. It was left for Roydon to respond to her. "I wish I could take you home," he said. "I can see you're one of those tremendously highly-strung people whose awareness is almost hyper-acute."
"Actually, Mummy says I simply live on my nerves," Valerie confided.
"You haven't a nerve in your whole insensate body!" said Paula, with shattering effect.
Valerie had never sustained such an insult in her life. She flushed poppy-red; her eyes flashed becomingly, and it seemed as though the tension was to be relieved by a very satisfying exchange of personalities between the two ladies.