Sturry came back into the room to announce dinner. The quarrel petered out; and Nathaniel's guests filed out of the room in depressed silence.
Sturry had swept away the knives and forks from Nathaniel's place at the head of the table. This vacancy struck everyone immediately, and brought his death suddenly and foolishly nearer. Joseph was inspired to exclaim: "It will seem strange to me, and melancholy, to see another in Nat's place. It must come: I know it, and I shall accept it bravely, but I can't help feeling glad that for just this one evening I see only Nat's empty chair."
No comment seemed to be required; indeed, it would have been impossible for anyone except Stephen, Mathilda reflected, to have made any. Half expecting him to utter some blistering remark, she glanced across the table towards him. A wryness about his mouth informed her that the tactlessness of the reminder had not gone unobserved, but he gave no other sign of having heard Joseph.
Joseph whispered: "Help me, Tilda! We must be natural! We must try not to let this horror get on top of us."
What he hoped she might be able to do she had no idea. An attempt to inaugurate a conversation upon any offer subject than Nathaniel's death would be regarded as callous, and must fail. She began to drink her soup, ignoring Joseph.
Valerie, growing momently more temperamental, refused soup, saying that it seemed awful to be sitting at dinner with Mr. Herriard dead upstairs.
"You don't drink soup because you think it's bad for your figure. You told us so," said Paula.
"Some people think a great deal of the Hay Diet," suddenly remarked Maud. "I daresay it is very good, though I myself have never had any trouble with my digestion. But Joseph has to be more careful. Rich food never agrees with him."
Sturry, who had been conferring with the footman in the doorway, approached Joseph's chair, and bent over it, murmuring bodingly: "Dr Stoke, sir."
Joseph leaned forward. "Stephen, my boy! The doctor!"
"You'd better take him up," said Stephen.
"You don't wish to be present? You have a right to be there."
"Thanks, not in the middle of dinner."
Joseph put back his chair, and rose, with what was felt to be a gallant attempt at a smile. "It shall be as you like, old fellow. I understand."
"I imagine you might."
"Hush! No bitter words tonight!" Joseph said, as he left the room.
He found the doctor in the hall, handing his coat and hat to the footman. "Stoke!" he said. "You know why you have been sent for? I needn't tell you."
"Herriard's man told me that there had been an accident to his master," the doctor replied. He looked narrowly at Joseph, and said in a sharper voice: "Nothing serious, I trust?"
Joseph made a hopeless gesture. "Dead!" he said.
"Dead!" The doctor was plainly startled. "Good God, what has happened?"
"A terrible thing, Stoke," Joseph said, shuddering. "I will take you to him."
"Is he in his own room?" Stoke asked, picking up his bag.
He was a spare, active man, and he ran up the broad stairs ahead of Joseph. Ford was sitting on a chair outside Nathaniel's door; the doctor glanced frowningly at him, and passed into the room. When he saw the position of Nathaniel's body, he went quickly up to it, and dropped on to his knees. The briefest of inspections convinced him that his patient was indeed dead; he looked up, as Joseph came into the room, and asked curtly: "The valet spoke of an accident. How did this happen?"
Joseph averted his eyes from Nathaniel's body, saying in a low tone: "Look at his back, Stoke!"
The doctor looked quickly down. Stephen had left Nathaniel lying much as he had found him, on his left side, exposing the little bloodstained rent in his coat.
There was a short silence; Joseph turned his back upon the doctor's activities, and gazed down into the dying embers in the grate.
The doctor rose from his knees. "I suppose you realise that this is a case of murder?" he said.
Joseph bowed his head.
"The police must be notified at once."
"It has already been done. They should be here any minute now."
"I will wait for them."
"It has been such a ghastly shock!" Joseph said, after an uncomfortable pause.
The doctor assented. He looked as though he too had suffered a shock.
"I suppose you don't know who - ?" he asked, leaving the sentence unfinished.
Joseph shook his head. "I almost feel I'd rather not know. If one could be sure he didn't suffer!"
"Oh, probably hardly at all!" Stoke said reassuringly.
"Thank you. It's a relief to know that. I suppose he must have died immediately."
"Well, within a very short time, anyway," conceded Stoke.
Joseph sighed, and relapsed into silence. This lasted until the arrival of a police inspector, with various satellites. Stephen brought them upstairs, and Joseph roused himself from his abstraction, greeting the Inspector, whom he knew, with a forced smile, and saying: "You know Dr Stoke, don't you?"
The room seemed suddenly to be overfull of people. Joseph confided to Stephen that it seemed a desecration. The police-surgeon and Dr Stoke conferred together over Nathaniel's body, and the Inspector, who looked as though he did not like being brought to a murder-case on Christmas Eve, began to ask questions.
"I can't tell you anything," Stephen said. "The last time I saw him alive was downstairs in the drawing-room, at about seven-thirty."
"I understand it was you who broke into the room, sir, and discovered the body?"
"His valet and I. Our finger-prints will be found all over the place."
"Mine too," Joseph said unhappily. "One doesn't think, when a thing like this happens."
The Inspector's eyes dwelled on the brandy decanter, and the glass beside it. Stephen said: "No. False scent. The brandy was brought to revive my uncle before we realised he was dead. I drank it."
"Very understandable, sir, I'm sure. When you came in, was the deceased lying as at present?"
"Not quite," Stephen said, after a moment's reflection. "He was rather more on his face, I think."
"I wonder if you would be so good, sir, as to replace the body as you found it?"
Stephen hesitated, distaste in his face. Joseph said pleadingly: "Inspector, this is terribly painful for my nephew! Surely -"
"Shut up!" Stephen said roughly, and went to Nathaniel's body, and arranged it. "More or less like that."
"Do you agree with that, sir?" the Inspector asked Joseph.
"Yes, yes!" Joseph said. "His head was on his arm. We never dreamed - we thought he had fainted!"
The Inspector nodded, and asked who slept in the next bedroom, which lay beyond Nathaniel's bathroom. He was told that it was a single spare-room which Roydon had been put into, and took a note of this. Having scrutinised the windows, both in the bedroom and in the bathroom, and looked meditatively at the halfopen ventilator, he ascertained that these had not been tampered with since the finding of Nathaniel's body, and at last suggested that further questions might best be answered in some other room.
Both Joseph and Stephen were glad to get away from the scene of the crime, and they led the Inspector downstairs to the morning-room, leaving the photographer, the finger-print experts, and the ambulance-men in possession.
The morning-room fire had been allowed to go out, and the room felt chilly. The Inspector said that it was of no consequence, and he would be obliged to question everyone in the house. Joseph gave a groan, and ejaculated: "Those poor young people! If they could have been spared this horror!"
The Inspector did not waste his breath answering this; he knew his duty, and he had no time to spare for irrelevancies. He should have been filling his children's stockings by right, not taking depositions at Lexham Manor. It wasn't as though the case was likely to do him much good, he reflected. He wasn't the Detective Inspector, but merely deputising for that gentleman, who was in bed with influenza. The Chief Constable, a nervous man, would be bound to call in Scotland Yard, he thought, and some smart London man would get all the credit for the case. He waited for Joseph to lower the hand with which he had covered his eyes before saying: "Now, sir, if you please! I understand you have a number of guests staying in the house? If I might have their names?"