"You don't want to worry about what you say to me," said the Inspector. "I daresay it's a relief to be able to get it off your chest. I can see you've been through a lot."
"I must say, I think you're frightfully decent!" she said. "It's been sheer hell ever since Mr. Herriard was killed; and that other Inspector was too brutal for words! - I mean, absolute Third Degree! All about Stephen's filthy cigarette-case!"
"I'm surprised at Inspector Colwall!" said Hemingway truthfully. "What did you happen to do with the case, if you don't mind my asking?"
"I didn't do anything with it. I mean, I simply took a cigarette out of it, and put the case down on the table in the drawing-room, and never thought of it again until all this loathsome fuss started. Only Mathilda Clare - who's quite the ugliest woman I've ever laid eyes on - practically accused me of having had the case all the time. Of course, she was simply out to protect Stephen, Willoughby says. Because Mr. Mottisfont said, who was likely to pick up the case except Stephen himself? which is perfectly true, of course. And if you ask me, Mathilda Clare deliberately tried to throw the blame on to me because she knew Mr. Herriard didn't like me!"
"Now that's a thing I can't believe!" said the Inspector gallantly.
"No; but he didn't, all the same. In fact, that's why I came here. It was my mother's idea, actually, that I should have a chance to get to know Mr. Herriard. Personally I think he was a woman-hater."
"If he didn't like you, he must have been. Didn't he want his nephew to marry you?"
"Well, no, as a matter of fact he didn't. Only I feel sure I could have got round him, if only Stephen hadn't made everything worse by annoying him over something or other. Of course, that's just like Stephen! He would! I did try to make him be sensible, because Uncle Joe dropped a word in my ear, but it was no use."
"What sort of a word?" asked Hemingway.
"Oh, about Mr. Herriard's will! He didn't actually say everything was left to Stephen, but I sort of gathered it."
"I see. Did you tell Mr. Stephen?"
"Yes; but he only laughed, and said he didn't care."
"He seems to be a difficult kind of young man to have to do with," said Hemingway.
She sighed. "Yes, and I don't really - Oh well! Only I wish I'd never come here!"
"I'm sure I don't blame you," said Hemingway, wondering how to get rid of her, now that he had extracted the information he wanted.
This problem was solved for him by Mathilda, who came into the hall at that moment from the passage leading to the billiard-room. Valerie flushed guiltily, and ran upstairs. Mathilda's cool, shrewd gaze followed her, and returned, enquiringly, to the Inspector's face. "I seem to have scared Miss Dean," she remarked, strolling across the hall towards him. "Was she being indiscreet?"
He was slightly taken aback, but hid it creditably. "Not at all. We've just been having a pleasant little chat," he replied.
"I can readily imagine it," Mathilda said.
Chapter Thirteen
While these various encounters had been taking place, Mrs. Dean had been usefully employing her time in conversation with Edgar Mottisfont. Like Valerie, he too was suffering from a sense of wrong, and it did not take Mrs. Dean long to induce him to confide in her. The picture he painted of Stephen's character was not flattering, nor did his account of the circumstances leading up to the murder lead her to look hopefully upon the outcome of the police investigation. Really, the case seemed to be much blacker against Stephen than Joseph's story had led her to suppose. She began to look rather thoughtful, and when Mottisfont told her bluntly that if he were Valerie's father he would not let her marry such a fellow, she said vaguely that nothing had been settled, and Valerie was full young to be thinking of marriage.
It was really a very awkward situation for a conscientious parent to find herself in. No one had informed her of the actual size of Nathaniel Herriard's fortune, but she assumed it to be considerable, and it was a wellknown fact that rich young men were not easily encountered in these hard times. But if Stephen should be convicted of having murdered his uncle, as seemed to be all too probable, the money would never come to him, and Valerie would reap nothing but the obvious disadvantages of having been betrothed to a murderer.
While Mottisfont talked, and her own lips formed civil replies, her mind was busy over the problem. Not even to herself would she admit that she had jockeyed Stephen into proposing to Valerie, but she had not spent several hours at Lexham without realising that his brief infatuation had worn itself out. She would not put it beyond Stephen, she thought, to jilt Valerie, if he were not first arrested for murder. The trouble was that although Valerie was as pretty as a picture she lacked the intelligence to hold the interest of a man of Stephen's type. Mrs. Dean faced that truth unflinchingly. The child hadn't enough sense to see on which side her bread was buttered. She demanded flattery, and assiduous attentions, and if she did not get them from her betrothed she would be quite capable of throwing him over in a fit of pique.
When, shortly before teatime, Mrs. Dean went up to her room, she was still thinking deeply; and when she heard her daughter's voice raised outside her door in an exchange of badinage with Roydon, she called her into the room, and asked her if she had been with Stephen all the afternoon.
"No, and I don't know where he is," said Valerie, studying her reflection in the mirror. "Probably getting off with Mathilda Clare. I've had a simply foul afternoon, doing nothing, except for listening to Paula reciting bits of Willoughby's play, and talking to the Inspector."
"Talking to the Inspector? What did he want?" demanded Mrs. Dean.
"Oh, nothing much! I must say, he was a lot more human than I'd expected. I mean, he absolutely understood about the hateful position I'm in."
"Did he ask you any questions?"
"Yes, about what I did with Stephen's mouldy cigarette-case, but not a bit like that other one did. He didn't disbelieve every word I said, for instance, or try to bully me."
Mrs. Dean at once felt that Inspector Hemingway was a man to beware of, and set herself to discover just what information he had extracted from her daughter. By the time she had elicited from Valerie a more or less accurate description of her conversation with him, she was looking more thoughtful than ever. There could be no doubt that the Inspector's suspicions were centred on Stephen, and, taking the terms of Nathaniel Herriard's will and the damning evidence of the cigarette-case into account, there seemed to be little chance of his escaping arrest.
She was a woman who prided herself on her power of making quick decisions, and she made one now. "You know, darling," she said, "I don't feel quite at ease about this engagement of yours."
Valerie stopped decorating her mouth to stare in astonishment at her parent. "Why, it was you who were so keen on it!" she exclaimed.
"That was when I thought it was going to be for your happiness," said Mrs. Dean firmly. "All Mother cares about is her little girl's happiness."
"Well, I must say I've utterly gone off the idea of marrying him," said Valerie. "I mean, money isn't everything, is it? and anyway, I always did like Jerry Tintern better than Stephen, and you can't call him a pauper, can you? Only I don't see how I can get out of it now, do you? It would look rather lousy of me if I broke it off just when he's in a jam, and it would be bound to get about, and people might think I was a foul sort of person."
This admirable, if inelegantly phrased, piece of reasoning almost led Mrs. Dean to hope that her daughter was acquiring a modicum of sense. She said briskly: "No, pet, it would never do for you to jilt Stephen; but I am sure he will understand if I explain to him that as things are now I cannot allow my baby to be engaged to him. After all, he is a gentleman!"