"You mean," said Valerie, slowly assimilating the gist of this, "that I can put the blame on to you?"
"There's no question of blame, my pet," said Mrs. Dean, abandoning hope of dawning intelligence in her first-born. "Merely Mother doesn't feel it right for you to be engaged to a man under a cloud."
"Oh, Mummy, how too Victorian! I don't mind about that part of it! The point is I don't really like Stephen, and I know he'd be a hellish husband."
"Now, you know Mother doesn't like to hear that sort of talk!" said Mrs. Dean repressively. "Just give Mother your ring, and leave it to her to do what's best!"
Valerie drew the ring somewhat regretfully from her finger, remarking with a sigh that she supposed she would have to return it to Stephen. "I rather loathe giving it back," she said. "If he says he'd like me to keep it, can I, Mummy?"
"One of these days I hope my little girl will have many rings, just as fine as this one," said Mrs. Dean, firmly removing the ring from Valerie's grasp.
Upon this elevated note the conversation came to an end. Valerie returned to the all-absorbing task of reddening her lips, and Mrs. Dean sallied forth in search of Stephen.
She was prepared to expend both tact and eloquence upon her delicate mission, but she found that neither was required. Stephen, looking almost benign, met her more than half-way. He wholeheartedly agreed that under the existing circumstances he had no right to expect a sensitive child to go on being engaged to him, cheerfully pocketed the ring, and acquiesced with maddening readiness in Mrs. Dean's hope that he and Valerie might remain good friends. In fact, he went further, announcing with a bland smile that he would be a brother to Valerie, a remark which convinced Mrs. Dean that, fortune or no fortune, he would have made a deplorable son-in-law.
She was not the woman to give way to indignation when it would clearly serve her interests better to control her spleen, and as she was obliged to remain at Lexham until the police saw fit to give Valerie permission to go, she came down to tea with her invincible smile on her lips, and only a steely light in her eyes to betray her inner feelings.
The news of the broken engagement had by that time spread through the house, and was received by the several members of the party with varying degrees of interest and emotion. Mottisfont said that he did not blame the girl; Roydon, who, in spite of writing grimly realistic plays, was a romantic at heart, was inclined to deplore such disloyalty in one so lovely; Paula said indifferently that she had never expected the engagement to come to anything; Maud greeted the tidings with apathy; Mathilda warmly congratulated Stephen; and Joseph, rising as usual to the occasion, insisted on regarding his nephew as one whose brave spirit had been shattered by treachery. When he encountered Stephen, he went towards him, and clasped one of his hands before Stephen could frustrate him, and said in a voice deepened by emotion: "My boy, what can I say to you?"
Stephen rightly understood the question to be rhetorical, and made no reply; and after squeezing his hand in a very feeling way, Joseph said: "She was never worthy of you! Nothing one can say can bring you comfort now, my poor boy, but you will find, as so many, many of us have found before you, that Time proves itself a great healer."
"Thanks very much," said Stephen, "but you are wasting your sympathy. In your own parlance, Valerie and I are agreed that we were never suited to one another."
If he entertained any hope of thus quelling Joseph's embarrassing partisanship he was speedily disillusioned, for Joseph at once smote him lightly on the shoulder, saying: "Ah, that's the way to take it, old man! Chin up!"
Mathilda, who was a witness of this scene, feared that Stephen would either be sick or fell his uncle to the ground, so she hastily intervened, saying that she thought both parties ought to be congratulated on their escape.
Joseph was quite equal to dealing with Mathilda. He smiled at her, and said gently: 'Ah, Tilda, there speaks one who has not known what it is to suffer!"
"Oh, do for God's sake put a sock in it!" said Stephen, in a sudden explosion of wrath.
Joseph was not in the least offended. "I know, old chap, I know!" he said. "One cannot bear to have one's wounds touched. Well! We must forget that there ever was a Valerie, and turn our faces to the morrow."
"As far as I am concerned," said Stephen, "the morrow will probably see my arrest on a charge of murder."
Mathilda found herself quite unable to speak, so horrible was it to hear her unexpressed fear put crudely into words. Joseph, however, said: "Hush, my boy! You are overwrought, and no wonder! We are not even going to consider such a frightful possibility."
"I have not had your advantages. I have not spent a lifetime learning to bury my head in the sand," said Stephen brutally.
Mathilda found her voice. "What makes you think that, Stephen? How can the police know who murdered Nat until they discover how anyone contrived to get into that room?
"You'd better ask them," he replied. "I shall be hanged by my own cigarette-case and Uncle Nat's will. Jolly, isn't it?"
"I will not believe it!" Joseph said. "The- police aren't such fools! It isn't possible that they could arrest you on such slender evidence!"
"Do you call a hundred and sixty thousand pounds or so slender evidence?" demanded Stephen. "I should call it a pretty strong motive myself."
"You knew nothing of that! Over and over again I've told them so!"
"Yes, my dear uncle, and if you had not previously told Valerie that I was the heir I daresay the Inspector might listen to you. As it is, I have just sustained a cross examination which leaves me with the conviction that not one word I said was believed."
"But you are still at large," Mathilda pointed out.
"Being given rope to hang myself, no doubt."
"Don't be absurd!" she said sharply. "I don't believe any of this! They'll have to find out how Nat was murdered behind locked doors before they can arrest you!"
"From the trend of the questions put to me," said Stephen, "I infer that I entered the room through one of the windows."
"But they were all shut!" Joseph said.
"A pity I didn't get you to verify that fact," said Stephen. "The police have only my word for it."
Joseph smote his brow with one clenched fist. "Fool that I was! But I never thought - never dreamed - Oh, if one could but look into the future!"
Maud, who came into the room at that moment, overheard this wish, and said: "I am sure it would be very uncomfortable. I once had my fortune told, and I remember that it quite upset me, for I was told that I should travel far across the seas, and I am not at all fond of foreign travel, besides suffering from sea-sickness."
"Well, that is a very valuable contribution to our discussion," said Stephen, with suspicious amiability. "On the whole I prefer the Empress."
At the sound of this word Maud's placid countenance clouded over a little. "It is a most extraordinary thing where that book can have got to," she said. "I am sure I have looked everywhere. However, the Inspector, who is a very civil and obliging man, has promised to keep his eyes open, so I daresay it will turn up."
Mathilda's ever-lively sense of humour overcame the gloom induced by Stephen's morbid prognostications, and she burst out laughing. "You haven't really told the Inspector to look for your book, have you?" she asked.
"After all, dear," said Maud mildly, "it is a detective's business to look for things."
"My dear, you shouldn't have taken up the Inspector's time with such a trivial matter!" said Joseph, a little shocked. "You must remember that he is engaged on far, far more important work."
Maud was unimpressed. Seating herself in her accustomed chair by the fire, she said: "I do not think that it will do anyone any good to know who killed Nat, Joe, for as he is dead there is nothing to be done about it, and it will only create a great deal of unpleasantness to pry into the affair. Like Hamlet," she added. "Simply upsetting things. But the Life of the Empress of Austria belongs to the lending library, and if it is lost I shall be obliged to pay for it. Besides, I hadn't finished it."