"Yes, but I think I shelved the question. I gave them the name of Nat's solicitor."
"Do you suppose that the will is in his charge?"
"I don't know," he said reluctantly. "If it isn't, I shall have to say where I think it might be. I mean, I can't do Stephen out of his inheritance, can I? Besides, they'd be bound to find it sooner or later. I don't know what to do for the best."
Mathilda felt strongly inclined to advise him not to meddle, but she refrained. He said: "I wish you'd exert your influence, Tilda! Don't let him alienate the police through sheer perversity! He won't listen to me."
"I expect he knows his own business best," she said shortly. "In any event, I have no influence over him."
"Sometimes I fear that no one has," said Joseph, with one of his gusty sighs. "It's as though he was born cussed! Now, what in the world can have possessed him to hide poor Maud's book? That's the sort of silly, schoolboy mischief that puts people against him so!"
Mathilda thought that anyone less schoolboyish or mischievous than Stephen would have been hard to find, but she merely observed that Stephen denied all knowledge of the book's whereabouts.
"Oh well, perhaps I'm wronging him!" said Joseph, visibly brightening. "Anyway, it doesn't seem to be in this room."
They returned to the library, their arrival synchronising with that of Valerie, who had apparently derived some benefit from a protracted and expensive telephone-call to her mother. She announced that Mummy was coming down to Lexham on the following day.
"Oh, my God!" said Stephen audibly.