"I'd say he was all right. Very starchy he is, but not above putting his ear to keyholes. He doesn't like Mr. Stephen, but that's nothing. He's been some time with Mr. Herriard."
"Might be coming in for a legacy, of course," said the Chief Constable. "He'd hardly commit a murder for it, though. Not a man like Sturry. Besides -" He paused, frowning, and then said, shooting a look at Hemingway from under his brows: "Not the point. I told you this was the devil of a case, Inspector. The suspects aren't worrying me: it's how the deuce the murder was committed at all.
"What, you aren't going to tell me this is one of these locked-door cases you read about, sir?" exclaimed Hemingway incredulously.
"It is, just that. Now, you listen to the facts as we know them! Roydon read his play to the rest of the house-party after tea yesterday. It ended in a general row; the party split up, and went off upstairs to change for dinner, leaving Miss Clare in the library, and Joseph Herriard trying to smooth his brother down in the drawing-room. Nat then went up to his room, still furious. Miss Clare, who came out of the library just as he was going upstairs, heard him slam his bedroom door. She and Joseph then went up together. They were the last people except the murderer, of course - to see Nat alive. Some time between then, which must have been between seven thirty and eight, and when the party gathered in the drawing-room again for cocktails, Nat was stabbed to death in his bedroom. When he didn't join the party, Joseph went up to tell him they were all waiting for him. He found Ford outside Nat's door, pretty worried at getting no answer to his knocking. The door was locked, and when Ford and Stephen Herriard forced the lock, Nat was lying dead on the floor, with the windows latched securely, both the door into his bedroom and that from his bathroom on to the upper hall locked on the inside, and only the ventilator above the bathroom window open."
"What kind of a ventilator?" asked Hemingway.
"The ordinary sort, opening outwards, which you often get above a casement-window."
"Big enough for anyone to get in through it?"
The Chief Constable looked at Inspector Colwall, who said slowly: "Well; it is, and it isn't, if you take my meaning. A man would have to be pretty small to do it, and, what's more, he'd need to be clever. It isn't as though the room's on the ground-floor, you see. What with having to climb up to it, and then squirm in without making any noise - well, I don't see how it could have been done, I'm bound to confess. Nor I couldn't discover any signs of footprints on the sill, but you can't go by that entirely, for it was snowing hard all yesterday evening, and they might easily have been covered up."
"Any finger-prints?"
"Only on the insides of the windows, and they were Ford's, just as you'd expect. It was he who shut the windows after tea, and drew the curtains."