"Then I take it that it wasn't you who ascertained that the bathroom door also was locked?"
"Stephen saw to everything," Joseph said. "I don't know where I should have been without him!"
The Inspector, who was fast coming to the conclusion that no one at the Manor, including himself, would be in the present predicament but for the activities of Mr. Stephen Herriard, agreed heartily, and said that he would not trouble Joseph any further. Then he went off to find Ford.
Ford, twice questioned by the police already, was nervous, and inclined to be sullen, but when he was asked if he had tried the bathroom door in his efforts to get into his master's room on the previous evening, he replied readily that he had, and that it had been locked. Paula, interrupted in the middle of a discussion with Roydon on the advisability of rewriting a part of the second act of Wormwood, said impatiently that of course she had not tried the bathroom door, and turned her shoulder to the Inspector. He withdrew, and was fortunate enough to encounter Valerie, crossing the hall towards the staircase. She gave a start on seeing him, and eyed him with mingled trepidation and suspicion.
"You're just the person I was waiting to see, miss," said Hemingway pleasantly.
"It's no use: I don't know anything about it!" Valerie assured him.
"No, I don't suppose you do," he replied, surprising her exactly as he had meant to. "It isn't likely a young lady like you would be mixed up in a murder."
She gave an audible sigh of relief, but still watched him suspiciously. Correctly divining that she would not object to familiarity, if it were judiciously mixed with flattery, he said: "If you don't mind my saying so, miss, it's a bit of a surprise to me to find anyone like you here."
She responded instinctively. "I don't know what you mean! Do you think I'm so extraordinary?"
"Well, it isn't every day of the week that I meet a beautiful young lady, all in the way of business," said the Inspector unblushingly.