"I admit that he's a bit trying. It's a depressing reflection that overflowing affection should arouse the worst in normal breasts. If you come to think of it, it's all his fault. The ghastly result of good intentions! If it hadn't been for Joseph, I don't suppose Nat would have made his will, and I'm sure he wouldn't have thrown this party. But for him, Valerie wouldn't have known that you were the heir, and Roydon wouldn't have maddened Nat by reading his play to him. Trivial circumstances, whose appalling consequences no one could have foreseen, and all, by a fiendish turn of fate, combining to put you on the spot! It's enough to make one turn cynic! But they haven't anything like enough on you yet, Stephen!"
Oddly enough, Inspector Hemingway had reached much the same conclusion, although he did not share Mathilda's unreasoning faith in Stephen. He had found him very much on his guard during his brief interview with him, and although he realised that this was understandable, it did not prejudice him in Stephen's favour. Stephen was reticent, and he weighed every question before answering it. The Inspector, not a bad judge of men, thought him remarkably cold-blooded, and was inclined to the opinion that of all the ill-assorted persons gathered together at Lexham, he was the one most capable of committing murder. But in spite of what certain of his superiors thought an unholy predilection for all the more turgid aspects of psychology, the Inspector was far too good a detective to allow his theories to run away with him. He might (and very often did) talk in the airiest fashion, advancing opinions wholly unsubstantiated by fact, and indulging flights of the purest fantasy, but anyone rash enough to assume from this that he had attained his present position more by luck than solid worth would very soon have discovered that appearances, in Inspector Hemingway's case, were more than ordinarily deceptive.
He was profoundly dissatisfied with Stephen Herriard's evidence; he mistrusted the valet; and, in spite of being so far unable to prove it, still suspected that there might have been collusion between the two. With this in his mind, he had already dispatched Ford's finger-prints to London, and had obtained from him the names and addresses of his last two employers. These had been given so readily that it did not seem probable that this line of investigation would prove fruitful, but the Inspector was not the man to leave any stone unturned.
Questioned, Ford had stated that he had firmly shut all the windows in Nathaniel's bedroom on the previous afternoon, adding that he did so every day, the late Mr. Herriard having had no opinion of the beneficial effects of night-air. This was borne out by Sturry, who said that while he was quite unable to account for the activities of the valet or any of the housemaids, it was his rule to close all the sitting-room windows at five o'clock precisely throughout the winter. "Such," he said, "being the late Mr. Herriard's orders."
Hemingway accepted this statement, but bore in mind two distinct possibilities. If the valet had been Stephen's partner in crime, no reliance could be placed on the truth of his statements; if he had not, Stephen, who had left the drawing-room some time before Nathaniel, might have been able to have gone up to his uncle's room unobserved, and to have opened one of the windows there.
That it would have been impossible for anyone to havec climbed up to the windows without a ladder, the Inspector had already ascertained; it now remained to discover whether there was a ladder upon the premises.
He had told his Sergeant to find this out for him, and by the time he had brought his interview with Stephen to an end, Ware was waiting to report the result of his investigations to him.
"There's nothing of that sort in the house, sir: only a pair of housemaid's steps, and they wouldn't have reached, not anywhere near. But I snooped around the outhouses, like you told me, and I found one all right."
"Good!" said Hemingway. "Where is it?"
"Well, that's it, sir: I can't get at it. There's a disused stable near the garage, and the chauffeur tells me that the head-gardener keeps his tools in it, and such-like. Only he went off home yesterday at noon, and he won't be back till the day after tomorrow, and no one seems to know where he keeps the key. There's a small window, but that's bolted. I saw the ladder when I peered through it."