Envious Casca Read online

  ‘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.

  She giggled. ‘Good gracious, I didn’t know that policemen paid one compliments!’

  ‘They don’t often get the chance,’ answered Hemingway. ‘You’re engaged to be married to Mr Stephen Herriard, aren’t you, miss?’

  This brought a cloud to her brow. ‘Yes, in a way I suppose I am,’ she admitted.

  ‘You don’t sound very sure about it!’ he said, cocking an intelligent eyebrow.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know! Only I never thought a thing like this would happen. It sort of changes everything. Besides, I utterly loathe this house, and Stephen adores it.’

  ‘Ah, he’s got a taste for antiques, I daresay!’ said Hemingway, very much on the alert.

  ‘Well, I think it’s all completely deathly, and I simply won’t be buried alive here.’

  ‘I wouldn’t take on about that, if I were you, miss. I expect Mr Stephen will be only too glad to live wherever you want.’

  She opened her eyes at him. ‘Stephen? Oh gosh, no! He’s the most foully obstinate person I’ve ever met! You simply can’t move him once he’s made up his mind.’

  ‘I can see you’ve been having a pretty uncomfortable time,’ said Hemingway sympathetically.

  Valerie, already smarting from the sense of her own wrongs, and further aggrieved by her parent’s attitude of bracing common sense, was only too glad to have found someone to whom she could unburden herself. She drew nearer to the Inspector, saying: ‘Well, I have. I mean, I’m one of those frightfully highly-strung people. I just can’t help it!’

  The Inspector now had a certain cue, and responded instantly to it. ‘I could see at a glance that you were a mass of nerves,’ he said brazenly.

  ‘That’s just it!’ said Valerie, immensely gratified. ‘Only none of these people realise it, or care a damn about anyone but themselves. Except Uncle Joe: he’s nice; and I rather like Willoughby Roydon too. But the rest have been simply foul to me.’

  ‘Jealous, I wouldn’t wonder,’ nodded Hemingway.

  She laughed, and patted her curls. ‘Well, I can’t imagine why they should be! Besides, Stephen’s as bad as the others. Worse if anything!’

  ‘Perhaps he’s jealous too, in a different way. I know I would be.’

  ‘Oh, Stephen’s not in the least like that!’ she said, brushing the suggestion aside. ‘He doesn’t care what I do. No, honestly he doesn’t! In fact, he doesn’t behave as though he cared for me a bit, in spite of having brought me down here to get to know his uncle. Of course, I oughtn’t to be saying this to you,’ she added, with a belated recollection of their respective positions.

  ‘You don’t want to worry about what you say to me,’ said the Inspector. ‘I daresay it’s a relief to be able to get it off your chest. I can see you’ve been through a lot.’

  ‘I must say, I think you’re frightfully decent!’ she said. ‘It’s been sheer hell ever since Mr Herriard was killed; and that other Inspector was too brutal for words! – I mean, absolute Third Degree! All about Stephen’s filthy cigarette-case!’

  ‘I’m surprised at Inspector Colwall!’ said Hemingway truthfully. ‘What did you happen to do with the case, if you don’t mind my asking?’

  ‘I didn’t do anything with it. I mean, I simply took a cigarette out of it, and put the case down on the table in the drawing-room, and never thought of it again until all this loathsome fuss started. Only Mathilda Clare – who’s quite the ugliest woman I’ve ever laid eyes on – practically accused me of having had the case all the time. Of course, she was simply out to protect Stephen, Willoughby says. Because Mr Mottisfont said, who was likely to pick up the case except Stephen himself ? which is perfectly true, of course. And if you ask me, Mathilda Clare deliberately tried to throw the blame on to me because she knew Mr Herriard didn’t like me!’

  ‘Now that’s a thing I can’t believe!’ said the Inspector gallantly.

  ‘No; but he didn’t, all the same. In fact, that’s why I came here. It was my mother’s idea, actually, that I should have a chance to get to know Mr Herriard. Personally I think he was a woman-hater.’

  ‘If he didn’t like you, he must have been. Didn’t he want his nephew to marry you?’

  ‘Well, no, as a matter of fact he didn’t. Only I feel sure I could have got round him, if only Stephen hadn’t made everything worse by annoying him over something or other. Of course, that’s just like Stephen! He would! I did try to make him be sensible, because Uncle Joe dropped a word in my ear, but it was no use.’

  ‘What sort of a word?’ asked Hemingway.

  ‘Oh, about Mr Herriard’s will! He didn’t actually say everything was left to Stephen, but I sort of gathered it.’

  ‘I see. Did you tell Mr Stephen?’

  ‘Yes; but he only laughed, and said he didn’t care.’

  ‘He seems to be a difficult kind of young man to have to do with,’ said Hemingway.

  She sighed. ‘Yes, and I don’t really – Oh well! Only I wish I’d never come here!’

  ‘I’m sure I don’t blame you,’ said Hemingway, wondering how to get rid of her, now that he had extracted the information he wanted.

  This problem was solved for him by Mathilda, who came into the hall at that moment from the passage leading to the billiard-room. Valerie flushed guiltily, and ran upstairs. Mathilda’s cool, shrewd gaze followed her, and returned, enquiringly, to the Inspector’s face. ‘I seem to have scared Miss Dean,’ she remarked, strolling across the hall towards him. ‘Was she being indiscreet?’

  He was slightly taken aback, but hid it creditably. ‘Not at all. We’ve just been having a pleasant little chat,’ he replied.

  ‘I can readily imagine it,’ Mathilda said.

  Thirteen

  WHILE THESE VARIOUS ENCOUNTERS HAD BEEN TAKING

  place, Mrs Dean had been usefully employing her time in conversation with Edgar Mottisfont. Like Valerie, he too was suffering from a sense of wrong, and it did not take Mrs Dean long to induce him to confide in her. The picture he painted of Stephen’s character was not flattering, nor did his account of the circumstances leading up to the murder lead her to look hopefully upon the outcome of the police investigation. Really, the case seemed to be much blacker against Stephen than Joseph’s story had led her to suppose. She began to look rather thoughtful, and when Mottisfont told her bluntly that if he were Valerie’s father he would not let her marry such a fellow, she said vaguely that nothing had been settled, and Valerie was full young to be thinking of marriage.

  It was really a very awkward situation for a conscientious parent to find herself in. No one had informed her of the actual size of Nathaniel Herriard’s fortune, but she assumed it to be considerable, and it was a well-known fact that rich young men were not easily encountered in these hard times. But if Stephen should be convicted of having murdered his uncle, as seemed to be all too probable, the money would never come to him, and Valerie would reap nothing but the obvious disadvantages of having been betrothed to a murderer.

  While Mottisfont talked, and her own lips formed civil replies, her mind was busy over the problem. Not even to herself would she admit that she had jocke