Envious Casca Read online

  ‘On Christmas Eve!’ Joseph groaned, as though he found this an added torture. ‘Oh, Paula, Paula!’

  She flashed round upon him. ‘Why do you say that? Do you suppose I had anything to do with this?’

  ‘Oh, my dear, no!’ he said, shocked. ‘Of course you didn’t!’

  ‘Who did? Have you any idea?’

  ‘I can’t think, my dear. It’s too hideous! I try to realise it, to pull myself together –’

  ‘This house! This wicked, horrible house!’ She burst out, looking wildly round. ‘You laughed at me when I told you it was evil!’

  ‘My dear, you’re overwrought!’ he said, looking somewhat taken aback. ‘The house can’t have killed poor Nat!’

  ‘Its influence! Acting on us all, impelling one of us –’

  ‘Hush, Paula, hush!’ he said. ‘That’s nonsense! There, my poor child, there! Come away! It isn’t fit for you to be here.’ He put his arm round her, and felt how tense she was, yet trembling a little.

  ‘It wasn’t one of us,’ she said, speaking with difficulty. ‘It couldn’t have been. Someone through the window – robbery, perhaps. The door was locked!’

  ‘Paula dear, did Ford tell you that?’

  ‘I knew it! I tried to get in, before I went downstairs! He wouldn’t answer when I knocked.’

  ‘Oh, Paula, why didn’t you tell us?’ he exclaimed.

  ‘I didn’t think anything of it. Only that he was sulking. We’d had a row. You know what he was! Besides, I did tell you, when you asked me to go up and call him.’

  ‘Too late!’ he said tragically.

  ‘It must always have been. I suppose he was dead when I knocked on the door.’

  He winced. ‘Paula dear, not that hard voice!’

  There was a look of Stephen in her face as she answered: ‘It’s no use expecting me to sentimentalise. I’m honest, anyway. I didn’t like him. I don’t even care that he’s dead. He was mean and tyrannical.’

  This was very shocking to Joseph. He looked really pained, and rather anxious too, and said: ‘We mustn’t let ourselves become hysterical, Paula. You don’t mean that. No, no, your old uncle knows you better than that!’

  She shrugged. ‘I hate being idealised.’

  He took one of her thin hands, and fondled it. ‘Gently, my dear, gently! We must keep our heads, you know.’

  She understood this to mean that she must keep hers, and said: ‘You mean that the police will think I did this, because of my quarrel with him? All right! Let them!’

  ‘No, my dear, they could never suspect a girl of your age, I feel sure. But don’t talk unkindly of poor Nat! And, Paula! try to make Stephen guard his tongue too! We know how little that manner of his means, but others don’t, and some of the things he says – only for effect, the silly fellow! but I dread his doing it before the police! Oh dear, I never thought when I planned this party that it would end like this. I meant it all to be so jolly and happy!’

  ‘We’d better go downstairs,’ she said abruptly.

  He heaved a sigh. ‘I suppose it’s foolish of me, but I don’t like to leave him here alone.’

  It was plain from her expression that she thought this very foolish, so after looking down at Nathaniel’s body for a moment he accompanied her out of the room, saying in a melancholy tone: ‘My last leave-taking! Perhaps it will not be for so long, after all.’

  Ford was standing at the head of the stairs, conversing in whispers with one of the housemaids. The girl, after the manner of her kind, was torn between excitement and a conventional impulse to burst into tears. She scuttled away when she saw Joseph. Paula flushed, and said through her teeth: ‘Gossip already! That’s what we shall have to face!’

  Joseph pressed her arm admonishingly, told the valet to mount guard over Nathaniel’s bedroom, and escorted his niece downstairs. ‘Stephen will have broken the terrible news to them by now,’ he said.

  Stephen had indeed performed this office. Having notified the local police-station, five miles distant, he had walked into the drawing-room, where the rest of the party was still assembled, in varying degrees of impatience and uneasiness, and had said at his most sardonic: ‘No use waiting for Uncle Nat. As you’ve no doubt guessed, he’s dead.’

  ‘Dead?’ Mathilda exclaimed, after a moment’s stupefied silence. ‘Are you joking?’

  ‘I am not. To put it plainly, someone stuck a knife in his back.’

  Valerie gave a scream, and clutched at the nearest support, which happened to be Roydon’s arm. He paid no heed to her, but stood staring at Stephen, with his jaw dropping.

  Mottisfont said in an angry, querulous tone: ‘I don’t believe it! This is one of your mistaken ideas of humour, Stephen, and I don’t like it!’

  Maud’s hands were still clasped in her lap. She sat still, a plump, upright little figure, with a rigid back. Her pale eyes studied Stephen, travelled on to Mottisfont, to Roydon, to Valerie, and sank again.

  ‘It’s true?’ Mathilda said stupidly.

  ‘Unfortunately for us, quite true.’

  ‘You mean he’s been murdered,’ said Roydon, as though the words stuck in his throat.

  ‘Oh no! I can’t bear it!’ Valerie whimpered. ‘It’s too ghastly!’

  Mottisfont passed a hand across his mouth. He asked in a voice which he tried hard to keep level: ‘Who did it?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ Stephen replied. He took a cigarette from

  the box on the table, and lit it. ‘Interesting problem, isn’t it?’ he drawled.

  Six

  HIS WORDS WERE FOLLOWED BY A RATHER STUNNED

  silence. He smoked for a moment, looking round in malicious amusement at the various countenances turned towards him. It was impossible to read the thoughts behind them; they looked shut-in, suddenly guarded, even a little furtive. He said cordially: ‘Really, no one would know which was the actor amongst us! we’re damned good, all of us.’

  Maud looked at him, expressionless, but said nothing. Edgar Mottisfont said angrily: ‘A remark – a remark in the worst of bad taste!’

  ‘Herriard,’ Mathilda said succinctly.

  Joseph came in with Paula. She looked pale, exchanged a glance with her brother, and asked him curtly for a cigarette. He put his hand in his pocket, withdrew it again, and nodded to the box on the table. Joseph had gone over to his wife, and had taken her hand in both of his. ‘My dear, we are bereaved indeed,’ he said, with a solemn depth of tone which made Mathilda feel an insane desire to giggle.

  ‘Stephen says that Nathaniel has been murdered,’ Maud said calmly. ‘It seems very strange.’

  The inadequacy of this comment, although typical of Maud, momentarily robbed Joseph of the power to display deeper emotions. He looked disconcerted, and said that he could see that the shock had numbed her. The rest of the company perceived that whatever feelings of grief or of horror might inhabit Joseph’s inmost soul he would not for long be able to resist the opportunity thus afforded him to seize the centre of a tragic stage. Already he was seeing himself, Mathilda thought, as the chief mourner, the brave mainstay of a stricken household.

  Attention swerved away from him to Valerie. Fright had enlarged the pupils of her lovely eyes; her mouth drooped; she said in a soft wail: ‘I wish I hadn’t come! I want to go home!’

  ‘But you can’t go home,’ Stephen replied. ‘You’ll be wanted by the police, like the rest of us.’

  Tears spangled her lashes. ‘Oh, Stephen, don’t let them! I don’t know anything! I can’t be of any use, and I know Mummy would not like me to be here!’

  ‘Nobody could possibly suspect you!’ Roydon said, looking noble, and glaring at Stephen.

  ‘My poor child!’ Joseph said, creditably, everyone felt, in face of so much folly. ‘You must be brave, my dear, and calm. We must all be brave. Nat would have wished it.’

  A certain pensiveness descended upon the company, as each member of it pondered this pronouncement. Mathilda felt that Joseph would soon succeed in making