“— and all I have to tell you,” Hilary was saying, “is that he must be found. He must be somewhere and he must be found. I know you’ve got a lot to do and I’m sorry and really it’s too ridiculous but there it is. I don’t know if any of you have suggestions to make. If you have I’d be glad to hear them.”

From her place on the stairs Troy looked at Hilary’s audience. Blore. Mervyn. Nigel. Vincent. Kittiwee. The Boy. Standing further back, a clutch of extra helpers, male and female, brought in for the occasion. Of these last, one could only say that they looked tired and puzzled.

But the impression was very different when she considered the regular staff. Troy was sure she hadn’t concocted this impression and she didn’t think it stemmed from preknowledge. If she hadn’t known anything about their past, she believed, she would still have thought that in some indefinable way the staff had closed their ranks and that fear had inspired them to do so. If they had picked up death masks of their faces and clapped them over their own, they could scarcely have been less communicative. This extravagant notion was given a kind of validity by the fact that — surely — they were all most uncommonly pale? They stared straight in front of themselves as if they were on parade.

“Well,” Hilary said, “Blore? You’re the chief of staff. Any ideas?”

“I’m afraid not, sir. We have made, I think I may say, sir, a thorough search of the premises. Very thorough, sir.”

“Who,” Mrs. Forrester snapped out, “saw him last?”

“Yes. All right. Certainly, Aunt Bed. Good question,” said Hilary, who was clearly flustered.

There was a considerable pause before Cressida said: “Well, I’ve said, sweeties, haven’t I? When he eggzitted after his thing I went back as arranged to the cloakroom and he came in from the outside porch and I took off his robe, wig and makeup and he said he’d go and report to Uncle Fred and I went back to the party.”

“Leaving him there?” Hilary and Mrs. Forrester asked in unison.

“Like I said, for Heaven’s sake. Leaving him there.”

Nobody had paid any attention to Troy. She sat down on the stairs and wondered what her husband would make of the proceedings.

“All right. Yes. Good. All right,” said poor Hilary. “So far so good. Now then. Darling, you therefore came into the hall, here, didn’t you, on your way to the drawing-room?”

“I didn’t do an Uncle Tom’s Cabin, darling, and take to the snow.”

“Of course not. Ha-ha. And — let me see — the people in charge of the children’s supper were here, weren’t they?” Hilary looked appealingly in their direction. “Kitti — Cooke — and all his helpers?“ he wheedled.

“That’s right,” said Cressida. “Busy as bees.” She closed her eyes.

“And I expect,” Hilary said, “some of you remember Miss Tottenham coming into the hall, don’t you?”

Kittiwee said huffily, “Well, sir, I’m sure we were very busy round the supper table at the far end of the hall and, personally speaking, I didn’t take notice to anythink but my work. However, sir, I do call the incident to mind because of a remark that was passed.”

“Oh?” Hilary glanced at Cressida who didn’t open her eyes.

“I asked him,” she said, “if his bloody cats were shut up.”

“Yes, I see.”

Mrs. Forrester adjusted her thick-lensed spectacles to look at Cressida.

“The thing is,” Hilary hurried on, “did any of you happen to notice Moult when he came out of the cloakroom there? After Miss Tottenham? Because he must have come out and he ought to have gone up the right-hand flight of the stairs to the Colonel’s room and then returned to help with the children.”

Hilary’s reference to the stairs caused his audience to shift their attention to them and discover Troy. Mrs. Forrester ejaculated: “Has he—?” and Troy said quickly, “No. Not a sign. The Colonel’s quite all right and fast asleep.”

Nobody, it transpired, had seen Moult come out of the cloakroom or go anywhere. Kittiwee again pointed out that the hall was large and dark and they were all very busy. When asked if they hadn’t wondered why Moult didn’t turn up to do his job, Blore replied with unmistakable spitefulness that this didn’t surprise them in the least.

“Why?” Mrs. Forrester barked.

Kittiwee simpered and Blore was silent. One of the women tittered.

Mr. Smith removed his cigar from his mouth. “Was ’e sozzled?” he asked of nobody in particular, and as there was no response added, “What I mean, did ’e take a couple to celebrate ’is triumph?”

“That’s a point,” Cressida conceded. She opened her eyes. “He was in a tizzy about going on for the part. It was pretty silly, really, because after all — no dialogue. Round the tree, business with arms, and off. Still, he was nervous. And when I fixed his whiskers I must say it was through a pretty thick Scotch mist.”

“There y’are,” said Mr. Smith.

“Aunt Bed — does Moult sometimes —?”

“Occasionally,” said Mrs. Forrester.

“I think he had it on him,” Cressida said. “That’s only my idea, mind. But he sort of patted himself — you know?”

Hilary said, “He was already wearing the robe when you went in to make him up, wasn’t he?”

“That’s right. He put it on upstairs, he said, for Uncle Fred to see.”

“Which he didn’t,” Troy said. “He’d gone to sleep.”

“Moult didn’t say anything about that. Though, mind you,” Cressida added, “I was only with him for a matter of a minute. There was nothing to fixing his beard: a couple of spots of spirit gum and Bob was your uncle. But I did notice he was all uptight. He was in no end of a taking-on. Shaking like a leaf, he was.”

“Vincent!” Hilary suddenly exclaimed, and Vincent gave a perceptible start. “Why didn’t I think of you! You saw Moult, outside, when he left the drawing-room, didn’t you? After his performance?”

Vincent, almost indistinguishably, acknowledged that he did.

“Well — what about it? Did he say anything or — or — look anything — or do anything? Come on, Vincent?”

But no. It appeared that Vincent had not even noticed it was Moult. His manner suggested that he and Moult were not on such terms that the latter would have divulged his secret. He had emerged from his triumph into the icy cold, hunched his shoulders against the wind, and bolted from the courtyard into the porch. Vincent saw him enter the little cloakroom.

“Which gets us nowhere,” Mrs. Forrester said with a kind of stony triumph.

“I don’t know why there’s all the carry-on, ’Illy,” said Mr. Smith. “Alf Moult’s sleeping it orf.”

“Where?” Mrs. Forrester demanded.

“Where, where, where! Anywhere. You don’t tell me there’s not plenty of lay-bys for a spot of kip where nobody’s thought of looking! ’Ow about the chapel?”

“My dear Uncle Bert — surely —”

“Or all them old stables and what-’ave-you at the back. Come orf it!”

“Have you —?” Hilary asked his staff.

“I looked in the chapel,” Mrs. Forrester announced.

“Has anybody looked — well — outside. The laundries and so on?”

It appeared not. Vincent was dispatched to do this. “If ’e’s there,” Troy heard him mutter “ ’e’ll ’ave froze.”

“What about the top story? The attics?” Mr. Smith asked.

“No, sir. We’ve looked,” said Blore, addressing himself exclusively to Hilary. It struck Troy that the staff despised Mr. Smith for the same reason that they detested Moult.

A silence followed: mulish on the part of the staff, baffled on the part of the houseparty, exhausted on all counts. Hilary finally dismissed the staff. He kept up his grand seignorial role by thanking his five murderers, congratulating them upon their management of the party and hoping, he said, that their association would continue as happily throughout the coming year. Those of the temporary helpers who live in the district he excused from further duties.

The houseparty then retired to the boudoir, it being, Hilary said, the only habitable room in the house.