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Ermyntrude laid a hand on her breast. ‘I feel it here! A woman’s instinct is never wrong! I’ve always hated that man!’
‘But, Aunt Ermy, really that isn’t fair!’ expostulated Mary. ‘Why on earth should he murder Wally?’
‘Don’t ask me!’ said Ermyntrude. ‘I don’t trust him, that’s all I know.’
The Inspector said in a dry tone: ‘I see, madam. You have, I understand, a foreign gentleman staying in the house?’
Ermyntrude gave a start. ‘Alexis! If I hadn’t forgotten him! That shows you the state my nerves are in!’ Tears sprang to her eyes. ‘And I wanted everything to be so nice – a real glimpse of English country-house life! Oh dear, Mary, you know the trouble I took over Alexis’s coming, and Wally being as disagreeable as he knew how! And as though it wasn’t enough for him to carry on like he did, spoiling everything, but he must needs go and get himself murdered! Whatever will Alexis think?’
‘Ah!’ said the Inspector. ‘Mr Carter, then, didn’t like the foreign gentleman?’
‘Oh, I don’t know what he liked, but if you ask me he’d have liked him well enough if it hadn’t been for all that silly fuss about the dog. It sort of put him against poor Alexis.’
‘Fuss about the dog?’ repeated the Inspector, struggling to keep pace with Ermyntrude’s erratic utterances.
Hugh, who had been listening entranced to these disclosures, met Mary’s eye for a pregnant moment.
‘Aunt Ermy, that can’t possibly interest the Inspector,’ said Mary. ‘It has absolutely no bearing on the case!’
‘I wouldn’t be too sure of that, miss,’ said the Inspector darkly. ‘If there was some sort of a quarrel over the dog, foreign gentlemen not treating dumb animals the way we do, and Mr Carter took exception to it, as well he might, it may have a very important bearing on the case, for we all know that foreigners are hasty-tempered, and take offence where none’s intended. Mind you, I don’t say—’
‘The man’s mad!’ exclaimed Ermyntrude, her tears arrested by astonishment. ‘Whoever said there was a quarrel about the dog? The idea!’
‘You misunderstood what Mrs Carter meant,’ said Mary. ‘Our guest is a Prince, and unfortunately my cousin’s spaniel’s called Prince. It was just that my cousin felt that it might be a little awkward.’ She saw a look of bewilderment on the Inspector’s face, and added desperately: ‘On account of them both answering to the same name, I mean.’
Hugh gripped his underlip between his teeth, and gazed rigidly at the opposite wall.
The Inspector was obviously shaken. He stared very hard at Mary, and said severely: ‘I’m bound to say, it doesn’t make sense to me, miss.’
‘No. No, it was very silly and trivial. I told you it had no bearing on the case.’
The Inspector turned back to Ermyntrude. ‘This Prince, madam, is a friend of yours, I take it?’
‘Well, of course he is!’ replied Ermyntrude. ‘He’s a very dear friend of mine!’
‘I should like to see him, if you please,’ said the Inspector, feeling that he was nearing the centre of the labyrinth at last.
‘You can’t see him; he’s gone out to tea with Dr Chester. Besides, what’s the use of your seeing him? You don’t suppose he killed my husband, do you?’
‘I don’t suppo
se anything, madam,’ said the Inspector stiffly. ‘But it’s my duty to interrogate everyone staying in this house. If he’s out, I’ll wait for him to come back; and in the meantime I wish to ask Miss Fanshawe a few questions.’
‘Don’t you think you’re going to drag my girl into this!’ said Ermyntrude, a dangerous gleam in her eyes. ‘I’ll put up with a good deal, but I won’t put up with that! My Vicky’s an innocent child, just on the threshold of life, and if you imagine I’m going to stand by while you rub the bloom off her, you’ll very soon find out where you get off, and so I warn you!’
The Inspector turned a dull red. ‘There’s no call for you to talk like that, madam. I’m sure I don’t want to rub any bloom off anybody! But I’ve got my duty to do, and I’m bound to tell you that I can’t have you trying to obstruct me the way you’re trying to!’
A voice from above made him look quickly up the staircase. ‘Oh, darling Ermyntrude, I do think that’s so dear and quaint of you!’ said Vicky. ‘Only I simply haven’t got any bloom left after what’s happened, and anyway you can see what a nice man he probably is in his off-time.’ She bestowed one of her more angelic smiles upon the Inspector, and said confidingly: ‘I dare say you’ve got daughters of your own?’
The Inspector was not unnaturally put off his balance by the sudden and enchanting vision of a fragile beauty, ethereally fair in a frock of unrelieved black, and said that he was not a family man.
‘Oh, aren’t you? I quite thought you must be,’ said Vicky. ‘Do you want to talk to me? Shall I come down?’
‘If you please, miss.’
Ermyntrude, whose wrath had given way to the fondest maternal admiration, watched her daughter float downstairs in a drift of black chiffon, and said involuntarily: ‘Oh, Vicky, I am glad you’ve changed out of those trousers! Somehow they didn’t seem right to me.’
‘Oh no, they were utterly anomalous!’ agreed Vicky. Her gaze fell upon Hugh. ‘I can’t imagine why you’ve come back. I think you’re frightfully uncalled-for.’
