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‘Look here, Mrs Carter, I asked poor old Wally to come over and have tea, if he’d nothing better to do, and that’s all there was to it.’
‘Well, I’ve got a strong notion it wasn’t all,’ said Ermyntrude. ‘What’s more, I’d like to know what that Jones person had got to do with it.’
‘Really, if I can’t invite a couple of friends to tea without being asked why—’
‘That’s not so, Mr White, and heaven forbid I should go prying into what doesn’t concern me, but it seems a funny thing to me that you should be so anxious to get Wally over to your place – which you won’t deny you were, ringing him up no less than three times – if it was only to see him drink a cup of tea. Besides, he was murdered.’
‘Well, you don’t think I murdered him, do you?’ retorted White.
The Prince rose, begging his hostess to excuse him. ‘You wish to speak privately to Mr White, Trudinka. You will permit me to vanish.’
‘You needn’t vanish on my account,’ said White. ‘I’ve no secrets to talk about.’
The Prince, however, bowed himself out of the room; and Ermyntrude announced that she did not believe in beating about the bush. ‘What I’m asking you, Mr White, is, had you and Wally got some deal on which I wasn’t supposed to know about?’
‘Who’s been telling you anything about a deal?’ asked White suspiciously. ‘It’s news to me!’
‘That’s as may be, but I hope you aren’t going to tell me you haven’t gone into a whole lot of deals with Wally in the past, because I wasn’t born yesterday!’
‘I suppose,’ said White, his colour darkening, ‘you’re hinting that I happen to owe Wally a bit of money. You needn’t be afraid, Mrs Carter: naturally I shall pay it back to you. As a matter of fact, it isn’t due till Wednesday, but of course if you’re anxious about it you can have it before. It was just a loan to help me over a temporary embarrassment. That’s what I liked about Wally. He was open-handed.’
‘Yes, it’s very easy to be open-handed with other people’s money!’ said Ermyntrude. ‘Not that anyone’s ever called me mean, and as for my hinting about it, such a notion never entered my head, and I’m sure I’m not worrying about being paid back, so don’t think it!’
Matters seemed to be becoming a trifle st
rained. Mary said: ‘Perhaps you wonder at Mrs Carter’s asking you that question, Mr White, but the fact is that my cousin said something that led us to believe that he was contemplating some sort of a business deal.’
‘He may have been, for all I know. I suppose I’m not the only person he could do business with?’
‘There’s no need for you to be offended,’ said Ermyntrude, incensed by the sneering note in his voice. ‘Considering you’ve time and again led poor Wally into investing money in schemes which never turned out to be a bit of good—’
‘Look here, Mrs Carter, you’ve never liked me, and you needn’t think I haven’t known it. I’m sure I don’t blame you; it’s a free world, and you can like whom you damned well please. I don’t know what you think you’re getting at with all this talk about my having a secret deal on with Wally, but if you’ve got some notion of dragging me into the poor chap’s murder, and making out it was in some way connected with a business deal which I was leading him into, you can drop it, because you’re a long way off the mark. And if that’s all you wanted to see me about, I’ll say, good night! You needn’t trouble to show me out!’
Ermyntrude took him at his word, but Mary rose to her feet, and accompanied him to the front-door. When she came back into the drawing-room, Vicky said: ‘I thought he was awfully fallacious, didn’t you?’
‘No, I don’t think I did, really. After all, you were rather impossible, Aunt Ermy!’
‘If you ask me,’ said Ermyntrude darkly, ‘he was up to something. Ten to one, if Wally hadn’t been shot, he’d have been up to his neck in a plan to lose a lot of money by this time.’
‘Five hundred pounds,’ said Vicky. ‘Do let’s tell the Inspector, Mary!’
‘I’m not going to. In fact, I’m beginning to wish I hadn’t said anything about it. Moreover, Hugh doesn’t think the Inspector would believe a word of it.’
‘Well, I think we ought to broaden his mind,’ said Vicky. ‘Or do you feel that this is really a case for Scotland Yard?’
‘Oh, my goodness, don’t suggest such a thing!’ exclaimed Ermyntrude. ‘I mean, what’s the use? Scotland Yard can’t bring Wally to life again, and when you think that I’ve got to face an Inquest, it’s too much to expect me to put up with detectives as well. Because you know, dearie, once they start, heaven alone knows what they won’t dig up!’
Unfortunately, this point of view was not shared by the police. On the afternoon of the following day a brisk and bright-eyed Inspector from the Criminal Investigation Department arrived in Fritton, accompanied by an earnest young Sergeant, and several less distinguished assistants.
Neither Inspector Cook nor Superintendent Small viewed with much pleasure the prospect of handing over their case to the Inspector from London, but Inspector Hemingway, when he arrived, disarmed hostility by a certain engaging breeziness of manner, which had long been the despair of his superiors.
‘Nice goings-on in the country!’ said Inspector Hemingway, who had beguiled the tedium of his journey from town with a careful perusal of the account of the case, submitted to his Department. ‘Mind you, I don’t say I’m not going to like the case. It looks to me a very high-class bit of work, what with rich wives, and Russian princes, and I don’t know what besides.’
‘Properly speaking, this Prince isn’t a Russian, but a Georgian,’ said the Superintendent. ‘At least, that’s what he says.’
‘My mistake,’ apologised Hemingway. ‘Matter of fact, I knew it all along. My chief tells me that if he’s a Georgian, he ought by rights to be a dark chap, with an aquiline kind of face, and not over-tall. He tells me he’s got a Georgian name all right, so no doubt he was speaking the truth.’
‘He’s dark and aquiline right enough,’ said Cook. ‘And I don’t mind telling you that I don’t take to him, not by a long chalk.’
