‘Yes, that’s right,’ said Jones, edging forward a little. ‘And I put my coat under his head, just as you see, Inspector. And if it isn’t needed any more, I’d be glad—’
‘In a moment, sir,’ said the Inspector severely. ‘I shall be coming to you presently. Can you describe to me, Mr White, how you found Mr Carter’s body?’
‘Well, I don’t know that I can exactly. He was lying in a sort of heap, more or less across the bridge, facing towards the house – my house, I mean.’
‘I see, sir. And when you realised Mr Carter had been shot, did either you, or Mr Jones, think to look in the thicket there?’
‘I don’t know what Mr Jones thought of: I certainly didn’t,’ replied White. ‘All I thought of was to get a doctor as quickly as I could, in case Mr Carter was still alive.’
‘Very proper, I’m sure, sir,’ the Inspector said, and turned towards Hugh. ‘And now, sir, if you’d tell me where you were at the time of Mr Carter’s death?’
‘I haven’t any idea,’ responded Hugh. ‘You see, I don’t know when he died, or, in fact, anything about it, other than what I’ve been told.’
‘Then may I ask, sir, how you come to be here?’
‘I came to discover just what had happened.’
‘You knew something had happened?’
‘Yes, certainly I did. I had gone to call at Palings, and I ran into Miss Fanshawe on the lawn outside the drawing-room windows. She had apparently come from here, and was on her way to break the news to her mother.’
‘That’s right,’ said White. ‘She turned up just after I’d got back here from ringing up the doctor, and the police station. We were too late to be able to head her off.’
‘Miss Fanshawe being the deceased’s stepdaughter?’ said the Inspector. ‘From what direction did the young lady come?’
‘Down that path,’ replied White, pointing to the thicket across the stream. ‘She had her dog with her.’
‘Indeed, sir!’ said the Inspector, in an expressionless voice. ‘Well, I think that’s all we can do here, but if you gentlemen, and you, miss, will take me up to the house, my men can get on with what they’ve got to do before we have the body removed. There are one or two more questions I’d like to ask you, Mr White, and you too, Mr Jones.’
‘I’m ready to answer anything,’ offered Jones. ‘But I would like to have my coat back, if it isn’t wanted any longer.’
The Inspector said indulgently: ‘No, sir, I’m sure we don’t want your coat. You should have spoken about it before. Give the gentleman his coat, Sergeant.’
‘Look here, do you want me?’ asked Hugh.
Before the Inspector could answer, White said: ‘Yes, we do want you. You can tell the Inspector just what happened at that shooting-party yesterday.’
Hugh sighed. ‘You’re barking up the wrong tree. My evidence is nothing but hearsay, and valueless.’
‘Well, there’s no reason why you should object to telling what you know, is there?’ demanded White. ‘Seems to me it might have a pretty important bearing on poor Wally’s murder – a darned sight more than that kid Vicky’s happening to be around!’ he added scathingly.
The Inspector looked penetratingly at Hugh, and said: ‘Yes, sir, I should be obliged if you would accompany us to the house.’
Seven
The Inspector, having been shown White’s study window, and having verified the fact that from it no view of the bridge could be obtained, turned his attention to Hugh, and requested him to explain White’s reference to the shooting-party of the day before. Hugh replied in a voice calculated to depress excitement that he supposed White to be referring to Wally Carter’s carelessness in moving from his stand. ‘Instead of remaining where he was posted,’ he said, ‘he apparently wandered some way along the hedgerow, with the result that he very nearly got himself shot. If you want to know any more about it, you should ask Mr Steel, or Prince Varasashvili, who were both in a position – which I was not – to see what happened.’
‘Prince who, sir?’ demanded the Inspector.
Hugh repeated the name, explaining the Prince’s identity. It was evident that the Inspector thought the entrance into the case of a foreigner so exotically named at once invested it with immense possibilities. He said, that he would have to see the gentleman himself. He next inquired of Hugh how long he had been at Palings before encountering Vicky, and as it appeared from Hugh’s answer that, at the time of the murder, he had not arrived there, he asked him some searching questions about his journey from the Manor.
Hugh had driven himself to Palings in his own car, and admitted cheerfully that he had come through the village, and past the Dower House. But when urged to try to remember whether he had seen anyone in the neighbourhood of the Dower House, he shook his head. ‘No, I don’t think I saw anyone.’
‘But you’re not sure, sir?’
‘No, not entirely. Let us say that I didn’t notice anyone. But as I was driving, and not staring about me, that isn’t very surprising.’
The Inspector accepted this, and announced that he had, at the moment, no further questions to put to him.
‘Then I’ll go back to Palings,’ said Hugh.
The Inspector put his notebook into his pocket. ‘I shall be calling there myself, sir,’ he said. ‘I’ll run you there.’
It was plain that he did not want Hugh to reach Palings before himself, so Hugh made no demur, but meekly accompanied him to the police-car waiting in the drive. After conferring briefly with the Sergeant who had accompanied him, the Inspector got into the car beside Hugh, and they drove off.
The scene that awaited them at Palings was in the best traditions of the place. Ermyntrude, in a pink satin wrapper lavishly edged with ostrich feather trimming, was prostrate upon the couch in the hall, with a bottle of smelling-salts clasped in one plump hand, and a pink georgette handkerchief in the other. A glass and decanter on a low table beside her bore evidence that she had had to be revived with brandy. Vicky was not present, but Mary, looking rather white, was standing at the head of the couch, saturating a handkerchief with eau-de-Cologne. She glanced up quickly as Hugh walked in through the open front-door, and greeted him with a forced smile. ‘Thank goodness you’re back! Vicky told us – is it true?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid it is,’ Hugh replied. ‘Inspector Cook’s here. Can he come in?’
‘Police!’ moaned Ermyntrude. ‘Oh, if my poor first husband were alive to see this day!’
The Inspector, pausing discreetly on the threshold, cast a somewhat awed look at the widow. Ermyntrude seemed to be beyond human aid, but Mary stepped forward, saying: ‘Yes, of course. Good afternoon, Inspector. This – this is an awful shock. I – I hardly know what… Please come in! We’re rather upset, and Mrs Carter… But, of course, you must come in!’
‘Very sorry to have to intrude on Mrs Carter at such a moment miss,’ said the Inspector. ‘You’ll understand that it’s my duty to make certain inquiries.’
Ermyntrude lowered the handkerchief from her eyes. ‘What have you done with his body?’ she said tragically.
The Inspector glanced appealing towards Hugh, who took pity on his evident embarrassment, and tried to explain tactfully to Ermyntrude that Wally’s body had been removed to the police mortuary.
‘The mortuary!’ Ermyntrude said in shuddering accents. ‘Oh my God!’
It was plain that the situation was fast getting out of the Inspector’s control. Mary saw that it was her duty to pull herself together, and to assist the course of justice. She turned to the couch. ‘Dear Aunt Ermy, what does it matter what becomes of his body? Don’t think about that! The Inspector wants to ask you some questions.’
Ermyntrude found that her recumbent position made it impossible for her to fling wide her arms without hitting the sofa-back, so she sat up. ‘Have you no me
rcy?’ she demanded of the horrified Inspector. ‘Haven’t I borne enough without your coming here badgering and torturing me?’
‘I’m sure, madam, I don’t want to badger you!’ expostulated the Inspector. ‘If you’ll just—’
‘Ask me what you like!’ said Ermyntrude, allowing her arms to fall, and bowing her golden head. ‘What do I care? What is there left for me to care for?’ She clutched suddenly at Mary’s hand, and said in far more natural tones: ‘Oh, Mary dear, the disgrace of it! Oh, I shall never get over it! Having the police in!’
The Inspector, who was beginning to feel like a leper, said defensively that he was sure there was no reason for her to take it that way, though he quite understood her feelings. ‘What I want to know is, was there anyone who might have had any sort of grudge against your husband, madam? Anyone who’d quarrelled with him, for instance, or—’
He broke off, for the effect of this question was very alarming. Ermyntrude almost leaped to her feet, and confronted him in an attitude that would have done credit to a Duse. ‘Are you accusing me of having done my husband to death?’ she cried.
‘Aunt Ermy, of course he isn’t!’ exclaimed Mary. ‘What can you be thinking of ? You must try and control yourself!’
‘Am I to understand, madam, that you had quarrelled with Mr Carter?’ asked the Inspector.
‘Oh God!’ said Ermyntrude. ‘I parted from him in anger!’ Once more she reverted to more ordinary accents. ‘Oh, Mary dear, he was a bad husband to me, but I wish I hadn’t told him off, for now I shall never see him again, and we can’t all be perfect, can we?’
Mary gently pressed her down on to the couch again. ‘It was nothing, Aunty Ermy; and I’m perfectly certain he didn’t set any store by it.’
‘Him set store by anything?’ said Ermyntrude bitterly. ‘Water off a duck’s back!’
By this time, the Inspector was looking keenly interested. It seemed as though Ermyntrude had recovered from her histrionic fit, so he ventured to put a question to her. ‘Had there been any unpleasantness between you and Mr Carter, madam?’
Mary could not resist giving Ermyntrude’s hand, which she was still holding, a squeeze of warning. Unfortunately, this acted upon Ermyntrude in a most disastrous way. She reared up her head, and declared that other people could wash their dirty linen in public if they liked, but she would not. ‘What’s past is done with!’ she said. ‘He may have been a waster – I’m not saying he wasn’t – and Heaven knows he treated me disgracefully, what with his goings-on, and encouraging that Harold White, and a lot of other things I could tell you if I wanted to; but he’s dead now, and God forbid I should go taking his character away! You won’t get a word out of me, and as for me telling him off; who had a better right, that’s what I should like to know?’
Mary removed her hand, and said quietly to the Inspector: ‘Mrs Carter is rather overwrought. Perhaps I can help you? What exactly do you wish to know?’
‘Well, miss,’ replied the Inspector, ‘when a gentleman is shot dead practically in his own grounds, the police want to know everything. Mr Carter was related to you, I believe?’
‘He was my cousin, and until I came of age, my guardian.’
‘I take it you were on pretty intimate terms with him?’
‘I think so – up to a point. I live here, you know.’
‘Yes, miss. Now, did you ever have any reason to think he might have enemies?’
‘No,’ Mary replied. ‘I know that many people – rather disliked him, but I can’t imagine anyone having any cause to murder him.’
‘Oh, Mary, what a shocking word to use!’ gasped Ermyntrude. ‘Oh, whatever have I done to deserve a thing like this coming upon me, and Lady Dering asking me to be Chairwoman of the Hospital Committee, and all!’
‘Had he private means, miss?’ asked the Inspector.
‘Not a penny!’ said Ermyntrude. ‘And if he had he’d have gone through it inside of a week! The money I’ve squandered – well, I don’t mean that exactly, but no one would believe the sums he’s had out of me, and all spent on things I won’t mention, let alone what found its way into White’s pocket! Oh, you needn’t look like that, Mary! I’m not such a fool but what I can see what’s been under my nose since I don’t know when! It was him led Wally to his ruin, not but what he didn’t need much leading, but at least he wasn’t ever so bad till he took up with White! Everything’s been his fault, and if you ask me you’ll find he’s at the bottom of this, too!’
‘What makes you say that, madam?’ asked the Inspector.
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.’
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