Джорджетт Хейер - No Wind of Blame

Although Ermyntrude had chosen to have her dinner sent into the drawing-room on a tray, conversation between Hugh and the two girls was necessarily of a spasmodic nature, since the butler was continually coming in and out of the room. This helped to add to Mary's exasperation, and by the time the dessert was on the table, and they were finally rid of Peake, she was cross enough, and tired enough, to say angrily to Vicky: "Well, I hope you're satisfied with your work!"

"Artistes are never wholly satisfied, but I must say I thought it went with quite a swing," replied Vicky sunnily.

"It may interest you to know that I think you behaved disgustingly! I was absolutely ashamed of you!"

"But, darling, be fair!" begged Vicky. "You said only yesterday that you didn't know how on earth to get rid of Alexis."

"I never dreamed you meant to do anything so ill-bred, and - and atrocious!"

"No, but I do rather feel that we couldn't have got rid of Alexis in a well-bred way. As a matter of fact, I've been frightfully bothered about it the whole afternoon, because I found him making the most subtle love to Ermyntrude, and I couldn't see my way at all. Only he very kindly played right into my hands, setting the police on to me."

"I don't believe he did any such thing!"

"Oh, I'm pretty sure you're wrong there, Mary!" Hugh interposed. "Every time I've had the privilege of meeting him, he's managed to cast suspicion on to someone or other."

"Next you'll say that you enjoyed that vulgar exhibition!" snapped Mary.

"Well, I did, rather," Hugh confessed. "You must admit it was epic!"

"I don't admit anything of the kind. I feel hot with shame whenever I think of it."

"Poor sweet, that isn't shame: this room's awfully stuffy. I'll open a window, shall I?" suggested Vicky.

"No! I'm only sorry that you can't see how badly you've behaved. Hugh may think it was very funny, and egg you on, but Maurice didn't. He said you ought to be smacked!"

"How dear and mild of him! He's rather precious, isn't he? Hugh said I ought to have been drowned at birth."

"You can try to turn it into a joke as much as you like, but you won't succeed in getting me to see the humour of it. You pitchforked us into a perfectly ghastly scene - in front of that Inspector, too! - and though I don't expect you to care about my feelings, I should have thought you'd have had more consideration for your mother than to have upset her like that."

"Darling, you simply can't imagine how resilient the poor lamb is! Besides, I've told Robert to look in this evening. To catch her first bounce, you know, because I quite agree it would be fatal for her just to trickle away to some frightful person on the boundary."

"Vicky, how can you talk like that?"

Vicky stretched out a hand towards a dish of grapes. "But, dearest pet, I don't see that it would be a bit helpful of me to pretend that Ermyntrude isn't the sort of darling idiot who'll make the most unparalleled muck of things, if not cherished by a Good Man. Well, I mean to say, just look at the way she fell for Wally, who was an utter loss! Naturally, you don't see it as I do, because she isn't your mother; but it's no good expecting me to sit back in a well-bred way while she lets a boa-constrictor like Alexis coil himself all round her."

"You're impossible," said Mary hopelessly. "Did it occur to you, when you deliberately played on her feelings, that the one thing she's been dreading, ever since Sunday, was that you'd be accused of having had something to do with Wally's death?"

"Oh, then that was why she reacted so superbly! I must say, I didn't expect her to turn on Alexis quite so fiercely. Now you come to mention it, though, I did think something was weighing on her mind. Did she tell you about it?"

Just now. Perhaps you'll soothe her yourself the next time you elect to drive her into hysterics!"

"I don't suppose I will," said Vicky, considering it.

"You're so much better at it than I am. Are you going to the Inquest tomorrow?"

"No, and I hope you're not either!"

"Well, I am, because it seems to me I'm a very interested party, and I want to see what's likely to happen next."

"I shouldn't go, if I were you," said Hugh. "I'll let you know if anything startling comes out. Not that it's likely to. The police are sure to ask for an adjournment."

"I should like," said Vicky, dipping her fingers in the cut-glass bowl before her, "to find out why Harold White wanted to see Wally on Sunday, and what they were going to do with that five hundred pounds."

"Oh, it's got to that now, has it?" said Hugh. "Any good my reminding you that that idea is nothing more than a suspicion of Mary's?"

"Well, not much," Vicky said, with one of her enchanting smiles.

"In any case, you're not likely to hear anything about it at the Inquest."

"I expect I'll go all the same," said Vicky tranquilly. "Then I suppose I shall have to take you," said Hugh. "Oh, no! Not a bit necessary."

"You'll only get into mischief if I don't keep an eye on you."

"I wouldn't wonder," Vicky murmured. "Oh, I've just been smitten with the most awesome reflection! How do you suppose Maurice is managing to entertain Alexis?"

"Vicky, you little beast!" said Mary. "That's the worst part of it all, that Maurice should be stuck with that awful man!"

"Well, I don't know," said Vicky. "After all, we've had him ever since Friday, so it's time somebody else had a turn."

This was too much for Mary, and she got up from the table, bringing the party to an end. Hugh declined going into the drawing-room with the two girls, but instead took his leave of them, and drove back to the Manor, having promised to meet Vicky outside the Coroner's Court on the following morning.

Not long after his departure, Steel arrived, and was ushered into the drawing-room. Ermyntrude, still reclining upon the sofa, greeted him with unaffected pleasure; and Mary could not help feeling, as she watched him take Ermyntrude's little plump hand in his own strong one, that he must undoubtedly represent a pillar of strength to clinging womanhood. The story was poured into his ears, and his reactions to it were all that Vicky had hoped they might be. Nothing could have formed a greater contrast to the Prince's excitable display than Steel's rugged calm. He indulged in no aspersions upon his late rival's character; he merely said that it was a good thing the fellow had gone, and that he had never taken to him much. He even refused to join Ermyntrude in attributing the Prince's oblique attack on Vicky to his having murdered Wally himself, remarking that he didn't think the fellow would have the guts to do it. When he was alone with Ermyntrude, he held her hand in an uncomfortably strong grasp, and told her that whatever happened she could rely on him.

Ermyntrude wept a little, and confided to him the fear that was gnawing at her nerves. "Oh, Bob, they won't think it was my Vicky, will they?"

"No," he replied.

The simple negative was wonderfully reassuring, but she could not be quite satisfied. "Bob, it keeps nagging at me day and night! I ought never to have told her about Wally and that girl, only I was so upset at the time, it just slipped out. And I keep thinking about it, wondering, because she's not like most girls, my Vicky. You never know what she'll get up to next! Bob, she - she couldn't have done a thing like that! She couldn't!"

"She didn't do it. You can put that clean out of your head."

"I know, I know! But I can't help its coming back to me. For there's no denying she was there, and it's in the blood, Bob. You can't get away from that!"

"That's a lot of rot," said Steel. "Your first husband wasn't a murderer!"

"No, but look at the animals he killed in his time! I mean, he had a regular passion for it, but he took it out on lions and tigers and things; and I can't help thinking of a book I read once, all about impulses, and what you inherit from your parents, and things that happen to you in the cradle that go and give you fixtures, or some such nonsense, and I ask myself if perhaps there is something in it after all, and I ought to have seen to it my Vicky had a chance to shoot bigger things than just a few rabbits here and there."