No Wind of Blame Read online

  ‘Oh, I hate Mr White!’ agreed Vicky.

  ‘Well, ducky, I can’t ask Alan and Janet without their father, now can I? I mean, you know what he is, and this being a dinner-party, and him a sort of connection of Wally’s. It isn’t like asking the young people over to tennis, when he wouldn’t expect to be invited.’

  ‘That’s right!’ said Wally. ‘Crab poor old Harold! I thought it wouldn’t be long before you started on him. I’d like to know what harm he’s ever done you.’

  ‘I don’t like him,’ said Ermyntrude. ‘Some people might say he’s done me plenty of harm leading you into ways we won’t discuss at the breakfast-table, let alone planting himself down in the Dower House.’

  ‘You never made any bones about letting it to him, did you?’

  ‘No, I didn’t, not with you asking me to let him rent the place, and saying he was a relation of yours. But if I’d known what sort of an influence he was going to be on you, and no more related to you than the man in the moon—’

  ‘Well, that’s where you’re wrong, because he is related to me,’ interrupted Wally. ‘I forget just how it goes, but I know we’ve got the same great-great-grandfather. Or am I wrong? There may have been three greats, not that it matters.’

  ‘Ancestors,’ said Vicky.

  Ermyntrude refused to follow a false trail she quite clearly perceived. ‘It’s no relationship at all to my way of thinking, and you know very well that isn’t what I’ve got against Harold White, however hard you may try to turn the subject.’

  ‘The Bawtrys are stuffy,’ said Vicky suddenly.

  ‘Well, they are a bit,’ confessed her mother. ‘But it’s something to get the best people to come just for a friendly dinner-party, and I don’t mind telling you, lovey, that they never have before.’

  ‘And the Derings are stuffy.’

  ‘Not Lady Dering. She’s a good sort, and always was, and she’s behaved to me more like a lady than a lot of others I could name.’

  ‘And Hugh Dering is stuffy,’ said Vicky obstinately. ‘It’s going to be a lousy party.’

  ‘Not with the Prince,’ said Ermyntrude.

  ‘If anyone wants to know what I think, which I don’t suppose they do,’ interpolated Wally, ‘this Prince of yours will just about put the finishing touch to it. However, it’s nothing to do with me, and all I say is, don’t expect me to entertain him!’

  Ermyntrude looked a little perturbed. ‘But, Wally, you’ll have to help entertain him! Now, don’t be tiresome, there’s a dear! You know we arranged it all weeks ago, and honestly I know you’ll like Alexis. Besides, you won’t have to do much, except take him out shooting, like we said.’

  Wally rose from the table, tucking the newspaper under his arm. ‘There you go again! If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a dozen times that I don’t like shooting. And now I come to think of it, I lent my gun to Harold, and he hasn’t returned it yet, so I can’t shoot even if I wanted to.’

  This was too much, even for a woman of Ermyntrude’s kindly disposition. She said hotly: ‘Then you’ll tell Harold White to return it, Wally, and if you don’t, I will! The idea of your lending poor Geoffrey’s gun without so much as by your leave!’

  ‘I suppose I ought to have sat down with a planchette, or something,’ said Wally.

  Ermyntrude flushed, and said in a tearful voice: ‘How dare you talk like that? Sometimes I think you don’t care how much you hurt my feelings!’

  ‘Oh, I do think you’re quite too brutal and awful!’ exclaimed Vicky.

  ‘All right, all right!’ Wally said, retreating to the door. ‘There’s no need for you to start! If a man can’t make a perfectly innocent remark without creating a scene – now, stop it, Ermy! There’s nothing for you to cry about. Anyone would think Harold was going to hurt the gun!’

  ‘Do get it back!’ said Vicky. ‘You’re upsetting mother simply dreadfully!’

  ‘Oh, all right!’ replied Wally, goaded. ‘Anything for a quiet life!’

  As soon as he had left the room, Vicky abandoned the protective pose she had assumed, and went on eating her breakfast. Ermyntrude glanced apologetically at Mary, and said: ‘I’m sorry, Mary, but what with that White, and him being so tiresome, and then my poor first husband’s gun on top of everything, I just couldn’t help bursting out.’

  ‘No, he’s in one of his annoying moods,’ agreed Mary. ‘I shouldn’t worry, though. He’ll get over it.’

  ‘It’s all that Harold White,’ insisted Ermyntrude. ‘He’s been worse ever since he got under his influence.’

  ‘I don’t think he has, really,’ said Mary, always fair-minded. ‘I’m afraid it’s just natural deterioration.’

  ‘Well, all I can say is that I wish the Whites would go and live somewhere else. They’ve spoiled the place for me.’

  ‘One does seem to feel White’s influence,’ said Vicky, with an artistic shiver.

  Mary got up, ‘Don’t mix your roles!’ she advised. ‘That one doesn’t go with the Sports-Girl outfit.’

  ‘Oh, I’d forgotten I was wearing slacks!’ said Vicky, quite unoffended. ‘I think I’ve had enough of the Sports Girl. I’ll change.’

  Mary felt disinclined to enter into Vicky’s vagaries at such an early hour of the morning, and, with a rather perfunctory smile, she gathered up her letters, and left the room.

  It was part of her self-imposed duty to interview the very competent cook-housekeeper each morning, but before penetrating beyond the baize door to the servants’ quarters, she collected a basket and some scissors, and went out into the gardens to cut fresh flowers for the house.

  It was an extremely fine morning, and although Palings, as Ermyntrude had said, was best seen in springtime, when its rhododendrons and azaleas were in bloom, neither the sombre foliage of these shrubs, covering the long fall of ground to the stream at its foot, nor the glimpse of Harold White’s house upon the opposite slope, detracted, in Mary’s eyes, from its beauty. Ermyntrude employed a large staff of gardeners, and besides lawns where few weeds dared show their heads, and acres of kitchen-gardens and glass-houses, there was a sunk Italian garden, a rose-garden, a rock-garden, with a lily-pond in the centre, and broad herbaceous borders in which Ermyntrude’s own taste for set-effects had never been allowed to run riot.

  Mary reflected, with a wry smile, that Ermyntrude was the best-natured woman imaginable. Even in her own house she allowed herself to be overruled on all matters of taste, and not only did she acquiesce in the decisions made for her, but she quite seriously endeavoured to school her eye to appreciate what she believed to be good taste. But although she felt a certain pride in her slopes of rhododendrons (which were, indeed, one of the sights of the county), Mary knew quite well that in her heart of hearts she thought this wild part of her garden rather untidy, and very much preferred the view of formal beds, and clipped yews, and impeccably raked carriage-drive, which was to be obtained from the front windows of the house. From these windows, moreover, no disturbing glimpse of the Dower House could be caught.

  There was nothing intrinsically objectionable about the Dower House, but its temporary inmate, Harold White, had, during the course of two years, invested it, in Ermyntrude’s eyes, with such disagreeable attributes, that she had not only been known to shudder at the sight of its grey roof, visible through the trees, but had lately carried her dislike of it to such a pitch that she would sometimes refuse even to stroll down the winding path that led through the rhododendron thickets to the rustic bridge that crossed the stream at the foot of the garden. It was a charming walk, but it was spoiled for Ermyntrude by the fact that from the little bridge an uninterrupted view of the Dower House, situated half-way up the farther slope, smote the eye. The bridge had been thrown across the stream to provide an easy way of communication between the two houses, a circumstance which, however convenient it migh