No Wind of Blame Read online

  Ermyntrude came in. Before anyone could speak, Vicky had cast herself upon the maternal bosom. ‘Oh, mother, mother, don’t let them!’

  The Inspector opened his mouth, and shut it again. Mary said indignantly: ‘Vicky, it’s not fair! Stop it!’

  Ermyntrude clasped her daughter in her arms. Over Vicky’s golden head, she cast a flaming look at Hemingway. ‘What have you been saying to her?’ she demanded, in a voice that would have made a braver man than Hemingway quail. ‘Tell me this instant!’

  ‘It isn’t his fault!’ sobbed Vicky. ‘Alexis has told him about my shooting, and being on the scene! Oh mother, I knew all along Alexis thought I’d done it, but I never, never thought he’d set the police on to me!’

  ‘Oh! ’ said Mary, in a choking voice.

  ‘Alexis told you?’ Ermyntrude said terribly.

  ‘Look here, madam—’

  ‘You called to me, Trudinka?’ said the Prince, appearing suddenly in the doorway. ‘Ah, but what is this? What has distressed the little Vicky?’

  He encountered a look from the widow which made him take an involuntary step backwards.

  ‘Answer me this!’ commanded Ermyntrude. ‘What have you been saying to that man about my child?’

  ‘But, Trudinka—’

  ‘Don’t you call me Trudinka! What did you say to that man?’

  ‘I said nothing! But nothing!’ declared the Prince, the smile quite vanished from his face. ‘If he has told you that I said a word about Vicky, it is a lie!’

  Inspector Hemingway, whose senses were reeling, discovered the breaking-point of his admirable temper. ‘I’ve had more than enough of you!’ he said. ‘Not say a word about her! Oh, didn’t you, indeed!’

  Ermyntrude extended an arm towards the Prince in the most superb gesture of her life. ‘Out of my sight!’ she said. ‘You viper!’

  Twelve

  From that moment, the situation developed with such rapidity, and rose to such heights of dramatic fervour, that Mary, and Hugh, and the Inspector could do nothing but retire into the background. Ermyntrude certainly dominated the stage, but the Prince, no mean performer, very nearly stole the scene from her, once he had recovered from his first stupefaction.

  ‘Above all else, I am a Mother!’ Ermyntrude declared. She then said that she felt herself to be seeing Alexis for the first time, and announced in tragic accents that she had been a blind fool.

  The Prince countered by assuring her that he had been grossly misunderstood by the Inspector, who was a dunderhead; but any mollifying effect that this might have had was at once ruined by Vicky, who accused him of wanting to get her out of the way. This made the Prince lose his temper, and he found himself in the middle of a violent quarrel with his persecutor before he had time to reflect that to call heaven to witness that she was a liar, a mischief-maker, and an unprincipled baggage was scarcely likely to assuage her mother’s wrath. He clapped a hand to his brow, and cried out: ‘Ah, my God, what am I saying? No, no, I do not mean it! But when you try to come between me and this dear Ermyntrude, I grow mad, I do not know what I say! For I love her, do you see? I love her!’

  ‘A fine way to show me you love me!’ said Ermyntrude. ‘Standing there insulting my baby! Oh, my eyes are opened at last! Don’t touch me!’

  ‘Duchinka, be calm!’ implored the Prince. ‘It is a plot to undo me! Do not heed this foolish Vicky! She is jealous, but that I understand, and I forgive. You cannot think that I would seek to harm one who is dear to you!’

  ‘Don’t you talk to me!’ said Ermyntrude. ‘You to try to fling my Vicky to the wolves!’

  ‘Yes, I thought it wouldn’t be long before I got cast for a part in this,’ said the Inspector, in a gloomy undertone.

  ‘But I did not fling her to the wolves! It is false, quite false! Merely, when the police would have accused me, I said, to laugh to scorn the idea, “As well accuse Miss Fanshawe, or Miss Cliffe!” You see? To show the folly of it!’

  Unfortunately Ermyntrude seized on only one point of this explanation, and exclaimed indignantly: ‘You dare to tell me you tried to drag Mary into it too? Well, never did I think to live to see the day when a Prince would behave like a cad! The idea of trying to put the blame on to two innocent girls, when for all we know, it was you who shot poor Wally all along, just because I told you I didn’t hold with divorce! And if you think that I’d marry a man who comes to me with his hands red with my husband’s blood, you’ve got a very funny idea of me in your head, because I wouldn’t marry you, not if you had fifty titles! I dare say that’s the way you carry on in Russia, but you needn’t think you can bring your heathenish ways into this country, because you can’t!’

  The Prince showed signs of being about to tear his hair. ‘But I did not kill your husband! I defy you to say such a thing!’

  ‘Then don’t you let me hear you insinuating that my girl had anything to do with it! No, nor Mary either, for if anyone’s behaved like a daughter to me I’m sure she has, and not a word will I hear against her!’

  ‘Yet it is this quiet, good Mary who benefits by Carter’s death!’ said the Prince, nettled into taking another false step.

  ‘It’s not true! Mary won’t inherit Clara Carter’s fortune!’ said Vicky. ‘Hugh says so!’

  ‘She won’t?’ said Ermyntrude, momentarily diverted. ‘Well, I do call that a shame! Not that I ever believed in Wally’s precious Aunt Clara, because, if you ask me there isn’t any such person. And whatever the rights of it, I call it a real ungentlemanly thing to try to put the blame of Wally’s death on to a couple of girls!’

  Nothing that the Prince could say had the power to move her from this standpoint, and as he had, in fact, tried to do exactly what she accused him of, and was hampered in his denials by the Inspector’s presence, he soon found himself in a very awkward position, and ended by losing his head, and recommending the Inspector to ask himself why the murdered man’s relatives desired so palpably to discredit him.

  It was not necessary for Vicky to fan the flames kindled by this unwary hand. The scene rocketed into the realms of melodrama, with Ermyntrude holding the centre of the stage, and the Prince trying to deliver an impassioned speech which was invariably interrupted at the third word.

  Mary made one attempt to intervene, for she recognised the signs of rising hysteria in Ermyntrude, and guessed that this unleashed rage was to a great extent the outcome of overstrained nerves. Neither of the combatants paid the least attention to her soothing remarks, so she retired again into the background, and told Vicky that she ought to be ashamed of herself.

  The Inspector glanced towards the door, measuring his chances of escape, but before he had made up his mind to risk the attempt, a fresh actor appeared upon the scene. Dr Chester stood upon the threshold, surveying the room. ‘What in the name of all that’s wonderful is the matter?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, Maurice, thank God you’ve come!’ cried Mary, hurrying across the room towards him. ‘Oh, for Heaven’s sake, do something!’

  He took her hand, but looked towards Ermyntrude. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  Her wrath had exhausted Ermyntrude. She collapsed suddenly on to the sofa, and burst into tears. ‘Ask him! Ask him what he said about my Vicky!’ she sobbed. ‘Oh, I’ve never been so deceived in anyone in my life!’

  The Prince at once burst into speech, but as his agitation had made him forget his English, no one, least of all the doctor, could understand much of what he said. It was Mary who gave the doctor a hurried account of the quarrel. He betrayed neither surprise nor indignation, but merely said that since the situation was clearly impossible, he thought the Prince had better come and stay at his house until after the Inquest.

  Ermyntrude, who was weeping on Vicky’s shoulder, lifted her head to say in a broken voice that she was sure she didn’t want to hurry the Prince’s departure