‘He was, was he? Was he carrying anything else?’
‘No, Inspector, nothing else.’
‘Did you see him out of the house?’
‘Certainly I did,’ answered Peake, slighty affronted.
‘All right, that’s all.’ He waited until the butler had departed, and then said with all the air of one whose most cherished illusion has been shattered: ‘There, now, we shall have to give up thinking about White after all. Seems a pity, but there it is.’
‘I don’t see why,’ said Ermyntrude. ‘Something tells me he did it!’
‘Yes, but the trouble is that something tells me that you can’t get a three-foot rifle into a thirty-inch case,’ replied Hemingway. ‘It does seem a shame, doesn’t it? But, there, that’s a detective’s life all over! Full of disappointments.’
Fourteen
Since Ermyntrude was extremely loth to abandon what by this time amounted to a conviction that her bête noire had murdered Wally, the Inspector’s last remark annoyed her considerably. She said that to carp and to criticise and to raise niggling objections was men all over; and when the Inspector patiently asked her to explain how White could have packed a rifle into a case designed to carry, separately, the barrels and stock of a shot-gun, she replied that it was not her business to solve such problems, but rather his.
The Inspector swallowed twice before he could trust himself to answer. ‘Well, if he did it, all I can say is that he must be a highly talented conjurer, which, if true, is a piece of very important information which has been concealed from me.’
‘Of course he’s not a conjurer!’ said Ermyntrude crossly. ‘And don’t think you can laugh at me, because I won’t put up with it!’
At this point, Dr Chester intervened, saying with authority that Ermyntrude had talked enough, and must on no account allow herself to become agitated. He ordered her to rest quietly until luncheon was served, and, at a sign from him, Mary coaxed her to retire to the sofa in the drawing-room.
The Inspector threw Chester a look of gratitude, and said, when Mary had taken Ermyntrude away: ‘It beats me how you medical gentlemen get away with it, sir! If I’d so much as hinted to her that what she wanted was to cool-off, she’d have turned me out of the house, or had a fit of hysterics, which would have come to the same thing.’
‘You’re not her doctor, Inspector,’ answered Chester with a faint smile. ‘You mustn’t forget that I’ve attended Mrs Carter for many years.’
‘Know her very well, I dare say?’
‘A doctor always knows his patients well.’
‘Yes, but I’m not talking about her bronchial tubes,’ said the Inspector. ‘To tell you the truth, I’m not over and above fond of people’s insides. Not that I’m squeamish, mind you, but once you start thinking about how many yards of intestines, and I don’t know what besides, you’ve got, it’s enough to give you the horrors. Was Mr Carter a patient of yours too?’
‘Yes, but he didn’t often have occasion to call me in on his own account.’
‘Still, you probably knew him pretty well, I dare say?’
‘Fairly. If you want to know whether he was an intimate friend of mine, no: he wasn’t.’
The Inspector’s penetrating gaze held a question. ‘I take it you didn’t like him any more than anyone else seems to have done?’
‘No, I didn’t like him much,’ Chester replied calmly. ‘He was a tiresome sort of a man – no moral sense whatsoever, and as weak as water.’
‘Did it surprise you, when you heard he’d been shot, sir?’
‘Naturally it did.’
‘You didn’t know of anybody who might have wanted him out of the way?’
‘Certainly not. I know of many people who have thought for years that it was a pity Mrs Carter ever married him, of course.’
His tone was uncommunicative. The Inspector said: ‘It’s a funny thing, doctor, but I get the impression that you’re not being as open with me as I’d like.’
‘Sorry, I’m afraid there’s nothing I can tell you,’ Chester answered. ‘I wasn’t in Carter’s confidence.’
He turned to pick up his attaché-case from the table, but before he could leave the house, Vicky had entered it, with Hugh Dering behind her.
‘Oh, hallo!’ Vicky said, mildly surprised to see the Inspector. ‘Hallo, Maurice! How’s Ermyntrude?’