"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."