Patricia Wentworth - Mr. Zero

He drifted out of the room, and made short work of getting into his pyjamas, returning to switch out the light and announce as he got into bed,

“If anyone else thinks of having twins, tell ’em to drown ’em. Night, Ju.”

Yet twenty minutes later his head came up from the pillow with a jerk. Judith Hammond, wooing a dream in which the Meaker baby was hers, felt justly annoyed at being not only awakened but shaken.

“Ju, I know who that fellow was.”

“What fellow?” said Judith, half cross and half forlorn. Perhaps she and Jim would never have a child. Perhaps-

Jim Hammond stopped shaking her to thump the bedclothes triumphantly.

“The fellow I saw getting over the gate. What a damned extraordinary thing!”

But, darling, you can’t marry him, so what’s the good of saying you’re engaged?”

“I’m going to marry him,” said Gay with a fighting sparkle in her eyes.

She and Sylvia were in the Parlour, Sylvia in an easy chair, and Gay on her knees before a reluctant fire. She gave it a vicious poke and repeated firmly,

“I’m going to marry him.”

Sylvia leaned forward.

“But, darling, how can you? I mean, you can’t marry him if he shot Francis, because they’ll hang him, won’t they? Besides we are cousins-aren’t we, and I don’t think it would be at all nice.”

Gay whisked round with her cheeks burning.

“He did not shoot Francis! And they won’t-they won’t ! Sylly, how dare you?”

Sylvia’s lovely eyes widened.

“I thought they did if you shot people. I thought that’s what they were for.”

“He didn’t shoot Francis!”

Sylvia was surprised.

“But, darling, it would be such a good thing. I mean, everyone thinks he did, and it would clear it all up and settle everything, and the police would go away and not worry us any more. I do hate that old man with the red face-don’t you? They say he bullies his daughters most dreadfully. What I can’t understand is why they don’t arrest Algy and take him away, because if he didn’t do it, they could always let him out again, and if he did-well, I really don’t think it’s quite nice saying good-morning, and talking about the weather, and asking him to pass the salt-not if he shot Francis-I mean, well, is it?”

Gay caught her by the wrists.

“Sylly, he did not shoot Francis! Will you get that into your head and keep it there! If it’s the only idea you’ve got in the world, stick to it! Algy-didn’t-shoot-your-husband. It’s as simple as pie. Have you got it? Then hold on to it tight and don’t let go. Algy didn’t shoot Francis .”

“Then who did?” said Sylvia simply.

“I don’t know, but Algy didn’t. And when you say you don’t like having him in the house, you seem to forget that he’s done nothing but say hadn’t he better go to an hotel. And Colonel Anstruther kept on saying no and practically insisting on his staying here. You don’t suppose he wants to-you don’t suppose either of us want to? But of course the police like it because it gives them only one house to watch instead of sleuthing you in one place, and me in another, and Algy somewhere else.”

Sylvia said, “Oh, well-” and spread her hands to the small, uneasy flame which had responded to Gay’s last vigorous poke. “Of course,” she continued, “I don’t want Algy to be hanged if he really didn’t do it, even if it would save a lot of trouble. But I don’t think I should be engaged to him-just in case, you know.”

“I am engaged to him,” said Gay, with smiling lips.

“I know, darling. That’s just how I felt when Mummy wouldn’t let me go out with Frank Rutherford any more. He wanted me to be engaged, you know, and if it hadn’t been for Mummy I might have married him.”

“Suppose you had, Sylly?”

“Darling, he might have gone on being a curate for years, and years, and years, and I don’t know what they get, but Mummy said it wasn’t enough. And I cried dreadfully, but when Francis asked me to marry him, wasn’t I thankful! Because it doesn’t look nice if you have to break off an engagement-I mean, Francis being so rich, people would have been sure to talk, wouldn’t they?”

Gay looked at her with a sort of fascinated interest.

“Do you mean that you would have broken off your engagement to Frank Rutherford if you had been engaged to him when Francis asked you?”

Sylvia heaved a sigh.

“It was much nicer not having to do it-wasn’t it?”

“You mean you would have broken it off?”

Sylvia put her handkerchief to her eyes.

“I don’t think you’re being at all kind ,” she said, and dropped a tear, but whether for Frank or for Francis was more than Gay could tell. It was only a moment, however, before she looked up with a dawning interest in her eyes. “You know, darling, I rather liked the other one. Couldn’t you be engaged to him instead?”

Gay stared, sat back on her heels, and said as firmly as her surprise would allow,

“What other one?”

“The nice polite one,” said Sylvia. “I’m sure he would if you encouraged him a little. I think he’s rather shy, but so polite. I think he’d make a really good husband.”

If Sir Francis had been dead a little longer, Gay might have retorted, “Then marry him yourself.” She decided regretfully that it wouldn’t be decent. She said in an exasperated voice,

“I suppose you know what you’re talking about, Sylly-I don’t.”

“That nice polite Mr. Brewster. I really was sorry I didn’t see him yesterday when he was here. He’d have been so nice and ordinary after that horrid Colonel Anstruther and all those policemen and people. I think it would be much better for you to be engaged to him.”

Gay burst out laughing. She really couldn’t help it.

“It’s all very well to laugh,” said Sylvia in a protesting voice, “but I do think it would be nice to have a safe, ordinary sort of person like Mr. Brewster coming into the family. I mean, I really do think we want someone like that for a change. It isn’t as if we’d been brought up to have criminals in the family, and now they all say Francis was, and you say yourself that Algy is going to be arrested. And what do you think Colonel Anstruther and Mr. Brook said to me this morning? Why, they actually said they could send me to prison for taking that stupid envelope.”

Gay had stopped laughing.

“I suppose they could,” she said soberly.

“It’s all right-they’re not going to,” said Sylvia in a reassuring tone. “They said they’d had a conference or something at headquarters, and they weren’t going to, because they think it was Francis who made me, and Mr. Brook said he didn’t think I realized what I was doing, and there’s some law about its being your husband’s fault if he tells you to do something like that, so they’re not going to arrest me. I think Mr. Brook likes me a little, because I began to cry, and he said not to quite nicely. But Colonel Anstruther only glared and said ‘Tcha!’ ”

Gay felt a good deal of relief. She thought the law a very convenient one for Sylvia. She said,

“Why do they think it was Francis who made you take the paper? He couldn’t have talked to you on the telephone without you knowing his voice.”

“Oh, it wasn’t Francis who talked to me on the telephone. I told them it wasn’t, and they said they never thought it was. But they think Francis told him to do it-Mr. Zero, you know-and told him what to say and all that.”

“But why should he, Sylly? Why should Francis make you do a thing like that?”