Four Days' Wonder

by A. A. Milne

  ‘There’s this handkerchief, Inspector,’ said Mr. Parracot almost as soon as they were in the room. ‘I don’t know if it has anything to do with it, but——’

  ‘All in due course,’ said the Inspector, holding up the hand which had stopped a thousand motor-omnibuses. ‘We take things in order, Mr.—er——’

  ‘Parracot.’

  ‘Mr. Parracot, and in that way we keep things orderly. Now then, over there, please, until I’m ready for you.’

  The body was examined, photographed, removed. ‘Right over there,’ said the Inspector to Mr. Parracot, who had already got the legs of his trousers into two photographs. ‘Sit right over there in that corner, and don’t move until I tell you to come out.’

  ‘About the handkerchief,’ said George a little later on. ‘I didn’t want you to think——’

  ‘When the moment comes to come to the handkerchief, Mr.—er——’

  ‘Parracot.’

  ‘Parracot, we shall come to it.’ He looked round the room. ‘Now then, what were you saying about a handkerchief?’

  ‘There’s a handkerchief over there on that chair.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well, you see, my wife—I mean it’s got “Jenny” on it.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well, I mean my wife’s name is Laura.’

  ‘We shall come to Mrs. Parracot later,’ said the Inspector. ‘Suppose we begin at the beginning, and try to get things into some sort of order.’ He took out his notebook. ‘Your name?’

  ‘Parracot.’

  ‘Just Parracot?’

  ‘George Parracot.’

  ‘Don’t keep anything back. Now then, Mr. Parracot, if you would like to give some account of your movements this morning and to explain how you made this shocking discovery——’

  ‘Well, it was like this,’ said Mr. Parracot eagerly.

  He gave an account. He explained. He made it perfectly clear that the responsibility was his and his alone; that though, as he maintained, he had not struck the actual blow, yet, if a Jury of his fellow-countrymen, some of them possibly Old Felsbridgians, held that the harbouring of a strange body in one’s drawing-room was such bad form as to be practically indistinguishable from murder, then he was prepared to take what was coming to him, even if it meant the Supreme Penalty, so long as his dear wife, Laura——’

  ‘Look here,’ said Inspector Marigold, getting more and more suspicious, ‘you say your wife’s name is Laura?’

  ‘Yes,’ said George eagerly. ‘Laura Mary Parracot.’

  ‘And this,’ said the Inspector, holding up the handkerchief, ‘has “Jenny” on it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then whose is it?’

  Mr. Parracot was carried away on a wave of fine feeling. ‘Mine,’ he said simply, and fingered his tie.

  ‘I thought you said your name was George Parracot,’ said the Inspector, thumbing his way back to an earlier passage in his note-book.

  Mr. Parracot returned to the surface. ‘Er—yes,’ he said.

  ‘And yet you have “Jenny” on your handkerchiefs?’

  ‘Well, I don’t exactly,’ said George.

  ‘How do you mean you don’t exactly?’

  ‘Well——’ George wondered what he did mean.

  ‘You mean somebody called Jenny gave you this handkerchief, and you always carry it about with you?’

  ‘Good Heavens, no,’ said Mr. Parracot hastily, realizing that he had gone much too far. ‘No, no, of course not. As a matter of fact,’ he said weakly, ‘it isn’t really mine at all.’

  ‘Then why do you say it was?’

  ‘Well——’

  ‘Are you’, demanded Inspector Marigold sternly, ‘endeavouring to Obstruct the Cause of Justice?’

  ‘No, really,’ said Mr. Parracot.

  ‘Are you aware’, said Inspector Marigold severely, ‘that Obstructing the Cause of Justice is an Extremely Serious Offence?’

  ‘I—I misunderstood you. It isn’t my handkerchief at all.’

  ‘Then whose is it?’

  ‘I don’t—— I mean I—— Why, of course!’ Mr. Parracot was suddenly inspired. ‘Jane Latour! Jenny!’

  ‘And who, might I ask, is Jane Latour?’

  ‘Why, she was.’ He jerked his head towards the door.

  The Inspector moistened his thumb again and worked his way backwards.

  ‘Five minutes ago you told me that you had never seen the dead woman before, and had no idea who she was.’

  ‘Well, yes, in a way, but what I meant——’

  ‘Mr. Parracot, in your own interests I advise you to be Very, Very Careful.’

  ‘What I meant was my wife——’ He pulled himself up. ‘No, no, I mean I—I said to my wife, who—who just happened—as I say, I happened to call her in here, she was in her bedroom as a matter of fact, I should have said it anyhow, well really I just said it to myself, “It looks rather like Jane Latour,” I said, and my wife said “Like who?” and I said “Nobody you know, old girl, it’s just somebody I saw on the stage once,” and photographs, you know, and——’

  ‘I think’, said Inspector Marigold, ‘that I had better see Mrs. Parracot now.’

  ‘Oh, I say,’ cried George, ‘must you?’

  ‘Laura Parracot, didn’t you say?’ He got on to a clean page of his note-book.

  ‘I say, you will spare her as much as possible? You know what I mean? She’s only a woman, and—er—rather delicate and all that.’

  Inspector Marigold’s old school had no club tie, but he was a sportsman and a gentleman. His whole manner altered. For the first time he became friendly, human, understanding.

  ‘That’s all right, sir,’ he said, with a look in his eye which was just not a wink. ‘In a Delicate Condition, eh?’

  ‘Er—yes,’ said Mr. Parracot helplessly.

  It was when he discovered that Mr. Parracot was lying for the third time that the Inspector arrested him.

  II

  If George Parracot had been taken in gyves to Merrion Place police station, then (a disturbing thought to many) this story might have been written differently. For the poster

  FAMOUS ACTRESS

  FOUND DEAD

  WELL-KNOWN CLUBMAN

  ARRESTED

  would certainly have caught Nancy’s eye in London, if not Jenny’s in Tunbridge Wells, and Jenny, however absurd the arrest had seemed to her, since he was not a relation of Aunt Jane’s, would have returned to save Mr. Parracot’s life.

  Fortunately Inspector Marigold had not as yet committed himself to publicity. Mr. Parracot, considering himself, as requested by the Inspector, under arrest, but as yet unmanacled, was waiting in the hall with Sergeant Bagshaw until investigations in the drawing-room were finished. Bagshaw, who always exerted himself socially on these occasions, was telling him about the last moments of the Edmonton murderer, but George could manage no more in reply than an occasional ‘Fancy!’ as horror succeeded horror. How, he wondered, was Laura getting on upstairs?

  He need not have been anxious. Once the body was out of the way, Laura was her own woman again. Having removed the first misapprehension from the Inspector’s mind, and excused him for a moment while he arrested George, she then put him right on one or two other points.

  The dead woman was Jane Latour, the actress, as anybody with eyes in his head could have seen for himself . . .

  Jane Latour was not called Jenny. Her intimate friends called her Toto, as anybody who could read would have known for himself . . .

  They had taken the house through Harrods. The owner had died. No, not been murdered. Just died. Watterson, Watterson and Hinchcoe were the solicitors. Young Mr. Hinchcoe had met her at the house and gone into things with her . . .

  Mr. Parracot had never met Miss Latour. H
e wouldn’t. Not that sort of woman . . .

  Now she remembered. She knew there was something about Jane Latour. Of course! Her real name was Jane Windell. She was the daughter of General Sir Oliver Windell . . .

  It had everything to do with it. Auburn Lodge had belonged to a Miss Windell. The one who died . . .

  She couldn’t say everything at once. If the Inspector took that sort of tone, then she wouldn’t say anything at all.

  Inspector Marigold apologized humbly. Mrs. Parracot smiled at him sweetly. Inspector Marigold curled his moustache and smiled back; and metaphorically tied a knot in his handkerchief to remind him to release George, who was obviously not concerned in what, it was now plain, was a Family Job. Very handsome woman, Mrs. Parracot. Would have looked well at Lord’s being passed gently off the ground after the luncheon interval.

  ‘I’ll tell you something else,’ said Laura archly.

  ‘Please do, madam.’

  ‘I’ve only just noticed it, so don’t ask me why I didn’t say so before.’ She said it so charmingly that the Inspector was not offended, but he did just wonder how personal a tone the conversation was going to take. Not, of course, a crumb on the moustache, but——

  ‘The window,’ said Laura.

  ‘The window?’ He turned in his chair.

  Laura gave an apologetic little laugh.

  ‘No, I’m being silly. Of course, you opened it.’

  ‘No, madam, certainly not. Why?’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t open when we came in.’

  ‘What!’ The Inspector hoisted himself up and lumbered to the window.

  ‘Of course, George might have done it, while he was waiting for you,’ said Laura, trying to spoil it all.

  She was too late. The Inspector was already at the window. He looked out. He saw the footprints. He beckoned mysteriously to Mrs. Parracot.

  They looked out together.

  ‘See that?’

  ‘Footprints!’ said Laura excitedly.

  ‘The murderess,’ said the Inspector solemnly.

  ‘Jenny,’ said Laura.

  ‘Jenny it is.’

  They drew their heads in and nodded to each other.

  ‘And now,’ said Inspector Marigold with grim determination, ‘to find Jenny.’

  He looked at his watch, and decided that he would find her after the luncheon interval.

  III

  Archibald Fenton had a wife and six children, and at first he had minded this a good deal. Not only were the seven of them expensive to maintain, but they formed, he could not help feeling, the wrong background for a critic of the Advanced School. The greeting which he was accustomed to receive from the less mathematical of his friends, ‘Well, how’s the family?’ placed him definitely among the Victorians. So might Dickens have been addressed by Wilkie Collins; so, doubtless, he often was. But with the success of A Flock of Sheep, he realized that the family was just the background which he wanted. A man who had brought back ‘heartiness’, ‘virility’, ‘the smell of hops’, ‘something of an Elizabethan tang’ and ‘a Rabelaisian robustness’ to the English novel (to quote from different columns of the Observer review) was living well within himself in limiting his output of children to six; and though he did not go so far as to feel grateful to Fanny, he was now so far from blaming her that he insisted on accepting all the credit for himself. She was, so to say, merely her husband’s publisher.

  There was, he found, another advantage to him in the large family. As a young woman Fanny had been more admirable for her bank-balance than for her figure. It was natural that the needs of all these children should reduce considerably the one, and perhaps not surprising that the provision of them should have added considerably to the other, but certainly she was now much more noticeable for her figure than for her bank-balance. In men Archibald had no objection to that heartiness of outline which could not—or, anyhow, should not—be called stoutness; indeed, he himself, to take a case, had an accommodating fullness of habit, a certain not unpleasing convexity of figure which sorted well with the robustness of his work. But Fanny was a woman; and Fanny, in any case, had gone too far altogether. It was as well, then, that the cares of the nursery should keep her so devotedly at home, at a time when her husband was, so conspicuously, going about. Even if Fanny had been slim and beautiful, yet in his new social system Archibald would have shone more brilliantly alone, the solitary focus of attention. Moreover, no real artist can preserve that mystery, that aloofness, which the laity demands from its artists, in the presence of one for whom he has lost all mystery . . . and from whom he was never, strictly speaking, aloof.

  This excursion into Mr. Archibald Fenton’s family life is bringing us to no more than the fact that the house in Bloomsbury was full. Rightly Archibald had the largest room as his work-room, but it was a pity that there was no cupboard left over, however small, for his secretary.

  At 9.30 Miss Fairbrother arrived, and looked through the letters which Mr. Fenton had left for her.

  At 10.15 Mr. Fenton entered the work-room. Miss Fairbrother rose, and Mr. Fenton said something about the weather or his secretary’s personal appearance.

  From 10.15 to 1.10 Mr. Fenton dictated.

  At 1.10 Mr. Fenton left for his club.

  At 1.15 Miss Fairbrother joined the family for luncheon, thus enabling Mr. Fenton to pay her slightly less, and Miss Fairbrother to get an insight into the duties of a nursery governess, should she ever wish to be one.

  At two o’clock Miss Fairbrother returned, alone, to the work-room, and typed all that she had taken down in shorthand in the morning.

  At 4.30 Miss Fairbrother left, generally meeting Mr. Fenton on the doorstep; in which case he said to her ‘Just off?’ and she said ‘Yes’, these being the facts.

  From 5–7 Mr. Fenton, alone in his workroom, prepared, either in his mind or in rough pencillings, the next morning’s instalment.

  At eight o’clock, complete from eye-glass to fob, Mr. Fenton went out to dinner.

  At nine o’clock Mrs. Fenton put the last of the family (excepting, of course, Mr. Fenton) to bed.

  At ten o’clock, when Mr. Fenton was just joining the ladies, she went to bed herself . . .

  At 4.30, then, on this day of late June, Nancy had begun her eager return to the Chelsea Flat. Jenny had been in her thoughts all through the long afternoon. The clack-clack of the typewriter went on; the rumble of Oxford Street, the gentler noises of the quiet square, drifted through the geranium-scented windows; but in her mind Nancy was at one moment in the heart of Kent, hiding among the hay-cocks while the pursuit went by, or fording a stream to give some blood-hound the slip . . . and, at the next, back in London again, bidding a reluctant farewell to her beige knickers. If only she had been with Jenny (each, of course, wearing her own, and starting the thing properly) what fun they would have had! . . .

  Clack -clack -clack. Clack -clack. (What had Jenny done?) Clack-clack-clack. Clack.

  She wondered how she would look in Jenny’s green georgette. Not really her colour, of course. Clack-clack-clack . . .

  At last the afternoon was over, and she was free. Her mind still full of fancies, she hurried to her omnibus, and from the top of it began to get into touch with reality. A poster bore the words:

  WELL KNOWN

  ACTRESS

  DEAD

  Nancy wondered who it was, and hoped that it wouldn’t be Gladys Cooper.

  The next poster was more informative:

  WEST END

  ACTRESS

  FOUND DEAD

  Nancy was relieved, because now it was almost certainly not Gladys Cooper, who was much too West-end to be called a West-end actress. And ‘Found dead’ meant that nobody was there when you died, so you had probably done it yourself. Nancy wondered what it was like . . . doing it yourself. Anyhow Gladys Cooper wouldn’t.
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  WEST END

  MURDER MYSTERY

  LATEST

  That was that one at Notting Hill, wasn’t it? The organ-grinder with the wooden leg.

  ACTRESS DEAD

  IN

  WEST END

  MANSION

  That, thought Nancy, is the West-end actress. Gladys Cooper lived at Highgate. It would look funny if you had a poster ‘ACTRESS ALIVE IN NORTH END MANSION’. What a lot of funny posters you could have if you tried.

  FAMOUS

  ACTRESS

  MURDERED

  I say! thought Nancy. So it isn’t the organ-grinder! I wonder who it is! I expect her understudy did it! They always do. So as to play the part! I suppose the theatre will shut to-night. I wonder if——

  And then, as she came into Sloane Square, two more posters told her all.

  BROMPTON ROAD

  MYSTERY

  LATEST

  said the one. And the other:

  JANE

  LATOUR

  LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

  ‘Jenny!’ cried out Nancy’s heart. ‘Oh, Jenny darling!’ And she rushed down the stairs of the omnibus, and out into the Square.

  IV

  Nancy drew the second sheet from the typewriter, placed it beneath the first sheet, and settled down to read. From time to time she nodded to herself approvingly. It was a good letter. She was prepared to bet that not even Archibald Fenton himself, with all his reputation, could have written a letter so good. It did everything which it had set out, six copies ago, to do.

  It is possible that her early experiences in the Peninsular War had made Acetylene Pitt unduly cautious when communicating with a friend in the presence of the enemy; but certainly caution was necessary. For though the Englishman’s home may still have the integrity, and to some extent (if desired) the exterior decoration, of a castle, his correspondence has long ceased to have any privacy at all. Once a letter gets into the hands of His Majesty’s Postmaster-General, it is at the mercy of a Home Secretary looking for lottery tickets or a War Office searching for traitors. What more hopeful centre for their investigations, thought Nancy, than the Tunbridge Wells Post Office? Tunbridge Wells was notoriously the home of retired Admirals, Generals and Indian Civil Servants: admirable men, with a fixed but inadequate income, and an unconquerable belief in their ability to enlarge it. Who more likely than an Admiral to enter breezily for a sweepstake, or a General to sell to some treacherous foreign power his copy of King’s Regulations, 1886? What more likely pseudonym for them to adopt than an innocent-seeming ‘Gloria Harris’?