Mr. Zero Page 11

  Algy caught her by the arm.

  “Gay-if you did it, tell me. I’ll get you away. Only for God’s sake tell me!”

  “I didn’t! Algy, I didn’t!”

  “What were you doing with the pistol?”

  “I picked it up. I was wiping it.”

  “Why? For God’s sake, why?”

  She burst into tears.

  “I can’t tell you. What are we going to do? Algy, what are we going to do?”

  Question and answer had followed so fast that there had been no time to think, but now there was a most desperate need for thought. He said,

  “I can get you away. We’d better chance it. Wipe that pistol again. Take hold of it with your dress. Don’t leave any fingerprints. Then ran along and meet me at the end of the hedge. If we can get to the car we can get clear.”

  Gay said, “You go. I can’t.” But what she really meant was, “If I go, that will put it on Sylvia. I can’t leave Sylvia.”

  “Gay, if you did it-”

  She stamped her foot.

  “I didn’t! I tell you I didn’t!”

  “Then we’d better go up to the house and get help.”

  XX

  They did not need to go up to the house, for the house was roused. From the end of the lawn they could see lighted windows, black figures crossing them, lights moving, lights coming nearer.

  “Algy, what are we going to say?”

  “You came down to see Sylvia. I drove you. We heard the shot. We found him dead. Stick to it.”

  The lights came on. The butler arrived panting-a fat man, his face glistening with sweat in the light of a large electric lamp. He had a pair of trousers hastily pulled on. A striped pyjama jacket clung tightly. Gay remembered him, soft-voiced and decorous. He panted out,

  “What are you doing here? What’s up? What’s happened? Her ladyship-”

  “Your master’s dead,” said Algy. “He’s been shot. You’ll have to send for the police. And a doctor. My name is Somers, and this lady is Miss Hardwicke, Lady Colesborough’s cousin. We were coming down here to see her. We heard the shot, and found Sir Francis lying on the grass beyond the yew hedge over there. I don’t think there’s any doubt about his being dead. We don’t know who shot him. How many men have you got here?”

  “There’s two footmen, sir, and myself, and two men at the garage, and two gardeners who live on the place.”

  “Well, you’d better round them up. Someone must stay by the body and see it isn’t touched. And put a man on any way into this tunnel place, because he was shot from there. The weapon’s lying on the seat by the window. Hurry all you can. Miss Hardwicke will go to Lady Colesborough. I’ll come with you if you like, but the police ought to be sent for at once. By the way, what’s your name?”

  “Sturrock, sir. Perhaps you’ll get on to the telephone, sir. I’d best take charge out here.”

  “Where is Lady Colesborough? Miss Hardwicke had better tell her.”

  Gay caught her breath. Sturrock said, still panting,

  “Her ladyship knows, sir. She came in running and calling for help. She roused us all, crying out that Sir Francis was shot. And then she dropped down in a faint, and the housekeeper’s looking to her, and her own maid.”

  “Well, we’d better be getting along,” said Algy.

  Sylvia was in the study. They had carried her there and laid her on the leather-covered couch. She had come out of her faint and was sobbing hysterically, with her maid, a sensible-looking middle-aged woman, trying to soothe her, and the housekeeper, vast in pink flannelette and a waterproof, standing by.

  Sylvia sat up when she saw Gay, clutched her, and said, sobbing,

  “Is he dead? Oh, he isn’t! Oh, he can’t be! Oh, send everyone away!”

  The two women went. Algy went. Gay heard him ask where there was another telephone, and then something about the butler’s pantry. The door was shut. Sylvia stopped crying and said,

  “Is Francis dead?”

  “I think so.”

  “He shot him!” said Sylvia in a quick, excited voice. “Oh Gay, it was dreadful! They were quarrelling and he shot him!”

  “Sylly-who?”

  “Mr. Zero,” said Sylvia with a sob that almost choked the word.

  “But you had the pistol in your hand-you had it.”

  Sylvia looked at her with wide, frightened eyes.

  “I picked it up.”

  “But Francis was outside-the other side of the hedge. Where was this Zero man?”

  “He was outside too.”

  “Then how did you get the pistol?”

  Sylvia swayed as if she was going to faint again. She let go of Gay and said in a failing voice,

  “I picked it up.”

  Gay caught her by ths arm.

  “Sylly, pull yourself together. You can’t faint now-there isn’t time-Algy is telephoning to the police. You’ve got to tell me what happened. You’ve got to make up your mind what you’re going to say. They’ll ask you hundreds of questions. Tell me what happened-quickly, before anyone comes.”

  Sylvia drew a long breath.

  “I told you-I had to meet him-”

  “This blackmailing Zero man?”

  “Yes-I told you. I took the letters he wanted-out of the safe.”

  “Go on.”

  “I wrapped them up in a handkerchief that Marcia left behind. It was a very ugly one-”

  “It doesn’t matter about the handkerchief. Go on.”

  “It does, because that’s why I couldn’t find them-after I’d dropped them. I mean. It was a dark green handkerchief with a sort of brown check on it. I can’t think why Marcia got it.”

  Gay thought, “It’s exactly like a nightmare. Francis has been murdered, and we’re talking about the colour of Marcia’s handkerchief.” She said,

  “Tell me what happened-tell me what happened.”

  The couch was covered with crimson leather. Sylvia leaned back into the corner. Her black satin cloak had fallen open. The hood had dragged her hair and disarranged it. A bright spot of colour burned in either cheek. She said with a rush of words,

  “Francis was here. I don’t know how he knew I had gone out. I opened the parlour door-”

  “You left the light on.”

  Sylvia looked faintly surprised.

  “I never can remember about lights-I didn’t mean to leave it on. I suppose Francis saw it.”

  “Sylly, you’re not telling me what happened.”

  Sylvia began to breathe a little faster.

  “I went right down to the end of the yew walk where the seat is, and the window, but I didn’t like doing it a bit, because I don’t really like that sort of place very much even in the daytime. I had a torch, and when I got to the window it shone through it, and Mr. Zero said, ‘Is that you?’ and I said it was. And he said, ‘Have you got those letters?’ and I said ‘Yes.’ And he said, ‘Hand them over quick, and put out that torch of yours,’ and I said ‘Why?’ and he got awfully cross and said to put it out at once. And then we heard someone running, and it was Francis.”

  “How do you know it was Francis?”

  Sylvia stared and shuddered.

  “He called out. I was so frightened, I thought I was going to faint. Then they began to fight, and they were saying awful things. And Mr. Zero said, ‘Take that!’ and there was a shot, and the pistol fell down and I picked it up.”

  Gay tried to think whether anyone would believe a story like this. She didn’t see how they could. She tried to think whether she could believe it herself.

  The door opened and Algy Somers came into the room.

  She said, “Sylvia, will you say that all over again. To Algy. Algy’s got to help us. You’ve got to tell him.”

  Sylvia turned lovely plaintive eyes on Algy and said it all over again. As far as Gay could tell she used exactly the same words, like a child repeating a lesson that it has learned by heart.

  Algy brought a chair over to the couch and sat down quite
close to them.

  “Who is Mr. Zero, Lady Colesborough?” he said.

  Sylvia looked helpless.

  “That’s what he called himself when he talked to me on the telephone.”

  Algy said “Yes?” in an encouraging voice, and, when that did not produce anything, “Don’t you know his real name?”

  “Oh, no,” said Sylvia.

  “You were meeting him to give him some letters. Will you tell me why?”

  “He wanted them,” said Sylvia with a sob. “He said they were his. He said he’d tell Francis-about the other things-” Her voice broke.

  “He was blackmailing you?”

  Two large tears rolled down Sylvia’s cheeks.

  “Yes, he was. And Gay said not to meet him, and I wish I hadn’t now, but I didn’t want him to tell Francis about the paper.”

  Algy said “Help!” to himself. He had awful visions of the sort of witness that Sylvia was going to make, he had awful visions of what she might be going to say.

  He asked, “What paper?” and with a complete sense of unreality heard Sylvia say,

  “The one I took when I was staying with the Wessex-Gardners. I can’t even remember the man’s name.”

  It was Gay who said “Lushington,” and it was Gay who saw the white line come on either side of Algy’s mouth. There was one of those silences which seem as if they might go on for ever. Then Gay put out a hand to stop Sylvia, and Algy said very quietly indeed,

  “You took a paper from Mr. Lushington’s room,at Wellings a week ago?”

  “He made me,” said Sylvia. “He said he’d give me two hundred pounds. And I’d lost it at cards, and Francis would have been so angry.”

  It seemed a complete explanation.

  Algy said, “He being Mr. Zero?”

  Sylvia nodded.

  “So I had to get the letters when he told me to.”

  Algy said, “I see.” He got up and walked in the room. The window was open. Francis Colesborough had gone out that way. There was a drawer pulled out on one side of the writing-table, pulled out in a hurry and left. He stood looking down at it without touching anything. He wondered what had been taken from it in that last hurry, and saw a packet of cartridges lying there and thought, “It was his own pistol. He snatched it up and went out.” There was a sheet of paper on the blotting-pad, a letter just begun. You don’t read another man’s letters, but Francis Colesborough was no longer another man. He was “the deceased” in a murder case, and one of the first things the police would do would be to read this letter.

  Algy bent down and read it as it lay a little crookedly on the pale yellow blotting-paper.

  There was no beginning. That halted him, because there was something strange in a letter which discarded all the usual forms. The strangeness sounded a warning bell. The check was momentary, yet in that moment he had braced himself against what might come. Without any change of expression he read:

  “You disturb yourself unnecessarily. Neither Zero nor the agent is under the least suspicion. This rests in quite another quarter. M.L. has decided-”

  The writing broke off there.

  Algy Somers went back to the butler’s pantry and rang up Montagu Lushington.

  XXI

  Colonel Anstruther leaned back in his chair and frowned at Inspector Boyce. He had been a Chief Constable for ten years without ever coming to closer quarters with a cause célèbre than the pages of his daily newspaper. He now found himself threatened with a sensational publicity from which no man in the British Isles was more averse. He had an exact and orderly mind, and disapproved of crimes which could not be immediately docketed and pigeon-holed. He drummed on the arm of his chair and said,

  “The Home Office is sending a man down. You’ll have to take instructions from him as to the political issues involved. He will be present when the safe is opened, and so will Sir Francis Colesborough’s lawyer.”

  “That was a very queer letter, sir,” said Inspector Boyce.

  “Damned queer. Damned treasonable, if you ask me. Home Office report on sabotage missing, Lady Colesborough confessing she took it under instructions from a blackmailer who calls himself Mr. Zero, and her husband, who she thought was going to kill her if he found out, writing, ‘Neither Zero nor the agent is under the least suspicion.’ This means Francis Colesborough was in on that business, and lord knows what we shall find when we open his safe. ‘Neither Zero nor the agent-’ Now suppose Francis Colesborough was Zero-the agent very probably his wife. They were staying at Wellings when the paper was missed. She’s a pretty, silly woman. Suppose her husband put her on to getting the paper for him. Well, say she did it-what was she doing last night? She says-where’s that statement of hers?” He plucked it angrily from the desk and leaned back again. “Yes, here we are. She says:

  “ ‘I went into the yew walk to meet a man who called himself Mr. Zero. I have never seen him, and I do not know his real name. He said my husband was keeping some of his letters, and he induced me to take them out of the safe in our London house and bring them down to Cole Lester. He said they were his property and would have his name on them. I found a packet which was marked “Zero.” It was this packet which I took into the yew walk. I did not take any pistol with me. I have fired a pistol, but I do not possess one. I am not a good shot. There is a window in the yew hedge. When I reached this window Mr. Zero was there, but on the other side of the hedge and behind it so that I did not see him. He asked me whether I had the letters, and when I replied in the affirmative he told me to hand them over quickly. I heard my husband coming on the outside of the hedge to the left of the window. Mr. Zero was on the right. They were both outside the hedge, and I was inside. My husband called out. He said angry things, and used language which I would rather not repeat. I don’t remember whether Mr. Zero said anything then. They began to fight. I had a torch. I saw a pistol in my husband’s hand. I think Mr. Zero got it away from him. They were fighting just outside the window, and I was very frightened. I heard Mr. Zero say, “Now what about it?” and, “Take that!” There was a shot. I don’t know what happened to the letters. I don’t know what happened to Mr. Zero. I thought I was going to faint. I thought my husband was dead. I picked up the pistol-’ ”

  Sylvia and the official mind had obviously collaborated. The result enraged Colonel Anstruther. He repeated the last sentence angrily.

  “She says, ‘I picked up the pistol.’ What does she mean? What’s the good of letting her make a statement like this? How could she pick it up if it was the other side of the hedge?”

  Inspector Boyce gave a slight cough.

  “She says it wasn’t, sir.”

  “Wasn’t what?”

  “Wasn’t on the other side of the hedge, sir.”

  Colonel Anstruther glared.

  “Does she or doesn’t she state that she was on the inside of the hedge and the two men on the outside?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And that one of them had the pistol and the other got it from him?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then how the devil could she pick it up inside the hedge?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “Then why didn’t you ask her? If she says a thing like that she’s got to explain it, hasn’t she?”

  Inspector Boyce stiffened and reverted to the extreme official manner.

  “I did not omit to put that point to Lady Colesborough. She replied that she had no recollection of what occurred between the firing of the shot and the picking up of the pistol. If you will refer to the statement, sir-”

  Colonel Anstruther referred to it with dislike. A most unsatisfactory document. He read in an annoyed voice:

  “‘There was a shot. I don’t know what happened to the letters. I don’t know what happened to Mr. Zero. I thought I was going to faint. I thought my husband was dead. I picked up the pistol-’ ”

  “Well, what about it? The pistol was outside, and she is inside, and she says she picked it up. What’s
the thickness of the hedge? I suppose you’ve measured it?”

  “Six foot thick mostly, sir, but this window affair is cut in and there’s not more than a four-foot thickness there.”

  “What’s the size of the window?”

  “Three foot high and six foot wide, sir. There’s a seat inside, put facing it to get the view, if you understand. And there’s this window, with a four-foot sill and the hedge jutting out beyond it on either side for a couple of feet. She says they were fighting just outside, but unless the man who had the pistol threw it in through the window after he had fired I don’t see how it got the same side of the hedge as Lady Colesborough, or how she picked it up.”

  Colonel Anstruther looked up sharply.

  “Is there any proof that there were two men on the other side of the hedge? Anything to substantiate Lady Colesborough’s story of a fight?”

  Inspector Boyce coughed.

  “Dr. Hammond says the pistol must have been at least a yard away from Sir Francis when the shot was fired. There aren’t any footprints. It has been dry all day and the grass isn’t marked. There’s nothing to show whether there was a fight. There might have been someone there besides Sir Francis, or there mightn’t. It all rests on Lady Colesborough’s evidence. She says this man who calls himself Zero was there, and she says he fired the shot, but there isn’t anyone else that saw him, and we can’t find anyone that heard or saw a car.”

  Colonel Anstruther said “Tcha!” and added, “What did you expect to find? People in Colebrook don’t sit up at night counting cars, do they? I don’t suppose anyone heard Mr. Somers’ car either, did they?”

  “Well, no, sir, they didn’t.”

  “Well then, what’s the good of telling me nobody heard a car? That don’t mean there wasn’t a car to hear-does it?”

  “No, sir. You asked if there was any evidence.”

  Colonel Anstruther made an explosive sound.

  “And there isn’t any! I take it there’s no doubt that the weapon used was Colesborough’s own pistol, because if there was another-”

  “No doubt at all, sir. Sir Francis kept this pistol in a drawer on his writing-table-we found the drawer pulled out. He’d got a licence and all quite regular. Sturrock the butler says there were a pair of them, but we haven’t been able to find the other. It may be up at the London house.”