Four Days' Wonder

by A. A. Milne

  At ‘seven’ Julia said: ‘Ferries, Endover, Tunbridge Wells’, and the two policemen exchanged triumphant nods.

  ‘Have you any idea, Miss Treherne, how this watch came into his possession?’

  ‘Well, I suppose he saw it in a pawnbroker’s, and thought the “J” would do for “Julia”. It’s Jenny’s, isn’t it?’

  ‘But he’s in the country?’

  ‘Oh! Well, perhaps——’ She stopped powdering her face, and turned to him excitedly. ‘I say, you don’t think——’

  The Inspector said to Bagshaw: ‘Ring up Mr. Watterson’s house and get somebody to come over and identify it.’ Bagshaw went out.

  ‘Bertie! Have I been made love to by a murderer?’

  ‘Looks like it. Have you ever been photographed with him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘A pity,’ said Bertie sadly.

  The Inspector stood up.

  ‘Well, thank you, madam. I shall have to keep this, you understand?’

  ‘Well, of course, if it’s Jenny’s.’

  ‘Thank you. Good-day.’

  ‘Good-bye. And give my love to that nice —I mean say good-bye to that——’

  ‘Come on,’ said Bertie, clutching her arm.

  They went out. As they came to the entrance into the street Bertie whispered to her, and stopped to do up his shoe-lace. Julia went out alone with an air . . .

  MISS JULIA TREHERNE LEAVING MERRION PLACE POLICE STATION

  Chapter Seventeen

  Transformation of Jenny

  I

  Nancy sat in the lounge of her hotel, reading the latest allocution from Smilax Beauty Preparations, entitled: How I Keep my Face Clean and Free from Blemish—by Julia Treherne. In this respect she was having the advantage of Miss Treherne.

  ‘I don’t mind what I’m supposed to say about it,’ Julia had explained to Bertie, ‘as long as I needn’t read it, and haven’t got to use the stuff.’

  ‘Well, of course not,’ said Bertie. ‘Give it to Clara.’

  So this was done; and Nancy struggled on, unaware that she was reading: How I Keep my Face Fairly Clean and Free in one or two places from Blemish—by Clara Watkins.

  Derek came down the hill from the top of the common, in his pocket a list of things which Jenny wanted. This included certain Smilax beauty preparations. Jenny’s face was absolutely clean and entirely free from blemish, but naturally she wished to keep it so.

  He parked his car opposite the hotel, and went in. He shook hands with Nancy.

  ‘Ah!’ he said. ‘It was you.’

  ‘You mean at the post office?’

  ‘Yes. I want to hear all about that.’

  ‘I want to hear all about everything.’

  ‘You shall. Are you ready?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Come on, then.’

  They went outside together.

  ‘Now then,’ said Derek, when they were sitting in the car, ‘we can talk safely. First of all, you are Nancy Fairbrother, aren’t you?’

  ‘Undoubtedly.’

  ‘So am I. I mean I’m quite genuine too. With all these detectives about, one has to be careful. Now, Jenny wants a lot of things. Here’s the list. Just look at it, and tell me what you feel about it.’

  Nancy glanced at the list and said: ‘How do you mean feel? There’s nothing difficult.’

  ‘Well, have you got enough of Jenny’s money?’

  ‘Lord, yes.’

  ‘Good. And do you want me to come with you and carry the parcels, or would you rather be on your own?’

  Nancy looked at the list again.

  ‘I think Jenny—I think I shall be quicker alone. Besides, if you’re there, I shall be saying “Jenny” by accident.’

  ‘That would be fatal. We should be arrested at once. Well, I’ll walk up to the High Street with you, and leave you to it. What do you want, about half an hour?’

  ‘Three-quarters.’

  ‘Good Heavens, are you sure you’ve got enough money?’

  ‘Quite. I may be an hour.’

  ‘Then I shall get my hair cut again.’

  As they walked up to the shops Nancy said: ‘You realize that I don’t even know yet why Jenny ran away, or what she saw or anything?’

  ‘You shall hear it all as we go back.’ He was silent for a little, and then said: ‘I like your Jenny, you know.’

  ‘So do I, you know,’ said Nancy.

  So she heard all about it on the way back to Bassetts, and the story was finished just as they came in at the gate. Then she and Jenny were in each other’s arms.

  ‘Oh, Jenny! Oh, darling!’

  ‘Oh, darling! Oh, Nancy!’

  Derek decided to leave them to it. After all the terrible adventures which they had been through, they would have much to say to each other. They said it.

  ‘Darling, your hair!’

  ‘I know! Isn’t it awful?’

  ‘Did you do it yourself?’

  ‘Well, I had to. Nancy, did you get my things?’

  ‘I rather like it. Turn round and let’s have a look.’

  ‘Oh, darling!’

  ‘Sort of wind-swept.’

  ‘Well, I did wonder about that. I mean getting a proper wind-swept when I went back. Did you get my things?’

  ‘Rather. I don’t think it’s bad, that skirt. Turn round again.’

  ‘Oh, but it is short.’

  ‘Jenny darling, you do look funny in my clothes. I can’t tell you how odd it is.’

  ‘Darling,’ gurgles Jenny. ‘If you could see Miss Pitman! What have you got underneath? Did you get all the things?’

  ‘Of course. Yes, it is a bit short. You ought to have had the other.’

  ‘Oh, but I couldn’t! Did you get the dress?’

  ‘Out in the car. Yes, I do like the hair, Jenny.’

  ‘Oh, darling! But, darling, could you get a washing-silk in green? I mean in Tunbridge Wells? How wonderful of you.’

  ‘Not in green. I simply couldn’t, darling. And of course with your Derek getting his hair cut over and over again, and looking at his watch every five seconds, and comparing it with the nearest policeman’s——’

  ‘Nancy! He had his hair cut yesterday!’

  ‘I know. It’s getting a mania with the man. So you see, Jenny darling, I had to take what I could get. It’s white, and——’

  ‘Oh, Nancy!’ said Jenny tragically.

  ‘Yes, but listen, darling. It’s got a green belt, and a little turn-down green collar, and little green buttons all down the front which give a most unsettling effect. Really sweet, Jenny.’

  ‘Oh, how lovely! You angel! Is it in the car?’

  ‘And I got some green sandals—quite cheap —six and eleven——’

  ‘Did you really?’ cried Jenny, seeing them.

  ‘And it has an absurd little pocket over the chest, so I got a little green handkerchief to put in—two in fact—one to dangle——’

  The thought of the little green handkerchief to dangle was too much for Jenny. She took a sudden heroic decision.

  ‘Nancy darling,’ she said, ‘I wish you hadn’t got to be Miss Pitman. Couldn’t we both change now, and you could wear your own things, and I could wear the washing-silk, and you could take off the spectacles and all the layers you must have underneath, and be Nancy again. I hate to think of Derek not really seeing you.’

  ‘Shall I?’ said Nancy eagerly. Wavering.

  ‘Come on, darling, let’s get the things out of the car, and take them up! You got the stockings, didn’t you?’

  ‘Jenny?’

  ‘Yes?’ said Jenny nervously, knowing what was coming.

  ‘Look me in the face.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hand on heart.�
�

  Jenny put a hand on her beating heart and held it still.

  ‘Now then, say it.’

  A little girl again in Nancy’s nursery, Jenny said meekly:

  ‘Cross my heart, and let me die,

  If ever I tell my friend a lie.

  Cross my knees and waggle my toes—

  When I know anything, Nancy knows.’

  ‘Well?’ said Nancy.

  Two large eyes looked out pleadingly from Jenny’s burning face.

  ‘All right, darling, I think I know.’

  ‘Oh, Nancy!’

  ‘Come on and let’s get the things. What larks.’

  Clutching the precious parcels they went up to Jenny’s bedroom. For an hour they stayed there . . . and along the remotest backwaters of Bassetts Farm the ripple of their chattering voices played unceasingly.

  II

  ‘Derek, this is Nancy,’ said Jenny proudly.

  Derek looked at Nancy, and then said: ‘Who’s the other one?’

  ‘Jenny,’ said Nancy.

  Derek looked at them both as they stood there, hand in hand, and nodded to himself.

  ‘Right. It’s a bit confusing just at first. Now then—oh, by the way, Miss Fairbrother, we have a good deal to settle, and saying “Miss Fairbrother” won’t make us any quicker, if you see what I mean.’

  ‘Quite, Mr. Fenton.’

  ‘No, no, that’s what you say to Archibald. My name’s Derek.’

  ‘I’ll make a note of it, Derek.’

  ‘Good. Let’s take a cushion or two outside where nobody can hear us.’

  They made themselves comfortable at the far end of the orchard. Jenny thought: I wish we could just sit here, me in this dress, and not bother about doing anything.

  ‘Now, then,’ said Derek, ‘what are we going to do? I’ve been reading about the inquest. They aren’t arresting Parracot, so we haven’t got him on our hands yet. Nancy, you’re the latest from London—who does the average Man about Town, West-end Clubman or Man in the Street suspect?’

  ‘The Man in the Train——’

  ‘That’ll do. Well?’

  ‘Jenny. He told me he knew it for a fact.’ She gave a quick impression of the Man in the Train knowing it for a fact. Derek laughed. Jenny, feeling completely right and envious of nobody in the new washing-silk, smiled happily to herself to think that this was her friend, who had made Derek laugh.

  ‘Yes, but now what about the watch? Or is that going to make it still worse for Jenny? I mean, will people think that just because a woman —of course you aren’t a bit alike really——’

  ‘Oh, but I didn’t pawn it.’

  ‘Nancy!’ cried Jenny. ‘Then where did all that money I’ve been spending—— Darling, you haven’t been——’

  ‘No, I mean, Mr. Fenton pawned it for me.’

  ‘Archibald?’

  ‘Yes. So you see, as soon as he saw the papers, he’d write to Scotland Yard, and tell them it was me. So the pawnbroker wouldn’t come into it at all, and I couldn’t be mistaken for Jenny.’

  ‘But Archibald is here!’

  ‘I know. At Ferries. That’s how I could get away.’

  ‘But, my dear girl, we don’t get papers down here.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Nancy, astonished. ‘Why not? Are you afraid’, she asked earnestly, ‘that the locomotives will frighten the cows, or is education not spreading as much as one thought?’

  ‘When I say we don’t get papers, I mean that we don’t buy them in the village shop as we buy cigarettes and nutmeg-graters. There is a way of getting a paper delivered, which I haven’t quite mastered yet, but anyhow it takes a little time to get it into motion. How long has Archibald been down?’

  ‘Wednesday evening.’

  ‘Did he come suddenly?’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘Then he hasn’t the slightest chance of seeing a paper until next Monday. Unless of course he goes into Tunbridge Wells or somewhere.’

  ‘He wouldn’t do that. He’s working very hard.’

  ‘Well,’ said Derek, ‘not so hard but what he’s found time to pay us a call.’

  ‘Jenny!’ cried Nancy. ‘Did you see him?’

  ‘Not only saw him, but shot him,’ said Derek.

  ‘Darling!’

  (There was an interval while the story of Archibald’s visit was told to a delighted Nancy.)

  ‘So that was that. Well now, how do we stand? The pawnbroker comes in very strongly now with a description of Archibald. Is it on all the hoardings of London? What a glorious thought!’

  The little sleeveless washing-silk with the green belt and little turn-down green collar and the green buttons down the front and the green handkerchief peeping out of the absurd little pocket felt very, very good to Jenny, so good that she was sorry suddenly for all the poor people who were not wearing such a darling dress; and as these undoubtedly included Mr. Archibald Fenton (who, indeed, would have been ill-suited by it), she felt sorry for Mr. Fenton, and the more so because at any moment he might be wrongfully hanged.

  ‘Derek,’ she said shyly.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I think I’m going to give myself up.’

  ‘I’m dashed if you do.’

  ‘Darling,’ said Nancy, ‘wait till—Derek, when did you say the village would be reading all about last Thursday’s weather?’

  ‘You misunderstand me. What I said was that Archibald would be reading next Monday’s paper on Monday.’

  ‘Well, then, wait till Monday, and I’ll give myself up too.’

  ‘And so will I,’ said Derek. ‘Accessory after the crime. We all will.’

  ‘But we can’t let poor Mr. Fenton——’

  ‘How would it be’, said Nancy, ‘if I went to Ferries this afternoon to spy out the land?’

  ‘Just how does one spy out land? Spy out a bit here to show us.’

  Nancy went through the exaggerated movements of a bloodhound looking for its collar-stud.

  ‘Yes. Well, you could do that, of course. And then we could do something helpful afterwards.’

  Nancy waved him into silence.

  ‘Having done that,’ she said, ‘or not, as the case may be, I then ring the bell and ask for Mr. Fenton. I say that I’m spending my holiday in Tunbridge Wells, and came over to see if I could do anything for him. That’s all quite natural, and he’d want to know my address anyway. He is delighted to see me, gives me three autograph albums to return, and asks me how to spell “disassociated”.’

  ‘Can you?’

  ‘No. But he wouldn’t know that. Then we get talking, and I find out how much he guesses, and if he’s read the papers, and so on.’

  Derek looked inquiringly at Jenny.

  ‘What do you think? Not bad, is it?’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘I’ve just remembered. We’ve still got his car.’

  ‘Oh, Lord, yes, we’ve got to get that back somehow.’

  ‘Well, why couldn’t you drive me down in it?’ suggested Nancy.

  ‘Good idea!’ said Derek eagerly. ‘And then we leave you and the car, and Jenny and I walk back and collect mine, and drive down again, and——’

  ‘Wouldn’t your brother recognize his car, and wonder how Nancy came in it from Tunbridge Wells?’ said a lazy voice.

  Derek broke off and stared at Jenny. Then he turned to Nancy with a look of patient suffering.

  ‘Stupid idea,’ he said, shaking a reproachful head at her. ‘Why do you make these idiotic suggestions, Miss Fairbrother?’

  ‘Sorry. I’ll try again. How would it be if I ran both ways?’

  ‘It would be hot,’ said Derek simply. ‘But’, he added, ‘we could lend you a bicycle.’

  Nancy turned on him a
look of patient suffering which bettered his own.

  ‘And suppose your hawk-eyed relations recognized it, and saw at once that it had started from Ipswich?’

  ‘They wouldn’t. This is an anonymous bicycle.’

  ‘Any particular sex? Or is there a pair of trousers which goes with it?’

  ‘There’s a——’

  ‘It would be better the other way round,’ said Jenny thoughtfully.

  ‘You mean facing the back-wheel, darling?’

  ‘Thus,’ said Derek, ‘giving the false impression that one was travelling to Tunbridge Wells——’

  ‘From Ipswich. Ingenious,’ said Nancy, ‘but tiring.’

  Jenny, smiling lazily at the foolish pair, said:

  ‘The best way would be for us to take Nancy down in Derek’s car, hide it somewhere, and walk back here for the other. Then when we got to Ferries again, it explains why we’re there —to return Mr. Fenton’s car——’

  ‘Listen to this, Miss Fairbrother. This is the real thing.’

  ‘And we can walk in, and be introduced properly to Mr. Fenton’s secretary.’

  Nancy blinked rapidly at Derek, and said brightly to Jenny: ‘Your brother, Mr. Fenton? Really? So you have a brother? I thought you only had a mother.’ And then to Derek: ‘Isn’t it amusing, Mr. Fenton, that I am also a brother, a Fairbrother, and you are a dark brother, ha-ha, very amusing, I often say things like that to your brother and then he uses them in his novels, no, he doesn’t pay me, but I’m allowed to see the press cuttings.’

  This was the sort of thing that Nancy did so well; spontaneous, unaffected: as it seemed inevitable, when you had touched the right button and set her off. Derek laughed whole-heartedly; Jenny smiled a little wistfully.

  ‘Well, anyhow,’ said Derek at last, ‘let’s do that. Starting about three. Agreed?’

  ‘Agreed,’ said everybody.

  Lying there in the half-shade of the apple-orchard they drifted lazily into their own thoughts.

  Derek thought: She’s heavenly, this girl. We must see a lot of her when we’re married . . .

  Nancy thought: He’s up to the ears, this man. I shall be chief bridesmaid . . .

  And Jenny thought: They’re lovely together. They just suit each other.

  She felt glad and proud about this, not sorry; because the day was beautiful, and, whatever might happen in the future, this one hour was assured to her, when she and Derek would walk back from Ferries together, she bareheaded and in her new washing-silk.