Mr. Zero by Patricia Wentworth Page B

luck. Why couldn’t it have been Brewster who had been told off to take that damnable envelope up to Monty? A bit hard on Brewster perhaps, but on the other hand imagination really boggled at the idea of anyone suspecting Brewster. He tried to picture him under suspicion and failed. Brewster was the perfect assistant secretary, the industrious apprentice, the human encyclopedia. No good bothering about Brewster. This was the affair Algy Somers. What was Algy Somers going to do about it? See his good name and his prospects die a slow death from poison? Well then, what about it? The answer came to him vigorous and clear—“I’ve damn well got to find out who took those papers.”
    He ceased to lie supine in the gratifyingly hot water. You didn’t expose villainy by lying in a hot bath—you girded yourself for the fray, and you went out and looked for the fellow who had really done the deed.
    Algy proceeded to gird himself. He didn’t know where he was going to look, but it occurred to him that Linda’s dinner table wasn’t at all a bad place to begin, because what he wanted to do was to listen to the voice of scandal. About the Wessex-Gardners, and the Wessex-Gardners’ house-party.
    He ran through the guests in his own mind. Monty had been a bit stiff over telling him about them, but had stood and delivered like a man in the end.
    Beaufort and Poppy Wessex-Gardner. The host and hostess. He was the little man with the bald head at the Ducks and Drakes. Insignificant physically and no use socially, but a bulging forehead and probably a great brain. Anyhow he had made masses of money, and was now going to build aeroplanes for the government. They called him Buffo. Sabotage might interest him. Poppy? Amazing clothes, bizarre make-up, moderate personal attractions, age very difficult to tell—somewhere between thirty-five and forty-five. Nothing to suggest whether she was or could be interested in anything or anyone except herself.
    Another lot of Wessex-Gardners. Bingham and Constance. Man known as Binks. In business with his brother, but definitely a lesser light. Very good bridge-player. Constance—Maud Lushington’s sister. Vague recollections of having met her—vague recollections of her being even more like a horse than Maud. It didn’t seem possible, but the equine impression very strong.
    Francis Colesborough and the lovely Sylvia. A peach of peaches. Quite, quite negligible in the affair Algy Somers. She wouldn’t even know what sabotage was, bless her.
    He turned reluctantly to a less radiant image. Francis Colesborough. Very well set up, very well preserved. One of your forceful, industry-building fellows. Second generation of self-made family—timber, steel. Lots of irons in the fire. Lots of money. Easy, pleasant, reasonably good at all the things people are good at. Highly efficient, and full of government contracts. Just a trifle aloof.
    Monty and Maud. Irreverence toyed with a fantasy of Maud abstracting Monty’s papers. Algy had no deep affection for his cousin Maud by marriage—too much nose; too much upper lip; too many teeth; far, far too many bony ridges in front. Ungrateful of Algy, because Maud had quite an affection for him and always spoke of him as “my husband’s young cousin.” He sometimes wondered what would happen when he passed the thirty mark, and the thirty-five, and the forty. Would he become “my husband’s middle-aged cousin”—and at what moment? Digressions apart, Monty and Maud were off the map. What remained not promising at all. Buffo, Poppy, Binks, Constance, Francis Colesborough, and the lovely Sylvia. It was really extremely difficult to imagine any of them pinching a government memorandum out of Monty’s despatch-case with Monty next door having a bath. Worse than difficult—farcical. Well, when there are no probables you must take a possible, and if there aren’t any