‘Just imagine having anything out finally with Madame Marel,’ she replied. ‘As for Grace, you mustn’t be too hard on her. I think she has received a terrible shock, and is still suffering from it. To see a thing like that with your own eyes can have really grave results, psychologically.’
‘Oh, nonsense, Meg. She ought to have another baby, that’s all.’
‘Having a baby is not a sovereign cure for everything, although all men, I know, think it is.’
‘Anyhow, she’s in a thoroughly tiresome state of mind. I can’t find out what it is she does want – divorce or what. She says one thing one day and another the next, and it’s time something was settled, in my view.’
‘What does he think, do you know?’
‘Yes, I do. I’ve had a long letter from him. As I’ve often told you, I never understood why he wanted to marry her in the first place, but whatever the reason may have been it still seems to hold good, and he wants her back again.’
‘Have you told her?’
‘It wouldn’t be any use me telling her in her present mood; he must come and tell her himself. But meanwhile she goes on havering and wavering about shall she or shan’t she divorce until I’m tired of discussing it with her. She’s grown up, and she must decide for herself which it is to be.’
‘It really doesn’t make a pin of difference,’ said Mrs O’Donovan. ‘They weren’t married in church, and therefore neither Charles-Edouard nor anybody else in Paris counts them as being properly married at all.’
‘I suppose it would only make a difference if one of them wanted to marry again. The whole thing is thoroughly tiresome and annoying. Well, after the holidays I’ll run over to Paris and have a word with Charles-Edouard, that will be best. I’ll tell him he must come and fetch her back if he wants her – I don’t believe she’d ever resist him in flesh and blood. She’d much better stick to him, this fidgeting about with husbands is no good for women, it doesn’t suit them. Hullo, Sigi, I didn’t know you were there –’
‘It’s too wet to go out and too early for Dick Barton, and Mummy and Mr Palgrave are talking about Madame Marel, as usual. If you go to Paris I wish you’d take me.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I want to learn the words of A la voix du vainqueur d’Austerlitz, and nobody knows them here.’
‘Oh I do,’ said Mrs O’Donovan. ‘I used to read them every morning of my life when I was a little girl with a hoop in the Tuileries Gardens. I’ll teach them to you if you come along to my bedroom before dinner.’
2
That night Sigi was woken up by a tinkle of breaking glass under his open window. He nipped out of bed and looked down. The pantry window was underneath his and he saw a bit of broken glass shining on the gravel beside it; there seemed to be a light on in the pantry. Nanny was snoring away undisturbed in the next room, so it must be very late he knew; well after midnight. He crept out of his room and down the back stairs, feeling his way by the banisters. Sure enough there was a light shining under the pantry door. He put his eye to the keyhole and saw a man examining the door of the silver cupboard, big and heavy like that of a safe. Now Sigi, owing to a great friendship formed in early babyhood with Atkin the butler, knew all the little ways of this silver cupboard. He opened the pantry door and walked in. The burglar, a small, fair young man, turned quickly round and pointed a revolver at him.
‘I don’t care for these manners,’ said Sigi, in a very governessy voice. ‘Surely you know that never never should your gun pointed be at anyone. That it may unloaded be matters not a rap to me.’
‘It’s not only unloaded,’ said the burglar, ‘but it’s not a gun at all. It’s a dummy. You get into a terrible mess, in my trade, if you go carrying guns about.’
‘Are you a burglar?’
‘Yes, I try to be.’
‘I think it’s very careless of you not to wear gloves. What about the finger-prints?’
‘I know. I simply cannot work in gloves – never could – can’t drive a car in them, either. I’m not very good at my work as it is – look at this wretched door, I don’t know how you’d open it.’
‘Why do you do it then?’
‘The hours suit me – can’t get up in the morning, and everything you earn, such as it is, is tax free, with no overheads. There’s a good deal to be said for it. I expect I shall improve.’
‘How about prison?’
‘Haven’t had any yet. I’m so fearfully amateurish that nobody ever thinks I can be serious, and when I get caught they simply think it must be a joke.’
‘Where I live it’s not a joke at all, burgling. They come with machine-guns and wearing masks and they generally kill off the whole family and the concierge before they begin.’
‘That must make it much easier.’
‘Yes. Sometimes they only sausage them.’
‘They what?’
‘Tie them up like sausages, brr round and round, and gag them and put them in a cupboard, where they are found next day more dead than alive.’
‘Where do you live then?’
‘Paris. I’m a French boy.’
‘You talk pretty good English for a French boy.’
‘Yes, and I talk pretty good French for an English boy. Would you like me to open the silver cupboard for you?’
‘Why? Do you know how to?’
‘Of course I do. Mr Atkin showed me. You blow on it, see. Like that.’ The door swung slowly open. ‘I always feel on the
