Pursuit of a Parcel

by Patricia Wentworth

  “I’m not bothering about that. Delia—”

  Her laughter interrupted him.

  “Darling, how lordly! Even Cousin Mervyn bothers about telephone bills. I must say Cousin Leonora would break anyone who wasn’t a millionaire. Oh, Antony, Uncle Philip’s better—he’s much better. We rang up after lunch, and they’re most awfully pleased, and if he goes on like this, I can see him in a day or two. Isn’t that splendid?”

  “I’m most awfully glad. But, Delia—”

  “Darling, your voice does sound queer! What’s the matter with it?”

  Antony said, “Cake,” and washed it down with the last of the second cup of tea. “Now, darling, listen! This isn’t me talking to you—this is an official interview.”

  “What about?”

  “Cornelius. And it’s important, so think before you speak, and don’t say anything you’re not sure about.”

  “What do you want to know?” said Delia. Her voice had changed.

  “Something quite simple. When you saw Cornelius yesterday morning, had he got a bandage on his wrist?”

  “A bandage?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why should he?”

  “Never mind about that. I want to know if he had.”

  At the other end of the line Delia screwed up her eyes and tried to remember everything about Cornelius coming to see her yesterday … A dark suit, with a heavy rain-coat over it—a dark felt hat which he had refused to give up to Parker—a dark blue tie with a lighter fleck in it—dark brown gloves which he kept in his hand—an edge of striped shirt-cuff beyond the rain-coat.… He held the gloves in his left hand and put his hat on a chair. When he picked it up again his wrist came out from the striped cuff—his right wrist. There wasn’t any bandage on it—She said,

  “Whch wrist did you want to know about?”

  Antony’s turn to think back.… The dark porch, the dark steps—the tiny beam of his torch—blood running from the gash on a man’s wrist—his right wrist. He said the words aloud.

  “It would be the right wrist.”

  “Then there wasn’t any bandage.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Oh, quite.”

  “It’s—important.”

  “I’m quite sure. He had his gloves in his left hand, and he reached out for his hat with his right. I could see his wrist, and there wasn’t any bandage. Antony, what’s all this about? Why do you want to know?”

  All of a sudden his voice was tired. He said,

  “I can’t tell you—yet. Goodbye.” He rang off.

  Delia went back into the drawing-room, where Miss Simcox was enjoying Mrs. Parker’s date-and-nut cake. She would have enjoyed it even more if her conscience had not been in a highly uncertain state over the question of Mr. Antony Rossiter. It was not yet five o’clock, and he had already called once in person and twice on the telephone. What did Lady Maddox expect her to do? A couple of hundred years ago Delia would have been locked into her bedroom, and there would have been no telephone, but this was 1940. Casting her mind back over the spate of instructions with which she had been inundated, she recalled that she was to be firm but on no account to antagonize Delia, who was a sweet girl but not one to be driven. She was to be very, very tactful, but not to allow this lamentable affair with young Rossiter to go any farther. She was to gain Delia’s confidence, to wean her from an ill-considered engagement, and incline her thoughts in the direction of Mr. Lewis West, but she was not to drive her into rebellion by too open a show of authority. In reply to all this Miss Simcox was glad to remember that she had said no more than that she would do her best.

  Afterwards she was to remember that Delia was very silent for the rest of the meal. To Miss Simcox tea really was a meal, and the pleasantest one of the day. She began to wonder what Mr. Antony Rossiter had said to induce this silence. And really what use was it for Lady Maddox to say that the affair must go no farther, when the house was positively littered with telephones and extensions—one in the study, one in the pantry, one in Mr. Merridew’s bedroom, and even one in Delia’s room, on the table beside her bed? How did Lady Maddox suppose that she was to be prevented from ringing up or being rung up as often as she and Antony Rossiter desired? Miss Simcox considered that she had been placed in a false position, and almost but not quite regretted having obeyed the peremptory summons which had snatched her from the Vicarage at Pudley Marten.

  The regret would have been unqualified if it had not been for the fact that she had really been finding the Rectory so very cold—twenty bedrooms, a quarter of a mile of passage, and of course no central heating. Mr. Pottinger was all that was kind, but so very energetic, and dear Doris—she had been Doris Penfold—quite as bad, so it must be confessed that a natural inclination to oblige had been powerfully reinforced by the feeling that it would be pleasant to escape from ten-mile walks, alfresco meals—in October—and perpetual conversation about the parish. If this was self-indulgence, Miss Simcox was about to be punished for it. Fourways was very, very comfortable. Every room was beautifully warm. She was not obliged to walk any farther than she wished. And after the Pottingers’ simple life Mrs. Parker’s cooking was a dream. But responsibility had begun to weigh, and was shortly to become quite crushing. Searching her conscience, Miss Simcox suspected a judgment. Within the next few hours she would be writing—her letter of the morning only just posted—a poignant epistle to her sister Maud: “I cannot say that I am to blame—one must be just to oneself as well as to others—but if I had not felt the cold so much at Pudley Marten I might have remained there, and I should not then have become involved in this distressing affair. Difficult as it would have been to disregard the appeal Lady Maddox made to me, I cannot help fearing that I was tempted to accede to it from selfish and unworthy motives, and if that is the case, I have done something to deserve my present painful position.…”

  But all this was mercifully veiled by the future. Only the merest shadow of what impended touched her mood as she sat comfortably by the fire and made a really excellent tea. When Delia presently slipped out of the room she picked up the book which she had taken from the study shelves and read with great enjoyment the account of an intrepid traveller whose experiences included escapes from gorillas, alligators, man-eating lions, and serpents of every kind. Nothing is more delightful than to look upon danger from a place of perfect safety.

  The heroic virtues can be enjoyed by proxy and there is no risk. In fact the best of two worlds.

  With her body reclining in a cushioned chair, Miss Simcox eluded a mamba, and sprang with miraculous agility into a tree to avoid the charge of an infuriated rhinoceros. The entrance of Parker to remove the tea things would almost have passed unnoticed if he had not attracted her attention by a slight melancholy cough. He had to repeat it before she transferred her focus from the African jungle to his tall, stooping person. He stood before her, holding the silver tray, his head inclined.

  “If you please, miss, Miss Delia asked me to say that she has gone over to Miss Kyrle’s for an hour.”

  “To Miss Kyrle’s?”

  “Dr. Kyrle’s daughter—a friend of Miss Delia’s. She was going to pick her up in the car, and Miss Delia asked me to say it would be quite all right about her coming home, because Dr. Kyrle would be passing and he would set her down at the gate.”

  “She hasn’t taken her own car then? I thought you said—”

  “No, miss. It was Miss Kyrle who was picking Miss Delia up. Miss Delia asked me to tell you.”

  He went out with the tray, and Miss Simcox returned to her tree, from which she was presently privileged to behold a pride of lions disporting themselves upon the open rolling ground beyond. Time slipped away unnoticed. After some indefinite lapse the light began to fade and she switched on the standard lamp.

  Presently Parker came in and drew the curtains. Later still the dressing-bell rang.

  Trained to the utmost punctuality, Miss Simcox closed her book and returned to Surrey.


  Encountering Ellen on the upper landing, she enquired whether Miss Delia had come in, and was startled to hear that she had not. She looked at her watch. Seven o’clock. But perhaps Dr. Kyrle had been kept—a doctor’s time is never his own—

  She changed into last year’s summer foulard, converted to evening wear by being lengthened with a broad strip of black satin and having the sleeves cut off at the elbow, where they were finished with a black satin turnover. Her evening brooch, amethyst surrounded by pearls, repeated the predominant colour of the floral pattern and replaced the ribbed gold bar, also set with pearls, which she habitually wore in the day. By the time this modest toilet had been completed it was nearly half past seven.

  Ellen came knocking at the door to enquire whether Miss Delia was to be waited for. This was the first real moment of apprehension. Miss Simcox found herself startled and alert. The telephone, from being a menace, became a providential institution. She went down into the study and asked for Dr. Kyrle’s number. A girlish voice replied. She enquired whether Delia had left, and received the most staggering reply. The girlish voice asserted that Delia had not been there at all—had not been telephoned to or communicated with all day. Yes, it was Miss Kyrle speaking—Cynthia Kyrle.

  “Oh, no, she hasn’t been here.… Oh, yes, I’m quite sure.… Oh, no, I didn’t ring her up. There must be some mistake.”

  Some mistake. Through the numbness which had invaded her Miss Simcox was conscious of these saving words. She said in her accustomed ladylike manner,

  “Oh, yes, of course—I must have misunderstood—it must have been some other friend. I suppose you can’t tell me who would have been likely … No, of course not. I am so sorry to have troubled you.”

  She hung up the receiver, and rang for Parker.

  “Miss Delia does not seem to be at Dr. Kyrle’s.”

  Parker’s thoughts were with an elusive clue.

  “Indeed, miss?”

  “You are quite sure she said she was going there? Could there be any other name you might have mistaken for Kyrle?”

  “Oh, no, miss. And Miss Delia didn’t say Miss Kyrle. She wouldn’t—not speaking to me. It was Miss Cynthia she said, the same as she always does.”

  The numbness was dissolving into fear. Miss Simcox commanded her voice with an effort.

  “And she said Miss Cynthia would be picking her up at the gate?”

  “That’s right, miss.”

  Miss Simcox felt herself confronted by possibilities of the most dreadful description. They were so dreadful that she was able to repel them. Things like that did not happen to oneself or to the people that one knew. It was quite inconceivable that they should happen to a relative of Lady Maddox. Groping for escape, she clutched at a hopeful alternative—Delia had eloped with Antony Rossiter. Very wrong of her, very regrettable, and most inconsiderate towards Miss Simcox, but no irretrievable tragedy. Perhaps Lady Maddox had been too harsh—she had a certain commanding way with her. The young people were very much in love. Of course it was wrong of them to elope, very wrong indeed.

  Her own position was a most difficult one. Why, oh, why, had she ever left Pudley Marten? What was the good of a comfortable chair and a warm fire when you were being crushed beneath a load of responsibility? She looked back with remorse to the Pottingers’ draughty Vicarage and the Pottingers’ Spartan meals. Her conscience accused her, and with no uncertain voice. She had hankered after the fleshpots, and in the manner of the best Moral Tracts they had brought her nothing but trouble and vexation of spirit.

  In the kitchen a loudly partisan Mrs. Parker proclaimed her own conviction that Miss Delia had run away to Mr. Antony. “And why couldn’t they leave us alone? Doing very nicely we were without her ladyship, but no, she’s got to come pushing in, upsetting Miss Delia—bringing in a governess to look after her! And Mr. Antony that’s been here as if it was his own home—and so it is, to be sure—he’s to be pushed out, and put off, and sent away without so much as a bite of lunch and nowhere to say a word to Miss Delia but the pantry. Well, I say if they did make it up to run away together, it wasn’t any more than they’d a right to do, the way her ladyship was treating them.”

  Miss Simcox had something on a tray in the drawing-room. The evening lagged and dragged. A little soft-footed man slipped back the catch of the study window and stood listening in the dark for five full minutes with the door ajar before he crossed the hall and risked the stair. There was not really so very much risk.

  At this hour in every well regulated household the domestic staff would be in their own premises, and the family in the drawing-room.

  When he reached the bedroom floor he was pleased to observe that the beds had already been turned down. He went through the rooms methodically, locking each door on the inside before he began his search. He was very quick and very thorough. There are, after all, a limited number of places in which you can hide a wax cylinder measuring four inches by seven. Papers now, that was a trickier job, but a dictaphone cylinder would have been mere child’s play to find—if it had been there.

  By the time he had been over all the upstairs rooms he was prepared to swear that it was not there. He then stepped inside the comfortable roomy cupboard in Philip Merridew’s room and waited for the household to go to bed.

  Ellen came up first. He could hear her running up the back stairs—going into Miss Simcox’s room with a hot-water bottle—going into Miss Delia Merridew’s room—going off down the passage to her own room.

  Voices next. Miss Simcox high and plaintive: “I think we had better leave the light on in the hall, just in case,” and Parker murmuring something in reply.

  He waited for an hour after that, and then went through the downstairs rooms with the same care and thoroughness that he had used on the bedroom floor. But there was no wax cylinder. If it wasn’t there, he couldn’t find it, could he? And that it certainly wasn’t there, he was prepared to maintain to his employers or to anyone else concerned. “I can’t make cylinders, can I? And if you don’t believe me you can go and look for yourself.” He rehearsed these and other kindred remarks as he let himself out of the study window, leaving behind him a house as orderly and composed as if no stranger had just ransacked it on an unlawful errand. There was not a book crooked in any bookcase, no shelf or drawer in disarray, no piece of furniture moved from its accustomed place. Mr. Merridew’s shirts, vests and pants, Miss Simcox’s modest underwear, Delia’s frills and fancies, showed no trace of an intruding hand.

  When Parker descended in the morning and found the study window unlatched he thought no more than that he must have let it slip. He had shut up the house before Miss Delia’s disappearance had come home to them, so he could not put it on that. But he had been a good deal preoccupied with the possibilities of a clue describing “a bird of peace once used as an engine of war,” and he couldn’t really say that he had been putting his mind into what he was doing. His conscience reproved him, but he had no intention of exposing himself to any further reproof. He did not, therefore, mention the matter to Mrs. Parker. The clandestine visit remained one of those things to which the nursery proverb applies, “What the eye does not see the heart does not grieve over.”

  XV

  It was at seven o’clock the next morning that Antony felt an urge to talk to Delia. He restrained himself until half past seven, and then got through. It was Parker who replied, his voice tuned to a funereal note.

  “Oh, Parker—just put me through to Miss Delia, please.”

  There was the sort of silence which generally means you have been cut off, and then a kind of gasp from Parker.

  “Miss Delia?”

  “Miss Delia,” said Antony in an impatient voice.

  There was another pause. Then words came tumbling out.

  “Oh, Mr. Antony—Miss Delia—she went out last night, and when she didn’t come back we thought, Miss Simcox and all of us—well, Mr. Antony, we thought she’d run away to you.”

  With the feeling that he
had stepped suddenly into a nightmare, Antony heard himself repeating,

  “She went out and she didn’t come back—”

  “Yes, Mr. Antony.”

  “What do you mean? Get on with it, man! What are you saying?”

  “She isn’t with you, Mr. Antony?”

  “Of course she isn’t! Get on with it—tell me what’s happened!”

  He could hear Parker clear his throat and shift his grip on the receiver.

  “It was like this, Mr. Antony. I was coming across the hall, and Miss Delia, she was coming out of the study—between six and a quarter past it would be—and she said, ‘I’m going down to Dr. Kyrle’s for a bit. Miss Cynthia will pick me up at the gate, and Dr. Kyrle will drop me when he goes out—he’s got a call to pay at Lane Hill. And don’t tell Miss Simcox till I’ve gone.’ That’s what she said. And when it came to half past seven and she wasn’t back, Miss Simcox rang Miss Cynthia up, and she hadn’t seen Miss Delia nor telephoned, and Miss Simcox took it into her head that Miss Delia had run away.”

  Antony asked three more questions, slammed down the receiver, and rang up Colonel Garrett.

  “Frank, they’ve got her!”

  “Got who?” Garrett’s tone was unamiable to a degree.

  “Delia. Frank—for God’s sake!”

  Garrett said, “Hold on!” and then, “What’s all this?”

  Antony told him.

  “She went out, and she didn’t come back. The message was a fake. Someone must have known a bit to put that across. What damned fools we’ve been! We ought to have guessed they’d come down on her. Don’t you see, their orders are to get that cylinder. They believe it exists, and they’ve got to get it. They haven’t tumbled to it that Cornelius was bluffing. They can probably see that the parcel has been opened—I told you Delia opened it. Well, they’ve guessed that too—it’s easy enough. And they think she took the cylinder out. Frank, don’t you see, they’ll try and make her say where it is. And she can’t. I don’t believe it ever existed, but as long as they think so, she—she’s in the most frightful danger. Don’t you see?”