Pursuit of a Parcel

by Patricia Wentworth

  Garrett’s voice barked back at him.

  “I’m not blind! Have they been to the police?”

  “No. Fools—they thought we’d eloped!”

  “All right, you’d better go down. Take the car. Get the local people going. The fake call. Any strangers asking questions. Any strange car. If she was picked up at the bottom of her own drive, the car would be standing there—perhaps five minutes. Difficult to hit off the time exactly. Someone may have seen it. Sun doesn’t set till 6:15. Local people very good for all this. Get them going. Scotland Yard can be got on to it by the afternoon—with luck. Meanwhile lots for you to do. Get along on with it!”

  Antony got on with it. At half past nine he walked in at the front door of Fourways, and encountered Miss Simcox emerging from the study. She was as neat as ever, but the colour in her cheeks had gone dead and purplish, and it was quite obvious that she had not slept. She came straight up to him and laid a hand on his arm.

  “Mr. Rossiter—thank God you’ve come! Have you any news?”

  “I? None.”

  “She did not go with you?”

  “Of course she didn’t!”

  She gave a long sigh and stepped back.

  “I’ve been telephoning to the police.”

  “You should have done that last night—when she didn’t come home.” His voice was bitter. Too respectable to make a scandal—too conventional to take the steps which might have saved Delia’s life! He knew her kind.

  She kept her dignity.

  “Do you think I have not said that to myself? I thought she was with you, and—it is so easy to make talk in a village.”

  He said abruptly, “I must see Parker. And then I’ll go down to the police station.”

  The morning resolved itself into a series of interviews. Parker, Mrs. Parker, Ellen—in case some faintest trace of a clue might be latent amongst their recollections and impressions. Then the police station, and Sergeant Hopkins whom he had known since he was nine years old. He knew him too well too think that it was possible to hurry him now—a man of girth, a man of beef and beer—old yeoman stock, slow as growing wheat and as sound, with a shrewd streak in him. But he had to take his time, and if you tried to hustle him, he’d go back to the beginning and start all over again with his favourite “Wait a bit now—let’s just get this clear.” And before ever you came to the beginning there would be a ritual of greetings, enquiries.

  They worked through them. Philip Merridew. His escape—“providential, I’d call it, Mr. Antony.” The improvement to his condition—“which I was very pleased indeed to hear about.” And, at what seemed like long last though it really was not so long, “And now what’s all this about Miss Delia going out last night and not coming home? I hope there’s no reason to suppose she’s met with an accident.”

  Antony said his piece, and Sergeant Hopkins listened in a slow, cogitating manner. At the finish he had quite clearly in his mind the facts that Mr. Antony had left papers of great importance at Fourways in Miss Delia Merridew’s care, that Miss Delia had very sensibly put them in the bank for safe keeping, and that in Mr. Antony’s opinion the bank had been broken into for the sake of these papers, and Miss Delia kidnapped because some of them were missing and it might be supposed that she knew where they were. He wrote down in his notebook in the clear hand of the man who does not overwork the art:

  1. Important papers in Miss D. Merridew’s possession, and enquired,

  “Would they be government papers?”

  Even in the midst of heart-racking anxiety Antony could feel a quirk of humour at this description. He said,

  “Yes, you might call them that.”

  In a painstaking manner Sergeant Hopkins inserted the word government. He then wrote down:

  2. Papers as above deposited in local bank.

  “And what date would that be?”

  He added the date, and passed to another line.

  3. Bank broken into some time that night. Parcel containing papers taken.

  “But there was all manner of things taken as well as that parcel,” he said. “I suppose you know that.”

  Antony’s shoulder jerked.

  “You wouldn’t expect them to leave diamonds and pearls lying about when they could have them for the picking up, would you?”

  Sergeant Hopkins said he supposed not, and wrote further.

  4. Miss Merridew left home between 6:15 and 6:30 P. M., stating she had received telephone call from Miss Kyrle. Miss Kyrle states no such call made.

  He then read these four items aloud, and fell into a state of meditation. The cud was obviously being chewed.

  Antony contained himself as best he could and let him be.

  After what seemed to be an eternity, but was probably no more than seven or eight minutes, results appeared. They were very sound results. What Sergeant Hopkins proposed to set in hand coincided in a surprising manner with the suggestions of Colonel Garrett. Any strange individual, any strange car—“Well, it stands to reason there’s someone notices them. It ’ud be very bad luck if a car was to stand five minutes or so at the bottom of the Fourways drive and we couldn’t find someone that took notice of it. Same as it was with the attack on Miss Murdle. There was a little fellow come through on a motor-bike, and Lily Holliday saw the bike pushed in between two furze-bushes round about the time the lady must have been knocked down. Getting on for dusk, but she says she could see it all right. Well, there you are—it just shows, doesn’t it?”

  Miss Murdle—Antony took an impatient breath and plunged.

  “Look here, Sergeant, to the best of my belief the attack on Miss Murdle was an attempt to get hold of those papers. It wasn’t meant for Miss Murdle at all. It was meant for Delia.”

  Sergeant Hopkins stared.

  “What’s all this?”

  “I’ll tell you—”

  Half way through he began to wish that he had held his tongue. Mental agility was being called for, and there was quite definitely no response. He ploughed through to the end beneath a stolid and disapproving stare, and when he had done received a portentous shake of the head.

  Seargeant Hopkins cleared his throat and spoke.

  “Now, now, Mr. Antony—what’s all this? You go too fast for me. Wait a minute—let’s go back to the beginning and get this clear.”

  The police station at Wayshot stands no more than fifty yards down the street from the bank, on the opposite side, a fact which Sergeant Hopkins was inclined to consider as adding insult to injury. It was bad enough to burgle a bank at any time, but to burgle a bank right across the road from the police station—well, take it as you will, it’s impudence, and when criminals get impudent with the police it’s time there was something done about it.

  Antony came out of the police station, walked thirty-five yards on the same side of the street, and entered Mr. Giles’s grocery store. It was the largest of the row of small shops which faced the bank, and its window displayed no more of the stock than three flat bowls containing respectively lentils, sago, and rice. Mrs. Giles behind the counter was thus afforded an uninterrupted view of the street.

  She stood there now and greeted Antony with an air of condolence which he found hard to bear. For a wonder, the shop was empty. There was only himself and Mrs. Giles in her dark grey dress and white apron, with her hair all tight curls across the top of her head and done up in a twist behind—real sandy hair. Her lashes were sandy too, and her eyes like bits of grey glass, hard and sharp and clear between them.

  Antony said, “Good-morning,” and had the words snatched from him.

  “It may be for some, but a bad morning for those that think as much of Miss Delia as you and me, Mr. Antony. And a pretty pass we’re coming to when people can’t go outside their own doors without being knocked on the head, or disappearing into thin air, as you might say. It was only yesterday I passed the remark to Mr. Giles. ‘I don’t know what we’re coming to,’ I said—‘poor Miss Murdle, and the bank.’ And now there’s M
iss Delia as well.”

  Antony came up to the counter and leaned on it.

  “That’s what I want to talk to you about. I am sure you will help us if you can. You see, everyone passes here, and I want to know whether you noticed anything—any stranger—any strange car—”

  “Yesterday?” said Mrs. Giles sharply.

  “Not only yesterday—right back from the day that Miss Murdle was attacked.”

  “That would be Monday—” She beat a little rat-tat on the counter with her fingers.

  Antony could remember her doing that any time this twenty years. As a little boy it had frightened him, because her fingers were so bony and bloodless and when she beat her rat-tat the knuckles stood up white and nubbly. He could remember Delia puckering up her face to cry, and Mrs. Giles giving her an acid drop out of the tall jar of mixed sweets which used to stand on the counter.

  “Monday—” said Mrs. Giles in a tone of fierce concentration.—“Monday … There was a man on a motor-bike come along round about half past three in the afternoon—pulled right up behind the bus and started fiddling with something or other. There wasn’t only one got off the bus, and that was Mrs. Rudge from Alridge, come down to see her sister Martha Pratt that was—she’s not long for this world, poor soul. Those afternoon buses, they run pretty well empty, but I took notice of there being a gentleman inside—might have been a clerk by his bowler hat.”

  Antony pricked up his ears. That would be Holt—he would have got out at the next stop. And the man on the motor-bike—He said quickly,

  “What was the man like—the one on the motor-bike?”

  Mrs. Giles stopped beating out her bony, inaudible tune.

  “Not over big, and that’s all you can say. Overalls and goggles, and one of those tight caps on his head. There’s nothing left to go by if it isn’t what size they are—and I put him a good inch less than my Tommy, and he stands five foot six in his stockings, if they haven’t taken him down with their prison-camps over there.”

  “I don’t think you need worry about that.”

  Mrs. Giles gave her head an odd little jerky toss.

  “It’s my belief that Hitler ’ud do anything! Why, there was a bit in the paper only yesterday—”

  Antony headed her firmly.

  “Let’s get back to the bus, Mrs. Giles. What did the man with the motor-bike do when it went on?”

  “Oh, he went on too.”

  “Did you see him again?”

  She shook her head.

  “I can’t say I did, but Lily Holliday—”

  “Yes, I know—the sergeant told me.”

  Mrs. Giles looked disappointed.

  “Tuesday there wasn’t anything to take notice of, unless you count Miss Delia coming in to the bank—stopped right in front of it and went in with a parcel in her hand and come out without it. And, come to think of it, there was a man on a motor-bike came in behind her. Mind you, I don’t say it was the same one as Monday, but it might have been. I’d a three or four people in the shop, and I can’t say more than that. And Wednesday—well, you may say there’s half the day gone with the early-closing. Mr. Giles and me, we took the bus to Lane End to see my cousin Mrs. Rigg that’s got a married niece and three children evacuated from Croydon, and we had a cup of tea there and come home. And a very nice quiet young woman she is, and not like some I could name.” She dropped her voice to an edgy whisper. “Those Parkins, Mr. Antony—well, what I say is, girls don’t turn out that way if they’re brought up right. And I’m sure that Gladys Parkin is bad enough, with her perms, and her lipstick, and her nails for all the world as if she’d got them in the red ink by mistake, and the way she carries on after respectable young men that don’t give her a thought, or wouldn’t if she didn’t put it into their heads—and that’s some comfort to me about Tommy, for I’d rather he was in a German camp than mixed up with such as Gladys. Well, as I say, she’s bad enough, but when it comes to Ivy that’s married, or so Mrs. Parkins makes out—well, I know what I’d do to a daughter of mine, carrying on as bold as brass where anyone could see her, standing up on her tiptoes with her arms round a man’s neck, kissing and hugging. Thank goodness it wasn’t none of the boys round here!”

  A profound lack of interest in the Parkin family became suddenly relieved by a spark. It flared, perhaps only to fade, but Antony followed the beam. “Who was it?” he said.

  Mrs. Giles gave her head a negative jerk.

  “I didn’t know him from Adam, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t either. Picked him up on the road as like as not, and if she gets herself knocked on the head like Miss Murdle she’ll only have herself to thank.”

  Antony said quickly, “You mean he was a stranger?” and saw her hand go up to her mouth.

  She kept it there, the knuckles pressing against her teeth, whilst her eyes met his. He saw them sharpen. Her hand dropped. She said, hard and quick,

  “A stranger—of course—that’s just what he was! Oh, my goodness me—who’d have thought of that?”

  Antony took his gleanings back to the police station, and was not received with any enthusiasm. Sergeant Hopkins mounted a high horse and rode it ponderously. It appeared that he had his own opinion about amateur detectives who went round being clever and interfering with the police. “And what I say is this, if a man’s a baker, you let him get on with his baking, and if a man’s a farmer, you let him get on with his farming. But if a man’s a policeman, then every Tom, Dick and Harry thinks he can do his job better than what he can himself, and wants to put a meddling finger in the pie. Too many of these detective stories—that’s what’s the matter with them. And all of them thinking they’re Sherlock Holmes, or Mr. Fortune, or Mounseer Poyrott.”

  “Well, you see, Sergeant, you read them yourself.”

  Hopkins came off his horse with a jolly laugh.

  “Well, they won’t hurt me,” he said. “It’s those that don’t know the routine of the job that get it into their heads you don’t need no training nor any hard work. But I can tell you that it takes a lot of both, some as it does for every job that’s worth doing at all. Where did you say Mrs. Giles saw this girl with a stranger?”

  “Wednesday evening, about a hundred yards the Lane Hill side of Fourways. She and Giles were coming back from Lane End, and they were walking because they had missed the bus. She says it was dusk, but not too dark for her to be sure of Ivy Parkin—you know, she’s the red-haired one. And she says the man was a weasley little fellow, and he’d got his face down kissing Ivy, so she never really got a look at it, but he’d dark hair and a cap pushed back off it, and he might have been the man she saw on the motor-bike, or he mightn’t. You know, the people behind all this aren’t local—not possibly—so they must have got their local information somehow. That telephone call to Delia—someone knew enough to have Dr. Kyrle and his daughter all pat. Well, if you wanted local information in a strange place, how would you set about getting it? I know how I would. I’d look out for the girl that’s an easy pick-up and let her kiss and tell. And you wouldn’t have to look far with those Parkin girls about. Quick workers—especially Ivy.

  “She’s been away in London these two years. Her mother says she’s married, but it isn’t credited much. Mrs. Miller she calls herself, and no law against it, as I’ve told more than one, but Ivy Parkin is what she goes by here. Brought up bad, both those girls.”

  Antony got up.

  “Well, I don’t say she knew she was doing any harm, but I think Ivy Parkin is where the local information came from. If you squeeze her you may get something. That sort of girl is apt to be scared of the police.”

  He drove back to Fourways, his heart a little heavier with every revolution of the wheels. He had done all he could. He knew as well as old Hopkins did that he couldn’t go round interviewing people without getting in the way of the police. They were local men, and as far as the local routine work went they would be very good at it. It was the other end of the tangle that was outside t
heir scope, and at any moment now Scotland Yard would be attending to that. Garrett would give them what he knew. That they would unravel the snarls, he did not doubt.

  But unravelling may mean time and patience, and how much time had they got?

  That was just what nobody could tell. Delia had been gone for seventeen hours. It did not bear thinking about, but the thought came back to him unbearably every time he forced it away. They had her in their hands. If they believed in this damned spoof cylinder—and he thought it was obvious that they did—then they’d got to try and get hold of it. There were no two ways about that. They had broken into the bank, and they had got away with the parcel. Fine and cock-a-hoop they must have felt. And then when they opened the thing—well, you could just imagine the bump. And now they’d got Delia.

  What would they do? Try and persuade her—frighten her? He thought so. He thought they wouldn’t go beyond that at first, unles they were outrageously pressed for time. They would count on fear doing their work for them.

  But if it didn’t—if she didn’t tell them where the cylinder was—then—then—

  A cold sweat came out on him. Because Delia couldn’t tell what she didn’t know. In his own mind he felt a certainty that the dictaphone cylinder with which Cornelius had threatened the little man in Berlin had existed only in his bold imagination. It had served its turn, and it now had no existence at all. Delia could not buy her life with it, or relief from pressure which would hour by hour be becoming more intolerable.

  He wrenched his mind from that, to be confronted by the picture of his own uselessness.

  There was nothing he could do.

  Whilst he was telephoning Frank—coming down here—interviewing Miss Simcox, the Parkers, Ellen, old Hopkins, Mrs. Giles, he had seemed to himself to be doing something, but now there was no more that he could do. He had been rushing round in circles because he didn’t dare to stop and think what might be happening to Delia. Now he had to stop, and he had to think. There was nothing else that he could do.