Pursuit of a Parcel

by Patricia Wentworth

  “She’ll probably want to come too. At least not want, but she’ll probably have to, because Cousin Leonora gave her a perfectly fierce talking to before she went away, and she’ll have to be weaned from thinking you’re the original Big Bad Wolf, so perhaps it would be a good thing to coo at her as much as you can. She really is a pet, so it won’t be too much of a strain. She’s frightfully romantic inside, you know, and she loves a love affair, but of course Cousin Leonora’s got her all tied up in a strong sense of duty—”

  Antony broke in.

  “That’s enough about Simmy! What were you just going to say to me when Lady Maddox came down the passage yesterday and I had to jump out of the window?”

  “Was I just going to say something? We were talking about the parcel. I don’t know—oh, yes, I do—something about its being safely in the bank—”

  “And then you said, ‘But’”

  “Yes—” Her voice had changed.

  “What were you going to say?”

  There was quite a pause.

  “Can’t you remember?”

  “Oh, yes, I can remember.”

  “Aren’t you going to tell me?”

  “I—don’t—know—”

  She heard him whistle softly

  “Is it anything important?”

  Delia said, “Yes.”

  The receiver clicked and the line went dead.

  He was having his breakfast, when the bell rang again. It was Delia, very breathless.

  “Antony! Oh, is that you?”

  “Yes. What’s up?”

  “They’ve burgled the bank!”

  Antony whistled.

  “Who says so?”

  “The postman. That’s why he was late. He was getting the letters from the post office when they found out about the bank, so of course he stopped.”

  “How did they find out? It’s not opening time yet.”

  “Mrs. Green looked out at her bedroom window when she took the black-out down—you know the Greens, their house is behind the bank, and you know what a perfect idiot she is. She thought how untidy it was to have a hole in their back wall and leave the bricks all lying about. And then she went and got the children up, and she began to wonder if there had been a bomb in the night and she hadn’t heard it. And when the milkman came she asked him, and he took a look out of the window and said, ‘Oh, my lord—someone’s burgled the bank!’ and ran over to the police station. And oh, Antony, I’ve got a feeling in my bones that it’s all that blighted parcel.”

  “You don’t know if it’s gone?”

  “I don’t know anything the postman doesn’t know. I’m just off to find out, but I thought I’d ring you first.”

  “All right—I’ll be down.”

  He arrived in very good time, and was introduced to Miss Simcox, a plump, pleasant lady whose hair and skin and eyes had all faded together to an agreeable nondescript brown. She wore a knitted woollen dress of the same shade, and tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles. She looked over the top of them at Antony with a tolerant air.

  “I’ve told Simmy that we’ve got to talk about business, and she says as long as we don’t plan an elopement she doesn’t mind what we talk about, but Cousin Leonora made her swear she wouldn’t leave us alone, so she’s going to sit this end of the drawing-room and write letters to all her relations, and we can go over to the end window-seat. She won’t hear anything we’re saying, because she’s just a little bit deaf.”

  “Well, I shan’t be trying to listen,” said Miss Simcox, “and I shall have plenty to occupy me.” She resumed her seat and the writing-pad which she had laid down.

  Delia and Antony went over to the window-seat.

  “She can’t hear us,” said Delia, “and it’s the best we can do. I don’t suppose she’d look round—if you kissed me, I mean. She’s got a conscience, but I think she makes it do what it’s told, and I don’t believe she’d tell it to make a fuss about a kiss.”

  Antony kissed her, with one eye on the back of Miss Simcox’s head. It is not a comfortable way of kissing.

  Then Delia said, “It’s gone all right. I knew it would be.”

  “The parcel?”

  She nodded.

  “That’s what they were after. I say, Antony, it must be something very important for them to burgle Mr. Holt, and murder Miss Murdle—because they couldn’t have told that she’s got an extra thick skull, and it’s no thanks to them she isn’t murdered—and break into a bank for it. I mean someone must want it most awfully badly.”

  Antony cocked an eyebrow. “I think someone does.”

  “What will they do with it now they’ve got it?”

  “That depends—”

  “On what?”

  “On who’s got it.”

  Delia sat up very straight.

  “Who do you think has got it?”

  “It might be Cornelius. I hope it isn’t.”

  “Why should Cornelius steal his own parcel? You’d have given it back to him, wouldn’t you?”

  Antony nodded.

  “After I’d seen what was inside—and perhaps he didn’t want me to see what was inside.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. There might be papers which he didn’t want me to know about. I don’t know—I’m just guessing.”

  Delia was silent for a moment. Then she said,

  “Do you think it was Cornelius?”

  “Well, I hope it wasn’t. And I shouldn’t think it was. I should think it was a good deal more likely to be the people he is trying to get away from.”

  “What sort of people?” said Delia in a whispering voice.

  “German secret service agents.”

  Her eyes widened and darkened, and she drew in her breath.

  “But they couldn’t be over here! They couldn’t—”

  “All German secret service agents weren’t born in Germany, my sweet. Some of them were born in Holland, and some of them were born over here.”

  Delia remained looking at him. She had lost all her colour.

  “If people like that wanted something very badly … it does look as they wanted that parcel very badly, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes, I think we may safely say that!”

  Delia continued to gaze at him.

  “If they wanted it as badly as all that, it wouldn’t be awfully safe to—well, to thwart them?”

  Antony laughed.

  “Not awfully. The game Cornelius was playing isn’t an awfully safe game. But then nor is polo, nor flying, nor mountain climbing, nor rugger. Men just will go and play these rough games.”

  “I don’t call being murdered a game,” said Delia with all the rest of her colour gone.

  Antony had an arm around her. She felt oddly rigid. He said, “What’s the matter?” and felt her draw ever so little away.

  “I don’t like it—it frightens me.”

  “I don’t like their getting away with it, but there isn’t anythink to be frightened about. You see, at the moment we’re not thwarting them—unfortunately.”

  Delia allowed herself to rest against his arm, but without relaxing.

  “Antony—do you know what was in the parcel? I mean, how much does it matter if they get away with it?”

  “I—don’t—know.” He spoke in a slow, thoughtful voice. “It mattered very much to Cornelius as long as he was where the Nazis could put their hands on him. It oughtn’t to matter so much now. That’s as far as the cylinder is concerned. There may have been papers as well. I can’t say about them—they might matter—I just don’t know.”

  She had started away from him again.

  “What did you say about a cylinder? I don’t understand.”

  “That’s what was in the parcel—one of those wax cylinders out of a dictaphone.”

  Delia beat her hands together and said, “No!”

  He looked very much surprised.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean no—I mean it wasn’t in the parc
el—I mean there wasn’t anything like that at all.”

  Antony gazed at her. “You opened it?”

  She beat her bands together again.

  Miss Simcox very slightly raised her head, and then resumed the letter she was writing to her sister Fanny. She discovered afterwards that she had written “very goodlooking” in the middle of a description of Bronwen’s baby. It was not strictly true, but so many things are said about babies which are not strictly true, and she let it pass. The time had not yet come when it would be proper to give Fanny any particulars about Mr. Rossiter, to whom the epithet by rights belonged.

  “Of course I opened it!” said Delia. She had flashed into a sudden brilliance. Her eyes sparkled, her cheeks glowed. A bright energy came from her. “Of course I opened it!”

  Antony burst out laughing. He couldn’t help it. Delia and her “of course!” He laughed, but he was angry too, because she had simply no manner of business to meddle with the damned thing.

  The brightness was if anything enhanced. It dazzled him through his anger.

  “Of course I opened it!” said Delia for the third time. “There might have been a bomb inside.”

  Antony felt himself slipping. He cast an exorcising glare at Miss Simcox’s back.

  “There might have been a bomb,” said Delia in an accusing voice.

  Antony collected himself. It was no use trying to exorcise Miss Simcox.

  He could neither shake Delia nor kiss her. He fell back upon irony.

  “And was there?”

  “You know there wasn’t.”

  “Only the wax cylinder?”

  She shook her head vehemently.

  “There wasn’t any cylinder—I keep telling you there wasn’t!”

  He had let go of her. They sat back, facing one another on the deep window-seat.

  Antony said, “No cylinder?” and Delia repeated the words with a little jerk of exasperation in her voice.

  “I keep saying so, and you won’t believe me!”

  “You really mean it?”

  “Darling, do you want me to scream? Because I shall if you go on not believing a word I say. There wasn’t any cylinder in the box. There were only a lot of papers.”

  Antony said quickly, “What sort of papers?”

  “They were in German, or Dutch or something. I couldn’t read them.”

  “But I expect you tried.”

  “Of course I tried! There was one with Luftwaffe on it, and then lists—at least that’s what they looked like, only of course I couldn’t read them. And there were maps with things marked on them in red. And there were lots of other papers. I suppose they might be important.”

  “I suppose they might,” said Antony very drily indeed. He took her hands and held them in a grip that hurt. “Delia, tell me—did the box look as if it had been opened—tampered with? Was there a space where the cylinder might have been?”

  “Oh, no, there wasn’t.”

  He thought she sounded relieved, and wondered why.

  “It didn’t look as if the cylinder had been there and someone had taken it out?”

  “How big did you say it would be?”

  “About four by seven.”

  She shook her head. The bright hair tossed.

  “Oh, no—there wouldn’t have been room. There were a lot of papers.”

  Antony let go of her and brought his hand down hard upon his knee.

  “Then Cornelius spoofed him! What a bluff!”

  Delia wasn’t taking much notice. She had skated over some very thin ice, and she was passionately anxious to reach the shore.

  She made haste in that direction.

  “So I tied the parcel up again beautifully—you would never have known it had been opened—and took it right off to the bank, because I thought if they had just burgled Mr. Holt and nearly murdered Miss Murdle for the miserable thing, it wasn’t the kind of parcel I wanted to have lying about. Because it looked to me as if anyone who had those papers might be really murdered.”

  Her voice made a question of the last words.

  Antony said quite seriously, “I think they might.”

  Delia relaxed.

  “What a good thing the parcel’s been burgled,” she said in a comfortable voice.

  XIII

  When Antony had interviewed the police and gone back to town, Delia pulled out a stool and sat down at Miss Simcox’s feet.

  “Don’t you think he’s nice, Simmy?”

  The letter to her sister Fanny having been completed, Miss Simcox was now engaged on one to her sister Maud. Fanny was unmarried, but Maud was the wife of Mr. Henry Tulkinghorn, headmaster of Wrestleford Grammar School. Henry was earnest, zealous, and extremely modern. But Maud was a dear. She had five children of her own, and mothered three hundred boys as well, but she had always leisure and interest to spare. To her Miss Simcox had just confided that she considered Lady Maddox was being severe—“and, though I do not like to say so, worldly. Delia is a dear affectionate child, and Mr. Rossiter a very, very charming young man—”

  She looked up from the words with what came very near to being a blush.

  “My dear child—”

  Delia was gazing at her in a beguiling manner.

  “Oh, Simmy, don’t be discreet! It’s so dull! If you’re never going to say what you really think because Cousin Leonora or somebody mightn’t approve, you might just as well be dead and buried.”

  “My dear—I hardly think—”

  Delia nodded vehemently.

  “Just as well,” she said with emphasis—“and have one of those large, square, heavy stones like a table put down on the top of you so as to make sure that you’ll never get up again.”

  “Delia—dear!”

  Delia tossed her head and laughed.

  “Simmy, I shall burst if you won’t let me talk.”

  She got an indulgent smile.

  “You can talk as much as you like, dear.”

  “Well then, don’t you think he’s nice? Oh, Simmy, you must!”

  With a guilty consciousness of what she had just written to Maud, Miss Simcox again came near to blushing.

  “He is certainly very goodlooking, but—”

  “I know, darling—handsome is as handsome does, and all that kind of thing. But he’s got all that too—he really has. Uncle Philip thinks no end of him, and I know he’ll be pleased, and so will Cousin Mervyn if Cousin Leonora will only leave him alone.”

  Miss Simcox screwed the cap on to her fountain pen. It did not seem at all likely that she would be able to continue her letter to Maud until after lunch. She said in a soothing voice.

  “Lord Maddox is always so kind.”

  Delia went on talking about Antony.

  Antony Rossiter walked into Colonel Garrett’s office at a little after two o’clock. Frank being a rapid and abstemious luncher, he quite expected to find him there. He came instead upon Miss Ann Marsden, who was looking out of the window. She whisked round in a hurry, and he recognized the typist whom he had accused Garrett of reducing to a nervous wreck. She was looking considerably revived and a great deal too pretty.

  At the sight of Antony she produced a very engaging smile and said, “Oh!” and then, “You’re Mr. Rossiter, aren’t you?”

  Antony admitted it.

  The smile took on an ecstatic character.

  “Oh, Mr. Rossiter, I did want to thank you! I do think you were wonderful!”

  Agreeable, but alarming. Antony said,

  “What have I done?”

  Miss Marsden looked at him out of very bright blue eyes.

  “You told him he was bullying me,” she breathed—“Colonel Garrett, I mean.”

  Antony hung his hat on the knob of a convenient chair.

  “Well, he was, wasn’t he? Look here—were you listening at the door?”

  “Oh, no—” her tone expressed horror—“I wasn’t! He told me himself.”

  “Garrett did?”

  She nodded.


  “When I came in. You know, he makes me shake all over, and then everything goes out of my head, and then he thinks I’m a perfect fool. But I was picked out for him because I was good—I was really. Only when he roars—”

  “I know. What did he say?”

  “He began as soon as I came in. He said ‘Miss Marsden’—that’s my name, Ann Marsden—‘Miss Marsden,’ he said, ‘young Rossiter says I bully you.’ And I don’t know how I had the courage, but I said ‘Yes, sir,’ and he said ‘Tchah!’—you know the way he does. And then he said, ‘Reducing you to a nervous wreck?’ and I said ‘Yes, sir’ again, and I thought, ‘Well, I can only die once and then it’ll be over,’ but he just clattered with his chair and said, ‘Don’t take any notice—I shan’t eat you,’ and I took down three letters without making a mistake. And he’s been quite human all the morning.”

  Antony burst out laughing.

  “In fact I have your life! Now—do you want it to stay saved?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Then listen! Do you know what you are?… You don’t? You’re a red rag, same like they flap at bull-fights to make the bull go mad. When Garrett sees you he doesn’t see a human being with nerves, or feelings, or anything of that sort—he sees a bundle of his pet abominations.”

  Ann Marsden said “O-oh—” with a pursed scarlet mouth.

  Antony’s eye was stern upon it.

  “Lipstick—make-up—tut-tut! Eyeshadow—asking for trouble, aren’t you? Nail-polish—the new geranium, isn’t it? And your hair hanging down on your shoulders!”

  “Where else can it hang?” said Miss Marsden in a faint, stunned voice.

  Antony warmed to his task.

  “Nowhere, my child—that is the point. Neatly pinned into a bun at the back.”

  A faint moan escaped Miss Marsdens’ lips.

  “A bun?”

  “A neat bun,” corrected Antony—“like this.” He twisted the hair deftly into a knot and holding it at the nape of her neck, stepped back to arm’s length in order to contemplate his handiwork. “It’s good!” he said.

  “Is it?” Her tone was a little revived.

  “Oh, definitely. Gives you a what-you-may-call-it—a cachet.”

  “Does it?” The blue eyes were very appealing.