Delia shuddered to her very core. Cousin Emilia was Cousin Leonora’s eldest unmarried sister. She lived a hundred miles from anywhere, and always kept a young guest from feeling bored by setting her to darn the sheets and pillowcases of an outworn day. If she wished to escape Cousin Emilia she must fight.
The conflict was just beginning to die down, when Parker came respectfully into the room.
“If you please, Miss Delia, Mrs. Parker wished me to ask if you would see her for a moment.”
The interruption was really not unwelcome to either of the protagonists. Lady Maddox had been astonished at the quality of Delia’s defence. Having been forced to a compromise, she welcomed the break. Delia provided her with the Times, and followed Parker across the hall and through the green baize door which led to the kitchen wing.
At the end of the passage the door to the pantry stood ajar. Delia entered, heard it close behind her, and for the second time that day ran into Antony’s arms. They hugged each other like a couple of children—a radiant little girl Delia, and a mischievous schoolboy Antony. And then grown-up lovers again—and held one another and kissed, but not for long.
“Angel, we must be quick, or she’ll track you down. I say, darling, she’s grim! She’s not going to drag you away and herd you with the schoolboys, is she?”
Delia gave a soft, breathless laugh.
“She isn’t sure if there are enough beds, because there might be more coming and Cousin Mervyn won’t listen to reason. And she wanted me to go to Cousin Emilia in the wilds and darn all the ancestral linen—you have to if you go there, and if you don’t do it nicely you have to unpick it and do it again—but I’ve fought her off, and I’m to have Simmy here instead.”
“Who’s Simmy?”
“Miss Simcox. She was the girls’ governess—Dilys and Enid and Bronwen, you know—and she’s rather a pet, so I don’t mind. Anyhow, anything is better than Cousin Leonora snatching me away and worrying the life out of me about marrying Lewis.”
“What!”
Delia rubbed her cheek against his softly.
“She wants me to marry Lewis West because he’s going to be a duke.”
“My sweet, you’d make a very pretty duchess.”
“I should make a perfectly idiotic duchess.” Her voice breathed heartfelt conviction. “Look here, let me tell you about the parcel quick. Mr. Holt brought it down here and gave it to me after having his house burgled like I told you. Well, I was having the work-party, and I think somebody followed him down and looked in through the study window—I could see the mark of his boots there next morning. And I think he didn’t see my face, only the top of my head and the colour of my dress, but I think he saw me go out of the room with the parcel. And you know Miss Murdle—you know how maddening she is about copying me—well, she had on the green dress she’d made to be like mine, and—oh, darling, they found her in the lane down by her cottage with her work-bag all turned out.”
“Dead?”
She felt his hands tighten on her.
“No, she wasn’t—I mean she isn’t. I mean Dr. Kyrle says she’ll get over it, but only because she’s got such an extraordinarily thick skull. But, Antony, I did feel awful, because I’m sure the man who did it was after the parcel, and he thought he’d just seen Mr. Holt give it to her.”
Antony gave a long, low whistle.
“So what?” he said.
“So I took it down to the bank next day,” said Delia. “And a man followed me on a motor-bicycle and saw me go in. I rather dangled that parcel at anyone who might be watching to see what I did with it, because I thought it would settle their minds to know that it was safely in the bank. But—”
There was the tinkle of a bell from the row of bells overhead. With a soft flurried knock Mrs. Parker surged into the room.
“Oh, Mr. Antony—the study bell. Parker was to ring it if her ladyship came this way, and he won’t be able to hold her not more than a minute.
Delia was kissed and Antony out of the window before the words were out of her mouth.
Lady Maddox found her young cousin in a housewifely conference about ration cards. There were a few gracious words on the excellence of the lunch, after which there was a stately return to the drawing-room.
“What a high colour that poor woman has,” Lady Maddox remarked as they crossed the hall. “Really quite alarming, but I suppose it comes from bending over the kitchen fire.”
Delia supposed it did.
Chapter Twelve
Antony went back to town, dropping the Daimler en route. As soon as he got back to the flat he rang up Colonel Garrett in his office.
“Would you like me to come round and see you, sir?”
“No, I shouldn’t!” The celebrated bark was at its rudest. “I’m busy! Have you got the parcel?”
“No, sir.”
“Why haven’t you?”
“That’s what I thought I might come round and tell you about.”
“All right, all right—come along!” The thump of the receiver jarred the line.
Antony put on his hat and went out again.
He found Garrett terrifying a new typist. Girls in the office being his pet abomination, he was not attempting to restrain himself. The wretched child gave Antony a look of passionate gratitude and fled. It was now so late that with any luck she might hope for a night’s interval before she had to face any more of Colonel Garrett’s dictation.
Antony shut the door after her, observed that girls worked better when they weren’t bullied, and waited for the explosion. But Garrett only looked surprised.
“Who bullies them?”
Antony grinned.
“You do.”
Garrett made the most frightful of his repertory of faces.
“Did you see her nails—half a yard long and bright scarlet? Revolting!”
“The girl’s a nervous wreck. She’ll have hysterics on you right here if you go on shouting at her like that.”
Colonel Garrett’s eyes became fixed in a steely gaze.
“Come here to lecture me on my office manners?”
“No, sir.”
“Then sit down and tell me about this damned parcel!”
Antony told him.
“I thought it wasn’t any good having a pitched battle—attract too much attention for one thing. Lady Maddox is just the sort of woman who goes screaming all over the place about how I’d dragged her husband into some mysterious affair about a parcel and all the rest of it, and I thought I’d rather leave it over until she was gone. I can go down again tomorrow.”
Garrett gave a grunt.
“Comes of having young women mixed up with things—that’s what I say. Fatal! And they bring them into my office! Tchah!”
“Tchah it is! You don’t suppose I want Delia mixed up in this rotten show? I’ll go down tomorrow and bring the parcel back. What I can’t understand is, why wouldn’t Cornelius meet me? He went away at a quarter to ten, as soon as he heard I was coming down. Why? We parted on the most friendly terms. Why won’t he meet me?”
Garrett looked up sharply.
“Wants to get away with the parcel. Don’t want to come and see me. Not too comfortable in his mind about what he’s been up to and what we’re likely to do about it. That’s my guess. Have you got a better?”
“No, I don’t know that I have. It feels funny—that’s all. What about No. 11 Silverthorn Road—did you get anything there?”
Garrett humped a shoulder.
“What did you expect? Told you there wouldn’t be anything.”
“And there wasn’t.” There was the faintest tinge of irony in Antony’s voice.
“There was an empty house. Plenty of empty houses knocking about these days. Old crater out behind and not much back wall left. Plenty of that sort of thing too. Furniture’s been cleared out.”
Antony frowned.
“Then they weren’t living there?” Garrett shook his head. “Then what were they doing—waiting for Con
to come along? It might be that. We don’t know where he was living, but it looks as if they did. Looks as if they knew he’d be passing along Silverthorn Road and they’d got someone tailing him just to make sure. Then there was that crump. I wonder what was due to happen if Jerry hadn’t dropped a couple just then. I wonder what did happen—” His voice trailed away.
Garrett looked up at him sharply.
“What’s eating you? Nothing happened to Cornelius anyhow. Turned up bright and punctual on the girl friend’s doorstep this morning, didn’t he?”
Antony nodded.
“And didn’t wait to see me—left like a streak of greased lightning as soon as he heard I was coming down. I can’t fit that in, Frank. It doesn’t feel right.”
Garrett leaned back in his chair. He sucked at his foul old pipe. Then he said out of the side of his mouth,
“Don’t want to meet me. Don’t want to meet you, because he’s afraid you’ll hale him here to see me. Wants to get off with the bit of blackmail he’s got in that parcel.”
Antony leaned both hands on the table and said,
“Why?”
Garrett stared at him.
“How do you mean, why?”
“Why should he want to get away with the parcel? It was sent to me for a reason, and the reason still holds good. He wanted someone to hang on to it whilst he made his getaway. He’s told them that if he was laid by the heels or molested in any way, the parcel would get going—and from what I’ve heard of the doings over here it looks as if they believed him. Somebody’s been trying very hard to get hold of that parcel, but I can’t see why Cornelius should want to get hold of it. It seems to me that as far as he’s concerned it’s all right where it is.”
Still out of the side of his mouth, Garrett said,
“Forgetting about being dead, aren’t you? Told the girl friend you were a corpse, didn’t he? Quite a good reason for retrieving his parcel, I should say. If you were dead, he’d want to find someone else to hold the stakes whilst he cleared out.”
The shadow passed from Antony’s face. He straightened up.
“I suppose he would. He wants to get away to America. Can it be done?”
Garrett shrugged.
“Don’t ask me. Has been done. Lots of things get done that no one knows anything about, but you needn’t say I said so. I want to see him first, that’s all I know, but up to the present you and this girl of yours are the only people who’ve seen hair, hide or hoof of him. I’d have sent someone down to Wayshot if I’d thought you were going to make such a mess of getting there.” He grinned malevolently.
“If you’d given me a nice motor-bike and some petrol, there wouldn’t have been any mess,” said Antony with his charming smile. And then, “Con oughtn’t to be difficult to find—he’s too big to be lost in a crowd.”
“How much accent has he got?”
“Oh, none—none at all. He’s not even too correct, which is where most Dutch people slip up. You see, he grew up speaking nothing but English. It’s not a language he’s ever had to learn.”
“Oh well, we’ll find him,” said Garrett easily. “I’ve been on to the Dutch about him. They say he dropped in on them from the blue—wanted a permit to stay here until he could get off to America. That was a couple of days ago. He left an address. Small hotel in Bayswater.”
“Well?”
“Not particularly. He only stayed there two nights.”
“Which nights?”
“Didn’t come back last night. Left his bag. Nothing in it. Toothbrush. Pyjamas. Change of linen. All new.”
“But, Frank—”
Garrett stared.
“Don’t be a fool! He went down to Wayshot.” He removed his pipe and banged it on the edge of the table. “Wake up, young ’un! Whatever happened or didn’t happen at 11 Silverthorn Road last night, Cornelius rolled up to see your Delia Thingumajig this morning.”
The natural colour came back to Antony’s face.
“So he did. Just for a moment—” He broke off, laughed, and said, “The name is Merridew.…”
Antony went to bed and slept the perfect dreamless sleep. His mind emptied itself of all its worries. Delia was not being snatched away to stay with antagonistic relations. Cornelius was alive and kicking. Garrett was supplying him with a car and petrol for tomorrow’s excursion. All was for the best. And so to sleep.
He did a ten-hour stretch, and woke to the sound of the telephone bell. Delia’s voice, all in a soft hurry.
“Antony, is that you? Did I wake you up? Antony, she’s come!”
“Who has?”
“Simmy. You know—Miss Simcox, Cousin Leonora’s old governess. She’s come!”
“At this hour in the morning?”
“No, last night. Darling, Cousin Leonora is a Master Mind—she is really. And what Uncle Philips’ telephone bill is going to be like just won’t bear thinking about.”
“Don’t let’s think about it,” said Antony.
He heard her laugh.
“I’m not. But, darling, you should have seen her—Cousin Leonora, I mean. She just sat there in front of the telephone, and first she rang up Bronwen for Simmy’s address, and when Bronwen hadn’t got it she rang up Dilys in Cheshire, and when she found out that poor Simmy was having a holiday with an old pupil near Oxford she rang her up and routed her out and told her to hire a car and come here straight away, and never budged till she got here, so it wouldn’t have been any good your waiting about. And oh, darling, when am I going to see you again? Wasn’t yesterday foul?”
“Damnable!” said Antony. “But I’m coming down this morning—orders—to collect my property. I suppose your Miss Simcox will allow you to accompany me to the bank?”
“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 had
n’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.”
Pursuit of a Parcel: An Ernest Lamb Mystery Page 13