Read Online Outrageous Fortune by Patricia Wentworth - Free Book Online

would.”
    The young man blushed. He was a susceptible young man.
    â€œWas it anything in the way of a purdonium?”
    Spoken, the word was completely awe-inspiring. Caroline found herself echoing it in a rapt mental recitative: “Cadmium—chromium—euphonium—harmonium—purdonium ……” She withdrew herself from this fascinating exercise with a start.
    â€œOh yes—if you’d be so awfully kind. No, I don’t want one for myself.”
    â€œWe’ve got some very nice ones, miss.”
    Caroline looked politely at a black purdonium with a wreath of pink roses, and a hammered copper purdonium trimmed with gun-metal tulips, and at a very refined oxidised silver purdonium with a bas relief of angels’ heads. She looked, and looked away, controlling an inward shudder.
    â€œI think Mrs Riddell bought one here. And this is the bill—she dropped it, and I’d like to give it back to her, but I don’t know the address, so I thought perhaps you would be very kind and let me have it.”
    The young man asked nothing better than to be very kind to Caroline. He made a number of most helpful suggestions, such as, why bother about the bill, as it was a cash payment and no chance of its being sent in again; and “Let us have it, miss, and we’ll see it’s posted to Mrs Riddell, and no need for you to trouble.”
    Caroline handed all these suggestions back with gentle tact. She thought the red-haired young man was rather a lamb. She succeeded in making it quite clear that she wanted Mrs Riddell’s address. When it came to the point, the young man had to go and ask Miss Smithies, a pale angular young woman in pincenez, and after some wrinkling of the brow Miss Smithies, recollected that Mrs Riddell was staying with young Mrs Williams out at Ledlington End. Yes, that was it, because the purdonium had been got for a wedding present and Mrs Williams came and helped choose it—“and—let me see—what’s the name of the house? Not The Nest, nor Cosy Corner, but something after that style.” Miss Smithies was afraid she’d have to look it up, and having looked it up, gave the address as c / o Mrs T. Williams, Happicot, Sandringham Drive—“and you go right out to Ledlington End and straight past the War Memorial, and Sandringham Drive’s the first turning on the left after you pass the Kosy Korner tea-house—and you needn’t mention it, I’m sure; it’s no trouble.”
    Caroline drove past the Kosy Korner tea-house, which displayed rustic seats and orange and chocolate striped umbrellas. Then she turned into Sandringham Drive. It was a bright, clean little road full of bright, clean little houses, all new and shiny like the toys off a Christmas Tree.
    Happicot was the seventeenth house on the left, and it was not as up to date as the other sixteen. They had for the most part casement curtains in shades of orange, scarlet, rose-pink, or delphinium-blue; but the parlour windows of Happicot were hung with blue plush and Nottingham lace. The garden was raw earth, with a scarlet geranium surrounded by a circle of lobelia set out in the middle of it.
    Caroline lifted the latch of the rustic gate, walked up a bright yellow gravel path, and knocked upon the front door. It was Nesta Riddell who opened it. She looked at Caroline with a mixture of surprise and suspicion. “Flag-day, or something of that sort,” she said to herself, and prepared to shut the door.
    â€œMrs Riddell?” said Caroline.
    Nesta nodded. If she wasn’t collecting for something, what on earth could she want? Suspicion deepened.
    Caroline felt as if there were strong invisible bars between them. She lifted her chin and took a step forward. All the bolts and bars in the world weren’t going to keep her from Jim.
    â€œMay I come in?”
    Nesta stood where she was, the door half closed.
    â€œI’m Mrs