Read Online Pursuit of a Parcel by Patricia Wentworth - Free Book Online

features quivered in the way they had when he was taking anything to heart. It was at these moments that he so strongly resembled a faithful and domestic ferret.
    Mrs. Holt patted him comfortably on the shoulder.
    â€œWell, ducks, I shouldn’t take on. Look on the bright side. It’s good news about Mr. Merridew.”
    Emanuel said, “Yes.” Then he dropped his voice. “Rosie, where is it?”
    â€œSsh!” said Mrs. Holt. She brought her lips close to his ear. “In my hat-box along with my best hat.”
    Then it came over her—the two of them alone in the house—in their own kitchen—whispering. Silly! She began to laugh, and all at once it wasn’t silly any more. She had the feeling of cold water running down her back. She held him by the arm and whispered again, “Em—there was a man here this morning—said he was from the water company. I kept the door on the chain and I wouldn’t let him in.”
    They looked at each other.
    â€œHe might have been from the water company, Rosie.”
    â€œWell, he wasn’t,” said Mrs. Holt. “I locked up, and I went down to Green’s and telephoned.”
    â€œThey didn’t send him?”
    â€œThey didn’t send anyone.”
    â€œI don’t like it, Rosie.”
    â€œNo more do I.”
    â€œHow can anyone have known? That’s what I can’t understand.”
    â€œWell, you brought it home in broad daylight, ducks. And a pretty thing, I must say, if you’ve got to watch, and creep, and hide yourself like a thief before you can get a parcel into your own house! It seems as if that’s the way it is. And there’s Doris—she’s a chatterbox. If anyone was to lead her on, she’d be ready enough to talk. I wouldn’t say anything to Doris, whatever we do with the parcel.”
    â€œI don’t know what to do,” said Emanuel in a helpless voice.
    Mrs. Holt brought her mouth so close to his ear that the movement of her lips tickled him.
    â€œTake it along to Miss Delia,” she said.

V
    The drawing-room at Fourways was full of the buzz of voices—female voices in variety, from Cynthia Kyrle’s shrill treble to Mrs. Barrock’s bass. The Wayshot Ladies’ Work-party was in full swing. Needles and tongues moved nimbly.
    Mrs. Canterbury said in a drawling voice, “I know you won’t believe me, but it is true—when we started a working party in Little Puddlington in the last war they sent us down a pattern to make nightshirts for the troops.”
    Cynthia came giggling into a dramatic pause.
    â€œDarling Mrs. Canterbury—what is a nightshirt?
    Mrs. Barrock eyed her disapprovingly. “Men used to wear them, and women used not to talk about them, Cynthia.”
    Cynthia giggled again, and Mrs. Canterbury said plaintively, but as if no one had interrupted her,
    â€œIt took yards and yards and yards of stuff, and little gussets, and things let in on the shoulders. And you won’t believe it, as I said, but it’s the solemn truth that it was the original pattern which Queen Victoria gave Florence Nightingale or someone for the troops in the Crimea, and down to the last gusset it was an exact reproduction of the Prince Consort’s own nightshirt.”
    â€œDid you make any?” said Miss Murdle in a reverential tone.
    She was bareheaded, a fashion very trying to a faded face. Her flaxen hair, which never seemed to turn grey, hung in limp curls as nearly as possible after the manner in which Delia Merridew wore her pretty, fair hair. She admired Delia very much indeed, and copied her as closely as she could, thus inducing the pleasant illusion that she herself was still young and pretty—in fact just what she admired in Delia. It was an illusion shared by nobody else. Her green dress was as nearly as possible a replica of the one Delia was wearing. The youthful cut showed how thin she was, and the