Pursuit of a Parcel by Patricia Wentworth Page A

ought to say she wasn’t sure. No, that wouldn’t do, because then they would drag Mina into it. She never thought it strange that Mina, who didn’t love Antony and had betrayed him, should be shielded at her expense.
    She sat in the car beside Barend and felt a hatred for him that was like a burning fire. That it was he who had given Antony away to the Gestapo, she was as sure as she was of her own hatred. Never while she lived should he marry Mina—she made herself that promise. And some day she would tell him why, and tell him that the van Eydens didn’t marry traitors.
    When they came to the mortuary she went calmly in and looked at a dead, drowned face. She looked at it for a long time. There was a disfiguring wound on the temple. It was rather a horrible sight, but she looked steadily and long. She might have been meeting a lover loved and lost. She might have been taking a last farewell. Her small, dark features were icily composed. Her eyelids were cast down. Only the dead man could have seen her eyes. If there was a dangerous spark in them, only he could have told. She said at last in a clear, controlled voice, “Yes, it is Antony Rossiter.”

VIII
    Delia felt much happier after she had deposited the parcel at the bank. She sang all the way home, and nobody followed her, which just showed. When you have been feeling very young, inexperienced, and uncertain, it is heartening to find that you have done the right thing. She forgot about Miss Murdle for nearly a quarter of an hour, after which she had an attack of remorse and rang up the cottage hospital. It was a relief to hear that Miss Murdle really wasn’t dead.
    It was after she had got this off her mind that she began to notice Parker’s gloom. He came and went like a mute at a funeral. When Delia went into the dining-room to see if the flowers would do, he was putting away spoons and forks with the air of one who is about to drop the unavailing tear. After five years of co-operation she had not the heart to leave him to it. The flowers would do, so there was really no hurry. She said, “What is it—are you stuck?”
    He turned round gratefully with a tablespoon in his hand.
    â€œCompletely, Miss Delia—all hung up for one word. You don’t happen to think of one seven letters long meaning ‘a bright bridge that sounds cold’? Neither Mrs. Parker nor me can call anything of the sort to mind, and it’s not the kind of thing that a dictionary would be any help for neither.”
    â€œA bright bridge?”
    â€œSounding cold. Sounding nonsense, is what Mrs. Parker says, but I say there’s always something behind these teasers when you get to the bottom of them and as it were clear them up. Of course it stands to reason there must be hundreds and thousands of bridges which me and Mrs. Parker have never so much as heard mention of—nor likely to.” His voice plumbed the depths. “That’s what makes it so disheartening, because even with a college education, which was a thing that never come my way, there ’ud still be all the bridges in a lot of foreign countries which the best education that money could buy mightn’t just happen to bring to your notice, so to speak. I can’t help feeling it’s a very disheartening circumstance, Miss Delia.”
    Delia said, “’M—” and nodded. “Wait a minute—something’s hovering. Did you say it sounded cold?”
    â€œYes, Miss Delia.”
    â€œAnd seven letters?” She ticked them off on her fingers. “Then I’ve got it—at least I hope I have! But don’t be too buoyed up, in case there’s a snag. Would Bifrost do?”
    Parker looked doubtful. “Is there a bridge by that name?”
    She nodded again. “A rainbow bridge. You see, that fits in with its being bright, and the frost part of it sounds cold. It was the bridge which led up to Valhalla where the