Free Outrageous Fortune by Patricia Wentworth

going to stay. Of course, she paid towards the housekeeping and gave a hand with things, and she’d given them a lovely copper coalscuttle; but still, when you’ve only been married six weeks you do want your place to yourself.
    Min sighed over the pale blue silk which she was making into a blouse, then coughed to hide the sigh, and said,
    â€œBlue’s my favourite colour. What’s yours?”
    This time Nesta bit her nose right off, and a couple of tears splashed down on the pale blue silk.
    Tom got up and switched on the radio.
    When the rest of the house had settled into darkness and silence, Nesta Riddell still sat on in the parlour. She sat leaning forward with her cheek propped on her hand and her eyes fixed. It was being difficult—he was being difficult. Would he be any easier if she waited? Or was her best chance now, before he had got back his strength?..… Everything in her said now. She hadn’t risked so much and come so far to lose everything for the want of a little pluck. The emeralds were half hers. If Van Berg died, they’d bring her in accessory after the fact. She’d risked that, and she wasn’t going to be done out of her price, not much she wasn’t. She’d have her share of those emeralds whatever she had to do to get it.
    It was a long time now since the footsteps overhead had ceased. For a little while there had been the faint whisper of voices, but it was a long time since they too had died away.
    She wondered if there was anything in that stunt of old Caroline Bussell’s. It was whispered in the village that Caroline knew a good many things that she hadn’t any right to know. People in Packham said she had a hold over Mr Entwhistle and could do what she liked with him. Suppose she had tried this stunt of hers on him. Suppose she had gone into his room at the dead hour of the night, the hour between midnight and the first hour of the day, slipping in on her stocking feet with a bowl of water in her hand..… You’d have to tread like a cat and keep yourself almost from breathing so as to know by the breathing of the sleeping man whether he were deep enough asleep. Old Caroline always walked quietly. She gave you the creeps in broad daylight the way she’d come on you without the least sound, with her neat upright figure and her prim starched collar, her face that always put Nesta in mind of a plump floured scone, and her brown front that never had a hair out of place. There —it was all nonsense, and creepy nonsense at that. Only, if a man could be got to talk like that in the dead of night with no power to hold anything back..…
    She sprang up suddenly and looked at the clock between the china cherubs. The hands stood at half past twelve. Nesta kept her eyes fixed on them for a moment. Then with a jerk of the shoulders she stooped, undid her shoes, and stepping out of them, went to the door and opened it. There was no light in the passage or on the upper landing. The linoleum was cold under her feet as she went through into the kitchen and switched on the bulb in the ceiling.
    Min’s big mixing-bowl would be about the right size. She reached it down off the china shelf and filled it half way at the tap. The water had to be cold—that was what old Caroline said. But how cold would it have to be? You could call anything cold water so long as it came out of the cold water tap. This wasn’t very cold—no bite in it so to speak. Perhaps a drain out of the hot water tap wouldn’t do it any harm. She let in a little and dipped her hand into the bowl. Would that wake you up if you were asleep? Not if you were really fast. Was it near enough cold to do the trick? You couldn’t tell that till you tried; and it was long odds that it was nothing but a pack of rubbish anyhow.
    In her heart of hearts Nesta did not believe that it was rubbish.
    At the kitchen door she hesitated, and then put out the light. Now the