Free Hole and Corner by Patricia Wentworth Page B

Dale! It must go to a competent jeweller. It is the most valuable thing I have except my emeralds. Put it on the mantelpiece. Now I wonder how the catch can have become damaged like that.”
    She continued to wonder at considerable length, and then announced that she would like a rest.
    â€œI am feeling completely exhausted. No sleep at all last night—hour after hour, just waiting for the dawn. If I could drop off for half an hour before tea, it would be something.”
    Shirley pulled down the blinds and withdrew to the Study. She wondered how long she would have to go on enduring Mrs Huddleston. Commonsense said, “Until you can get another job,” but something else, something unruly and wild and young, said in a very loud, dear voice of defiance, “Well, some day I shall throw something at her, and I expect it will be some day soon.”
    She sat down on the hearth-rug and considered what she would throw. One of the Dresden figures on the mantelpiece would make the most row, and a flower-vase full of cold water the most satisfying mess. “And golly—how she would yell!” She made a really good Woggy Doodle face and relaxed.
    The warmth of the fire soaked pleasantly into her back. With any luck Mrs Huddleston would sleep till tea-time. It would be nice if Anthony were to walk in. He wouldn’t, because he was week-ending at Emshot, but it would be nice. She could tell him about Miss Maltby. No, she couldn’t. It—it was too beastly. It made her feel hot all over to think of telling Anthony that she had practically been accused of stealing two six-pences and hiding them up in her room. She was glad that Anthony was out of town, glad that there wasn’t any chance of his coming here, because she didn’t want to tell him, or even to see him until she had got the taste of this beastly thing out of her mouth.
    She got up resolutely, found herself a book, and curled up in the easy chair under the light.

CHAPTER NINE
    Bessie Wood came softly up the kitchen stairs. She came very softly indeed. The quickest ear in the world could not have caught the sound of her feet on the treads. She opened the door into the hall and stood there looking and listening. There was nothing to see but the solid Victorian furnishings—table, chairs, hat-and-coat rack, and umbrella stand, and the grandfather clock which was a survival from an earlier century. There was nothing to hear except the ticking of this same clock. The hands stood at half-past three.
    Bessie stayed there for quite a long time. Then she took a note out of her pocket and went across the hall to the table. She picked up a salver and went on to the drawing-room door, where she stopped again to listen. No sound came from the room beyond. Mrs Huddleston was certainly asleep, because her tongue never stopped so long as she was awake. Bessie’s thin bitten-in lips took on an ironic twist. Extraordinary what a lot of sleep some people managed to put in. Swore she never slept a wink all night, but Possett, the maid, said that was all my eye. Well, Possett was safely out of the way, gone down to see her mother in Ealing, and Cook was having forty winks in the kitchen, a thing she’d never admit to, so she could be reckoned on to declare that Bessie hadn’t left the room. With Mrs Huddleston asleep in here, and Miss Shirley Dale in the study, she could go in and have a look around and no one a penny the wiser. And if Mrs Huddleston did wake up, she’d got a note on her salver and every right to bring it in, and no one but herself to know it had come before lunch and she’d kept it back on purpose.
    She opened the door as silently as she had done everything else. The room was very dark. Those green blinds fitted better than any blinds she had ever seen—no cracks round the edges. She waited for a moment to get her eyes accustomed to the green dusk, and as she waited, the steady rhythmic snoring of the Blessed