Hole and Corner by Patricia Wentworth Page B

story came out—well, I ask you, what was it going to look like? Conspiracy, my dear—and then it would be you that would be in the dock on a criminal charge, and not her.”
    â€œDry up!” said Ettie Miller angrily. “What do you think you’re saying? What was the good of doing the thing at all if it was all going to fizzle out?”
    Mr Phillips went on smiling.
    â€œWhen the real job comes off, Anthony Leigh’s going to remember where that bag of yours was found,” he said.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    Shirley came back to her lunch next day to find Mrs Camber hovering. The door was no sooner shut than she made an agitated descent from the half-landing.
    â€œIf I might have a word with you, Miss Dale—”
    Shirley looked at her in surprise. She didn’t in the least want to have words with Mrs Camber. She wanted her lunch. She had been promised a good hot helping of beefsteak pudding and a baked apple, and she had been thinking lovingly about them all the way home, and Mrs Camber ought at this moment to be taking the pudding out of its cloth and helping it in portions instead of lurking on the stairs and fussing down on her like a stout agitated hen.
    â€œIf you’d come into the dining-room, miss, if you please,” said Mrs Camber, very flushed, very short of breath, and still shiny from the kitchen fire.
    The dining-room belonged to Miss Pym, but since she was in Paris, it was at their disposal.
    â€œWhat is it, Mrs Camber?” said Shirley when the door was shut. Whatever it was, she hoped it wasn’t going to take long. The room was stuffy and quite horribly cold. Miss Pym ran to silver photograph frames, and they were all lying down flat, as if a wind had passed over them.
    Mrs Camber stood just inside the door and fidgetted with her kitchen apron. She had a round, flushed face and deeply sunk eyes. Her dark hair was brushed back as tight as it would go and pinned into a heavy coil at the back of her head. She said in a choked, gulping way,
    â€œI’m bound to bring it to your notice, miss. And what you’ve got to say about it you can say it to me down here, for when all’s said and done it’s my house, and no getting from it, and so I told her.”
    The cold stuffiness of the room seemed to thicken about Shirley. It was rather a horrid feeling. She had an involuntary picture of being plunged in cold dirty water that had begun to freeze. What a stupid thing to think about. She said,
    â€œMrs Camber, what do you mean?”
    Mrs Camber’s flush deepened.
    â€œAnd I told her straight, unpleasantness is what I’ve never had in my house before—no more than it might be a gentleman that had had a glass too much and come home a bit noisy, and if so be that it happened more than what you might call once in a way, I’d give him his notice same as I did Mr Peters that had the room Mr Wrenn’s got now—and a nicer gentleman never stepped, only when it come to his falling downstairs three nights running and getting on for four in the morning and a-setting on the landing singing Rule Britannia , only he couldn’t get along with it for the hiccups, well, I took and told him, ‘Mr Peters,’ I said, ‘this is my house,’ I said, ‘and it’s a respectable house, and those as don’t behave as such, they must take and go elsewhere,’ I said.” She paused for breath, drawing it in with a sound between a gasp and a snort.
    Shirley spoke quickly. Once Mrs Camber got going again, she wouldn’t have a chance, and she simply must find out what all the fuss was about.
    â€œMrs Camber dear —what’s the matter? I didn’t come home drunk last night, did I?”
    Mrs Camber looked scandalized.
    â€œI never said no such thing, miss—and a drunk woman’s a disgrace neither more nor less, and nothing to make a joke about if that’s your meaning!”
    A spurt of anger flared in