“There’s the portmanteau still,” she said hopefully. “Pistols in the portmanteau. Your idea, Elizabeth.”
“Yes, dear,” said Elizabeth; “but thank God I must have been very wrong about the portmanteau. The outside-porter told me that he brought it up from the station to Major Benjy’s house half an hour ago. Fancy your not knowing that! I feel sure he is a truthful man, for he attends the Padre’s confirmation class. If there had been pistols in it, Major Benjy and Captain Puffin would have gone away too. I am quite happy about that now. It went away and it has come back. That’s all about the portmanteau.”
She paused a moment.
“But what does it contain, then?” she said quickly, more as if she was thinking aloud than talking to Diva. Why did Major Benjy pack it and send it to the station this morning? Where has it come back from? Why did it go there?”
She felt that she was saying too much, and pressed her hand to her head.
“Has all this happened this morning?” she said. “What a full morning, dear! Lovely autumn leaves! I shall go home and have my lunch and rest. Au reservoir, Diva.”
Miss Mapp’s eternal reservoirs had begun to get on Diva’s nerves, and as she lingered here a moment more a great idea occurred to her, which temporarily banished the disappointment about the duellists. Elizabeth, as all the world knew, had accumulated a great reservoir of provisions in the false book-case in her garden-room, and Diva determined that, if she could think of a neat phrase, the very next time Elizabeth said au reservoir to her, she would work in an allusion to Elizabeth’s own reservoir
