The Parcel Left in Bay Six

At six minutes past six, June Pell put a claim ticket on the counter and asked Nell Darrow for a parcel that was not there.

The ticket was forty-one. Nell remembered the number because she had written it twice: once on the stub, once on the label tied to a blue cloth case. She remembered the red cord too. It had left a shallow groove in June's palm when she handed the case across at four that afternoon.

Now the place marked forty-one held a plain brown box.

"That isn't mine," June said.

Nell did not touch the box. Beyond the parcel-room window, a coach reversed with three patient beeps. Rain ticked against the wire glass.

"You left a case. Blue cloth."

"With the recordings in it."

The words were quiet, but Nell felt them travel through the room. June was the archivist at the little theatre on Bracken Street. Tomorrow's anniversary gathering was to include voices recorded there before either woman was born.

Nell turned the ticket over. No cancellation mark. No second number. In the ledger she found her entry: 16:00, Pell, blue case, red cord, local hold, bay six, ticket forty-one.

Under it, in Mina Ross's smaller handwriting, was ticket forty-two. Plain prop box. Theatre collection. The destination space said LOCAL, then had been crossed through and replaced with RETURN COACH.

"Please tell me you can find it," June said.

Nell wanted to say yes. Six months earlier she would have said it immediately. Since returning to Fenwick Coach Hall for temporary work, she had learned how long a promise could stand in a room after the person making it had run out of ways to keep it.

"I'll find out where it went," she said. "And I won't give you a guess dressed as an answer."

Mina was counting the till in the adjoining office. She was nineteen, wore her lanyard wound twice round her wrist and had applied for the permanent vacancy Nell was covering.

"Forty-one?" she said. "I didn't release forty-one."

Nell showed her the ledger. "What changed here?"

"The prop box. The theatre asked for it to go back to the scenery workshop. I put local by mistake."

"When?"

"After five. I wrote it in the dispatch sheet."

The sheet lay under a stapler. At 17:10, Mina had entered one box, return hold, morning coach to the workshop at Alder Quay. At 17:20, Owen Cale had signed the dispatch check. Beneath the description was a single claim number: forty-two.

No coach carrying return parcels had left since then. The evening service did not take freight. Whatever had been sent to the return hold should still be in the building.

Nell crossed to bay six, the sixth wooden rack inside the parcel room. A rectangle of dry concrete showed where the brown box had stood before someone moved it.

Above the rack a pipe joint shone with a bead of water. A yellow bucket stood underneath. Idris Vale's bucket: he had painted a black ring round its handle so that nobody would borrow it for cleaning.

Mina watched Nell looking upward.

"Idris was in here," she said. "About twenty-five past five. He shifted something away from the drip."

From the office came Owen's voice, asking whether the money balanced.

"Not the money," Nell said. "Something else."

She heard the severity in her own voice and did nothing to soften it. That was her first mistake of the evening.

Idris was kneeling by the radiator outside the waiting room. He got up slowly when Nell called him.

"Did you take a case from bay six?"

"I moved a box. The pipe was dripping."

"Where did you put it?"

"On the next rack."

"There's a box on forty-one that doesn't belong there."

He looked at her for a moment before reaching for the cloth tucked into his belt.

"Then let's look at the box."

In the parcel room he pointed at the plain brown carton. "That one. From the bottom shelf of bay six to the dry end of the same bay. I didn't move it from another bay."

"Was it sealed?"

"Brown tape. A paper label. I didn't read it. I was trying to stop the water."

June stood close enough to hear every word. Nell realised that her questions had acquired an audience.

"I wasn't suggesting—"

"You asked whether I took a case," Idris said. "I didn't."

He drew the bucket out and showed her the water. The mark on the floor matched the bottom of the carton; the carton itself had a damp corner and a paper label tied through a handle cut into its side. The label read forty-one.

Nell had not written that label. Her own fours had an open top. This four was closed like a small window.

"Mina," she said, "did you make a replacement label?"

The trainee's eyes went to the office door.

"For the prop box. The old one came loose."

"And you wrote forty-one?"

"I must have."

Idris folded the cloth into a square. He said nothing further, which made Nell wish he had.

Owen came in with a ring of keys and the expression he used when a delay might become a complaint.

"The return hold is locked," he said. "If something's been put there, it won't have gone anywhere."

He led them down the service corridor. The room at its end smelled of cardboard and the oranges the drivers kept in a bowl. A wire cage contained the next morning's workshop returns.

On its top shelf sat the blue case, tied with red cord.

June let out a breath. Nell felt her own shoulders drop, and then saw the white tag hanging from the handle.

Forty-two.

"There," Owen said. "Simple mix-up."

June reached through the open cage door. "May I?"

Nell stepped aside. June loosened the cord, checked the cases inside one by one and compared them with the list in her coat pocket. She did not hurry because everyone else wanted relief. At last she closed the lid.

"All here. The inner cases are dry."

Owen held out his hand for the dispatch sheet. "We'll cross it out. No harm done."

"There was harm," June said. "You were going to send it to Alder Quay. I would have been standing outside the theatre tomorrow explaining why those people couldn't hear their parents."

"But we didn't send it."

"Because I came back tonight."

Nell looked at the checkmark beside Owen's signature. It was large and decisive. Under it, the description said plain prop box.

"You checked a blue case against a description of a brown box?"

Owen turned the keys over in his hand.

"I checked the number."

"Then that's what we'll write down."

The case had been found. The evening, Nell understood, was not finished with them.

Back at the counter, Mina began to cry without making a sound. She kept her hands flat on the till tray, as though moving them would make everything worse.

"I told you I made a replacement label," she said.

"You did," Nell answered. "I need to know what happened to the first one."

Mina pointed at the paper bin.

Nell took the bin to an empty section of counter and spread its contents on an old newspaper. Bus timetables. A torn pastry bag. Three strips from the ticket printer. Then a white tag with an open-topped four and a loop of red thread caught through its hole.

Forty-one. Her writing.

The tag was not wet. Its hole was not torn. Whoever removed it had untied it.

Mina looked away.

"A label coming loose doesn't explain this," Nell said.

"I know."

"You had the case here when you changed the destination for forty-two."

Mina nodded.

"I put it on the dispatch trolley. I thought it was the workshop parcel. Then I saw the other box on the rack."

"You could have put the case back."

"Yes."

The answer came so quickly that Nell paused. Mina had not said she could not remember. She had not blamed the rain or the loose tag. She had reached the part of the story she had been trying to avoid.

"I need you to tell it from there," Nell said.

Owen shifted behind them. "We can deal with staff matters tomorrow."

Mina raised her face. "If I wait till tomorrow, I'll spend tonight making another version."