Miss Seeton Cracks the Case (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 9)

by Hamilton Crane

  Miss Seeton Cracks the Case

  A Miss Seeton Mystery

  Hamilton Crane

  Series creator Heron Carvic

  FARRAGO

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Note from the Publisher

  Preview

  Also Available

  About the Miss Seeton series

  About Heron Carvic and Hamilton Crane

  Copyright

  chapter

  ~1~

  AS THE COURIER’S watchful eyes spotted the very last of her charges coming into distant view, she heaved a great sigh of relief and turned to give the driver of the air-conditioned coach a brisk thumbs-up.

  “About ruddy time, too,” muttered the driver, switching on the ignition and thumping his foot hard down upon the accelerator. “Fine start to the week this is, running over an hour late,” and a heartfelt chorus of agreement erupted from the crowd of irate passengers behind him.

  “Are we going to leave them behind, after all?”

  “Serve them right if we do!”

  “Making us late like this . . . never catch up . . . spoil the whole trip . . . selfish . . . hardly what we expected . . .”

  They must have known that they’d kept everybody waiting; yet even the impatient gunning of the engine and the polite but agitated gestures of the courier failed to increase the walking pace of the latecomers. They moved with a strange, irregular gait, close together, and the taller of the two women—bony in form and equine of feature—seemed to be supporting the other, a dumpy little body who appeared to have developed a limp.

  They had been checked off the courier’s clipboard list long before their feet were anywhere near the coach’s bottom step. And it took a real effort for the young woman in the crisp uniform to smile in greeting.

  “Miss Nuttel, Mrs. Blaine—we were starting to worry about you! Still, here you are, better late than never—but is everything all right? Mrs. Blaine, you look . . . ”

  “Ricked her ankle,” explained the human crutch, as she prepared to assist her patient up the steps. Mrs. Blaine paused, favouring her with a reproachful stare.

  “Sprained it, Eric. It’s far more uncomfortable than just ricking. If you’d cut my shoe off as I asked you, I’m sure it would have swollen like a pumpkin. And how I’ll manage once we’re home, I just don’t know . . . ”

  Erica Nuttel shook her head. “Had to be able to walk,” she pointed out in the tone of one who has repeated herself several times already. “Too heavy for me to carry, and can’t walk the streets in bare feet.”

  The courier glanced down at what was visible of the feet of Mrs. Blaine, but could see very little difference, if any, in size. “You’d better leave your shoe on,” she suggested, “until we can get you to a doctor.” But Mrs. Blaine shook her head. Her black-currant eyes creased in reminiscent pain.

  “If only we’d managed to find the herbalist,” she said with another reproachful look at her companion. “Eric was so sure she could remember where, but it’s been such a long time since we were last in Winchelsea. I kept saying we must have taken a wrong turning, but . . . and if I could only have applied a suitable poultice—though I’m afraid it’s going to be far too late—”

  “It certainly is!” came an angry voice from the doorway above, where a small crowd of curious passengers lurked in an attempt to find out why even now, with their companions safely restored to them and the engine of the waiting coach ready to roll, they were stationary still. “How much longer are we going to hang about here? We ought to have been in Rye over an hour ago!”

  “I’m sure we’ll catch up without too much trouble, if we hurry things along as best we can right now.” The courier glanced up at her grumbling charges with a wide, artificial smile and wondered whether she sounded as phony as she felt. “If you’d all please get back to your seats, so that Miss Nuttel and I can assist Mrs. Blaine up the steps . . . ”

  She reflected briefly that it was as well this pair of late arrivals had not always been so tardy. By being first—aggressively so—in the queue when the allocation of seating was made, Miss Nuttel and Mrs. Blaine had managed to secure the prime position behind the driver. Indeed, they had positively rushed to stake their claim on the one place where the view ahead was unobscured by plastic antimacassars fastened over high-backed headrests.

  Such triumphant ownership of this particular seat would make it an easy matter to deposit Mrs. Blaine and her ankle, whether ricked or strained or pure imagination, in safety—and with luck it wouldn’t be very long before the two women were their own responsibility once more and not the courier’s. From what she’d overheard them saying, they were local people—strange, perhaps, that locals would take a tourist trip on such a glorious day, but tastes differed—and wouldn’t, in Rye, be more than half-a-dozen miles from home. A village with a fruity name, she reflected—might it be Appledore? No, that didn’t sound quite right, though it was something similar, she thought . . .

  The bright May sunshine sparkled on the plate-glass windows of Lilikot, Plummergen home of Miss Nuttel and Mrs. Blaine—who have long been known to village humourists as The Nuts, though only in part because of their vegetarian lifestyle. The windows of Lilikot always sparkle, for they are cleaned far more often and with more enthusiasm than those of any other house in Plummergen: The Nuts appreciate fully their fortunate situation directly opposite the garage in the main—virtually the only—street, an excellent vantage-point for the observation of all local comings and goings, and thus the origin of many an enthralling scandal.

  Miss Nuttel, and the friend known to herself as Bunny and to Plummergen wits as the Hot Cross Bun, perform what many might consider a public service in the dissemination of gossip, rumour, and wild surmise. Though often the grain of truth becomes buried under a mountain of inaccuracy, there may remain an element of fact among the monstrous fictions which will enter Plummergen folklore, there to be not so much fossilised as fermented. Like yeast, the original seed expands mightily—and persistently—to result in glorious legend, long-lasting unto the third and fourth generation.

  It may seem strange to some that there are those in Plummergen who do not approve of the great public spirit demonstrated by The Nuts in saving many of their neighbours the price of a local newspaper—a paper which, moreover, is edited in Brettenden, a town six miles distant. Too often what is observed from the vantage-point can have more than one possible interpretation—and thereby many a tale may hang, and many a character, as well. Yet the majority of villagers understand well the limitations and accuracy of the intelligence system, and can adapt or select their responses as seems fitting, while others may choose to ignore the gossip, or to remonstrate, or attempt to set up their own counter-rumour. Few people in Plummergen remain untouched by rumour . . .

  Which has of recent years been brought to focus, more than once, upon the new owner of Old Mrs. Bannet’s
cottage at the south end of The Street. Flora Bannet lived to be ninety-eight, bequeathing Sweetbriars to her second cousin and god-daughter, Miss Emily Seeton. Miss Seeton was glad to retire from her London flat and her nosy neighbours to the country, little realising that Plummergen could leave Mrs. Perrsons and her ilk far behind in the nosiness stakes. For Miss Seeton, her inheritance came as a welcome delight, a chance to have a proper home; and she was determined to enjoy herself to the full.

  She was kneeling now in her sunlit garden, a small fork in her hand, loosening the earth around the roots of what she knew to be weeds, and wondering why the illustrations in Greenfinger Points the Way could not be more accurate in their depiction of the good and the undesirable in floral life. As a former art teacher, Miss Seeton thought accuracy very important. One should only draw what one sees; and, conversely, what one sees ought to be recognisable from what some other one has drawn.

  Yet it is in her depiction, not of what her artist’s eye sees, but of what her artist’s mind senses as the truth behind sight, that her artist’s abilities are most valued—and valued by the police, who have found her in the past to be of such help that they now pay her a modest retainer for her services. Their calls upon her time and talents have given The Nuts much cause for speculation; speculation to which Miss Seeton, as a true gentlewoman should, remains utterly oblivious. She keeps herself politely to herself, and while being friendly to all has chosen long ago not to become too closely involved in the affairs of others.

  The fact that the affairs of others—often criminal affairs—tend to become closely involved with Miss Seeton is something to which she has been able, surprising though it may seem, to close her mind: she considers her life to be routine and uneventful, not knowing that in some quarters she is considered a catalyst, a stirrer of hornets’ nests—the misguided missile, as someone in authority once called her. The newspapers, national and international, describe her as the Battling Brolly; yet somehow Miss Seeton still manages to regard herself as peacefully retired and placidly resident in Plummergen, that most English of villages in Kent, that most English of counties, where nothing out of the ordinary ever occurs . . .

  • • •

  “I hope you all enjoyed your visit to Winchelsea,” said the courier, as at last the coach was under way, “and that you remembered to take a good look at the tree in the churchyard which marks the spot where John Wesley preached his last open-air sermon in 1790.” Dutiful murmurs with an undertone of guilty shuffling greeted this pious wish. The courier cleared her throat, and continued:

  “We’re now driving along the Royal Military Road towards Rye, which I’m sure you’ll find a fascinating place.”

  “If we have long enough there to find out,” muttered a disaffected voice from the rear of the coach. Miss Nuttel, bridling, tossed her head; Mrs. Blaine’s black eyes vanished in a scowl. The courier ignored them all as she went on:

  “The name Rye means at the island, and comes about by a misreading of the original Anglo-Saxon which would have been pronounced at ther eye, where eye was the word for island. Which Rye is, as you can tell as we drive along—we’re right at sea level here, but as you look upwards and ahead you can see how steep a hill it’s on . . . ”

  More sounds of disaffection from the rear. The Nuts, in their front seat with the windscreen view, congratulated themselves and gazed dutifully at the sight they had seen several times before.

  “Rye has a colourful past and is full of interesting buildings with historical associations—”

  “Is that where the Rye House Plot happened?” came an interruption which did not unduly surprise the courier. On every tour there was always at least one person, usually an enthusiastic American, who had studied English history and enjoyed the thrill of fitting places to facts. This time, though, the facts weren’t quite right.

  “I’m afraid not,” replied the courier, kindly. “We’re in Sussex here, and Rye House is north of London, in Hertfordshire, a few miles from Broxbourne. The derivation of the name is probably the same, though.” She cleared her throat and went back to her commentary. “Now, in this Rye, you’ll be able to see many fine examples of various early styles including brick, stone, and timber. Perhaps the finest timber-frame building is the Mermaid Inn, which was a famous smugglers’ headquarters and where the notorious Hawkhurst Gang used to sit in the bow windows fronting the street, drinking to their success—”

  “Smugglers?” came a query from behind. “Pirates?”

  “Highwaymen!” came another suggestion.

  “No highwaymen around these parts,” said the courier with a smile, as she pressed on with her commentary. “The Hawkhurst Gang were one of the worst bands of smugglers in the country in the eighteenth century. They murdered people and tortured informers, and fought pitched battles with rival gangs. They were said to be able to muster five hundred men within an hour—far worse than any highwaymen,” she concluded with relish, hearing her audience shudder with gleeful terror.

  Then she heard an outburst of real terror: a curse from the driver and a screech of brakes, cries of shock from The Nuts as they were thrown forward with the impetus. Across the road, in front of the coach, a dark blue car had turned, and stopped. Dead. Blocking the road completely . . .

  And, giving the lie to her recent words that there were no highwaymen associated with that part of the country, two masked figures with shotguns appeared and made menacing gestures at the driver through the windscreen.

  “Turn round!” she gasped, as passengers in the front began to exclaim in fright and those at the rear demanded to know what was happening. “Reverse—get away!”

  “There’s another car blocking my tail—I can see it in the mirror,” the driver told her, and swore. “Looks like they want me to open this door—and I’m no hero. Those guns could do a deal of damage, shooting through glass . . . ”

  Above the horrified protests of all those who were not riveted with fear or startled into silence, he pressed down the pneumatic lever. With a sigh and a rubbery thud, the coach door folded open.

  And one of the ambushing figures, shotgun in hand, with the other covering from outside, climbed the steps, stood beside the driver, and gave the traditional command:

  “Stand and deliver! Your money—or your life!”

  chapter

  ~2~

  “REMARKABLE,” SAID THE chief superintendent, with what in a weaker man might have been regarded as a sigh. Sergeant Bob Ranger looked up from his notebook, from which he was trying to transcribe his shorthand. Practice in his case did not make perfect: he knew what it said, true enough, but there was more than a suspicion that this was only because he made a point of writing up his notes as soon as possible after making them. Memory, he felt, had perhaps too large a part to play in his work: suppose one day he should be hit on the head and suffer amnesia? Where would that leave whichever of his colleagues had to take over his caseload?

  Then he remembered how marriage to Anne Knight had given him access at all times to the most devoted of professional nursing care, and he smiled. His superior looked at him quizzically.

  “My words are not intended to amuse you, Sergeant Ranger. They are intended to prompt a spark of curiosity, a query as to what it is I am talking about. Curiosity should be the good detective’s watchword at all times.”

  Bob removed the smile and substituted an air of alert interest. “Certainly, sir. You were talking about something, as yet unspecified, being remarkable. I was simply waiting—politely—for you to enlighten me as to what that something might be.”

  He closed his notebook, folded his arms, and tilted his head slightly to one side, the perfect pupil in the front row, eager for Teacher to begin the lesson. Very few schoolchildren, however, stand six foot seven in their socks and play football for the police eleven. Bob looked rather comical, and Delphick had to laugh.

  Then he sobered, and sighed more obviously this time. “I had in mind the monumental growth of paper work in this of
fice,” he said, regarding his overflowing in-tray with a thoughtful expression. “No matter how hard I work—you as well, for that matter—”

  “Thank you, sir,” murmured Bob.

  “—the evidence always seems to suggest that we spend all our time in idleness. Blink but an eye, and the in-tray which was almost empty Friday evening is full again, and the week barely begun. I swear that the files must multiply when we’re not looking.”

  “Or they creep back across from the out-tray,” suggested Bob, “and change their appearance with intent to mislead.”

  “Personation, you mean? Not an altogether common crime nowadays—in Scotland Yard, unheard of, to my knowledge.” Delphick shook his head. “Time to tackle the next batch, I suppose, if you’ll only stop chattering long enough to let me get down to some honest work.”

  “Sorry, sir,” Bob said, not sounding it in the least. Delphick chuckled briefly, then reached for the topmost file of an unsteady heap.

  When the telephone rang, Bob looked up with alacrity from his perplexing pothooks and wondered if he was to be spared any more of the struggle by the call to action. He kept his eyes on the chief superintendent’s face, and from Delphick’s sudden frown and exclamation knew that the call had indeed come.

  He listened with dismay to the accessible half of the ensuing conversation; he knew enough about the recent crime wave to be able to supply the inaudible half without too much difficulty. He looked at the heap of files on Delphick’s desk and guessed that it would grow a great deal higher before it began to diminish.

  His guess was correct, although it hardly needed the instinct of a detective to make it. “We’ll be right there,” concluded Delphick briskly, “and you’d better let us have your files on all the other occurrences, as well. Unless it’s a copycat crime, I think you’re right—it’s our friends again. And this time they really have killed someone . . .”

  He hung up the receiver and turned to Bob; but there was no need to explain. His sergeant said at once: “The Sherry Gang, sir?”