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

by Hamilton Crane

  “I never said no such thing,” said Mrs. Flax firmly, “for what I did say was how the poor girl’s body might be lying there this very minute in that bunker, and none the wiser, but there’s no chance of seeing him as killed her brought to justice. But,” she said, projecting her voice to the most distant corners of the post office, “if them Nuts have done away with Miss Seeton, and hidden her body, and escaped the law, well . . .”

  This was one of the choicest speculations Plummergen had enjoyed for years. The air was fizzing with ideas, politely suppressed until Mrs. Flax had finished.

  “They’ve had a full day’s start, and no police’ll catch neither hide nor hair of them!” concluded Mrs. Flax grimly, and fixed Mrs. Potter, wife to Plummergen’s village bobby and a fascinated, if silent, observer of recent proceedings, with a knowing look. “Two against one,” said Mrs. Flax, “and she no longer in her prime—wouldn’t have stood a chance, Miss Seeton wouldn’t, mark my words!”

  Her words had been duly marked, and Mabel Potter (though she believed them no more than, in its scandal-loving heart, Plummergen as a whole did) reported them to her husband; who thought it his duty to report them to Superintendent Brinton in Ashford, though it was not his usual day for ringing in. With the result that when, chauffeured from London by Bob Ranger, Chief Superintendent Delphick made a special effort and arrived at the police station early that evening instead of the next day, to render his old friend whatever assistance he could, he was met by a man whose hair, Delphick would have been almost prepared to swear, really had turned several shades whiter than it had previously been.

  “I don’t know how much more I can take,” Brinton greeted his colleague with a groan. “I’ve just had Potter on the phone from your favourite Kentish village, Oracle, and you’ll never guess what they’re saying now.”

  “I couldn’t begin to,” said Delphick, “so tell me. From the look on your face, Miss Seeton must come into it.”

  “She’s been murdered,” said Brinton. The two Scotland Yarders jumped and exclaimed, but the superintendent hurried to set them straight.

  “No, no, nothing like that—she was fine when I popped her into a Panda car a couple of hours ago and sent her home. But she hadn’t reached home before Potter’d rung to warn me that the whole damn village seems to have worked it out that Miss Seeton’s been bumped off by Miss Nuttel and Mrs. Blaine, because she somehow found out that they’re running a white slave ring—don’t shout at me like that, I’m just telling you what he said. And, wait for it—her body has been hidden by a henchman of the Nuts. In—now, this may interest you—in an air-raid bunker at the bottom of somebody’s garden.”

  chapter

  ~18~

  AFTER MABEL POTTER had left the post office, and even while her spouse was telephoning to his superior in Ashford, those members of the Plummergen gossip circuit who remained in Mr. Stillman’s emporium were thrilled when a car drew up outside Lilikot.

  “A police car!”

  “A Panda car,” amended more knowledgeable citizens, with glee, and there came a concerted rush to the door. Somebody more practical than the rest closed the door, so that the Nuts, if they should happen to glance across the road, might not observe too many interested faces peering at them from the other side of the glass. Several tins and packets were swiftly removed from Mr. Stillman’s careful window display to give a direct visual line across to The Nut House; and Mrs. Scillicough scored mightily by sneaking round to the back of the grocery counter and appropriating Mr. Stillman’s set of aluminium steps, which she mounted in triumph in order to see over the top of Plummergen’s collective head. Everyone held their breath and waited.

  The uniformed driver climbed out of the Panda to open its rear door, through which, tottering, emerged first Miss Nuttel and then Mrs. Blaine, so shaken by all she’d undergone she barely remembered to limp. The young policeman said something which nobody inside the post office could hear, to which Miss Nuttel made some equally inaudible reply. There was a spirited discussion on the wisdom of re-opening the door of the post office, but before a decision could be made the Nuts had said goodbye to their—chauffeur? warder?—and, leaning one upon the other, lurched up Lilikot’s front path, groped inside handbags and pockets for their keys, and vanished within.

  Everyone’s breath was expelled, then quickly drawn back in for the purposes of speech. It was a race to see who would volunteer the first opinion. Mrs. Scillicough, who’d had by far the best view of events, won.

  “They’ve not got enough evidence yet to hold ’em, the police haven’t, so they’re letting them bide while they investigate further. That’s what it must be.”

  “They’ll be keeping watch to see if’n when they contacts that Dennis Manuden about hiding the corpus,” Mrs. Skinner decided. “He’ll not be opening up that bunker with raffle tickets, mark my words. We’ll have her in here again, We’ve changed our minds, such a pity, that’s what she’ll say, and nothing to be done about it, for the police don’t seem to be bothered to do their jobs proper. They should’ve kept them in Ashford till they admitted everything, so they should, not let them come home as if nothing was the matter.”

  This was felt to be true, but a waste of effort, since Mrs. Potter was no longer around to hear the slur on her husband and his colleagues. Mrs. Henderson, who had not forgiven the flowers for the church but was willing to forget, in the interests of scandal, jumped in at once.

  “The police’ll be watching the house for evidence, like Mrs. Scillicough said, and they’ll get it, see if I’m not right. Then they’ll open up that bunker and find . . .” She shuddered expressively. “Oh, I don’t like to think about it—not that I remember Susannah so well, her being so much older’n me, but she’ll be just a skellington by now, which won’t be so bad. But poor Miss Seeton—somebody known to all of us . . .”

  “That little Mrs. Manuden has a look of Susannah,” said one who’d been at school with Queer Albie’s daughter until her father had decided that Holdfast Brethren should attend nothing but Sunday education. “Them clothes, and her hair, just like living through the war again to see her, it is.”

  “And a lot of them war-time things were made better than this modern rubbish,” volunteered Mrs. Skinner. “Supposing, when they opens up that bunker, the bones are wearing one of Susannah’s own dresses!”

  Mrs. Henderson couldn’t resist the chance. “Well, whose else would the poor girl have been wearing?” she demanded, to a chorus of agreement. “And there’ll be her teeth,” she added vaguely. “Tell a lot from the teeth, so they can.”

  “They won’t need teeth for Miss Seeton,” scoffed Mrs. Skinner. “Hardly cold, her corpus won’t be, and what with her clothes and her umbrella, won’t be hard to know who it is when they’ve found her. And then,” indicating the quiet plate glass of Lilikot, “we’ll see things start to happen!”

  This was doubtless true, but what happened at that particular juncture was that Mr. Stillman cleared his throat. Loudly, in a meaningful fashion. And, now that the police car had departed, people remembered the ostensible purpose for their being in the post office, and began to make their reluctant way back to the counter, stepping over the tins and bottles that nobody had bothered to replace in the window. Mr. Stillman said nothing, but his eye was eloquent, and it was considered prudent to humor him by starting to buy things again. Only Mrs. Flax, for some reason feeling her nose to have been put out of joint, did not join the drift to the counter, preferring to linger by the door, peering into the street.

  Suddenly, with a startled and indignant yelp, she drew back, but not in time to prevent herself being caught by the door as a new customer, breathless, excited, came rushing in. Mrs. Flax was about to remonstrate mightily with such impertinence when she recognised the light of excitement in the newcomer’s eye.

  It was Mrs. Putts, Emmy’s mother, home from her job in the Brettenden biscuit factory. “You’ll never guess,” she cried, ostensibly to her daughter, but with a watchful ey
e on the rest of the audience she’d felt sure would be there. “Another Dick Turpin robbery, that’s what there’s been, seen it on the news on telly—and right near here, this time! A coach full of trippers going to France, it was, and driving from Brettenden to Lydd, and held up near the Gibbet Oak—and on the telly, it said that some local residents were believed to have been involved!”

  Then there was uproar. All talk of Susannah Dawkin’s long-ago disappearance was forgotten in favour of this new, enthralling possibility. It was clear that by local residents the telly must mean the Nuts: why else should they have been brought back by a police car? They’d missed the chartered Omney bus which was supposed to bring them back, but if they’d had a good, legal reason for missing it they could easily have taken a taxi the six miles from Brettenden to Lilikot. They must have been on that other bus, and this wasn’t the first occasion they’d been Turpinned, was it?

  “Which is suspicious enough, if you ask me, without them doing away with poor Miss Seeton, too,” opined Mrs. Skinner. “Look at what she’s always doing to help Scotland Yard, and how thick she is with the police! And them Nuts, twice is too much of a coincidence. They’re obviously in league with the Turpin lot and they’ve realised Miss Seeton was on to them somehow, so they lured the poor soul on that bus—”

  But development of this promising line of speculation was suddenly halted when Mrs. Flax, still brooding by the door and rubbing her bruises, came out with an announcement that stopped everything dead. “There’s another police car coming down The Street—but,” in a puzzled tone, “it’s going past The Nut House . . .”

  Everyone turned and rushed back to the door (which the ample bulk of Mrs. Flax blocked almost entirely) and windows, desperate for a view. Mr. Stillman raised his brows, sighed, folded his arms, and prepared to wait once more.

  “It’s gone right past,” said Mrs. Spice, very puzzled. “I made sure as they’d be coming back to ask those Nuts a deal more questions, but . . .”

  Anxious and inquisitive necks were desperately craned, but there is a limit to the elasticity of human bodies and the field of view from a flat-fronted window. The police car had driven past: the door must be opened, and somebody must stand outside on the pavement in order to report back on where that car had gone, who might be in it, and what he or she or they might be doing.

  Mrs. Putts, who’d been the focus of all attention, was a little miffed now to be ignored in favour of Mrs. Henderson, Plummergen’s choice. Mrs. Henderson stood nearest the door, after Mrs. Flax (tacitly admitted to be too large for a lookout) and was therefore best placed for a quick exit from the post office to the pavement, where she was instructed by an excited chorus to hide as much of herself as possible behind one of the trees which lined The Street, and watch what was going on, and where.

  It is hard to be unobtrusive behind a tree and to appear as if one has a valid reason for being there, but for the sake of Plummergen Mrs. Henderson was willing to try. Behind the tree she lurked, looking as casual as she could, peering down The Street and reporting back, after a few moments:

  “They’ve stopped outside Sweetbriars!”

  The babble from inside the post office was earsplitting. Everyone crowded even closer to the open doorway to catch every golden word.

  “There’s a policeman getting out—in a uniform . . .”

  “Going to check for bloodstains,” came the suggestion from someone who was instantly shushed. Miss Seeton, after all, had disappeared from Brettenden, not Plummergen—that is, so they thought. But supposing she’d come back under her own steam, unnoticed, and violence had occurred in her own home, after all? However, there was no time to enlarge on this theme, for Mrs. Henderson was hissing:

  “It’s Miss Seeton!” Gasps of amazement from those who were near the door and could hear; cries of frustration from those at the back, who demanded to be told what was happening. Mrs. Henderson’s words were relayed as she spoke them.

  “Getting out of the back of the car . . . now the copper’s seeing her up the path . . . now she’s opening the front door, and he’s coming back to the car . . . she’s gone inside and shut the door, and the copper’s driving away!”

  Furtive glances were cast across The Street towards the windows of Lilikot. Had the Nuts been somehow maligned by the village? Could there be an explanation?

  There could; and Mrs. Flax, savouring her moment of triumph, produced it. “That weren’t never Miss Seeton,” she said, so firmly that they knew it must be true. “Who’s in Sweetbriars this minute’s no more Miss Seeton than what I am. She’s an imposter, a policewoman pretending to be Miss Seeton, that’s who she is!”

  “Whyfore would anyone pretend to be Miss Seeton?” asked Mrs. Scillicough, while the others digested this and found it acceptable, if puzzling. Mrs. Scillicough was prepared to be argumentative. “Seems downright daft to me—”

  “Because the police has to negotiate,” crowed Mrs. Flax, “and while they’re doing it there’s nobody supposed to find out what’s happened, that’s whyfore! Nobody knows the truth of the matter barring them Nuts, natural enough, seeing as they was the ones as set up Miss Seeton for their gang to nobble—and worse than nobbled, she’s been. She’s been,” Mrs. Flax said with certainty, “kidnapped!”

  Which was the perfect note on which to end the session, for Mr. Stillman was clearing his throat and looking very pointedly at his watch. Those with less brazen natures did indeed head for the counter for the third time, and make a pretence of buying, but most people hurried out of the post office to watch the police car disappearing down The Street over the Royal Military Canal towards the Ashford road. The door of Sweetbriars remained shut fast; the imposter stayed out of sight.

  But not out of mind. Suppers that night throughout the village were as rife with speculation as any Plummergen meal had ever been . . .

  And when that Scotland Yard copper and his sergeant as married Dr. Knight’s girl Anne arrived to book rooms in the George and Dragon, then crossed The Street to call on Sweetbriars, everyone knew why they were there.

  To help the imposter of Miss Seeton play her part with as much accuracy as possible, of course.

  chapter

  ~19~

  AS CHIEF SUPERINTENDENT Delphick and Sergeant Ranger walked up Miss Seeton’s path to the front door of Sweetbriars, they sensed the collective gaze of curious Plummergen burning into their backs. It was as much as they could do not to turn round and wave the watchers away: they knew it would be an empty gesture, for there would be nobody in sight. The village knew better than to be caught out so easily.

  “They’ll have heard about the Turpinning by now,” said Delphick, “and no doubt believe we’re here to arrest Miss Seeton for whatever part she’s supposed to have played this time. A great pity Miss Nuttel and Mrs. Blaine had to be on the same bus—their tongues won’t have stopped wagging for a minute, I’ll wager.”

  “Everyone’s tongues wag in this place, sir,” Bob Ranger, husband to the doctor’s daughter and budding expert in local customs, reminded him. “Well, nearly everyone’s.” He could hardly envisage Doctor and Mrs. Knight, or the Colvedens, or, of course, Miss Emily Seeton, as being over-oscillatory in their vocal habits: but Plummergen as a whole . . .

  Delphick reached the front door, and his brisk rapping broke into Bob’s train of thought. He rearranged the frown with which he’d brooded briefly on Plummergen’s thirst for gossip, and turned it into a smile with which to greet Miss Seeton, his (off-duty) and Anne’s Aunt Em.

  “Mr. Delphick—and dear Sergeant Ranger, good evening.” Miss Seeton was there, smiling in welcome, looking delighted to see them. “It would be foolish of me to pretend,” she continued, leading the way through the hall and into the sitting room, “that I had not anticipated the likelihood of some visitation from the police. This afternoon’s little adventure, you see, and Mr. Brinton so disappointed, I could tell, although he is far too much of a gentleman to say so. But I do regret that I was unable to assist h
im then beyond a most unhelpful statement: it was so very quick, and rather a shock. But I never believed,” Miss Seeton smiled again, “that it might be both of you.”

  Delphick disentangled her true meaning and smiled back. “Normally, you’d be right: the hold-up took place within the Kent County area and wouldn’t as such be Scotland Yard’s responsibility, but we were on our way here in any case. There’s been another Sherry incident, locally, and Superintendent Brinton suggested it might be a good idea for us to pool our information.”

  Miss Seeton went pink. “My sketches, I suppose? Such a disappointment, when one naturally wished to do one’s duty, and a golden opportunity, I would have thought. Having been an eyewitness, I mean. To the robbery, that is, not this sad sherry business—so cruel, the pretence of help, and most people would be grateful, I know, and never dream of coming to any harm—such a very plausible excuse, and they must be very good actors.” Bob Ranger stirred, but had no time to say anything before she continued: “Somehow one is less inclined to harbour suspicions against a woman, don’t you agree? And with such a very normal appearance, too, it seems. No masks,” said Miss Seeton, “or shotguns. Only, as I said, it was all over so quickly. And one cannot help but feel guilty—the retainer,” and she blushed. A lady does not discuss money; but when on police business, Miss Seeton was a professional, not a gentlewoman, and must try to adopt a more professional attitude. “So undeserved, when the call to action finally came—I was wondering,” and she blushed again, “whether a deduction ought not to be made, for failing to assist one’s colleagues in the manner they would be entitled to expect. A penalty clause,” she said earnestly. “It would seem the correct thing to do. Dereliction of duty, you see.”