Miss Seeton's Finest Hour (A Miss Seeton Mystery)

by Hamilton Crane

  Miss Seeton’s Finest Hour

  A Miss Seeton Mystery

  Hamilton Crane

  Series creator Heron Carvic

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  Dedication

  The Beginning

  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

  Chapter 27

  Select Bibliography

  Glossary

  Note from the Publisher

  Preview

  Also Available

  About the Miss Seeton series

  About Heron Carvic and Hamilton Crane

  Copyright

  Author’s Note

  People may sometimes have wondered about the early career of Emily Dorothea, and how she became the quiet Miss Seeton who, many years after the war, retired from teaching art to live in the village of Plummergen.

  This book tells you at least part of her story.

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to those 520 of

  The Few

  who gave their lives for freedom in the summer of 1940

  The Beginning

  What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilisation. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world—including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for—will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age, made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.

  Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour.”

  —Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill,

  PRIME MINISTER OF THE UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND,

  in a broadcast to the nation,

  18th June 1940

  chapter

  ~ 1 ~

  THE TUBBY POLICEMAN—to call him overweight would have hurt his feelings—pedalled his regulation black bicycle slowly along the road. The hot summer sun gleamed on the chrome of his handlebars, the steel of his helmet, and the buttons of his uniform jacket. If the inspector hadn’t made such a point of telling him it was Official Business, he might have risked undoing the topmost button, but orders were orders. Police Constable Badgery knew that he had the reputation of the Hampstead force to maintain.

  Against one plump—that is to say, well-padded—hip the bulky canvas bag slung on its strap diagonally across PC Badgery’s shoulders bumped in time with his weary pedalling. Sunbeams glimmered on his well-polished boots as they rose and fell, rose and fell—left, right, left, right. His breathing was laboured, his forehead damp. Flaming June had given way to scorching July, and speaking for himself, he couldn’t wait for winter ...

  He arrived, thankfully, at his destination, dismounted, and as he held the bike upright with one hand, with the other he fumbled in his trouser pocket for a large white handkerchief. He tipped back his helmet, mopped his streaming brow, and sighed. He could feel a wide, deep dent where the webbing had rubbed. He promised himself that he’d have a word with his wife about that, standard issue or not. A spot of padding, perhaps. A little snip here and there to make it an easier fit ...

  PC Badgery contemplated the bare brick pillars on either side of the gateway for a few moments before he sighed once more, adjusted his helmet, and started to push his bike up the short paved path to the front door. His Blakey-tipped boots made dancing sparks as iron met stone with a heavy, clumping, rhythmic tread.

  He reached the house, propped his bike against the wall, and marched up the short flight of steps to the bell, which he rang in his most official manner. Waiting for someone to answer, he straightened his helmet, tugged at his jacket, coughed, brushed his boots on the mat—and grew suddenly hot as puffs of gritty dust drifted out of the plaited coir to dull the red waxed shine of the earthenware tiles that covered the porch floor.

  Coughing now for quite a different reason, the unhappy constable was about to back away when the curtains twitched at the side window. Through the brown, paper, antisplinter tape that patterned the glass, a pair of blue eyes peeped out at him. The curtain fell, and after a moment or two there came a rattle at the door as the handle began to turn.

  The door swung open, and PC Badgery found himself touching his helmet in salute to a small, elderly woman—a woman no more than five feet tall, and to the younger, plumper man enviably slim—who stood looking up at him with a smile of enquiry in her eyes.

  Police Constable Badgery cleared his throat. “Er—Miss Emily Dorothea Seeton?” he said in his most official tones.

  The grey-haired little lady shook her head in courteous reproof. “Come now, Mr. Badgery,” she said in a soft voice. “I will agree that I am not much given to gadding about the streets, but you must know very well who I am.”

  “Er—yes, Mrs. Seeton,” said PC Badgery, hotter than ever and wishing his collar didn’t feel so tight.

  “Yes, indeed,” returned Mrs. Seeton, the enquiring smile now a twinkle in her blue eyes. “But if your true intention was to speak with my daughter, I’m afraid she isn’t here at the moment. She is helping at the canteen—King’s Cross, you know, for the troops—and I don’t expect her home for at least an hour.” She saw his face fall. “You could come inside to wait for her if you like,” she invited. “If your business with her is important.” She saw him hesitate.

  “You could,” she suggested, “hold my wool for me if you felt obliged to make yourself useful.” Now the twinkle was almost mischievous. “My daughter,” explained Alice Amabel Seeton, “is very good about helping me wind the skeins into balls, but one’s arms grow so tired after a while, and when she is so busy in so many other ways, I am always reluctant to ask her. She would be most pleasantly surprised were she to come home this evening and find today’s batch already completed.”

  “Er,” said PC Badgery, shuffling his feet on the mat and then, as more dust appeared, growing hot again. “Well ...”

  Mrs. Seeton took pity on him. “Of course, your bicycle must be something of a problem,” she said kindly. “I can well understand your not wishing it left outside when there are such very strict warnings about leaving motor vehicles unattended. And one would think a bicycle even more of a temptation, as it makes no noise, and could easily be ridden away without your noticing.”

  “Don’t,” begged PC Badgery, blanching at the very idea of being charged with Aiding and Abetting the Enemy—which had to mean prison, at the least.

  At the least. There were rumours—not that he believed them, but he co
uldn’t help hearing people talk—of one or two folk who’d been actually hanged—some said shot—in the Tower, for treason. Well, if letting some passing spy or fifth columnist pinch a police-issue bicycle counted as treason ... well, if it did or if it didn’t, it was a risk he wasn’t prepared to run, seeing as how the only way of immobilising a bike was to take the blessed thing to pieces, and the day was too hot for that sort of carry-on.

  Mrs. Seeton seemed to read his mind. “And it is,” she continued, “far too hot for you to carry your bicycle up my front steps into the hall, where an eye could be kept on it. On second thoughts, Mr. Badgery ... I trust that you will not think me rude if I withdraw my invitation?”

  “Not at all,” he assured her, and ventured to grin. “Er, thanks, Mrs. Seeton. You’re right, I didn’t ought to leave my bike where it can’t be watched—and it’s only a message, after all. I’ll come back later on—when it’s cooler,” he added. “If that’s all right with you.”

  “For my part I see no difficulty, but I cannot promise that you will find Emily at home even then,” Miss Seeton’s mother warned him. “Should another troop train arrive at King’s Cross, they will need every helping hand they can muster. My daughter is a good, conscientious girl and does her best to telephone when there is a delay—but of course there is a war on ...”

  “If there wasn’t,” said PC Badgery, “I could’ve left my old bike outside your house and never worried.”

  “You could have propped it against the front fence.” Mrs. Seeton said, the wistful note in her voice an echo of Police Constable Badgery’s earlier sigh as he contemplated the bare brick pillars. No longer did spearhead iron railings guard the perimeter of the neat front garden; no longer did a curlicued model of the blacksmith’s art hang on ornate hinges in the gateway. There was a war on.

  In May of that year the government had asked for—had demanded, by Order in Council—the country’s scrap metal to be turned into guns, shells, bullets, tanks, ships ... and Britons up and down the land had responded with a magnificent swiftness that was cheerfully cavalier as to what might be meant by scrap. Cherished decorative ironwork was ripped from walls, balconies, and even domestic appliances to be handed over without a murmur. Over the past two months people had grown accustomed to the ubiquitous sound of hammers and hacksaws, and to the sight of holes in masonry and concrete—holes they regarded with patriotic pride tinged with only a slight pang of regret for past glories. Alice Seeton recalled her aunt, her mother’s only sister, telling how, as a child, she had watched the city’s gates and railings being painted black in mourning for Albert, Prince Consort. Aunt Dorothea had always hoped that one day they might all be returned to their original bright colours. She could never have dreamed that a time would come when they would all be taken away by order of the government and melted down ...

  “And my best saucepans, only yesterday,” murmured Alice. Lord Beaverbrook’s public appeal for aluminium to “turn your pots and pans into Spitfires and Hurricanes, Blenheims and Wellingtons” had struck a resonant chord with the Seetons. The minister of aircraft production’s promise to make good use of Britain’s “kettles, vacuum cleaners, hat pegs, coat hangers, shoe trees, bathroom fittings, and household ornaments, cigarette boxes, or any other articles made wholly or in part of aluminium,” had resulted in an energetic few hours of sorting for Alice and Emily before they could feel their consciences clear, their duty done. A telephone call to the local headquarters of the Women’s Voluntary Service, a visit from one of the green-clad ladies, and her departure with a clanking cardboard box in her arms had left both Mrs. Seeton and her daughter happy to have done what little they could in defence of the country they loved so well.

  “My missus, too,” said PC Badgery. “All in a good cause, I won’t deny, and we parted with a tidy lot and glad to do it—except there was no persuading her to give ’em her jam pan, even with sugar at eight ounces a week and like to be rationed shorter still before it’s long again.” He gave his tummy a quick, rueful pat and chuckled. “She goes on and on at me to cut down the spoons in my tea, too. She will have it that sweet stuff in the shops is bound to go on ration sooner or later ... but she makes a tasty marmalade, she does.” He smacked his lips and then sighed. “When she can get the oranges,” he finished sadly.

  “When, indeed,” echoed Mrs. Seeton. “And I am sure Mrs. Badgery will agree that having to buy them by weight still seems a little ... peculiar.”

  Mrs. Badgery’s loving spouse grimaced. “The whole blooming world’s gone peculiar.” Forgetful of government exhortations to spread neither alarm nor despondency, he thumped at the canvas bag slung diagonally across his hip. “I mean, gas masks—on a day like this! Time was we would’ve been out enjoying the sunshine, not wondering if that devil of a Hitler, begging your pardon, was getting ready to poison the very air we breathe. I don’t mind telling you, I keep my eyes skinned when I pass by a pillar-box just in case that warning paint looks like to change from yellow—and I’ve a whistle right here in my pocket, and a rattle in my saddlebag, all ready to let everyone know to take cover.”

  Alice Seeton winced, but did not answer. In the circumstances it was difficult to know what to say.

  PC Badgery blushed. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Seeton,” he said quickly, his embarrassed boots raising further clouds of dust in the little porch. “Spoke without thinking. I, er, I’ll be off now and pop back later, shall I?”

  “I cannot promise at what hour my daughter will return,” Mrs. Seeton reminded him. “She is usually home in good time to hear the six o’clock news, but ...”

  “But there’s a war on,” supplied PC Badgery, his blush fading as he saw his way clear to depart. “Well, I’ll leave it for a while and hope for the best, shall I?”

  “We must all hope for the best,” Mrs. Seeton chided him gently. “As my nanny used to say: ‘Hope for the best, expect the worst—and take what comes.’”

  “Ah,” said PC Badgery with a wise and thoughtful nod and a ponderous sigh. “If only we knew what was coming, it would make life a lot easier, Mrs. Seeton. I mean—it might well be the worst, but if we could know beforehand at least we’d be sure we were ready for it.”

  “We would have braced ourselves to our duties,” said Mrs. Seeton with a faint smile.

  “It’d be our finest hour,” agreed PC Badgery, neatly capping the phrase first uttered by Winston Churchill less than a month before and already famous throughout the world. “It will be,” the policeman amended firmly. “Oh, we’ll show that Hitler what’s what, Mrs. Seeton, just you mark my words. The Frenchies and the rest may have gone down—but it’s not so easy to walk over the British as he’d like to think. We may well be left on our lonesome own to stand against the blighter—but we aren’t licked yet!”

  chapter

  ~ 2 ~

  “CAPTAIN GRANGE?” THE GREY-SUITED man behind the desk in the anonymous office in the Tower of London addressed the telephone in crisp, clear accents. “Chandler here. I’ve just had a message from Hampstead—”

  “Then scramble this bloody call!” came the quick interruption in a voice more accustomed to giving orders above the roar of a mid-ocean tempest. “Great heavens, man, don’t you realise there’s a war on?”

  “Sorry, sir.” After a few moments Chandler resumed the conversation. “It’s hardly conclusive,” he told the still-simmering Captain Grange. “According to our information, the girl is helping out at the forces canteen and won’t be home again for some hours, at least.”

  “Canteen? What blasted canteen?”

  “King’s Cross station, according to her mother.”

  “According to her mother?” Once again Captain Grange’s bellow had the startled Chandler holding the phone away from his unhappy eardrum. “Good God, Chandler, some mothers will say anything in defence of their offspring. You should know better than to trust a feeble alibi like that. Has anyone made a ... an independent sighting?”

  “N-not yet,” came the admission afte
r an uncomfortable pause. “Our Hampstead chap—Steptoe—the one who started all this—was told off to go and look for her, but we’re still waiting to hear from him.”

  Captain Grange’s lengthy silence made Chandler feel even more uncomfortable. He felt little better when the other man finally spoke.

  “She could be miles away by now, Chandler. She could have prepared her damned signals for an entire squadron of parachutists and gone into hiding where we wouldn’t stand a hope of catching up with her before ... it was too late to matter, one way or the other.”

  “Unlikely, sir,” protested Chandler. “From all we’ve heard, she’s devoted to her mother, who isn’t in the best of health, and—well, to be honest, does anyone really believe all the stories about fifth columnists laying flight paths for enemy aircraft with stones and sheets of white paper?”

  “Enough people believe it to have ’em phoning the police when the damned woman keeps being spotted prowling about on Hampstead Heath—an open space, let me remind you, where parachutists could drop in their hundreds and hide in the scrub without being noticed—”

  “Which is why,” broke in Chandler, “the Heath has more barrage balloons and pillboxes and ack-ack guns per square yard than anyone could shake a stick at. The blighters wouldn’t stand a chance if they landed—which I doubt very much if they’ll try—”

  “Prowling about on the Heath,” resumed Captain Grange as Chandler drew breath, “with her sketchbook under her arm and her pockets full of pencils! That’s the sort of thing that makes people nervous, Chandler, when it’s fifty to one we’ll be invaded before the end of the month ...” There was an uneasy pause. “Or worse,” the captain grimly acknowledged. “That devilish Hun has rolled up Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, and France, not to mention Czechoslovakia and Poland and Austria—and, great God Almighty, the Channel Islands as well. British soil, remember!”

  Chandler, who remembered all too well, said nothing.