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

by Hamilton Crane

  “An answer for everything,” said Cox, sourly.

  “You must have had a lively meal,” said Aylwin. “I bet the ears of the people sitting near you were out on stalks. I bet the reports about fifth columnists and spies will come flooding in any minute now.”

  Major Haynes shook his head. “We lunched on board Chrysanthemum,” he said, referring to one of the two divisional ships of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve moored in the Thames within easy reach of Tower personnel. HMS Chrysanthemum, like her sister HMS President, had seen much in her long lifetime, and the ships’ crews were famed for their discretion. “Oh, they argued a bit at first,” conceded the major, “but I’d phoned Captain Grange on the way out of here, and he had them fix her a temporary pass, so in the end it was fine.”

  “You must have pleaded a highly convincing case,” said Chandler. “I wondered why Grange sent a message that he saw no need to attend this meeting.”

  “Miss Seeton strikes again,” said Aylwin brightly, looking up from the sketchbooks as Cox rolled his eyes and Steptoe shrugged.

  “Miss Seeton,” said Major Haynes, pressing on with his narrative, “doesn’t think much of the suggestion that there should be wholesale drainage of certain easily recognisable reservoirs and basins in the immediate London area. While she concedes that not everyone has the artist’s eye, she feels sure that enemy pilots will have been well trained in aerial reconnaissance, and that if they can’t follow the course of the Thames, with its famously distinctive shape, they have no business flying at all.”

  “The idea of drainage,” Cox reminded him, “was suggested to prevent the landing of enemy seaplanes on the aforesaid reservoirs and basins.”

  “Miss Seeton,” returned the major promptly with a twinkle in his eye, “saw no sense at all in draining reservoirs when any seaplane pilot worth his salt—her little joke, I fancy—would have the whole surface of the Thames on which to land. She admits that her knowledge of such matters is nil, but she finds it difficult to conceive of any way in which London’s main waterway could be closed to hostile aircraft without at the same time closing it to what I suppose should be called legitimate domestic traffic.”

  “That lot at PLA would have had something to say if we’d told them to start stringing booms and setting booby traps all over the show,” agreed Chandler. He and his team had endured more than one security tussle with the doughty sea-dogs of the Port of London Authority, whose majestic grey building with its pillared portico loomed reproachfully in the distance at the Tower staff as they emerged from Mark Lane tube station on their way to work.

  “I suppose,” said Cox, “Miss Seeton had her own ideas about that fishing ban in Scotland, too.”

  Major Haynes cleared his throat. “I, er, did ask what she would think of a civic authority that refused to allow its anglers to fish on the reservoir banks in case they were disguised fifth columnists armed with poison, but she said she thought it unlikely anyone could carry sufficient poison on his or her person—except that she thought women would have more sense—to do more than effect the odd upset tummy among the more vulnerable of the populace such as the sick, or children, or the elderly.”

  The major grinned. “She was pretty annoyed at the very idea of poisoned drinking water and could see why Edinburgh imposed the ban, but she still thinks they were overreacting because—well, that’s not the sort of thing the British would do, she said. Fair play, and so on. If wars have to be fought, she thinks it wrong to inflict them on the—the nonprofessional fighters at home.”

  He sobered. “She rather gave me the creeps, in the end. She said she was very much afraid that, given Hitler is a raving lunatic, only she put it more politely than that, we have no way of telling just how far he’s going to turn on the nonprofessional fighters at home. She thinks”—and his voice was grave—“that Churchill wasn’t exaggerating when he told us it was going to be blood, toil, tears, and sweat for all of us in this island. She thinks it’s going to be the first civilian—the first people’s—war in history ...”

  “I’d say she’s right,” said Chandler. “It’s what we’ve been expecting ourselves, after all.”

  “I’d say,” said Cox, “that if that sort of talk isn’t spreading alarm and despondency, then I don’t know what is. Great heavens, man, you should have arrested the girl, not—not filled her with lobsters and champagne and encouraged her to babble her ridiculous nonsense for everyone to hear!”

  “In fact, it was grilled sole—” the major began, but Chandler interrupted him with an upraised hand.

  “Haynes was only doing his job,” he said, with a frown for the unrepentant Cox. “Miss Seeton was, prior to this morning, a—an unknown quantity. Now, thanks to Haynes, she isn’t. Be fair to the girl. She was asked a direct question. Was she supposed to fudge her way through an answer? The very fact that she didn’t—that she came right out with plain, straightforward replies, no matter how unpalatable some of them might have been, makes me as inclined to trust her now as I—well, as I admit that I wasn’t so inclined before. A properly trained fifth columnist would have fudged. Miss Seeton’s downright honesty is a definite point in her favour.”

  “Like her common sense,” said Steptoe. “And her imagination, or lack of it—that blackout shutter of hers ...”

  “She saw through Collins without knowing how or why,” said Major Haynes. “You, Steptoe, have confirmed that the man’s as good as retired since she drew attention to him. If you ask me, Miss Seeton is one of the kind that knows things without knowing how—or why—or even, as in the case of those sketches, that there’s anything to be known.”

  “You mean she’s a sort of ... psychic coincidence,” said Chandler as Aylwin closed the sketchbooks through which, as the debate raged about him, he had been leafing.

  Major Haynes shrugged. “I doubt if she’d care to be called psychic—she probably wouldn’t think it respectable—but there’s something there, some quality ... And if we can harness it—well, why not? Even if nothing came of the experiment, what harm could she do with a few sketches or doodles or cartoons or whatever they are?”

  Cox, who had been about to argue, changed his mind. “If the girl is psychic—and if she isn’t a wrong ’un, there’s no other rational explanation that I can see—then you’re right, we ought to try turning it to our advantage. If we can,” the pessimist added. “Don’t forget, they say Hitler believes in astrology and witchcraft and hocus-pocus nonsense of that sort. You say Miss Seeton has her own queer hocus-pocus, and she’s supposedly on our side—which would be fighting fire with fire, wouldn’t it?”

  Everyone considered this in silence for a while before Chandler nodded slowly.

  “Fire,” he said, “or ... Spitfire?”

  “Ah,” said Major Haynes. “Yes ... Miss Seeton would be the first to tell you her mechanical abilities are limited. Even using a hand-cranked sewing machine for anything fiddly is beyond her, from what she says, and she leaves that side of things to her mother, which sounds like a good idea. Mrs. Seeton has turned out dozens of chintz bags since hospitals started asking for them, while she—Miss S.—had me in stitches—sorry!—with the sad tale of how she tried to knit a pair of seaboot stockings in oiled wool ...”

  “That’s why she works at the King’s Cross canteen,” said Steptoe, recalling PC Badgery’s caution that he might be asked to hold skeins of wool for winding if Alice Seeton was alone at the house when he arrived.

  “We wouldn’t ask the wretched girl to work on the factory floor,” said Chandler irritably. “For one thing, even if she’d be any use, which from what you say she won’t, it would take too long to train her to build aeroplanes. The sabotage—if sabotage it is—has wasted quite enough time already. And, sabotage or bad luck or sheer bloody incompetence, we need action—and we need it now!”

  chapter

  ~ 10 ~

  THIS TIME THE LETTER was brought, not by PC Badgery, but by the postman. Two days after Miss Seeton’s lunch aboard HMS C
hrysanthemum, another brown envelope marked OHMS in the top left-hand corner clattered through the neat brass oblong in the Seetons’ front door to land on the inside mat.

  This envelope, like the first, was addressed to Miss E. D. Seeton, but in contrast to the previous missive, the illegible signature at the end was a name she now recognised: G. Haynes, Major. Fleetingly Miss E. D. Seeton wondered whether G might stand for Gordon or Gregory or ... but there were more pressing matters to consider.

  “They want me at the Tower again, Mother,” she said to Alice, who smiled vaguely at her daughter before returning to her own correspondence, which was mostly bills and made her frown. Emily blushed.

  Perhaps this was because she believed her mother’s frown to have been inspired by the somewhat melodramatic way she had paraphrased the contents of the major’s letter ...

  “Major Haynes suggests the day after tomorrow at half-past ten, if that’s convenient,” Emily went on in as prosaic a tone as she could achieve. “Dear me. I’ll have to see if anyone will change her canteen shift with mine ...”

  Fifteen minutes’ telephoning resolved the little difficulty, and Miss Seeton was able to set out with a clear conscience on that day’s excursion, even if the next day’s must be cancelled. Today, however, she would accompany a dozen or so children to Kew Gardens, there to learn something of the mysteries of plant life and how marmalade might be made from green walnuts, or paper from stinging-nettle leaves and artificial silk from their stems.

  “And,” she informed Major Haynes when he greeted her at the Tower entrance (no sending Chandler as an escort on this occasion) by asking what she’d been doing with herself since their last meeting, “there are experiments being carried out to ascertain whether potato eyes will work as well as seed potatoes, which, if that is the case, will save both fuel and space. Potatoes are so bulky, aren’t they? The children were most interested by it all.”

  “I should think they were,” said the major. “And you, Miss Seeton? Bored to death, of course. Putting up with it just for the sake of the brats, eh?”

  Miss Seeton twinkled at him. “Enthusiasm is always to be encouraged,” she reminded him. “In moderation, that is, and of course it is always a pleasure to watch an expert at work. The botanists were so very informative, and without ever once appearing to lecture, that I believe several of the children have made up their minds to find some form of horticultural or agricultural employment when they are able. Even I—who know almost nothing of gardening and have no need to do so, as it is one of my dear mother’s greatest pleasures—was tempted to consider offering my services to the publishers of biology textbooks. As an illustrator, that is.”

  “Ah,” said Major Haynes. “Yes.” Not for the first time he had cause to wonder about Miss Seeton’s psychic—or in this case telepathic—powers. She’d as good as handed him on a plate his lead-in to the purpose of her visit.

  “Stinging-nettle paper’s quite a way in the future,” he said grimly. “And if this war lasts only a couple of years, we’ll be running short of the regular stuff—there will be smaller newspapers and far fewer books—”

  “Of course,” said Miss Seeton with a decided nod as he paused for breath. “The ration of paper pulp, if that is the correct term, will be saved for more important things. Such as public information leaflets.”

  His collar felt tight around his neck, and Major Haynes raised a hand to loosen the knot of his tie. “Public information leaflets,” he echoed dully. “That wasn’t quite what I meant to say, Miss Seeton. It was more in the nature of a—a friendly warning that there might not be so many textbooks published in the future.”

  “Meaning,” prompted Miss Seeton, “that my—shall we say ‘proposed career change’ might perhaps be unwise at this particular juncture?”

  “Oh, damn it!” burst from the major before he could stop himself. Miss Seeton arched her brows but said nothing. Was that another faint twinkle at the back of her eyes? Major Haynes couldn’t be sure. He wished he had loosened his collar as well as his tie.

  “Look, Miss Seeton,” he said, leaning across his desk and meeting her gaze levelly. “You’re an intelligent young woman and your father’s daughter. You know what national security means. You know the sort of sacrifice any one of us may be called upon—at any minute—to make in the interests of this country’s safety. I wasn’t being entirely ... frivolous when I mentioned the likely shortage of paper pulp and your chances of getting a job illustrating textbooks.” He drew a deep breath, and laid his hand upon the sketchbooks neither he nor his visitor had mentioned since the interview began.

  “You’ve shown here that you’re a—a more than adequate artist,” he went on. Miss Seeton failed to hide her quiet amusement at this remark. The major felt hot. “I didn’t,” he emphasised, “mean that as a backhanded compliment, Miss Seeton—but you said yourself that you have talent, not—not genius.” Not, he added silently as Miss Seeton nodded amiably, genius in the normal sense of the word, that is. “What I meant,” he persisted, “was that—well, there are quite enough competent artists around who could supply botanical publishers with cross sections of a nettle stem, or whatever else was wanted.”

  “Sandbags,” murmured Miss Seeton with a smile.

  Major Haynes coughed. “There is,” he went on with a wary look at the young woman who watched him with such quiet interest, “a certain ... immediacy about your sketches that would do very well—very well indeed—for a series of public information leaflets—but, really, once you’ve done the initial sketches, the same comment must apply. Any competent artist could copy them—amend them—to suit the particular intention of the time.”

  Miss Seeton nodded. “I understand,” she said helpfully as he loosened his tie a little more. “You wish me to produce sample sketches, as it were, for others better qualified to modify—to improve—to the required publication standard when my training, of course, was never in commercial art. I quite understand,” she said again, as he looked at her with an air of surprise and she herself was surprised (and, indeed, perhaps a little disappointed) that she had apparently been mistaken as to the friendly sympathy she had thought was growing between herself and the major. From his remarks it now seemed that he had supposed her to be one of those temperamental Artists with a capital “A” who resented any criticism, no matter how justified, of their work; and she was not.

  Yes, disappointing ...

  Miss Seeton pulled herself together. This was no time for indulging in the temperament she had only just now been telling herself she did not possess. She might have been called to service by His Majesty’s Government for the sake of her “more than adequate” artistic abilities, but she was a realist. The major’s kind words had been a gentlemanly courtesy, not a compliment: her head would not swell as a result of his remark. Nevertheless, in Miss Seeton’s view the Ministry of Information, in choosing her, had made a wise choice. She was not vain about this: she knew her limitations. Ministry leaflets were distributed to every household in the country. Their message must be clear, not confusing; must be both informative and precise. Hers might be the original creative inspiration—if this was not an immodest way of putting it—but when it came to the imparting of accurate facts, there must be no possibility of error.

  And yet ...

  And yet she was uncomfortably aware that sometimes—it didn’t happen very often, but she was no longer disconcerted when it did—sometimes her sketches—and especially those drawn (or altered) from memory—her sketches did not always accurately differentiate between what was really there and what was ... well, not. Between what she thought she saw, or had seen, and what she ... well, hadn’t. Or didn’t. Which would be hard to explain to the major when ... well, he hadn’t seemed to understand that she really didn’t mind being told her work wasn’t exactly what was wanted, even if there was no question of her being so foolish to object to as many changes as the experts might think necessary. There was a war on, after all ...

  “I qui
te understand,” she said again, firmly, banishing all temperament to oblivion. “And naturally I will be only too happy to provide the basic ideas”—which sounded far less immodest than inspiration—“once you have given me some idea of ... well, of what it is you really need. After the sandbags, that is.”

  The sandbags were becoming their private joke. Major Haynes met her twinkling smile with a broad grin. He sat back in his chair with a sigh.

  “I’ll be frank with you, Miss Seeton,” he said, trusting that she had insufficient experience of the MI mind to know that when an intelligence officer proposes to be frank, he intends to be less than fully honest. Major Haynes would be as honest as the situation allowed.

  “You’re a teacher,” he said, “and used to youngsters—to keeping order, and so on. How do you feel about youngsters who are barely out of school?”

  “Children mature at different rates,” said Miss Seeton, having considered the question for a moment or two. “Many are ready to leave school at fourteen, or even twelve, while others seem sadly incapable of leading an independent life as late as twenty-one.” She sighed. “And of course some, even more sadly, are forced by—by biological necessity to become adult far too soon. There was, of course, nothing of the sort with any of our school pupils, but once they were evacuated and had met some of the sturdy, one might even say lusty, young country girls, it came as something of a shock for them to have the theory shown so blatantly in practice.”

  “Er—ahem,” said Major Haynes, shifting on his chair and hoping he wasn’t blushing. Discussing unmarried motherhood among the infant peasantry was not the way he’d planned to lead into the subject ...

  Or had Miss Seeton, yet again, helped him out without realising the fact?

  “Suppose,” he began, “we were to ask you to become a—a kind of lady almoner, a workers’ welfare officer, for the young women and girls working in one of our aircraft factories.” Whatever you do, Chandler had warned, don’t tell her it’s Most Secret experimental work. What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her—or anyone else, if our “experiment” goes wonky and she turns out to be a wrong ’un after all ...