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

by Hamilton Crane

  “I would think it unlikely,” said Miss Seeton as Jemima led the way down the road towards the nearest brick-and-breezeblock edifice with its camouflage paint, shuttered windows, and, on closer inspection, Air Force wings moulded into the guttering and downpipes. “I know nothing of industrial work, and—”

  “Didn’t Sourpuss say you were some kind of artist?” her companion broke in with an impatient gesture. “Well, there you are! Keen-eyed, alert—it’s worth a try—so let’s get going, so you can see for yourself.”

  They reached the double doors that stood open and from which, as they drew closer, Miss Seeton had begun to hear an indescribable clamour bursting forth. Indeed, from the level of noise that assailed her ears as they went inside, she was amazed that she had caught even a syllable of what Jemima had been saying as they headed in that direction. Now that they were well inside she saw—and heard—that it was a huge, high-roofed, echoing, whirring, rattling, banging, clanging cave lit by stark white lights, crowded with people and machines and movement, and smelling of heat and dust and oil and perspiration.

  Jemima, grinning at her evident confusion, grabbed her by the arm and, as they walked down the central gangway, set about a running commentary in a voice she projected above the general hubbub of the factory floor in a manner reminiscent of Miss Davidson, games mistress at Miss Seeton’s old school. “Daisy” Davidson’s lungs had been developed to maximum capacity by years of galloping about hockey fields, shinning up and down ropes at speed, and vaulting wooden horses with style, aplomb, and considerable vigour. It was with equal vigour that, as they moved from building to building at a pace that gave Miss Seeton no time to think, Jemima Wilkes held forth on such varied topics as Vernier gauges, watchmakers’ lathes, rivets, power presses, draw bench dies, blanking and dishing tools, fly presses, drilling jigs, and flat-bottom forming. Miss Seeton’s head began to spin with both the barrage of manufacturing sound, and the barrage of mostly unintelligible information.

  While they were in the Machine Shop, a loud and sudden clanging rent the air. Nobody except Miss Seeton took any great notice of the clanging, though it was evident from the demeanour of those working at the nearby capstans, lathes, and drills that it was welcome.

  “Tea trolley’s on the way,” said Jemima, as Miss Seeton glanced about her in case it was, after all, a fire alarm. It had sounded so like the bell at school . . . “Can’t waste time letting everyone trot off to the canteen,” Jemima said with another grin. “But—talking of wasting time, d’you think you’ve seen enough to be going on with? I’d hate to overwhelm you all at once”—Miss Seeton, tactfully, said nothing—“and if I know Sourpuss, she’ll be expecting you back with your report even though she’s trying to pretend you don’t work for her really ...”

  This, Miss Seeton decided, as she hurried in Jemima’s wake from the Machine Shop, was her new friend’s diplomatic way of explaining that she had now spent (if not, indeed, wasted) an hour of her valuable time with Miss Seeton when she could have been better employed elsewhere. As to what, exactly, a ferry pilot did when not ferrying, Miss Seeton could only guess, but it was sure to be more important than sketching people at work making fighter aircraft when, truth to tell, she would—had she but the skill and the training—have preferred to be making the fighters herself ...

  Miss Seeton’s brain, as she stood catching her breath in the outside air, was awhirl with the many and varied industrial sights and sounds and smells she had never encountered—had never expected to encounter—in her life before. Was there talk of time? It would indeed take time for her to absorb all she had just seen and heard and smelled: the various buildings—no, shops—of the factory had been a riot (though on close inspection an organised riot) of urgent rhythm, ringing echoes, and (except in the Drawing Office, where it was almost peaceful, and the Sewing Shop, where peace ended when Beryl and Ruby spotted her) an all-pervading hot, metallic, oily, dusty, acrid reek so pungent she wondered how Miss Wilkes—Jemima—had been able to inhale without choking, never mind delivering that crisp, efficient commentary on what was happening, and why.

  Miss Seeton breathed again, more slowly. Major Haynes had asked her, on behalf of Section G (Godfrey? Gilbert?) to record her impressions: did he realise the magnitude of the task with which he had presented her? Yet in time of war each must perform to the best of his or her abilities. If sketches were what the ministry required of her, then she would sketch—although whether her official, as she ought (she supposed) to call them, employers would be able to make use of the flurry of images now crowding her senses, she did not know. All she now knew was that she would be thankful to return to the peace of her—no, their, she supposed, since Mrs. Morris had tacitly agreed that they should share it ... to the peace of the office, Miss Seeton compromised, with an uneasy blush.

  Besides, had she not left her sketching block and pencils in the discreet corner she had chosen for her own? As a welfare officer, she might not be able—or, by Mrs. Morris, allowed—to play a useful part in the war effort, but, pedestrian though her artistic talents might be, they could not be denied. She would start work at once.

  Yet Miss Seeton’s resolution was more easily formed than fulfilled. Mrs. Morris, already busy at her desk when her new assistant slipped quietly back into the Welfare Office, threw herself at once into updating her files and began a series of telephone calls Miss Seeton did not care to interrupt. Mislaid and/or damaged and/or wrongly stamped ration books, complaints from landladies about lodgers and countercomplaints from lodgers about their billets, lost or damaged laundry, and the transport problems of female staff until recently refused permission to sleep overnight on factory premises, were far more important than a request (however briefly worded) for a plan of the site so that she could wander and sketch, within the limits appointed by security, at will.

  Miss Seeton’s continued quietness, as Mrs. Morris continued to talk, was not stillness. The younger woman was unable to sit for long as a mere observer. The competence of Mrs. Morris much impressed her: Miss Seeton always liked to watch an expert at work, and she approved of the enthusiasm with which her superior tackled the job in hand, even if she suspected that the other’s concentration might not be as thorough as first appearances would suggest. Her years in school staffrooms had left Miss Seeton fully conversant with manifestations of professional jealousy, but, as she knew herself to be no serious threat to Mrs. Morris, she felt sure that Mrs. Morris would, in time, come to know it, too. She must, meanwhile, do nothing to disturb her superior further. She must remain silent, unobtrusive, and without motion ...

  It was her fingers that betrayed her. More restless than she, they selected a pencil, opened the sketchbook, and presented Miss Seeton with a tempting blank page that she very soon filled with swift strokes and skilful hatchings of light and shade and movement to produce a not unflattering likeness. There was Mrs. Morris, neat and trim in a steel-grey suit that matched her sober curls—a suit from whose jacket pocket a starched white handkerchief peered with a prim, triangular eye. Mrs. Morris was making hurried yet detailed notes on a scrap of paper ...

  Mrs. Morris was looking—glaring—at her. “Seeton,” said Mrs. Morris tightly, “is that by any chance me you have been—have been doodling in such a ridiculous and impertinent and—and distracting fashion?”

  Miss Seeton, with a guilty blush, confessed her fault and, as Mrs. Morris did not relax the glare, meekly passed to her the sketchbook her outstretched hand demanded. There was a thoughtful silence.

  “I don’t care to have my photograph taken,” said Mrs. Morris at last. “Heaven knows, Seeton, I am sufficiently stiff in my manner not to want it ... preserved in black-and-white to make me feel—But never mind.” She cleared her throat. “This isn’t bad—it’s not bad at all. Why, just by looking you can tell how busy I am—how many burdens a job of this nature lays upon those of us who do it properly—conscientiously ... And this is what the ministry wants you to show the rest of the country, I suppose. That
we are working—working hard—on their behalf. Am I right?”

  Miss Seeton murmured that such was her understanding.

  A dry chuckle creaked at her from the far side of the desk. Mrs. Morris was almost smiling as she said, “But where you got the idea I had a handkerchief, I can’t imagine. Are you a mind reader? No, you must have been here while I was arguing with the laundry. They’ve lost more than a batch or two of overalls in the past fortnight—I haven’t a handkerchief to my name anymore, and I’m not the only one—still, it’s a good likeness. If this is your usual standard ...”

  She took the younger woman’s blush for one of pleasure at having her skill appreciated, her presence approved. She did not realise that Miss Seeton had suddenly recalled the remarks of Jemima Wilkes about Mrs. Morris, Mr. Coleman the works manager, and the dropping of handkerchiefs ...

  As Miss Seeton coughed, Mrs. Morris creaked out another chuckle. “You’re hinting that you want to be off about your business,” she deduced. “Well, I’ve no objection—but do you think you can find your way around without bothering people? Assuming the Wilkes girl did as I asked her, you shouldn’t find it too much of a problem.”

  Her mention of Jemima had Miss Seeton blushing again for that unfortunate handkerchief, but she covered her confusion by putting her request for a site plan, if such a document existed, so that she would need to trouble as few people as possible as she moved around the factory and sketched.

  Mrs. Morris looked at her again. She hesitated. “You’re not to remove it from the premises,” she said at last. “You must keep it with you at all times, and let nobody else see it. You must sign for it each time you take possession, and you don’t leave here until I have countersigned that you’ve returned it—is that clear?”

  Miss Seeton assured her that it was.

  “Good,” said Mrs. Morris. “We must never, never forget that there’s a war on!”

  chapter

  ~ 17 ~

  THE END OF HER first day at the Spitfire factory found Miss Seeton as weary as she had ever been in her life. Not even standing for hour upon hour at the King’s Cross canteen, repeatedly washing cups or pouring tea for servicemen in transit, had been so draining; and as she had not (she sadly reflected) started work until the day was half over, she only hoped she could cope better on the morrow.

  But there had been so many new impressions to absorb—so much noise and bustle and urgency wherever she went—not that on this, her first day, she went far ... so many new faces to remember—so many strange words and phrases of a technical nature with which she must quickly familiarise herself if she was to understand anything of aircraft manufacture and, in her sketches, to depict—to interpret—it for the ministry’s leaflets and the national morale ...

  Mrs. Morris examined the floor plan closely when, just before six o’clock, Miss Seeton brought it back. Whether or not she suspected some attempt at illicit tracing on the younger woman’s part, the welfare officer did not say; but at last she nodded, refolded the plan, and produced from a locked drawer the small black receipt book in which she and her assistant would sign and countersign each time the document was entrusted to a different custodian.

  “You haven’t worn your pencil to a stub, I notice,” said Mrs. Morris, having consigned both plan and receipt book to the drawer and returned the key ring to her jacket pocket. “Wasn’t there enough going on to catch your interest?”

  Miss Seeton smiled a little ruefully as she answered that there had been rather too much going on for her to be anything other than interested. “It is,” she explained, “always a pleasure to watch experts at work—but with my sadly limited understanding of—of exactly what was going on, I fear the number of useful sketches I have drawn is likewise limited, although I hope to do better tomorrow, once I have asked a few questions. One cannot, of course, disturb people at their work—such vital work—but after work I might perhaps—”

  “Careless talk costs lives!” The eyes of Mrs. Morris flashed as she slapped an insistent hand on her desk and made Miss Seeton jump. “The girls have been strictly forbidden to chatter about their work, particularly in public—and especially on the bus, and—”

  “I was not talking about the bus!” Miss Seeton’s eyes, too, could flash in anger: so much anger that, despite her upbringing and background, she had been moved to interrupt. “I trust, Mrs. Morris,” said the daughter of Major Hugo Monk Seeton, VC, “that I understand the meaning of security as well as anyone. I would, however, be greatly surprised if Mrs. Beamish’s house, where I am billeted with several other of the female factory staff, is a hotbed of—of spies and fifth columnists.” She disliked the melodrama, but really: how else could she make this woman see her point? “What I had intended,” she went on more calmly, “was to take one or two of the girls aside this evening and ask for advice, no more than that, as to which parts of the factory, and which processes, I might most usefully observe tomorrow.”

  “Oh,” said Mrs. Morris. She could not bring herself to apologise for the misunderstanding: there was a war on, and vigilance was a national watchword. “Yes, I see. Which of the girls—?”

  This time the interruption came from a tap on the door. Mrs. Morris frowned, but then sighed as the door failed to open, and called for whoever it was outside to enter.

  “Excuse me, Mrs. Morris, it was Miss Seeton I was looking for,” said Beryl once her turbaned head, peeping round the door, had been followed by the rest of her. “Hello, Emily,” she added as Miss Seeton smiled at her in some relief. “All done? Ready to go home?”

  “Thank you, yes.” Miss Seeton smiled again, glanced at Mrs. Morris, received another of the older woman’s nods, and took it as a licence to depart. She gathered up her belongings and glanced once more at Mrs. Morris. “Until tomorrow morning,” said Miss Seeton, and thankfully took her leave as Mrs. Morris achieved a final, still-silent nod.

  “She’s a dragon, that one,” said Beryl, giggling as she led the way back down the corridor, past one-armed George in his uniform behind the hatch, and out into the fresh air. “A holy terror,” went on Beryl, hurrying her companion down the path to where the surly Day George stood on guard in his wooden hut. “I bet she’s been giving you a hard time!”

  Miss Seeton thought it tactful to change the subject. “Where is Ruby?” she enquired as George waved them through the gates towards a cluster of young women whose faces, and certainly whose voices, she recognised from the morning. “I thought you girls did everything together. I trust she has not been taken ill?”

  Beryl giggled again. “We tossed for it, and I lost,” she said, and then blushed. “Sorry, Emily, that didn’t come out like—it sounds so—I mean, I didn’t mean to be rude, honest. What I should’ve said is that it’s more Ruby won than me losing—about which of us came to fetch you for the bus, see, and which of us got to fetch Tilly’s bag of sweepings from the cleaner.”

  Miss Seeton recalled Mrs. Beamish’s remarks that morning as her lodgers left the house, and a faded blue linen bag that clanked. “Sweepings from the cleaner?” she prompted as they attached themselves to the outskirts of the cluster, which greeted them with vague smiles and carried on talking. Now that they were not such complete strangers, Miss Seeton had time to notice that several of the girls carried faded blue bags of their own.

  “He’s new,” said Beryl. “Been here a couple of weeks, I suppose. Quite old—he must be forty if he’s a day—but ever so good-looking, for all he’s a conchie ...”

  Miss Seeton wondered why being a conscientious objector should preclude the possession of good looks, but had the wisdom not to voice the thought aloud.

  “... or else,” Beryl chattered on at her side, “there’s something wrong with him—that doesn’t show, diabetes or something—because if he was healthy you’d think he’d want to do his bit at a time like this, wouldn’t you? And he’d look smashing in uniform, I’m sure he would.”

  Miss Seeton murmured a noncommittal reply to which her companion
paid no attention.

  “I suppose,” conceded Beryl, “somebody has to sweep the floor—but it just seems such a waste of a bloke like him. Not that he isn’t doing a valuable job, Emily, don’t think he’s a passenger on this ship! We all do our best not to drop things, but often you can’t help it, and if there’s rubbish left lying around we might have a fire, what with sparks and all from some of the processes, and everything so crowded. And they go for sorting when the rest is thrown away—nuts and bolts and rivets and screws and things. Tilly and the other old dears in the village, we take them the bags and they give ’em back next day, all labelled and everything ready to be used again.”

  “Which,” offered Miss Seeton as Beryl came to a halt, “must result in a considerable saving of metal and—and manufacturing effort—and, indeed, of money, too.” She considered her own neat-fingered talent—basic stitchery, a little sculpture and collage work—and decided that, with her sketching necessarily limited to factory hours, she was not doing nearly enough for her country. As soon as they were home she would ask Mrs. Beamish if she needed an assistant; and she hoped her landlady would be more amenable to that assistance than Mrs. Morris had seemed to be.

  Above the laughter and gossip from the others they heard the patter of approaching feet, accompanied by clanking that Miss Seeton, following Beryl’s explanation, knew at once for the sound of nuts, bolts, rivets, screws, and similar metal items being shaken together as whoever carried them hurried on her way. She looked towards the sound, and saw Beryl’s not-twin sister.

  “Why, here is Ruby,” she said.

  “And there’s the bus,” chorused the others, who had been looking in the other direction. Red-haired Muriel, Lord Haw-Haw’s mischievous echo, waved at Miss Seeton.

  “Keep well back,” she warned, “until the night shift has got off, or you’ll be trampled in the rush!”

  Pink-cheeked and breathless, Ruby joined her sister and friends. “Just made it,” she said as the night-shift workers began pouring off the bus and the day shift waited to climb on. “I wouldn’t have wanted to walk in this heat! But he kept me talking ...” She caught Beryl’s quizzical grin and giggled. “Well, it would have been rude to hurry away,” she finished with another giggle.