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

by Hamilton Crane

  “He’s too old for you, young Ruby,” said Muriel, who had spotted Ruby’s clanking linen burden and brandished her own faded blue in sympathy. “Beryl, you ought to keep a closer eye on this kid. She’s still wet behind the ears—and you know what they say about men who prey on innocent girls ...”

  “They say they give them a ruddy good time!” shrieked someone who then collapsed in howls of laughter in which everyone except Miss Seeton, who managed a smile, joined.

  With minimal pushing and elbowing by its passengers, the bus was soon filled. Seats were claimed in an orderly fashion that surprised Miss Seeton, until she realised that all the workers except herself had had several months to learn the ropes. She had been too bewildered to notice much that morning, but the system had no doubt been the same: she was thankful to Beryl and Ruby for having again squeezed her between them into a bench made for two. She might have committed some shocking faux pas had she been left to her own devices.

  The jokes about Ruby’s youth and the chances of her seduction by an older man soon palled, and the girls turned to other matters: wireless programmes, what was on at the cinema in the nearby town, and the difficulty of obtaining lipstick, powder, and nail varnish to impress men of whatever age were discussed in a shrill fortissimo gabble that must, Miss Seeton reflected as she had before, have made it hard for the driver of the bus to concentrate.

  Ruby nudged Miss Seeton, and jangled her blue linen bag. “I wasn’t going to say so in front of the others, Emily, but he might do for you—being a bit older than the rest of us, no offence meant.”

  Miss Seeton, her cheeks pink—although this could have been caused by the heat inside the crowded bus—assured her that no offence had been taken. One could hardly argue with the fact that she was, indeed, by several years senior to most of the other girls who worked at the factory ...

  “That’s what I thought,” Ruby said. “And if you haven’t got a chap of your own—well, you could look farther and fare a lot worse. Couldn’t she, Beryl?”

  Beryl agreed that she could, and both sisters giggled. Neither of them noticed that Miss Seeton’s cheeks had grown pinker as she murmured something they did not hear.

  “I’ve already put in a word for you,” said Ruby, once the giggles had subsided. “Told him there was a new girl just started—well, I didn’t think you’d mind, ’cos if I’d said you were one of the bosses, not that you act like it, but he’s not to know—well, it might have scared him off, him being just a cleaner for all he speaks so posh. He’s got a lovely voice,” she ended wistfully.

  “For a conchie,” added Beryl. “She’s right, Emily, he has—he sounds far too healthy for someone who’s not joined up, but if you didn’t mind that, he’d suit you a treat.”

  Anxious to divert her young friends from this kindly but embarrassing interest in her love life, Miss Seeton slipped into schoolteacher mode and reminded them that this was (she was proud to say) still a free country, which was why they were fighting the war; and whether or not one felt that pacifism, against an enemy such as Hitler, was justified, one had (she felt) to respect the right of others to hold the opinion that it was. Especially (she went on) as, from what Beryl had told her earlier, there was no indication other than his lack of uniform that the gentleman under discussion was in fact a pacifist. There were many people who, for one reason or another, had not received their call-up papers on the outbreak of war, or who had personal or—or family reasons for not volunteering at once ...

  Miss Seeton blinked and fell silent as a sudden vision of Alice, giving her daughter a farewell hug and trying to smile, drove all other thoughts from her mind.

  Beryl glanced at her and glared at Ruby, who took the hint and at once began to sing again the praises of the man who swept the floor. His name was Raymond Raybould, which sounded (and was) daft—only not the way he said it—and he was tall, with brown hair and a lovely smile to match his voice, and when he smiled his eyes twinkled, and they were as blue as any she’d ever seen ...

  Miss Seeton found herself admitting to a preference for brown eyes, at which Beryl and Ruby squealed with glee.

  “Oh, Emily! We know who drove you from the station last night,” cried Beryl.

  “And aren’t you a fast worker?” exclaimed Ruby with one of her giggles. “But come to think of it, Dr. Huxter might just do for you, at that—being the right age, and ever so sympathetic when you’re poorly.”

  “And a doctor’s a good, steady job,” added Beryl. “Mind you, he’s nowhere near as handsome as Ray ...”

  Both girls sighed. Squashed between these two romantic chatterboxes, Miss Seeton also sighed: but hers was not the enjoyable distress of teenage daydreaming. She was thinking that a doctor’s job was indeed a steady one; she feared for what the future might bring, and how much more busy in his work poor Dr. Huxter could very soon become—

  Miss Seeton stopped herself right there. Alarm and despondency! She, being older than these children, should be setting an example, not ... wallowing. It wasn’t as if she had voiced her pessimistic—her sadly realistic—thoughts aloud, but it was the principle that mattered.

  She knew she was unpractised in the art of badinage, but she had to say something.

  “Perhaps,” she suggested with an attempt at a twinkle, “I should look at Mr. Raybould first, to see if I—if I like him? Then, should I do so, he might be persuaded to ... to change the colour of his eyes by means of one of the cosmetic tricks that are, I believe, not unknown among film stars—if more than a little expensive—but of course, if he is as good-looking as you have given me to understand, he would consider it money well spent ...”

  The sisters were giggling again. Miss Seeton smiled for their merry innocence, and they giggled even more, mistaking her smile for one of mischief shared.

  “I’ll tell Ray tomorrow that you’re sort of keen on the doctor,” promised Ruby, giving the bag of metal sweepings a little shake. “When we fetch another lot for Tilly—make him a bit jealous, see?”

  “That’s a good idea,” chimed in Beryl. “Mustn’t let him think he’s the only pebble on the beach, you know.”

  “No,” agreed Miss Seeton absently, and set the sisters giggling all the more.

  “Or the only fish in the sea,” said Ruby.

  “Or the only horse in the race—gee up, there!” cried Beryl, bouncing on the badly sprung seat. “Gee up!”

  Miss Seeton smiled again. Gavin? Guy?

  Miss Seeton, despite her silent strictures on romantic daydreaming, drifted off into a world of her own ...

  chapter

  ~ 18 ~

  MISS SEETON’S SECOND day at work went noticeably better than her first. There was only a brief altercation with George on the gate; uniformed George waved his one arm and grinned at her through the hatch as she hurried by; and Mrs. Morris was almost cordial as she unlocked her desk and extracted the floor plan without which her unwanted assistant would remain under her feet all day.

  As the hours passed, Miss Seeton, armed with her sketchbook, her pencils, and the plan, grew ever bolder, ranging farther and farther afield in her search for suitable information leaflet sketches. Yesterday she had elected to stay in the relatively familiar territory around which Jemima Wilkes had guided her, but now she took heart and began to slip through doors she had never opened before. Here her questioning of Ruby and Beryl the previous evening proved its worth, for after asking her business and (having checked with Mrs. Morris) accepting her answers, none of the foremen tried to throw her out, but let her settle herself in some unobtrusive spot to watch—and to draw.

  While she acknowledged that there remained large gaps in her understanding of what went on, Miss Seeton felt reasonably confident that she had grasped the basics of Spitfire manufacture, and felt sure that Major Haynes would not find her work entirely useless. She was rather less certain that she would grow accustomed to the noise, the smell, and the bustle wherever she went. Even in the canteen there was no relief. People began gobb
ling their meals as soon as the plates came into their hands: nobody settled for more than five minutes at table, and Miss Seeton shuddered for their digestive systems. King’s Cross and Euston had never seemed so urgent. She asked the helpers when she could sketch the room empty, for contrast.

  “You can’t,” they told her. “It never is. We’re working round the clock here, remember! If they aren’t eating, then we’re clearing the tables or mopping the floor or getting the next lot of grub ready ...”

  By the end of the afternoon, Miss Seeton, even using both sides of the page, had filled well over half the sketchbook. She had also blunted her pencil three times. She wondered what would happen once the blade of her pocket sharpener was likewise blunted. There was a war on: metal was in short supply: salvage was all important, as witness last night’s sorting labours of Tilly at the kitchen table, though Mrs. Beamish had refused her help on the grounds that this was expert work. Miss Seeton, hurrying to return the floor plan to Mrs. Morris, resolved that at the earliest opportunity she must find a shop that sold penknives. Or might she be able to obtain a supply of small blades from Major Haynes? This drawing job was, after all, for the government ...

  Miss Seeton blushed.

  Miss Seeton stopped as a voice called her by name: the voice of a man, hailing her from a distance so that she did not—could not—recognise it.

  No doubt the warmth in her cheeks was caused by her hurry to return the plan of the factory to the custody of Mrs. Morris and the safety of the locked desk drawer.

  “Miss Seeton?” The voice—the man—drew closer.

  Miss Seeton braced herself and turned back in the direction of the voice and the queer, clanking footsteps that accompanied it.

  “Oh,” she said as a man—tall, brown-haired, wearing khaki dungarees and carrying a large broom—approached. As he did so she saw that in his other hand he carried a linen bag that might once have been blue. His eyes, she saw as he came closer, were undeniably blue.

  “Miss Seeton?” The man in dungarees grinned down at her. “I’m Ray Raybould,” he added, little realising that he had no need to introduce himself. Or did he realise? Did he know how very good-looking—unforgettably good-looking—he was?

  Perhaps he did. His grin, as he saw Miss Seeton’s expression, smoothed itself to a smile of (it really could not be denied) undoubted charm. “The girls,” he said, “have told me all about you, so I know you lodge with Ma Beamish. And I thought—as I spotted you by chance—that it would save time if I gave these to you, rather than to one of the others. That is, it’ll save time later—so they won’t risk missing the bus if I don’t happen to be where they expect to find me.”

  He held out the once-blue linen bag, and it clanked as Miss Seeton took it. “Nuts and bolts,” she said, nodding. “Rivets, and screws, and—and washers ...”

  “I can trust you to pass ’em on to Tilly?” He made the question as close to an instruction as good manners would permit. Meekly Miss Seeton told him that he could.

  “Thought so,” he replied with another smile. Having handed over his burden, Raymond Raybould seemed to have no great desire to rush back to work. He leaned on his broom and smiled again. “How are you settling in, Miss Seeton?” he enquired, his blue eyes twinkling.

  Miss Seeton thanked him and said that she thought, all things considered, she had been fortunate to have found such good friends at her lodgings. Without the great kindness of Beryl and Ruby she could not have made as much sense of her appointed task as she believed, with their help, she had managed to do. “But of course,” she concluded, “they are both very nice girls.”

  “They are indeed,” he said promptly, and chuckled. “You think they’ve got some prior claim, do you?” he went on once he had stopped smiling. “Nothing of the sort, I assure you. Footloose and fancy-free, that’s yours truly!”

  He pushed himself upright from the broom and swept her a deep, almost mocking, bow.

  Miss Seeton frowned. Whether or not he was the conscientious objector Beryl and Ruby suspected him to be, there was something ... uncomfortable about Mr. Raybould. Something ... not genuine: some impression of falsehood, of pretence, of acting a part. As he bowed with the broom in his hand, a sudden vision of a knight in armour with his spear or bannered lance at his side, had flashed into her mind. She blinked—it was gone—but the memory, the impression, was not gone. Raymond Raybould was not what he seemed, and her fingers itched to set that vision down on paper before it should fade entirely. Major Haynes, after all, had asked her to inform him of anything out of the ordinary ...

  “You look puzzled, Miss Seeton, and a little flushed.” Raymond’s tone was sympathetic. “You’re hot and tired, of course. It must be quite a new experience for you, working in industry.”

  Miss Seeton agreed that her particular experience of work had been very different.

  “An artist, they tell me,” he prompted.

  “A teacher of art,” Miss Seeton politely corrected him. At first, thinking of Major Haynes and his insistence on security, she had hoped nobody would know, but that hope (she now realised) had been naive. Even a glimpse of her, sketching busily nearby, must have been enough for everyone to work out that she was either a professional artist, or an amateur so talented the government was happy to employ her. Her innate honesty could not allow any misapprehension to persist. Her talent, she knew, was not so great: she was competent, no more; and while there were indeed professional artists who (in her opinion) were very little more than competent, they yet contrived to earn a living from their art, which she had never done—and could not expect to do so for the duration. One could hardly regard the rate of government pay as overgenerous. The major had explained that she would be classed as a Civil Service Shorthand-Typist, adding with one of his smiles that he feared wrangling over her geographic status looked likely to continue for some time. She was based in the Tower, in London, and London rates of pay were higher: but she might be asked to work at any time anywhere in the country, and provincial rates were lower. Seventy-five shillings a week in London, seventy-two shillings out of town—either way, Miss Seeton now reflected, she must not expect to make her fortune.

  But of course there was a war on ...

  “I thought,” said Raymond Raybould, “that teaching was a reserved occupation—nurturing the impressionable minds of younger generations, and so forth. You strike me as the conscientious type.” He glanced at the factory floor plan in Miss Seeton’s hand. It was folded, and she held it close to her side. “So what on earth made you come to work in a place like this?”

  Miss Seeton thought of Major Haynes, and of that coat-of-arms-headed paper she had signed in the Tower. She drew herself up and gazed into the piercing blue eyes of the man in dungarees. “One might as well,” she told him, “ask the reason for your presence here, Mr. Raybould, when other men of your—of our—generation are already in uniform.”

  Raymond let out a yelp of laughter. “Touché!” he cried, and threw the broom into the air, catching it without looking as it fell back. “Suppose I were to tell you that I was a pacifist?”

  Slowly Miss Seeton shook her head. “Those with strong views on such matters prefer medical to industrial work, or so I have been told.”

  “Good grief, I’m no doctor!”

  “Neither am I,” returned Miss Seeton promptly. “But a basic training in first aid does no harm to anyone—on the contrary, may well do a great deal of good, as I know from my teaching experience. If, however, you are uneasy with the idea of blood, which (again from my own experience) I will concede may be the case with the most unexpected persons, your physical strength could be applied to the national cause in a far more suitable way than sweeping a factory floor. Whether or not,” she added with a shake of the blue linen bag, “the sweepings are useful.”

  “I can’t drive,” said Raymond, “if it’s ambulance work you’re thinking of.”

  “The fire service,” countered Miss Seeton, “would be only too glad to have y
ou volunteer, I imagine.”

  “Suppose,” said Raymond, “that I told you I wanted to do something now? The blitzkrieg could start at any minute, we all know that—and firefighters will be needed as well as ambulance drivers—but it hasn’t happened yet. And—well, this is at least something, Miss Seeton.”

  Miss Seeton remembered Beryl and Ruby, who didn’t want to trim hats when there was a war on, and who thought parachutes were defeatist. A smile began to curve her lips.

  “It is indeed,” she replied, and shook the bag again.

  Raymond returned the smile with interest. “It might,” he ventured to tease, “be something just a little more ... productive than your sketches, Miss Seeton—toward the war effort, I mean.”

  Before she could reply, he hurried on: “What does Mr. Coleman think about having you here? He’s a holy terror for efficiency, I can vouch for that—and, with all due respect to your good self ...”

  “Mr. Coleman?” For a moment Miss Seeton was puzzled. “Oh, yes, the manager. I have no idea what he thinks, Mr. Raybould, about me or—or anything else.” She wondered if in this she spoke the truth: she recalled Mrs. Morris having said something about the Spanish Civil War—but what? She decided the subject should be abandoned. “Our paths,” she informed Raymond steadily, “have not yet crossed, and indeed I see no reason why they should.” Then she recalled how Mrs. Morris had emphasised the conscientious nature of the works manager, and felt her cheeks grow warm. “It would,” she concluded, “be an impertinence on my part, Mr. Raybould, when there must be far more important matters to occupy him.”

  Raymond laughed again. “Meaning I should be getting on with my work and let you get on with yours? You’re right, Miss Seeton, I should. So I will. You won’t leave the bag behind when you run for the bus, will you? There’s quite a lot to be sorted this evening. On a day as hot as this, no disrespect, but everyone’s sweating. And slippery hands drop things very easily, don’t they?”