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

by Hamilton Crane

  With another smile, and a skillful toss of his broom high in the air and back into an unseeing hand, he bowed to Miss Seeton, turned on his heel, and without looking round headed off down the corridor, whistling as he went.

  The knight who this time flashed upon Miss Seeton’s inward eye had the visor of his helmet firmly closed. Though she had been talking to him for almost five minutes, she felt she knew even less about Raymond Raybould than she had before they met.

  She wondered whether Major Haynes should know ...

  chapter

  ~ 19 ~

  MISS SEETON’S THOUGHTFUL silence on the homeward journey went unnoticed by her friends. Beryl and Ruby having mutually decided that she had found her factory feet and could cope on her own, they waved and smiled to her as she walked through the gates, but as they had left her to make her own way from the administration block, in the same spirit they left her to find somewhere to sit on the bus and themselves joined in the laughter and chatter and gossip that passed the older woman by.

  Miss Seeton continued to be thoughtful after delivering the blue bag of sweepings into Tilly’s expert hands and accepting in exchange a cup of tea. She listened and smiled, but she kept quiet as Beryl and Ruby waxed eloquent about the heat, their aching backs, their weary eyes, and their plan to spend the evening after supper trying out the new hairstyle one of the other girls had shown them in one of the few picture magazines that had not yet ceased publication because of the paper shortage, though of course it was much smaller than it used to be, and they supposed it would get smaller still before it got back to its original size, after the war.

  Miss Seeton pondered her sketchbook and its government-funded fellows in her bedroom, and the promises of Major Haynes that more would be available as she might request them. She remembered how the major had looked as she signed the Official Secrets Act ... but she was far from London, and the Tower, and the assurance of the major’s presence. Raymond Raybould had unsettled her. His remarks, followed as they had been by the grim expression of Mrs. Morris as the floor plan was locked away, made her feel ...

  The trouble was that she didn’t know how she felt, only that she felt ... uneasy. Was she wasting her time, as Mrs. Morris had implied? Mrs. Morris had not wanted an assistant—had made this fact very clear—and was just as clearly relieved that the assistant was able to occupy her time well away from the Welfare Office, leaving her superior to her own devices.

  Her own, more worthwhile, devices?

  At the factory next morning, Miss Seeton did not wait for Mrs. Morris to raise her head from the paperwork on her desk. On the previous day she had waited before interrupting the welfare officer’s train of thought to ask for the floor plan to be unlocked, but on this occasion she went at once to stand beside the visitors’ chair and coughed.

  Mrs. Morris shuffled together a few sheets of paper and sighed loudly. She did not look up. Miss Seeton cleared her throat. Mrs. Morris sighed again.

  “Mrs. Morris,” said Miss Seeton. She did not wait for her superior to respond. “I know that you regard my appointment as both a—an impertinence, and unnecessary. But does Mr. Coleman feel as you do?”

  Susan Morris jerked upright on her chair. Her sallow cheeks turned pink, and her eyes glittered.

  “He is,” Miss Seeton pressed quickly on, “the overall authority here, is he not? Would you feel more able to—to tolerate my presence if his—his official sanction were granted? And,” she added as Mrs. Morris opened her mouth, “should he refuse to grant it, then it would be for him to—to advise the ministry that my services were not required. Would it not?”

  For a moment the two women stared at each other: Miss Seeton standing, her sketching gear in her hand; Mrs. Morris flushed and still, seated openmouthed behind the desk, her knuckles white as they gripped the pencil with which she had been writing.

  At last Mrs. Morris collected her startled wits. “Very well,” was all she said as she pushed back her chair and rose to her feet. “Very well, Seeton.”

  Miss Seeton let out the breath she hadn’t realised she had been holding. While she had never thought of herself as either scheming or manipulative—a gentlewoman does not take advantage of the weakness of others—surely the adage that all was fair in love and war must apply at this time even more than usual? Mrs. Morris, it was clear, did not suspect that her warm regard for the works manager was no secret from her assistant—an assistant who by training was an acute observer. Was not another adage that the looker-on saw most of the game?

  The game of love. Miss Seeton hid a quiet smile as a brief vision of herself as Cupid flickered into her mind ... Cupid armed with a bow and arrow that suddenly changed from the rose-pink toys of a Valentine card into sharp, deadly steel as vicious as any bayonet.

  Miss Seeton sighed. Love—and war ...

  “We’ve no time to waste moaning,” Mrs. Morris snapped as she marched past Miss Seeton on her way to the door. “Mr. Coleman could be anywhere on the premises. He might even,” she added as Miss Seeton, with a blush, hurried after her into the corridor, “be asleep—in his office.” And now it was the turn of Mrs. Morris to blush. “In which case,” she warned, “I have no intention of disturbing him.”

  “Naturally I would not expect it.” Miss Seeton was a little nettled that Mrs. Morris should think her either so tactless or so unobservant. With the factory working round the clock, many men had, in the national interest, refused to go home for days on end. Mothers, wives, and sisters brought in an occasional change of clothes and supplied blankets, wrapped in which their menfolk would sleep on the floor, if necessary, taking advantage of whatever private corner they could find. Her sketches had depicted several of the weary bundles that lay deaf to the industrial hubbub all around them ...

  “And the wives don’t really mind,” Beryl and Ruby had told her that first evening as she put her eager questions. “They know there’s no risk of, well, goings-on because Mr. Coleman is ever so strict.”

  “Very prim and proper,” added Beryl, and Ruby giggled her agreement. “He refuses point-blank to let any of us girls sleep over—says it might encourage the men to take liberties—but the rate they’re all working, if there’s a man in the place with the energy to take any sort of liberty, I’d like to meet him!”

  “So would I,” said Ruby with another giggle, and Miss Seeton had smiled for their sense of fun. Cheerful minds made willing hands, and willing hands worked harder ...

  “Wait there while I knock.”

  Miss Seeton jumped as the voice of Mrs. Morris uttered its brisk command. Perhaps (she acknowledged) she should have kept her thoughts from wandering—although what else she could more profitably have done while hurrying after her superior she did not know—but had there really been any need for the older woman to address her as if she were a recalcitrant pupil being escorted to the headmistress?

  Then she smiled as she stood meekly where instructed. Of course: Mrs. Morris, already acquainted with Mr. Coleman, would be anxious to spare either the manager or the newcomer any embarrassment, even if she felt it herself. While in these urgent days the snatching of forty winks at one’s desk must be no disgrace, the “prim and proper” man who grudgingly allowed his female staff to work, but firmly refused to let them sleep, in his factory overnight would greatly dislike being surprised in his whiskers, with his collar and tie undone. He did not know that such sights were familiar to Emily Seeton from her time at college, when friends of a bohemian turn of mind might elect on the spur of the moment to stay several days in one another’s attics, causing much annoyance to those of their landladies who provided full bed and board.

  Miss Seeton sighed. In these days of rationing, nobody now could approve such careless, carefree habits ...

  “Come on, Seeton!” Once more a brisk command from Mrs. Morris woke the younger woman from her daydream. She saw her superior beckoning from an open door, and went across to be introduced to the man who would decide her fate.

  Mr. Coleman w
as tall, thin, pale, and more than slightly stooped. Miss Seeton had to blink several times before she could convince herself that he did not wear spectacles: the frown lines on his forehead were deep, as if he spent his every waking hour squinting myopically into the distance.

  She reminded herself that here was a widower who had not only lost his son, but who held a position of great responsibility—a responsibility so great that it could be called the ultimate burden. It would not be fanciful to say that the fate of the nation, perhaps the fate of the whole free world, might depend on Mr. Coleman and his fellow managers at other aircraft factories. No wonder, then, that he should wear a permanent frown ...

  “Miss Seeton,” said Mr. Coleman, smothering a yawn. Mrs. Morris had been right about his sleeping habits: Miss Seeton noted a crumpled collar, a spike of thinning hair no amount of smoothing could return to wakeful neatness, and a growth of fine, grey stubble on his hollow cheeks and jaw.

  “I must apologise again,” broke in Mrs. Morris above Miss Seeton’s attempt to return the manager’s greeting, “for the interruption, Mr. Coleman, when everyone knows how busy you are.” The look she shot at Miss Seeton, and the indignation of her pink cheeks, were very eloquent. “That is,” she went on, “everyone ought to know—ought to appreciate all the hard work and effort—”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Coleman, interrupting in his turn.

  “Yes,” echoed the hot-cheeked Mrs. Morris with another indignant look at Miss Seeton. “I’m sorry, but when Seeton here insisted—insisted—that she wanted to have you ... approve her post officially, I—”

  “Approve someone sent by the ministry?” Mr. Coleman’s hand strayed to his tie, still loose from his interrupted slumbers. “The ministry assigned her to this factory, Mrs. Morris, and that is good enough for me.” Tidying the knot on his tie, he began a slow, dismissive progress towards the door, encouraging his visitors to move before him. “It is not,” he said, “my place to question ministry decisions, Mrs. Morris.”

  “I—well, yes, perhaps, but—”

  On the threshold Mr. Coleman held up a white-palmed hand, and Mrs. Morris fell silent. “If,” he said, “Miss Seeton’s appointment is found to be an error, the ministry will sort it out in its own good time. My time—our time—is far too valuable to waste in what we all know would be futile argument. I would have expected you, at least, to understand this.”

  “Yes,” replied Mrs. Morris after an unhappy little pause during which Miss Seeton wished she hadn’t started this, and was first to edge her way out of the office. If her main object had been to reassure her superior that there was nothing to be done about the ministry-appointed assistant, this object might have been achieved—but the hidden hope of playing Cupid seemed to have gone badly wrong.

  Miss Seeton sighed.

  “I told you not to moan!” Mrs. Morris vented the tumult of her feelings on a victim she supposed would not answer back. “For goodness’ sake, Seeton, don’t—”

  This time it was not Mr. Coleman who interrupted her; nor was it Miss Seeton.

  It was the sound of running footsteps.

  Miss Seeton did not recognise the girl at once, with her hair in a turban and her trim little form swathed in oil-stained overalls; but then she knew red-haired Muriel, the mimic, who came pelting into sight along the corridor and uttered a cry of relief when she saw the trio of adults standing by the manager’s office.

  “Oh, thank goodness—Mr. Coleman! Mrs. Morris! In the Machine Shop—we’ve got to call the doctor—get the first aid—there’s been an accident!”

  Miss Seeton saw the manager’s look of surprise and heard the shocked exclamation of Mrs. Morris.

  “The drive belt on number-seven lathe,” panted Muriel as Mr. Coleman shook himself out of his trance and, without a word, hurried back inside his office. The redhead’s voice was trembling now. “Betty was just—oh, it’s awful—her p-poor face, her hands—the b-blood—and I think it’s b-broken her arm—she was working flat out and it—the belt—it snapped—it just snapped ...”

  But here Muriel burst into tears. Mrs. Morris looked in the direction taken by Mr. Coleman, and glared at Miss Seeton. “You stay here and deal with this,” she instructed with a nod for the sobbing Muriel. “We can’t have such behaviour upsetting everyone else, or production will suffer. Tell Mr. Coleman I’ve gone to the Machine Shop with the first-aid kit—from my office.”

  Miss Seeton noticed that even at such a time the older woman couldn’t help the proprietorial emphasis of the last word but one. And she sighed for the wartime shortages that had made possession of a basic first-aid kit so rare a circumstance. It puzzled her that the Machine Shop’s own kit had not been called into use, but perhaps the other workers were as distressed and confused as this child here ...

  She shook Muriel by the shoulders, ignoring her tears. “Come now,” exhorted the former teacher, “you must pull yourself together. If you want me to come to help your friend—what was her name? Beryl?”

  “B-betty,” Muriel corrected her after a moment or two with a sniff and a shudder.

  “Betty,” echoed Miss Seeton, moving aside to allow Mr. Coleman to stride past with a purposeful frown on his face in (she assumed) the direction of the Machine Shop. “And your name is ...?”

  “Muriel,” said Muriel, sniffing and shuddering again.

  “Then, Muriel, if you want me to come to help poor Betty, you must stop crying and show me the way,” Miss Seeton told her firmly. “Besides,” she added as Muriel blanched at this casual mention of her injured friend, “Mrs. Morris was right about not allowing production levels to fall. Should you really have left your own machine to run for help? I’m sure you meant it for the best, but the sooner we take you back, the better.”

  “The—the doctor?” faltered Muriel.

  “Mr. Coleman has telephoned,” said Miss Seeton, who had no reason to suppose he had not. “Dr. Huxter won’t take any longer than necessary, I’m sure, but we mustn’t waste time. Which way is the Machine Shop? We will go there at once.” Allowances might, in peacetime, be made for shock; in time of war there could be no allowance made. The factory was meant to be working round the clock, and Muriel’s absence from her own lathe—understandable though some might consider it—could be regarded by others as unforgivable.

  And perhaps, by others still, as treachery.

  chapter

  ~ 20 ~

  MISS SEETON SHOOK young Muriel once more by the shoulders, and the girl braced herself to meet the other’s grave eyes. “The Machine Shop?” prompted Miss Seeton, and Muriel nodded meekly, wiping her face with a corner of the turban that had somehow come unwound.

  Then Miss Seeton remembered that to reach the Machine Shop involved going out of doors. She hesitated. Muriel, in her hurry, had been prepared to take the risk—but ought not an assistant to set as good an example as a regular welfare officer? Mrs. Morris would, by now. be well on her way to the Machine Shop with not only the first-aid kit, but no doubt also the steel helmet she had collected from the office. Perhaps there would be time—

  She felt Muriel’s urgent tug at her arm, and realised that on this particular occasion there was no time. As they hurried along the corridor she tried to ease her conscience by silently promising that Emily Dorothea Seeton would, in future, carry her tin hat and gas mask with her everywhere, no matter how inconvenient they might be for someone already burdened with sketchbook, pencils, and a handbag ...

  They arrived in the Machine Shop to find the foreman, his hands on his hips, bellowing at a group of anxious girls kneeling, standing, and otherwise hovering around a crumpled shape lying on the floor—a shape to which Mrs. Morris, on her knees, appeared to minister while Mr. Coleman stood in the background, looking faintly sick, and the heavy thumping roar of abandoned lathes and drills rumbled through the air.

  “Get back to work, all of you!” bawled the foreman above the general hubbub. “There’s nothing you lot can do for her somebody else can’t do better—and i
t won’t help the poor kid to have you crowding her—and if I don’t see you back on your machines inside half a minute, I’ll have all your pay packets docked if it’s the last bloody thing I ever do! Don’t you know there’s a war on?”

  A few of the girls glanced at Mr. Coleman, who could do nothing but stand and look, his face pale and his expression troubled. Miss Seeton soon realised that Betty must have passed out from pain and shock: the injured girl neither moved nor uttered a sound as Mrs. Morris mopped and soothed her, taking no notice of the pool of sticky blood in which she knelt. The pool was spreading. Miss Seeton could not suppress a shiver at the thought of what torments the child would suffer if—when—she recovered consciousness.

  By Miss Seeton’s side Muriel let out one shrill gasp at the sight of her stricken friend, but as Miss Seeton pulled herself together and frowned, so did Muriel try to follow her example, taking a deep breath and then, with a nod to the foreman, being one of the first to lead a return to the lathes and drills. Within a minute the only people still close to Betty were Mrs. Morris, Mr. Coleman, and Miss Seeton, the latter having been recognised by the foreman as someone who would not panic in a crisis—someone to whom it would be safe to entrust those items he had managed to take from the shop’s medical box before the shrieks of Betty’s neighbours brought every girl within earshot rushing to her aid and, in the rush, crowding him out.

  Mrs. Morris had felt no compunction about elbowing those who stood in her path firmly out of it. Mr. Coleman, less sure of himself, had welcomed Miss Seeton as moral support, and only at her approach with additional bandages and cotton wool had he ventured any closer to the casualty.