Miss Seeton Quilts the Village

by Hamilton Crane

  “Edward Seymour,” said Euphemia, “brother of Queen Jane, was the first Duke of Somerset. He was also the Lord Protector who egged on that pious little squirt Edward after Henry died, had his brother executed for treason, and got his own head chopped off not so long after.”

  Miss Seeton stayed her note taking. “Those were different times, of course, but would you have said a suitable candidate for commemoration in Plummergen?”

  “I wouldn’t have thought so, but that’s where Genie comes into her own. My sister really enjoys digging through records and unearthing obscure facts. This place might have been a hunting lodge for the Duke—somewhere to get away from it all.”

  “Which in Tudor times would have been a very wise idea.” Miss Seeton doodled the semblance of a heavy crown where the top of the head merged into the unbroken plaster. “Or somewhere to keep a mistress. Another Fair Rosamond, perhaps—though no maze. Remarkable. And...uncomfortable.”

  Dr. Braxted peered over her shoulder. “Splendid,” she said. “Thank you, Miss Seeton. Now, if the paint flakes off when there’s nobody here and my photos go wrong, we’ll have some sort of record. Belt and braces. Oh...I don’t suppose Mr. Jessyp would oblige?”

  “The children are back at school, Dr. Braxted.”

  Euphemia chuckled. “It was worth a try. And by the time you’ve been able to develop your notes into a reasonable likeness, I’ll have been up to the Hall and broken the bad news and gone back to the museum to start phoning. This could make history in every learned journal ever published!”

  Miss Seeton left Dr. Braxted to her jubilation, suspecting that it might be a while before the Colvedens learned of her discovery. Such enthusiasm and energy. Miss Seeton smiled, making straight for home while that uncomfortable image was still clear in her mind and her notes would make the best possible sense. The word “exorcism” was over-dramatic and inappropriate, if not blasphemous, but she felt—so foolish of her—that if she could draw Henry’s face with sufficient clarity to please Euphemia, she could then dismiss those mean little eyes, that grey-gold beard, those jowls, completely from her thoughts. No wonder the workmen had been startled. No wonder Nigel had said the painting could be—must be—offered to the museum! Lady Colveden, who had told her friend all about it, hadn’t then seen the whole face. She hadn’t, then, understood.

  “...yelling at her to hurry up inside!” Mrs. Newport had been approaching the entrance to Nowhere Lane as Miss Seeton turned into it. Mrs. Newport wondered why, when there was so little down there of interest. Mrs. Newport duly pursued Miss Seeton along the lane, and heard the cries of Dr. Braxted.

  “All excited,” said Mrs. Newport now, “and straightway in trots Miss Seeton.”

  “Maybe that history woman found something,” suggested Mrs. Skinner.

  “Like what?” challenged Mrs. Henderson. “The furniture and stuff was all sold. “

  Mrs. Skinner rose to the challenge. “A place like that could hold a load of secrets...beyond what we already know about.”

  The younger element among the post office gossips looked puzzled. “I don’t know nothing,” said Mrs. Newport.

  “Nor me,” said Mrs. Scillicough. “Mum’s never said a word to us about that house.” It occurred to neither sister that a woman spending much of her time looking after a frenzy of grandchildren was unlikely to waste any of that time on village history. While nothing definite had ever been proved, and because the village believed in ghosts, the original story told by Jacob Chickney, Plummergen’s disgraced and unpopular mole-catcher, had at the time of telling been accepted rather than questioned.

  Three decades on, questions were surfacing from a younger, less credulous generation. “So what’s there to know?” said Mrs. Newport. “Old Griselda was off her head for years, we all know that.”

  “You’re too young to remember the war,” Mrs. Henderson began. Both sisters said together that they knew this very well. “D-Day, it was. Sixth of June 1944, and a full moon—and Jacob Chickney on the prowl down by the Kettle Wedge.”

  “Said the spinney was haunted,” enlarged Mrs. Skinner, for once in agreement with her rival. “Said he saw lights through the trees, and shapes moving about—”

  “And pushed off sharpish.” Mrs. Henderson regained the narrative. “He said he went back later and looked, but with the ground so wet he couldn’t find nothing, so much rain as there’d been.”

  “He said he didn’t find nothing,” countered Mrs. Skinner. “But you can be sure he’d have looked good and hard, the wicked old man.”

  “But he didn’t go back straight away,” said Mrs. Henderson, “on account of their father being seizured that self-same day. As near to death as makes no difference, and Jacob Chickney fearing he might have been witness to a foreboding of what was to come. Stirring things up, he said. So he let them lie for a while.”

  Mrs. Spice, that practiced fence-sitter, at last joined in. “Mebbe he found something after all,” she offered. “Could well of been their uniforms, as was suggested by some at the time.”

  “Whose uniforms?” came a further chorus from Mrs. Newport and Mrs. Scillicough.

  The older members of the party looked at one another. Mrs. Henderson won.

  “Them Saxons,” she said. “There was allus talk about how the family could of been in the pay of Hitler for years, just biding their time till he came, and uniforms all ready to show their support when he arrived—that’s whose.”

  “So maybe that’s what Dr. Braxted found and wanted to tell Miss Seeton,” concluded Mrs. Skinner.

  “And yet,” said Mrs. Henderson slowly, “what call would Dr. Braxted have to dig for uniforms in the churchyard when it’s them eyes in the house she’s meant to be exploring? If Jacob Chickney couldn’t find them—”

  “He might of done,” said Mrs. Skinner.

  “So he might,” agreed Mrs. Spice. “And blackmail, after, if he dug up the uniforms and told the Saxons they’d do well to let him have a share of Hitler’s gold he paid them over the years...” The tabloid press would have been gratified at its influence in Plummergen. “They couldn’t of spent it all, intended as it was for bribery and corruption after he came, which o’ course he never did.”

  “Could explain why the Saxons never had much money,” said Mrs. Henderson.

  “Never seemed to,” said Mrs. Skinner. “But Jacob Chickney never had none, either.”

  There was a contemplative pause.

  “So—what were they burying, then?” demanded Mrs. Scillicough at last, reluctant to accept ghostly forebodings. “Uniforms? Box full of Nazi gold?”

  Mrs. Henderson looked at Mrs. Newport. “She was in the house, you said? And called Miss Seeton inside?”

  “And told her to hurry up,” nodded Mrs. Newport.

  “Then what was buried in the Wedge could still be there, and whatever she’s just found, it’s in the house.” Even Mrs. Skinner could not fault this logic. “And whatever it is, she wanted Miss Seeton to know of it afore anyone else.”

  “Whatever it is,” Mrs. Scillicough echoed wistfully. “That box of gold, maybe...”

  “Well, when it’s a matter of Miss Seeton,” Mrs. Newport reminded everyone, “you never can tell, can you?”

  Miss Seeton, walking home, found her thoughts turning from Henry VIII to the music-hall song of Harry Champion. Miss Seeton’s voice was neither tuneful nor strong, but she enjoyed herself. “I’m her eighth old man named Henery—I’m Henery the Eighth I am!”

  The Reverend Arthur Treeves swept off his hat, and to her surprise—he was normally so shy—began to reprise the chorus in a pleasing baritone. “I’m Henery the Eighth I am, Henery the Eighth I am, I am—I got married to the widow next door, She’s been married seven times before—Every one was a Henery, She wouldn’t have a Willie or a Sam...”

  Miss Seeton joined him in the final couplet, forgetting self-consciousness. The dear vicar seemed to be enjoying himself so much. “I’m her eighth old man named Henery—I’m Henery
the Eighth I am!”

  “Bravo, Miss Seeton,” applauded the Reverend Arthur. “The old songs are undoubtedly the best.” He recalled that when he was a curate...but that was many years ago. “Perhaps a duet at the Christmas concert? Or maybe,” he temporised; she was, after all, unmarried and it might be misunderstood, “my sister Molly could make it a trio.”

  “But then who would play the piano?” Miss Seeton smiled kindly at him. He had been carried away by the song of his youth, and now wished to be relieved of his embarrassment. “Miss Treeves, I know, has many talents, but singing is so much more comfortable standing up, whereas playing the piano is not. Perhaps we might think of something else.”

  With a smile and a nod she walked on, leaving him trying to remember why he was on the corner of Nowhere Lane going...he could not remember where. Molly had told him, as he left the vicarage, that he must be sure to visit someone he had forgotten to visit the previous day. He had better go back to ask, even though she had reminded him only a few minutes ago. She was sure to know—unless, of course, she had already become engrossed in her piano practice...

  Back at home, Miss Seeton made a cup of tea and settled with her notes and coloured pencils to the sketch of Henry VIII. Relaxed now, she concentrated. Into her mind drifted once more the cheerful Harry Champion song, and once more with pleasure she warbled the chorus. She hardly noticed that her fingers, unbidden, had picked up a pencil and begun to draw...

  “Oh.” In place of the bloated, pig-faced Henry she expected, she saw three elderly women—long of hair, bright of eye—in floor-length dresses advancing down a flight of stairs, their robes held well clear of their booted feet. Their eyes were the most vivid part of the drawing; their expressions, like their hair and their apparel, identical. Glaring. Intense. Were they angry? Challenging? Fearful? Three of Henry’s unfortunate wives? All six had undoubted cause to fear, for much of the time. But surely he had always—apart from the fortunate Katherine Parr, who outlived him—chosen youthful wives of child-bearing age? Which these three females clearly were not.

  The Fates, perhaps? Spinning, weaving, cutting the fabric of life...Miss Seeton smiled ruefully towards the cabinet of the sewing machine. Perhaps she had been over-optimistic in her needlecraft intentions, after all.

  “Oh, bother,” said Miss Seeton. Despite her detailed note taking, Henry’s colourful image had somehow been completely swamped by those three weird sisters. “Sisters,” said Miss Seeton. The vicar’s mention of a trio must have confused her. Quickly she checked the clock. Dr. Braxted had said she would go to Rytham Hall to break the news, then to Brettenden Museum to start her telephoning. Miss Seeton knew Euphemia. She would almost certainly still be chipping plaster from the walls of Summerset Cottage. The door would not yet be locked.

  Miss Seeton slipped her tin of coloured pencils—they rattled; yes, she would teach herself to quilt, and make a proper carrying-case—into her bag. She chose a fresh sketchbook, shutting the other on the troublesome Fates, putting it and them in the bureau.

  In the hall she arranged her hat—perhaps that grosgrain trim was a touch too lively; she might unpick one crest—popped on her jacket, and unclipped an umbrella from the rack. As she trotted down the front path, she found herself humming yet again the song that had first helped to drive from her thoughts that uncomfortable image of Henry VIII.

  She frowned, and shook her head. This would never do. Dr. Braxted had asked her to draw the painting—should it be called a fresco?—as an aid to her research. Amusing as the song was, she must concentrate on forgetting it. She did not, in her concentration, notice the vicar emerge for the second time from the vicarage. He raised his hat, saw that she did not see him, and was at once overcome with guilt for his earlier presumption, and the offence he must so unwittingly have caused.

  So troubled was the Reverend Arthur by Miss Seeton’s obvious snub that he could not now remember where he was supposed to be going. Molly would know, of course, but his sister had been a little...restive when he apologised for disturbing her piano practice a few moments earlier.

  Miss Seeton smiled as she drew close to Summerset Cottage. The sounds of someone hard at work with some sort of tool—she thought of sculpture, and her student days—came clearly through the open window, together with puffs of dull white dust. She walked warily up the path and coughed, not altogether because of the dust.

  A cough answered her from inside. Yes, undoubtedly Dr. Braxted. Miss Seeton called her name.

  “Is that you, Miss Seeton? Come on through!” Euphemia, on a stepladder, turned with a wide, square-bladed knife in her hand. “The builders didn’t take all their tools, and I knew they wouldn’t mind if I borrowed a few bits and bobs for today. Tomorrow we’ll have the proper equipment, but for the moment...”

  She tapped the plaster with energy and a knife-blade corner. Miss Seeton, smiling, noted that there was a good deal less of the plaster on the wall than there had been, and many more chunks of it on the floor.

  “You have managed to uncover a considerable—” she began, and then: “Oh!”

  From the point where Euphemia had tapped, cracks began to radiate like some swift-moving spider’s web in every direction, widening all the time and with increasing speed. “Oh, Dr. Braxted, do take care!”

  Miss Seeton stepped back, opening her umbrella as a sudden hail of fragments fell from the wall. They shattered and crumbled as they fell, they bounced off the brolly and the floor, they crumbled further as they spread like a thick, dry fog throughout the room.

  Miss Seeton began coughing again. Up her ladder Euphemia coughed so much it looked as if she might fall. “Do take care,” called Miss Seeton, peering round the umbrella. She coughed. “It seems to have stopped...”

  Dr. Braxted climbed down the steps. “Outside, to let it clear,” she croaked, and both ladies picked their way through the litter out on to the path.

  They gave it ten minutes in theory, but Miss Seeton was not surprised when Dr. Braxted called time after about seven. “With luck that little mishap has done the rest of the work for me. Shouldn’t have been so careless, of course. Hardly the behaviour I’d like to see in any of my students, but if we keep it our little secret...Gosh!”

  They were back in the parlour, staring at the imposing fresco revealed by that one sharp tap from Euphemia’s knife. “Oh, my goodness!”

  “Yes, indeed,” was all Miss Seeton could say.

  “Oh, gosh,” breathed Euphemia. “I’ve never seen anything like it!”

  It was Henry VIII, enthroned in scarlet robes of a richly patterned fabric edged with a curving of dark fur, fastened at the throat by an elaborate brooch of gold and jewels. He sat with his knees apart, square and dominating with his body as well as his expression. In one plump hand on an enormous knee he held a sceptre; with the other he clutched a large orb surmounted by a long-stemmed cross. A crown sat heavily above his huge, pale face, overshadowing his features so that even his eyes seemed less oppressive. The colours were a little faded, but the drapes and folds of the cloth—embroidered velvet, perhaps a luxurious brocade—were very clear, if muted by the passage of time.

  “It—it’s magnificent,” said Euphemia. “It’s amazing!”

  Miss Seeton could only fall back on her original comment. “Remarkable,” she said.

  “The hours of work!” Euphemia flung out her arms. “The detail! See the writing in those side panels? Looks to me like biblical texts of some sort.”

  She sprang forward, or tried to, but her toe clipped a chunk of plaster and she clutched at Miss Seeton’s arm. Miss Seeton, who after careful shaking outside had closed and furled her umbrella, now dropped it. Dr. Braxted’s forward motion was interrupted. Arms akimbo, legs likewise, Euphemia tripped over Miss Seeton’s umbrella, staggered, spun round, and fell with a crash to the floor.

  Miss Seeton could only gasp, which made her cough again as plaster dust came swirling from around the stunned shape on the floor. No, not stunned—Dr. Braxted’s eye
s were open, and moving. She, like Miss Seeton, coughed. She had not, then, been knocked unconscious, but was she otherwise all right?

  “Oh, dear,” ventured Miss Seeton. “Don’t move, Dr. Braxted, until you have ascertained there is no injury.”

  But there came no answer from Euphemia, now wide-eyed and rigid on the floor.

  Miss Seeton had more sense than to ask if Dr. Braxted was all right when it was clear she was not. She asked what she should do to help.

  Euphemia continued to stare. Miss Seeton began to worry. Had she hit her head, had a seizure of some sort?

  Euphemia’s lips opened.

  “The devil!” cried the learned and distinguished lady historian. “Oh—the devil!”

  Chapter Eight

  MISS SEETON WAS not surprised—she was astounded. She stood speechless, gazing at Euphemia Braxted where she lay amidst ruin and debris, flat on her back on the floor. A gentlewoman was no less subject to moments of stress than anyone else; but on the rare occasions when Miss Seeton felt the need to vent her emotions she found that a modest dash, drat, bother, or blow suited her very well. But of course she had never fallen with such force and banged her head...

  “Look!” cried Euphemia, pointing. “Just look at him—upside down!”

  Dr. Braxted’s tone was so urgent, Miss Seeton’s astonishment so great, that after one wary look at the plaster dust and rubble she removed her hat, set it with her bag down by her umbrella, turned around, and raised her hands. Standing with feet apart she began, very slowly, to bend over backwards until she had a safe grip on her ankles and, in the hooped perfection of the Wheel posture or Chakrasana, could once more study the painting on the wall. Upside down.