Miss Seeton Quilts the Village

by Hamilton Crane

  “Oh, my dear!” Miss Wicks almost giggled. “No, I must not ask you—for more than a small favour, and of course I shall insist on reimbursing you at once. It is simply that I should not wish to offend Mrs. Welsted, who always does her best to oblige, by requesting what I am sure she does not have in stock. And busy as I am with my two submissions for the Plummergen project I cannot be sure of the next occasion I shall have time to visit Brettenden.”

  Miss Seeton’s own submission (should she submit it) would be far more modest and far less time-consuming. She smiled. “You must tell me what you would like me to buy,” she said. “I know there is an art shop, it’s where I obtain my supplies, so I would expect there also to be a shop that sells fabric. I can easily ask.”

  Miss Wicks looked back to the days before her pension had seemed to shrink so much. “There used to be a dressmaker and modiste, Jeannine Claire, and most stylish costumes she created, in rich and sumptuous fabrics. She also stocked glass embroidery beads in different colours.”

  “For the jewels, of course.”

  “Indeed yes, though I would not wish her to suppose that I want them in any spirit of—of commercial competition. Some scraps of silk or satin, a small assortment of beads—sufficient for one modest picture, certainly not for a rival establishment.” She glanced around her tiny sitting room. “They speak of cottage industry, Miss Seeton, but I should say that this cottage, while its owner certainly does her best to be industrious, hardly counts. Would you not agree?”

  And Miss Seeton, smiling at her friend’s little joke, agreed that she would.

  Euphemia Braxted was not a selfish woman. She loved her work, and found discovery of any sort enthralling, but never grudged a share of the fun to those who could be trusted to enjoy it as much as she did. Having coaxed Felix Graham (studying for a PhD) and Miss Madeline Staveley (aspiring MSc) into abandoning their studies to help with the investigation of Summerset Cottage, she made sure the young folk would have the chance to make discoveries of their own.

  Euphemia carried a broom with the rest of her paraphernalia, having made early telephone arrangements with Crabbe’s Garage the day after the sudden appearance of Devil Henry. Enthusiastic Dr. Braxted might be, but not stupid. Nobody with any sense carried a broom, a yardstick, two cameras, assorted lights and a tripod on a bicycle, never mind tape measures, notebooks, and sandwiches. All three historians, heavily laden, were collected from Brettenden Museum by Jack Crabbe’s taxi at half-past nine and were in Summerset Cottage by ten.

  After the requisite exclamations of wonder as they peered in the mirror and took it in turns to lie on the newly swept floor, Felix and Madeline asked what happened next.

  “I’ve taken a fancy to this chap.” Euphemia indicated the fresco. “The artist, not Henry, I mean. A talented chap, and brave. While I take photos of his masterpiece you can hunt through the rest of the house tapping the panels, banging on floorboards, measuring every room, drawing plans on the lookout for any indication of secret passages or priest’s holes.”

  “And for any more loose plaster,” added Madeline.

  “Golly! Neither of us thought of that.” Euphemia had explained her sister’s interest, and repeated Eugenia’s view that there was likely to be a priest’s hole even without a smugglers’ tunnel. “A second picture? Oh, wouldn’t that put us one up on the Taunton place!”

  “You never know, in a house this old,” said Felix.

  The clatter of the young couple’s feet was a background constant as Euphemia set to work. She propped the wooden steps against the wall, balancing her yardstick on top for accuracy of scale. As she took photo after gloating photo, Felix and Madeline moved from room to room calling out measurements, stamping, tapping. They found nothing, but were as eager when they finished in the scullery as they’d been when they started in the parlour.

  Further clattering in other rooms, then up the stairs. Overhead, their footsteps echoed even more in the empty house. The Colvedens had ensured that the auctioneers appointed to dispose of the contents had done a thorough job of clearing.

  Suddenly, a shout. Euphemia’s ears pricked. Some fevered tapping, back and forth along one wall. Euphemia, who had wanted a closer look at Devil Henry’s nose, climbed off the steps and set her measuring stick against the wall. She waited, her heart bumping.

  Down the stairs came Felix and Madeline. They rushed through the hall and erupted into the parlour. “Found it!” they chorused.

  Two notebooks were brandished as one. “We’ve checked and double-checked,” said Felix, pink about the ears.

  “The largest bedroom is two feet shorter than the room underneath.” Madeline was breathing hard. “There’s a recessed alcove that hides the difference, but upstairs, once you look, you can tell. However, the wall doesn’t sound very hollow—there’s a dead patch at one end—and we can’t find how you get in.”

  “But it’s there!” finished Felix.

  “Come on, then,” said Euphemia. She did not check the measurements. If these two said the rooms didn’t match for size, they didn’t.

  Together they hurried up the stairs and went into the largest bedroom, where Euphemia began her own tapping. “Hmm,” she said. “When this was built the wood was all new, and the plaster hadn’t decayed. If we’re right about what’s behind this wall, nobody in those days would have spotted anything unusual without a decent tape measure.”

  The other two nodded. It made sense. Had the secret room, if that was indeed what it was, been as easy to find then as now, no Jesuit priest taking refuge there would have been safe for more than five minutes. If as long.

  Euphemia let out a sigh. “My sister said that every design is different, for a priest’s hole, so that anyone finding one couldn’t use the same tricks to find another. She said that sometimes you gain access from another room—or even another floor.” She tapped again at the dead patch. “I suspect that what we have here is a staircase, starting in the roof.”

  Madeline clapped her hands; enthusiasm was catching. “A priest’s hole and a secret passage—a vertical passage, but who cares?—in one!”

  “Bull’s eye,” crowed Felix. “Now all we have to do is find the way in.”

  They moved out to the landing, and looked up.

  “If the builders come to take their stepladder back,” said Euphemia, “they’ll be right out of luck. It’s our only way of reaching that trapdoor.”

  “Then we’d better hurry,” said Madeline, “in case they appear.”

  Three wide smiles beamed around the landing. Felix ran down the stairs, and returned with the paint-splattered steps over his shoulder. He positioned them under the trap.

  “Me first,” said Euphemia. “You’ll each get your turn, but if it proves to be a tricky job I’m the one who should take the risk—not that there really is one. The attic was cleared as well as the rest of the house, Sir George said, so it shouldn’t require too much force to open the trapdoor. We should be safe enough.”

  Madeline and Felix grinned. They shared Euphemia’s excitement. Common sense suggested that she should ask around the village for the loan of a longer ladder, but now common sense took a back seat. All they had to do was hold the steps firmly and not look beyond their mentor’s ankles as she scrambled up into the attic.

  “Maddy,” said Felix, “you stand by me. Okay, Dr. Braxted...”

  Euphemia had guessed correctly: the trapdoor was heavy, but it did not stick. With a push and a sideways shove, it opened. She reached up to drag herself over the edge.

  “Mind you step only on the rafters,” warned Madeline. Her father had once put a foot through her bedroom ceiling while inspecting the hot-water tank.

  “Teach your grandmother,” cried Euphemia. “In a previous incarnation I could have been a platelayer for the railways...”

  Her voice faded as, switching on the torch squeezed into her cardigan pocket—her pockets were always double-lined for just such eventualities—she began to pick her way across the atti
c floor. Felix and Madeline exchanged looks.

  “You’re taller,” said Madeline. “You keep an eye on her.”

  As she held the ladder he climbed up, and poked his head through the square, shadowy hole through which Euphemia had vanished.

  “They certainly cleared this place right out,” called Euphemia. She coughed. “Apart from the dust.”

  At first he could see erratic shadows from her torch on the rafters, which were bare and gave straight on to the tiles. Occasional points of daylight flickered through but the roof, for all its years of neglect, appeared reasonably sound.

  “I’m going to start tapping the ceiling—the floor,” shouted Euphemia from the distance. “But I’ll be careful!”

  “I’m not bothered about her damaging the plaster so much as herself,” said Madeline. She explained her reasons. “When my father put his foot through the ceiling, his trouser leg was ripped to shreds and he was terribly cut and bruised. My mother sent him for a tetanus jab and said he could pay for a new pair himself because now they were only fit for the bin, and she wasn’t going to waste her time sewing when it was all his own fault. But she did get some peas out of the freezer for his sprained ankle.”

  “A heart of gold,” observed Felix.

  The two young researchers waited. The tapping stopped. “No luck as yet,” announced Euphemia. “But my sister told me a wrinkle or two...”

  “She seems to be examining the rafters,” said Felix, as muffled grunts came periodically from the darkness. “Good grief—she’s doing gymnastics.”

  Another grunt, a creak, a shriek. “Bingo!” cried Euphemia. “Good old Genie! One of the cross-beams...” She spluttered into silence after a long burst of coughing.

  “Are you all right, Dr. Braxted?” Madeline was concerned.

  “Catching my breath,” called Euphemia, wheezing slightly. “A cloud of dust blew out when the thing opened—suction, I suppose.”

  “It’s open! You found it!” babbled Felix and Madeline together.

  Euphemia coughed again. “Some sort of counterbalance, I think. You have to put all your weight on it—and now I can see steps. I’m going to explore!”

  “At least we know where they go,” said Felix to Madeline. “If the worst comes to the worst we can always find a pickaxe and chop her out through the bedroom wall.”

  “Don’t joke.”

  He climbed down the steps and hurried with Madeline back to the bedroom. They heard Euphemia’s footsteps on the hidden stair. There was a bump. “Safely down,” she shouted. “Are you there?”

  “Yes!”

  “Good. A feeble light through some sort of shaft,” reported Euphemia. “Ventilation, probably—look for it later from outside. A chair...a table...and—my God!”

  Both young people jumped. They demanded to know what she had found.

  “That—that devil!” burst from Dr. Euphemia Braxted. “I’m coming back right now!”

  Chapter Ten

  EUPHEMIA REAPPEARED, LOOKING grim. “You can go and see for yourselves, but be prepared for a nasty shock. Don’t drop the torch.” She saw Madeline’s face. “Nothing so nasty as you’re thinking, my child! Maybe I should have said unpleasant, only that lacks sufficient...force. Evil, perhaps.”

  Felix went first. He came back. “I’d say wicked—or devilish, and entirely in keeping with our friend on the parlour wall.”

  Madeline looked from one to the other. “Just tell me,” she said. “I’ll make up my mind afterwards if it’s the sort of thing I want to see.”

  “Nobody decent could want to see anything of the sort,” said Euphemia. “But there it is. Sir George will have to be told, of course—he’s a magistrate. He’ll know what to do about—about a two-way radio with German instructions on the dials.”

  Madeline stared. Euphemia remained grim. “Sender could just about be English, but there’s no arguing with Empfänger. It means ‘receiver’ in German—and there’s an umlaut over the ‘a’ if anyone needed further proof of...treachery.”

  “It must have been there since the war,” said Felix. “Maybe even before. Who lived here then? It can’t have been installed without their knowledge.”

  “Once you know it’s there, you can even see the aerial draped under the ridge of the roof,” said Euphemia. “If the people clearing this place spotted it they would have thought it was something to do with the electricity supply.”

  “Devilish,” Madeline said faintly. “Do you suppose...I mean, I wonder if that sort of thing is—is catching? An evil atmosphere—maybe even ghosts...”

  “My dear child,” said Euphemia, “the people who painted the fresco, the people who lived here, were devout Catholics. Their ghosts may haunt this house, not that I imagine they do but, if they did, they would be courageous and, by their own lights, honourable ghosts entirely out of sympathy with treacherous English Nazis four hundred years later. The first owners of Summerset Cottage would have wanted the overthrow of a Protestant crown for religious, not for personal or—or mercenary reasons.”

  Madeline shivered. Euphemia sighed.

  “There were more upper-class Nazi sympathisers before, even during, the war than we like to think,” continued the unconscious echo of Duncan Oblon. “Some were merely fascinated by that devil Hitler—look at Unity Mitford—but others thought the lower orders really should be ground under the heel of the discerning rulers, by whom they meant themselves. You’re both too young, but I remember people like that. Whoever lived in this house during the war will have been of the same kidney.”

  Felix cleared his throat. “I know Sir George must be told, but perhaps he’s not the most obvious person even if the house does belong to him. Shouldn’t we tell the police?”

  It was decided at last that Felix and Madeline would go to the police house in search of PC Potter, while Euphemia would make for Rytham Hall.

  “But first, we hide the evidence,” she decreed. “And the stepladder. We’ll shut the trapdoor and put the steps somewhere they won’t immediately be found. There may be surviving family members, even friends, who wouldn’t care for the word to get around that the people who lived here were a gaggle of Hitler-lovers...”

  In Ashford, Superintendent Brinton devoured a bun. Foxon was not long back from the canteen, and the superintendent was a distracted man. Paperwork bred nothing but paperwork. No sooner did one in-tray shrink than another wodge appeared. It wasn’t as if he could offload it on young Foxon, even if the lad had the rank, which he hadn’t. Brinton had the rank, and was paid for it. It wouldn’t be fair to pull that rank and dump everything on his subordinate. If there were nervous breakdowns around, Superintendent Brinton claimed the monopoly. Besides, Foxon had a way with him, for all his fancy clothes and persistent chirpiness. These buns had the thickest icing in the canteen, he’d bet a bob or two—

  The telephone rang. “Mmph,” he grunted through a stodgy mouthful, then a gulp. Choking, he gestured that Foxon should listen on the extension. Foxon set down his mug. “Potter?” cried Brinton. “Not again!”

  “Well, sir, I thought you did really ought to know, even if you might say ’tis thirty years too late...”

  Brinton banged down the handset and clutched his hair. “Nazi spies in Plummergen. That’s all I need. If it wasn’t bad enough with El Dancairo and his chums playing at dodgem cars, now we’ve got to watch out for elderly ex-Nazis breaking into empty houses to retrieve incriminating chunks of 1930s technology. This just about takes the perishing cake.”

  “Bun, sir,” amended Foxon. “Have some more—you’ll feel better.”

  Brinton glared, grabbed his mug, gulped heartily. He bit again into his bun.

  “You could always cancel your standing orders, sir,” said Foxon while his superior’s mouth was still full. Brinton glared at him again.

  “And I don’t see how you could possibly blame Miss Seeton for any of this,” persisted the young man in the striped tank top. Brinton swallowed the last of his bun.

  “
No, I couldn’t. And yes, I can. You know very well why those standing orders were set up. If I’m not kept informed of anything—everything—that happens within five miles of that perishing village when that woman’s in it, blue bloody mayhem will ensue.”

  “But, sir, you say it always does anyway.”

  “I know it does, and no need to rub it in. If Potter keeps me as up-to-date with things as he can, at least we have a slight—far too slight—advantage when the mulligatawny finally reaches the boil.”

  “But Miss Seeton wasn’t even living in Plummergen during the war! And she’s the last person who’d ever dream of—of consorting with enemy agents.”

  “I never said anything about consorting. Dammit, I never thought she was that sort—is, I mean. But she can’t help it, she and that brolly of hers just stir things up. Pure unadulterated mulligatawny. I’ll bet if asked about the war she’ll say something about popping down from time to time to visit her cousin, and there’ll turn out to be some sort of link nobody’s heard of before...”

  Foxon raised a further objection. “I thought they didn’t let you pop anywhere during the war, sir. Is your journey really necessary? and all that.”

  “Shuttup, Foxon.”

  Foxon looked pained.

  “I hate you, Foxon. You think I’m being unfair to the old girl, don’t you?”

  “I thought you liked her, sir. That umbrella you gave her for Christmas...”

  “I know, laddie, I know. It’s just that things do tend to happen when she’s around, whether she means them to or not—”

  “Not, sir,” declared the loyal Foxon.

  “—but I don’t want to end up having to—trying to—stop a pitched battle between the Plummergen locals and a gang of jackbooted neo-Nazis who believe that Hitler’s alive and well, being egged on by a load of Latin American fascists who say he’s living next door to their mothers.” Brinton once more clutched at his hair.

  “Plummergen,” he groaned. “I wonder if—”

  The telephone rang. He picked it up. His eyes rolled. “Sir George Colveden. I might have known. Yes, put him through. Foxon, if you so much as smirk I’ll—Yes, Sir George, what can we do for you?”