Miss Seeton Quilts the Village

by Hamilton Crane

  “Thank you for the warning, and I’ll also offer thanks on behalf of my wife. No reason to annoy her when an easier method could work just as well.”

  “Oh, it will, and one cannot help but marvel at the skill of the original artist. Dr. Braxted’s sister from the British Museum is trying to find out who he might have been. I don’t know if they knew about yoga in Tudor times, though of course they had tumblers—acrobats—and perhaps squared paper, too, for the basic design. And they would have had to burn it every time they worked on the picture, in case they were betrayed.”

  It would all eventually make sense. He seized on the one point that made sense now. “Dr. Braxted—yours, that is, not the one at the British Museum—will she be there if I stroll round in a few minutes? I take it we can’t phone to ask.”

  Miss Seeton smiled. “From what Lady Colveden has said, and what little I myself have seen, I think it unlikely there ever was a telephone in Summerset Cottage. But it is only a few minutes’ walk away, and Dr. Braxted is a true enthusiast. I imagine you would be almost certain to find her at work there as long as the light remains good.”

  Delphick thanked her and took his leave, with the envelope of photographs and Miss Seeton’s sketch of King Henry Crassweller. He wondered about the Three Sisters and the Devil In The Storm, but couldn’t yet see how they fitted in. What he could see was that she was still not entirely herself. Bob, he knew, intended to call on his adopted aunt later. He could ask for the other sketches when she’d calmed down properly.

  As he entered the George and Dragon he met Doris, the hotel’s live-in waitress, general factotum and indispensible assistant to Charley Mountfitchet. She also worked on reception if required, and was another friend of long standing. She beamed at him.

  “Welcome back, Mr. Delphick. Hope you enjoy your stay. How you and young Bob stick London week after week, I can’t think.”

  “Nor can we,” he said, disappearing up the stairs. “That’s why we come here.”

  Having hidden Miss Seeton’s sketch, with the photographs, under the mattress, he went back down to reception.

  “Doris, I’m told that somewhere nearby there’s a lady historian on the loose?”

  “Dr. Braxted, yes. Her and a couple of youngsters are down Nowhere Lane in the house where young Nigel’s going to live one day. Very keen, she is. Going to put Plummergen on the map, only it’s a big secret for now until she’s written it all up in some book or other.”

  Delphick, being the Oracle, could translate “book” as “magazine” or, in this context, “academic journal”. He nodded encouragement, and Doris explained how he would find Nowhere Lane and he couldn’t miss Summerset Cottage. But...

  “They say she’s keeping the doors locked and letting nobody in bar the police—so you’ll be all right, Mr. Delphick, only you’ll have to explain who you are in case she sets that young man of hers to chase you off the property!” She was still chuckling as Delphick thanked her for the directions, and hurried away.

  Euphemia heard steps on the path, peered through a window, and saw a tall stranger in a tweed jacket. A rival historian! He had somehow learned of her discovery, and was after a spot of academic poaching. She flung the window open.

  “This is private property,” she shouted. “Go away at once, please!”

  “Madam, I am a police officer.” He held up the warrant card he knew she couldn’t read from so far away. “I understand the law of trespass, but Sir George Colveden can vouch for me, if asked.”

  The heads of Madeline and Felix appeared at upper windows. “There are three of us here, as you see.” Euphemia hesitated. “I’ll take a look at that card of yours...”

  She was fulsome in her apologies, and he assured her that he understood her caution. He had heard from Miss Seeton, and from Superintendent Brinton of Ashford, that she had made some remarkable finds of considerable importance in historic terms “both ancient and modern...”

  Euphemia contemplated him for a moment, then nodded. “Come through and I’ll show you Henry the Devil, but I imagine it’s another devil that interests you more.”

  “Very probably.” Delphick followed her into the parlour, and was honestly astounded by what he saw when Euphemia produced her mirror. He kept looking from Henry to the Devil, and back again. He shook his head.

  “I can only borrow Miss Seeton’s word,” he said at last. “Remarkable.”

  Dr. Braxted sighed. “Not unique, so my sister tells me, but still an amazing find, though it’s what we found in the priest’s hole that shook me up rather more.” She lowered her voice. “I wouldn’t say so in front of those youngsters, but I had nightmares last night. The people directly involved—the three old girls who lived here—are dead, but that’s not to say a few of their cronies aren’t hiding somewhere in the wings waiting to see what else might still give them away. And there are the servants. From what PC Potter told me, and Sir George, they pushed off almost as soon as the death of the last old girl had been reported—though it was all above board, officially.” She paused. “As far as anyone knows.”

  Delphick made a mental note to ask Brinton what exactly was known about the previous inhabitants of Summerset Cottage, masters and servants alike.

  “Sir George sent us a longer ladder.” Euphemia led the way up the stairs. “He said it would be safer than balancing on steps, and the very least he could do, though he wasn’t keen to go scrambling about in the roof at his age. Of course, when young Mr. Colveden brought the ladder he was up there like a shot. He said not only was he his father’s official representative, but he was also the chap who’d be living in the house once all the work was finished, so he thought it was the very least he could do.”

  “They’re a close family,” Delphick said. “They share a sense of humour.”

  He noted how the heavy wooden ladder had been wedged against one wall. The rungs were awkward to reach, but safer to climb than if the bottom rested, free to slip, on bare boards. Nigel might be a cheerful young man, but he was no more irresponsible than his father. He would take due precautions for the safety of anyone working on family property.

  “Where a Colveden can go, and a Potter before him, so can a Delphick.” The Oracle wondered how Superintendent Brinton, not noted for his lack of bulk, would have responded to the challenge. He’d send young Foxon, of course. “Could I borrow a torch?”

  On his return, he was thoughtful. “The house belongs to Rytham Hall, but I assume the contents were the property of the late Saxons and now of their heirs, if there are any. An intriguing legal conundrum. Does this include a wireless set clearly marked as the property of a Third Reich that no longer exists?”

  “And a good job, too! The sooner that devil’s mouthpiece is gone from here, the happier I shall be.”

  “The proper authorities will be contacting you before long, I’m sure. Both Sir George and PC Potter have reported your discovery to Superintendent Brinton at Ashford, and he will be in touch with the right people. It may well turn out it’s all so far back in history that another historian, specialising in the Hitler years, will be the one who sorts everything out for you.”

  Euphemia’s eyes narrowed. “You can always,” he added quickly, “keep the door of the parlour shut—locked—while it’s being sorted. I won’t breathe a word about Henry, and I’ll warn my colleagues not to say anything either.”

  She brightened. “Careless talk costs academic lives,” she said, adapting the poster slogan of the Second World War. “I intend to write this up for publication, Chief Superintendent, and that’s how it goes, for people like me. Publish—or perish. This is the most exciting find I’ve made in years! And all thanks to Miss Seeton.”

  He might have guessed his old friend was somehow involved. He struggled not to laugh out loud when Euphemia explained how it had been tripping over the umbrella that led to her first upside-down view of the fresco.

  “Remarkable,” was all he could say at the end of the tale. Dr. Braxted had flung out her
arms, clasped her hands, and thrown herself wholeheartedly into the re-enactment. She’d be devastated if anyone took the fun and the fame away from her now. “I’ll do my very best to stop people talking,” he promised again.

  She beamed at him, then stiffened. Delphick heard them, too: brisk, heavy footsteps, coming along the path. Euphemia uttered a warning cry, and flew down the stairs to guard the door. Delphick followed in her wake, hearing other steps clattering above, and windows being opened.

  “This is private property,” Euphemia shouted. “Please go away!”

  “Is Chief Superintendent Delphick still with you?”

  “It’s all right, Dr. Braxted.” Delphick hurried across the hall. “My sergeant has come to find me. I imagine he dropped in on Miss Seeton and she sent him along.”

  Euphemia opened the door, took one look, and burst out laughing. “I can’t see him in my priest’s hole,” she spluttered, as Bob Ranger—six foot seven and seventeen stone—hovered outside.

  Bob looked from Dr. Braxted to Delphick. “Miss Seeton said you were probably here.”

  “She was right.” The laughter bubbled in Euphemia’s voice. “Come in. I’ll share one of my professional secrets with you, but I doubt if I could share the other! They don’t make shoe-horns big enough.”

  Bob was as impressed by Devil Henry as everyone else, swore to the utmost secrecy, and agreed that climbing ladders and creeping across rafters to corkscrew down a Tudor staircase was probably not justified unless a major crime had been committed—

  “Treason is a crime,” snapped Euphemia.

  “—with a realistic chance of bringing the criminal to justice,” he finished, watching the martial glint in her eye.

  “Hmm. Yes.” She subsided. “Unless the servants know anything, or we find lists of names—which I doubt we will—I suppose you’re right.”

  “Have you found any papers at all?” asked Delphick. “The Germans are an efficient race. If we grumble about our paperwork, they positively revel in theirs.”

  “Mice,” said Euphemia. “Plenty of old droppings up there, and nests galore. Any code-books or similar that haven’t already been chewed to shreds will have crumbled away, or were never there at all, or were there and then taken away and destroyed when it looked at last as if we really were going to win.”

  Delphick nodded. “You could use such incriminating documents to light fires. Risky to put them out as salvage, but bundles of paper spills wouldn’t be noticed.”

  “The Saxons cooked on an enormous kitchen range,” said Euphemia. “The servants must have spent hours black-leading it, poor things. Or I should really say the servants did the cooking, not the Saxons. But I do remember that if you already possessed a reliable means of cooking during the war, then without a dashed good reason for the change you weren’t allowed to install anything more up-to-date for the duration.”

  Bob grinned. “From what I’ve heard of the Saxons, they were barmy enough to put in for a smart new electric cooker or an improved gas supply at the height of the Blitz, and stick to the kitchen range years after the rules were relaxed out of sheer bloody-mindedness at their demands being refused in the first place.”

  Euphemia turned to the fresco. “Imagine if such unpatriotic vandals had known about this!” She flung out her arms. “I wouldn’t put it past them to have whitewashed the whole thing over—or taken the wall down for firewood!”

  “But they didn’t, and it’s going to make your name,” said Delphick. “And when you’ve completed your researches I believe the Colvedens are going to let you take the wall down, for your museum.”

  Euphemia beamed, nodded, and pressed on the two detectives an invitation to view the kitchen range and the scullery beyond, because of the floor tiles. It would have been heartless to decline, yet to both men the tiles looked merely old and worn, though Euphemia tried to explain how the pattern of wear clearly showed various generations of kitchen layout, and how many times the sink would have needed re-plumbing.

  “Whew!” said Bob as they finally made their escape. “I heard she was keen, but...”

  “I’d call that an understatement. And how are things at the Knights’?”

  “So-so, thank you, sir. Anne’s been telling me about the cottage, and the Saxons—you know how this place thrives on gossip—and how they were seen at midnight on D-Day burying something in the garden here, or in the spinney round the back where it borders the graveyard. They say it was probably their German uniforms, ready for when Hitler came, but I’d have thought with a great kitchen range like that they could easily have burned them—if they even existed—and no questions asked.”

  “Except for the buttons. A domestic range would have been insufficiently hot to melt them beyond recognition.”

  “I’d have cut ’em off first and chucked them in the canal.”

  “You, Sergeant Ranger, have a criminally trained mind—and you aren’t in shock, as they doubtless were.” Delphick looked at his subordinate. “Yet you do appear somewhat anxious. Is all well with Anne and the baby?”

  “Ye-es, sir, but it might be better, if you don’t mind, to postpone your visit until tomorrow. They had a bit of a crisis last night at the nursing home and nobody got much sleep—except his lordship, of course.” The proud father grinned. “He’s an adaptable little cuss and was full of beans when I saw him, but poor Anne’s exhausted. A new patient was brought in last night, a real emergency—caught dancing nude along the ridge of his roof telling everyone to call him Icarus.”

  “Real name, Plummet?” the Oracle couldn’t resist asking. Bob looked blank. “Sorry,” said Delphick. “I take it that he didn’t fall off.”

  “Oh—plummet, sir. I get it. Jolly good.” Bob coughed. “They had quite a time with him until Dr. Knight could get hold of the chap’s proper doctor and find out what he was meant to be taking that he’d stopped.” Anne’s father had been one of London’s top neurologists until retiring early for reasons of his own health. His private nursing home had once been Plummergen’s cottage hospital. He selected, rather than was allocated, his patients when possible, but he would never ignore a genuine emergency.

  “I’m sorry,” said Delphick, “but I fear the pleasure of meeting my prospective godson must be postponed beyond tomorrow. Give my apologies to Anne, but I’ve been thinking. You have called on Miss Seeton. How did she seem?”

  “Pleased to see me, sir. She told me you’d gone off to look at Nigel’s house—and I admit she didn’t seem too happy about the place, but having seen that creepy painting I can understand why...”

  “Come into the George,” invited his superior. “You’ll be able to phone the Knights and explain we’ll be heading back to town this evening.”

  Bob was surprised, but had more sense than to ask why when, as they came through the door, they saw Maureen ambling across the hall. A duster drooped from one hand, and she looked bored. She heard their footsteps, stopped, and slowly turned round.

  “Oh,” she said. She saw Bob and nodded at him, one local to another.

  “Good afternoon, Maureen,” Delphick said. “Or perhaps we are moving towards good evening? Hello, in either case, and at the same time I’m afraid it must be goodbye. We’re returning to London, so I won’t need my room after all. Could you find Charley or Doris so that I can settle my account?”

  “Oh,” said Maureen. Her lightning wits were a village joke. “Hello.” She frowned. “Mr. Mountfitchet’s down in the cellar. Dunno about Doris.”

  Delphick knew when not to insist. “We’ll just slip up to my room to collect my things. Perhaps by the time I’m back one or other of them will have appeared. If you see them before I do, could you please tell them I would like to check out at once?”

  “But...you’ve not long checked in. Doris told me.”

  “And soon I’ll be checking out. I’ll go up now.” He went, beckoning Bob to follow.

  In his room he rummaged under the mattress for the envelope of photographs with Miss Seeton
’s sketch. “She drew this for me, having studied these. What do you make of it?”

  Bob contemplated his adopted aunt’s IdentiKit drawing. “Well, it’s Crassweller all right, but there’s a lot of Henry there too...”

  Delphick had moved to stand in front of his sergeant. “And upside down it’s the devil, as well. Exactly the same as the Summerset fresco. Miss Seeton was most insistent that this—” he tapped the sketch “—should be looked at upside down. At first I thought she meant the fresco, but now I’ve had time to think...”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “I wonder,” said Delphick slowly, “whether she might not be trying to tell us we’ve been looking at the whole Crassweller business upside down from the start. Which is why we’re going back to London tonight.”

  “Upside down?” Bob was repeatedly turning the sketch in his hands. “You mean it’s somehow the wrong way round, sir?”

  From the other direction. Mirrors. Venison the menu...

  “Not suicide,” said Delphick. “Somebody else administered that polysyllabic barbiturate to Gabriel Crassweller. Not suicide—but murder.”

  Chapter Twelve

  MISS SEETON REGRETTED the brevity of Bob’s visit, but at least she had seen her adopted nephew, and received further news of Anne and the baby, so that when he telephoned to say he and Mr. Delphick must return to London sooner than expected, she entirely understood. It was, after all, their job. She hoped her little IdentiKit sketch had been of some help. Mr. Delphick (Bob assured her) was delighted. Miss Seeton, relieved, packed her sketching gear away and settled to the pursuit and practice of appliqué, as demonstrated by Louise to herself and Lady Colveden, and also by Miss Wicks, with her neatly basted geometric shapes.