Miss Seeton Quilts the Village

by Hamilton Crane

  “Needles,” echoed Miss Nuttel.

  “We were right after all,” said Mrs. Blaine. “It’s too bad of her.”

  Miss Seeton was so preoccupied with the damage her thoughtless cutting of paper might have done to her needlework scissors—though it had been only once, when she somehow mislaid her little crafting knife and she was in a hurry, or maybe twice, she couldn’t be sure—that she walked slap into a man who, busily chatting, was coming with his wife from the opposite direction.

  “Oof,” said the man.

  “Oh dear,” said Miss Seeton, and in her confusion dropped nearly everything except her pale blue hatbox. “Oh dear, I’m so very sorry. I should be far more careful about allowing my thoughts to wander in such a busy street.”

  Three heads bumped as Miss Seeton, the man, and his wife bent to retrieve her bag, basket, umbrella, and smart grey carrier, as well as the shopping that had spilled from her basket across the pavement. “Oh dear,” said Miss Seeton again, as they straightened together.

  “No harm done.” The man held out her handbag as his wife scooped up the contents of the basket and repacked it as best she could. “And your brolly, too. Handsome piece.”

  Miss Seeton smiled as she accepted her belongings from his wife, but continued with her apologies as he went on admiring the umbrella with its hand-stitched leather cover for the handle, and the neat gold initials embossed thereon.

  “Very nice. Looks like real gold, too.”

  “It is,” said Miss Seeton, adding quickly: “Only my initials, of course—I believe the police are not highly paid, and it was given to me by an acquaintance in the police force—and silk, too, as is the one Superintendent Delphick gave me some years ago—but it was Superintendent Brinton who gave me this. So very kind of him.” She was delighted, on Mr Brinton’s behalf, that his present had so caught the attention of her new acquaintance, although was he, indeed, so new? His face, his wife’s, seemed familiar. “But I would,” Miss Seeton hurried to explain, “have been just as happy with nylon because it is the thought that counts, not the financial expenditure, and a superintendent cannot be paid as much as a chief superintendent, naturally.”

  “Friends in high places, eh?” The almost-familiar man looked a little surprised, and his wife was frankly staring. Miss Seeton blushed. Would it be presumptuous to call Superintendent Brinton a friend? They had known each other for several years, but somehow it wasn’t quite the same as dear Mr. Delphick—yet both were colleagues, in a professional sense, even if her little art consultant fee was paid by Scotland Yard rather than by the county constabulary.

  “I have been acquainted with Superintendent Brinton for several years,” she said. “The umbrella was a special present one Christmas. He was kind enough to say that I had been of some assistance when the bank was robbed and the treasure was found—though not so much the chest in the vault as the Roman treasure at Rytham Hall—and not gold, but silver—jugs, and bowls, and dishes—and no hallmarks, naturally, and no coins, which puzzled me as I had always understood they were needed to pay the ferryman. Funerary goods, I believe, and you can see them in Brettenden Museum, together with the mosaic.” Miss Seeton, whose modesty discouraged her from chatting to anyone, especially strangers, about her own affairs, warmed to her theme as she told these strangers—or were they indeed strangers?—of the elaborate and unusual design of the floor of the Temple of Glacia at Rytham Hall, and of the rarity and beauty of the hoard of Siberius Gelidus Brumalix that had been found there.

  “Need a deal of polishing, from the sound of it,” observed the wife ruefully.

  “Now then, Agnes,” chided her husband. “We’ve done with all that at last.”

  “But—forgive me, but it is Roman silver,” protested Miss Seeton. “Polish, I assure you, would be most unsuitable. Only the purest soapsuds, and then a rub with chamois leather or soft flannel once it has been thoroughly rinsed. The fine detail would be lost over time if one were to use ammonia—or powdered pumice—or Bluebell.”

  Agnes pulled a face. “Horrible smell,” she said. “Still, I knew a kiddie once that drank half a can of the stuff, though it says poison on the tin—too young to read, see.”

  “How dreadful,” said Miss Seeton faintly. She would have thought the smell, never mind the taste, would have discouraged any child from such a foolish act, whether or not it could read. “I hope the child survived.”

  “Yes, but Sam never used anything but paste ever after,” said Agnes, “just in case.”

  “Or washing soda and aluminium foil, for small pieces,” said Sam. “But that’s all in the past, and not needed for this brolly anyway.”

  “No, indeed.” Miss Seeton, receiving her umbrella, slipped it on her arm and patted the royal blue handle. “Gold, of course, does not tarnish.”

  With final apologies, a friendly smile, and a nod, Miss Seeton parted from Sam and Agnes and continued needlewards to Lance & Lance. She did not notice Miss Nuttel and Mrs. Blaine hovering in the near distance.

  But they had noticed her. And her distracted mishap. And the people with whom she had collided.

  “Oh, Eric,” said Mrs. Blaine. “Nobody ever sees them now they’ve moved away—so why is she talking to the Brattles?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  THE WAY TO the Foreign and Commonwealth Office was now familiar to Detective Chief Superintendent Delphick and Detective Sergeant Ranger. Their reasons for this third visit, however, differed from the two previous occasions on which they had interviewed a small multitude of his colleagues in the department to which Gabriel Crassweller had belonged.

  “Before, we were after motives for suicide,” said the Oracle, as they left Scotland Yard on foot in search of a taxi. They’d learned the first time that, brandish their warrant cards as they might, parking spaces were at a premium in Whitehall. It took longer to find one than the effort was worth. “Now, we aren’t. We’ll try a return to basics. Why would you, knowing him, murder Gabriel Crassweller?”

  “Because he was a traitor, sir. And I’m a patriotic bloke.”

  “Why not report him to the authorities and let them deal with him?”

  Bob considered. “I’ve got no outright proof? Any more than we’ve managed to find, sir—so far, that is. Besides, whoever I told might be in on it too, and then I’d be the one for the chop, most like.”

  “No easy way of telling sheep from goats? Yes, that’s a possibility.”

  Bob was inspired. “Or the authorities know about him already, and want to try that turnaround trick Oblon mentioned, keeping him as a…a sleeper,” the jargon came with an effort, “and playing the misinformation game on the Stentorians to pass on to the Soviets, sir.”

  “Also possible. And in our country’s best interests, in the long term. If that’s the case, then, why kill him rather than leave him to mislead the Reds with or without realising it?”

  Some further thought. “I’m a patriotic bloke who’s illogical?”

  “Or, perhaps, convinced you know better than the authorities. You think it too risky to keep him alive—perhaps for fear he might encourage others to follow his path...Yes, that is likewise a possibility. You are conceited enough to think you always know best.”

  Bob grinned. “Sounds more like a politician than a diplomat, sir.”

  “So young, and so cynical.” The Oracle fell silent as they walked together, neither now looking for a taxi. Their conversation was not of the sort to be overheard by a third party. “Someone who sees him- or herself as judge, jury, and executioner all in one—who can’t believe they can possibly be wrong in whatever they choose to do.”

  “They all struck me as pretty bright, sir. The high-ups, I mean, those at Crassweller’s level—you’d need to be, wouldn’t you? For a job like that?”

  “Bright enough to conceal your machinations, certainly. What’s really needed here is an expert on the corkscrew workings of the human mind, not a couple of humble Scotland Yarders. Sadly, your father-in-law is trained in
neurology rather than psychoanalysis.”

  “How about hypnosis, sir?” suggested Bob. “Or a lie detector?”

  “Both can be fiddled, as I understand it—and by trying either, we give our suspicions away. We’ll just have to rely on copper’s instinct, the way we’ve done for years, and carry on as if we still believed it to be a suicide.”

  “You know, sir, I’m not sure I’m cut out for an actor. Assuming Miss Seeton’s right, that is.”

  “How tactful. You mean, assuming that I am right. You know Miss Seeton’s sketches invariably show us the truth. However, because this truth is filtered through her eyes, it is the interpretation of what she thinks she’s seen that has to be correct. I could be entirely wrong in my interpretation.”

  “You aren’t usually, sir. It’s got to be worth a try. And nothing else plausible has come up, has it?”

  “Only in a totally negative sense—which, as I’ve said before, is as valid an answer as any positive.” Delphick thought back over long, intense days of background reading, theorising, interviews and note-taking. “We found no motive for suicide. We found no evidence that he was being blackmailed—the man had money in the bank. There was no illness to cause him anxiety. His workload was no more than it had been for years. True, the drug found at the post mortem was not prescribed by his doctor, but in these days, sadly, drugs are all too readily obtained by those who seek an illicit thrill. It could indeed have been self-administered–-but, as Miss Seeton with her latest upside-down portrait has now led us to suspect, it was in all probability administered by a third party.”

  “All forty-seven syllables of it,” said Bob.

  “Yes, but if I can’t pronounce it I won’t waste time trying. Crassweller took or more likely was given whatever-it-is, crashed his car, and died. We will leave the details to those who understand them, and accept that the stuff is not impossible to obtain and is virtually undetectable by whoever ingests it until the general effects make themselves known.”

  “Until he goes woozy,” said Bob. “The way druggies like to feel. Trippy.”

  “Except that he didn’t drug, did he? Or smoke. The man could be almost an ascetic, if he hadn’t so clearly enjoyed an after-dinner drink or two.”

  “So someone could have slipped the polysyllable stuff into his port and waved him off in his car and just waited for the bang when it didn’t mix with the booze.”

  “Someone certainly could. Most probably it was someone he knew—and apart from work he appears to have known very few people.” He sighed. “Despite several days of rigorous questioning we have obtained no especially helpful information from any of his colleagues—and now it looks as if we must interview the whole lot again, asking the same questions as before, but with a different slant and without giving ourselves away.”

  In thoughtful silence, they walked on.

  They climbed the steps beside the statue of Robert Clive, and entered the elaborate grey building of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, with its chandeliers and painted ceilings. “Ladies first, I think,” said Delphick, mentally reviewing the various people they were about to interview for the second or third time.

  Miss Edith Brownlow, whose demure floral blouse had a neat kitten-bow tie rather than a pussycat, had been personal private secretary to Gabriel Crassweller from the moment he reached the appropriate step on the promotional ladder. As he had continued to rise, so had she, refusing every lure thrown to her by others promising higher grades and more money if she would come and work for them. Before even greeting her interrogators, Miss Brownlow pointedly double-checked the door of the office they had borrowed. After the preliminaries were over she said firmly that neither her loyalty nor her discretion could be questioned, whether her country or her boss might be under discussion.

  “Gabriel—Mr. Crassweller,” she corrected herself, her handkerchief to her eyes, “knew he could rely on me. When he had to go abroad he always took me with him—he would never have dreamed of anyone else. I can summarise reports and type speeches faster than anyone I know, which isn’t immodest, Mr. Delphick, I merely state a fact. Mr. Crassweller’s thought processes were...lively. Few people would be able to follow his unusual leaps of logic and make them coherent—but I can. Could.”

  Again she raised the handkerchief and dabbed gently at her eyes.

  Once she had gone, they looked at each other. “This time round,” said Delphick slowly, “I’d say she’s foxing. That handkerchief didn’t seem necessary. Did you notice that once or twice when she sniffed, she didn’t blink?”

  “I wondered about that, sir.”

  “Yet I can’t think what she can be covering up more than she’s covered previously—if she is. Or has been.”

  “First impression she gave us was that she was totally devoted to him, sir, but sort of resigned to the fact he was a…a hopeless case. When they started out together homosexuality was still against the law, remember.”

  “And Miss Brownlow would have been suitable camouflage? Yes. I wonder why he let the opportunity slip.”

  “He might’ve preferred her doormat impression in the office to her toothbrush in his bathroom.”

  Delphick pounced. “Impression? Yes. She’s been acting the part of a devoted subordinate—and acting well—but my bet would be she’s every bit as bright as the rest of them, and clever enough not to let anyone find out. There may be talk in the real world about Women’s Liberation, but in the corridors of power any sort of change takes a long time. Subterfuge must be the name of the game.”

  It was Bob’s turn to pounce. “As subterfugeous as taking over Crassweller’s leaks now he’s gone? Maybe that’s what she wanted all along, sir, knowing the work as well as ever he did and how to benefit the most efficient way.”

  The Oracle agreed that such an idea was not to be dismissed, adding that if anyone could bring Women’s Lib to Whitehall he thought Miss Brownlow probably could.

  Next to be interviewed was Harry Gilmore, several years younger than Gabriel Crassweller, but only one grade lower in the FO hierarchy. “I’m redbrick, not Oxbridge,” he said cheerfully. “Hence the tie—socialist red rather than old school.” He was apparently untroubled by the nuances of class and education said to exist in government. “Now poor Gabriel’s gone, there’s a chance for me to move up—or Walter Marrable,” he added, with the first hint of bitterness. “Walter’s second generation, you see.”

  “His father worked here?” Delphick’s research had already given him the answer, but he wanted to see what Harry really thought.

  “His father’s the ambassador to Costaguana—or was, until they recalled him when the trouble flared up. No doubt he’ll be back there before too long.”

  “The Reds,” offered Bob once Harry Gilmore had left the room, “believe in rising by your own merit and social equality and so on, sir, not handing it to you on a plate because of who your father is.”

  “He was open about his socialist sympathies, which don’t seem to have done him much harm in the promotion game. Or is he really Stentoria’s tame English Red from Redbrick? Although perhaps a little blatant for our purposes...”

  “Double bluff,” said Bob. “He’s bright enough for that. Triple, even.”

  Walter Marrable, by comparison, seemed born to be an ambassador. He was tall, sleek, well-dressed in pinstripes and very well groomed. Delphick’s quick appraisal of the cost of his shoes made him think with considerable envy of his own mortgage.

  “Either Ambrose Denarcott, or myself,” said Mr. Marrable, when asked who was likely to inherit the services of Miss Brownlow because you can’t let a woman like that go to waste, can you? Walter Marrable agreed that you couldn’t. “Made a touch at her myself, a year or so back,” he admitted, “when poor Gabriel looked so shaky—not politically,” he hastened to add, “never that. Very patriotic chap, our friend Crassweller. But he had a run of bad luck—pneumonia, twice, and the second time almost did for him. Edith covered for him during his absence, of course, and ma
de more than an adequate job of it.”

  He settled back in his chair, and smiled. “Of course, she’s too old to get much further on her own, but with me to help she could have done it, and maybe now, she can.”

  “Time will tell,” said Delphick. “Do you know if Mr. Denarcott make a similar approach?”

  “Gabriel was really very ill,” protested Walter Marrable. “One has to look out for oneself in a place like this—in a career like mine. Ours. I’ve no doubt Mr. Denarcott did, and will have received the same answer as the one she gave me.”

  “As I understand it, Mr. Marrable, Miss Brownlow has been professionally associated with Mr. Crassweller for some years. Is this the normal way such matters are arranged?”

  Walter Marrable said such was generally the case, but should events conspire against the female—junior—half of what he might almost be prepared to call a partnership, then it was every man, or even woman, for him (or her) self.

  “Your own secretary has not been with you for long,” deduced the Oracle.

  “Slipped up and had a baby, and the same sort of thing happened to Ambrose—except that his girl had the sense to get married first. Inconvenient for both of us, of course.”

  “Of course,” echoed the Oracle. “Thank you, sir.”

  He looked at Bob as the door closed. “Your views, Sergeant Ranger?”

  “Started off smooth, then gave himself away, sir. I don’t think he liked Crassweller that much—but surely a chap like him wouldn’t bump off another chap, no matter how much he envied him, just to get his hands on his secretary?”

  “Would he not? Remember that old saying about love and war, Bob, and everything being fair. In-fighting, competition and skulduggery would seem to abound in this place just as on the wider political stage, except that the outside skulduggery is rather more dramatic in its presentation. For an ambitious man, the perfect secretary is essential. Mere adequacy wouldn’t be enough.”