Miss Seeton Quilts the Village

by Hamilton Crane

  There was a further silence.

  The silence continued.

  Oblon broke it in the end by pulling open the drawer of his desk. He withdrew a slim folder, and set it on the blotter. He opened it, his gaze moving from Delphick to Bob, and back. What he saw in their eyes seemed, eventually, to reassure him.

  “In real life,” he said quietly, “you cannot hope to win them all. Real life has its flaws. Only the Almighty can achieve perfection. We mere mortals must do the best we can with what we can. I ask you to believe that you have done your country a great service—”

  He produced two closely printed forms on foolscap paper.

  “—and I must ask you both, please, to sign the Official Secrets Act.”

  Delphick signed first, without speaking. He rose, in silence, to leave.

  Bob scrawled his reluctant signature and handed the form back across Oblon’s desk. The sleeve of his jacket clipped the corner of Oblon’s in-tray turret. Everything crashed to the floor. Papers carpeted more than half the office.

  “Sorry, sir. Clumsy of me,” said Detective Sergeant Ranger, and followed the Oracle from the room without another word.

  Chapter Seventeen

  AN UNMARKED POLICE car made its roundabout way from Ashford to Plummergen, arriving in the middle of the morning. Heading north it crossed the Royal Military Canal, turned down Nowhere Lane, and stopped near a discreetly parked panda. Two young men got out to greet a third man, rather older, in uniform.

  “Potter’s talked to the vicar,” Brinton had told Detective Constable Foxon, “and he’ll be there to keep an eye on things while you dig. Potter,” he added as Foxon grinned. “Not the vicar, no matter how much the old boy likes to play in his vegetable patch. The fewer people on this wild goose chase, the better.”

  “And unless we find the golden egg we don’t dig, sir. Is that right?”

  “Depends how often the thing goes beep, laddie. You should know, you went to the shop, you had the lecture. If it beeps, you said, something’s there. Could be an old tin can, could be a broken spade, could be somebody’s loose change or—and pay attention, Foxon—the buckle from their trousers. Or the buttons from their tunic. If the thing makes the right sort of noise, you and young Whatsit start digging. Potter can shake the sieve.”

  News of police activity near the churchyard did not go unnoticed in Plummergen. PC Potter, warned by Brinton to keep it as quiet as possible—there were also warnings about chasing wild geese—had been torn between walking down The Street and risking questions, or driving there and making it official. He wondered about plain clothes rather than uniform, but that too would cause undue comment. In Plummergen there were always curtains on the twitch, and people going in and out of shops close to the Nowhere Lane turning.

  Margery Welsted, popping down to Mrs. Wyght’s for half a dozen currant buns (elevenses) and a sliced brown for toasting (supper tonight, sardines, and breakfast tomorrow), saw PC Potter driving down the lane and—she waited, to be sure—not coming back. She could see he’d gone beyond Summerset Cottage. Could be heading to one of the farms. Reminders about warble fly and sheep-dip, perhaps.

  Perhaps not. Margery continued to wait. Watching a blacksmith at work made excellent cover, and Dan Eggleden was a pleasure to watch. He could shape and fit a horseshoe faster than anyone for miles, and his wrought-iron balustrade for Miss Wicks’s cottage was a matter of village pride.

  Above the roar of the bellows, the rage of the fire and the clang of the hammer on red-hot metal nobody could have heard the approach of the unmarked police car, but Nowhere Lane was almost directly opposite the forge, and the movement as the car slowed caught Margery’s eye. Waving to Dan, she turned to see Detective Constable Foxon from Ashford, with another young man at his side, follow in the wake of Police Constable Potter. And, likewise, not coming back.

  Margery hurried to the bakery. There was nobody there but Mrs. Wyght. Plummergen prefers a larger audience when it has news to impart. With buns and bread in the string bag she’d crocheted herself, she returned to the draper’s and told her mother something seemed to be happening down the lane.

  “More people looking at Summerset Cottage,” suggested Mrs. Welsted. “Reporters, maybe. They say Dr. Braxted is going to be famous.”

  “No, it was the police. Two cars—Ned Potter in his panda, and that young Foxon from Ashford with another lad, both trying to look as if they were just out for a drive, as if anyone’d go down Nowhere Lane when it goes nowhere except to the end.”

  Mrs. Welsted’s interest grew. “Problems at one of the farms? Though nothing’s been said this morning that we’ve heard. Course, they might only just have found out and dialled nine-nine-nine.”

  “They weren’t flashing their blue lights, or using the siren.”

  “Trying to keep it secret.” Mrs. Welsted pursed her lips. “That would fit with Dr. Braxted, all right. Won’t let anyone into the house except those youngsters from Brettenden, and the police—and she shouts if you even go up the path.”

  True. Margery began to wonder if she hadn’t made too much of her casual sighting. The cars might have parked farther from Summerset Cottage to be out of the way of passing traffic, not that there ever was much...And as neither of the Welsteds could find any plausible excuse for either to stroll past to see what was happening, and exactly where, they agreed they must wait upon events. They knew it wouldn’t be long before someone came in and told them more.

  It wasn’t. And it was a lot more. Mrs. Skinner came in for another skein of red wool (her quilt panel depicted the French raiders burning the church in 1380) and said that as she walked past the forge Dan Eggleden had just stopped work, and in the distance she’d heard noises from Nowhere Lane and thought it best to slip along to make sure it wasn’t anyone up to mischief.

  “Men’s voices—thumps—a sort of rattling. Made me think of them Spaniards along of Mrs. Venning’s—castanets, and dancing—and I couldn’t think why anyone, even foreigners, should want to start dancing about like that so close to the churchyard.”

  “Hardly respectful,” agreed Mrs. Welsted, church organist, her lips again pursed, this time in disapproval. “Let the dead rest in peace, I say.”

  “Well!” said Mrs. Skinner, relishing her hold on her audience. “And that’s what I thought, too, only, with them being foreign—and Roman, what’s more—they’d think different from us, I thought. They have festivals, don’t they? Seen them on the telly.”

  “Mardi Gras,” said Margery, who enjoyed her food.

  Mrs. Skinner didn’t care to have her narrative interrupted. “So what I thought was,” she went on, “they might be trying to raise the spirits of the dead, in broad daylight, their ways not being the same as ours—or worse.”

  Mrs. Welsted quivered at this last. “We can only hope you were wrong, Mrs. Skinner, but with what they say is painted on the wall at Summerset Cottage—”

  “But it wasn’t them!” cried Mrs. Skinner, determined to deliver her punch line now that enough tension had been cranked up. “It was the police—and they wasn’t dancing, oh no.” Her eyes gleamed. “Digging, that’s what they were doing. Digging in the Kettle Wedge!”

  “I said it was police cars I saw,” crowed Margery.

  “Why should they sound like castanets?” said her mother.

  “That was Ned Potter with a great metal sieve, shaking fit to bust—and that Foxon lad from Ashford walking about with headphones and a giant vacuum cleaner or similar—”

  The door opened, the bell pinged, Mrs. Henderson came in. She spotted the skein of red wool on the counter beside Mrs. Skinner, and bristled. Mrs. Henderson was another who had chosen to depict the incendiary events of 1380.

  “—and the other lad with a spade, digging...”

  Mrs. Henderson’s voice was louder than Mrs. Skinner’s. “Did you know there’s police over there digging in the churchyard?”

  “We were just saying,” began Mrs. Welsted. Mrs. Skinner prepared to repeat
her story. Mrs. Henderson gave her no time.

  “You know why, don’t you? Acting like they’re looking for summat with one of them new-fangled metal detectors, but that’ll be just a bluff. Mr. Treeves wouldn’t let them go treasure-hunting among the graves. Not respectful to the dead, is it?”

  “No,” said Mrs. Welsted, “it isn’t,” but Mrs. Henderson rushed on before the organist could say more.

  “But if it was a grave they were digging, or rather, digging up...”

  Even Mrs. Skinner had to share the delighted shudder that filled the little shop. All four women looked at each other with a bright, speculative gaze. Mrs. Henderson nodded.

  “The vicar would let them dig, all right, if it was police business and an exhumation...”

  It was the most exciting news in the village for years.

  Plummergen revels in excitement. It is any villager’s unspoken duty to fan the smallest ember of gossip and surmise into heart-warming flame for the benefit of the curious. Forgotten by Mrs. Skinner and Mrs. Henderson alike were the long-dead flames fanned by the raiding French in 1380, and their place in the Plummergen Quilt. Mrs. Skinner paid for her wool and hurried off towards the post office. Mrs. Henderson told Mrs. Welsted she’d forgotten her shopping list and would be back later. She went in hot pursuit of her rival and caught up with her. They entered the post office together.

  Tongues wagged. Theories were concocted, exchanged, shot down.

  “...wrong part of the churchyard for really historical graves...”

  “...most recent burial old Griselda...”

  “...could be one of her sisters, buried beside ’em...”

  “...all three, maybe—or the old colonel...”

  “...they said it was a stroke, but you never can tell...”

  “...wicked temper—one of ’em could have slipped summat in his food...”

  “...anyone could have slipped summat to any of ’em...”

  “...whole family poisoned, and Griselda the last...”

  “...servants disappeared—gone back to London to hide...”

  Only now did Miss Nuttel and Mrs. Blaine, eager listeners but for once unable to break into the swift, shrill, speculative flow, find their chance to throw cold water on at least one of the theories.

  “We saw the Brattles the other day,” said Mrs. Blaine. “In Brettenden. If I’d poisoned my employers I wouldn’t be so foolish as to move just a few miles away, where anyone might see me. It can’t have been them who did it—if anyone did at all,” she added. Wholesale, undetected slaughter in a small village over several decades seemed less and less likely the more she thought the matter over.

  “Might of come back for a visit,” someone said, but was ignored.

  “Odd pair,” said Miss Nuttel. “Talking to Miss Seeton. Not like them.”

  “Never talked much to anyone when they lived here, that’s true,” conceded Mrs. Spice.

  “Perhaps Griselda didn’t want ’em to,” said Mrs. Skinner. “Or allow them. Who pays the piper calls the tune, and them Saxons piped for years, the colonel and his girls.”

  “Perhaps they were asking Miss Seeton for a job,” said Mrs. Henderson.

  “Everyone knows she’s got Martha Bloomer,” countered Mrs. Skinner.

  “The Brattles might not know.” A point to Mrs. Henderson. Never exactly mixed, that pair from London, had they? At least, not enough to hear things about people in the village, and who they worked for. Martha Bloomer, a very different sort of Londoner and married to a local, had adapted much better than the Brattles to life in Plummergen, obliging for several other ladies as well as Miss Seeton. Those who paid Martha paid her well, and kept her services. Bribery (as some had found to their cost) did not work. Hadn’t she been with old Mrs. Bannet for years before Miss Seeton? And she’d been almost as long with the Colvedens...

  Everyone realised at the same time the possibilities in what had just been said—and in what was not being said. Voices hushed. Eyes glittered. Brains were busy.

  “They do like their privacy at Rytham Hall,” someone said at last. That long-ago lady lumberjack who had retreated with a telescope to Dungeness was not forgotten. Nor was the family’s reluctance to exhibit the wedding presents anywhere but in the village hall.

  “With Louise a foreigner,” said Mrs. Henderson, brooding on 1380, “you can understand they might not want her right there in the house with them.”

  “Griselda could of lived for years,” said Mrs. Skinner, likewise thoughtful.

  “Lady Colveden used to visit every week,” said someone.

  “Kept her on the doorstep, though, didn’t they? Shows they never trusted her inside.”

  “More than one door to any house. Can’t be everywhere at once...”

  “...easy enough for summat to be slipped in a cup of tea...”

  “...pillow or cushion over her face...”

  “...never heard official what she really died of, did we...”

  “What a time for young Nigel to come back!”

  And everyone thrilled to the dreadful shock the young couple were about to receive once Nigel’s mother had been arrested on suspicion of doing away with old Miss Saxon in order to provide her son and his bride with a home of their own in a conveniently empty Summerset Cottage.

  On the desk of Superintendent Brinton in Ashford, the telephone rang. “Potter? Still having fun with your bucket and spade? Found anything?” The receiver quacked excitedly in the superintendent’s ear. “Stopped? For pity’s sake, why?” More quacks, and more excited. “They’re saying what?”

  He listened in dismay to the explanation, and could only shake his head. He began to feel giddy. He took a deep breath and looked across to the desk of his sidekick, ready to tell him to pick up his extension, but Foxon was in Plummergen, with a metal detector he had, according to PC Potter, dropped when Mabel Potter came hurrying down Nowhere Lane to tell the three policemen the latest gossip she’d heard while out shopping, and what did they think ought to be done about it. All Brinton could do was tear his hair, and groan periodically until the story came to its apologetic end.

  “No, I don’t see what else you could have done, especially if...No, not your fault, mine. I should never have listened to the Oracle. I should have thought how it might look to those scandal-mongering fools in your blasted neck of the woods...Yes, and a long shot anyway, as the detector bloke said from the start. Thirty years under the ground and the whole lot could be rusted away to nothing...Yes, tell ’em to pack up and forget the whole damned business. You can drop in on the vicar and explain, although—” Brinton knew the Reverend Arthur “—perhaps you’d best report to his sister at the same time. She’s got a head on her shoulders. A few words from Miss Treeves should stop the worst of it...”

  It was as well for Brinton’s peace of mind that he did not know, and PC Potter did not remember, that Molly Treeves was locked away with the rest of the Quilt Committee, busy with layouts in the village hall.

  Foxon came with exaggerated care through the office door, rubbing his back. “Worse than digging my gran’s garden, sir.” He perched daintily on the corner of his desk, grinning at his superior. “I won’t sit down just yet, if you don’t mind. Ned Potter’s as much of a slave-driver as you could ever be—or Gran Biddle.”

  Brinton glowered. “You survived the ordeal, I see, even though you’ve cost us a pretty penny smashing up the equipment and—”

  “No, sir!” Foxon seldom interrupted without good cause, so Brinton let it pass. “It just slipped from my hands and one of the dials got knocked off the setting. A few twiddles and it was fine again. We dropped it off at the shop before reporting back here, sir, and he said in the interests of public relations he wouldn’t charge us for the whole day.”

  “Very generous, but then, I suppose it’s the man’s livelihood.”

  “How he can make money at it I’ve no idea, sir. Why anyone should think it’s fun to trudge up and down through a load of weeds and brambles
with headphones beeping in your ears all the time I can’t imagine. We should have thought to take a scythe. I’m all for Women’s Lib after this morning, sir, believe me. Now I know how they feel when they have to hoover the carpets.”

  “I hate women,” said Brinton. “Especially the gossiping sort.”

  Foxon, filling in the gaps, was sobered at once. “We couldn’t believe it when Mabel told us what they were saying in the village, sir. An exhumation is daft enough—don’t they realise how long it takes to arrange something like that?—but to go around saying Nigel’s mother poisoned half the Saxon family because Sir George wanted a tenant who could pay more money...”

  Brinton sat up. “I thought it was only Griselda she poisoned, because she was the last one left in the house and the newlyweds wanted to move in.”

  Foxon sighed. “Ned thought it might be a good idea if we had a cup of tea and a bun at the bakery tea-rooms, sir, on account of all the thirsty work we’d been doing looking for a set of Second World War buttons and nothing else—and not finding them, anyway.”

  “A good man, Potter. It ought to have worked, but I take it that by the time you went in they’d thought of something else?”

  “Oh, they had. The latest is that both of ’em, Sir George as well as her ladyship, were in cahoots with the servants to help Griselda on her way, and that’s why the Brattles went off in such a hurry after the funeral, sir. In case awkward questions were asked by the authorities—probably meaning the police, but with us there they didn’t spell it out.”

  Brinton clutched his hair, and brooded. “We can only hope some new turn of events occupies their pestilential little minds before too long. But maybe there could be something in what they’re saying—oh, I don’t mean the Colvedens,” as Foxon let out a protesting yelp, “but you can’t deny it’s odd the way the Brattles vanished without even hanging around to see if they’d been left a keepsake or two in the old girl’s will.”

  “They haven’t exactly vanished, sir. I forgot to tell you, someone saw them the other day in Brettenden.” Foxon paused. “They were, uh, chatting with Miss Seeton, sir.”