“Next door,” said Miss Nuttel, as the knife completed its rhythmic little solo up and down the scrubbed white wood of the chopping board, and scraped the resultant soggy green mess into a mixing bowl. “The admiral—been thinking, Bunny. Those bees . . .”
Mrs. Blaine shuddered gleefully. “Too dangerous, Eric, as I’ve said all along—ever since That Man moved in, you know I have. Bees, after all, sting—and if anyone’s allergic, why, they could be killed!”
Miss Nuttel nodded. “Ballpoint pens,” she said grimly. “Emergency tracheotomy—been reading it up, just in case.” As Bunny squeaked with horror, Miss Nuttel gulped, and turned pale. “Hope not, though. Can’t say I . . . I fancy the idea overmuch,” and she sat down heavily on the nearest chair. Miss Nuttel, for all her gruff manner, was unnerved by many things, including the sight—even the concept—of blood.
Bunny clasped plump hands in anguish. “Oh, Eric, too brave of you! We must buy some ballpoint pens at once—and I think we should insist that the admiral pays for them! If we are forced to live so close to his hives—”
Thoughts of expenditure had taken Eric’s mind off having to stab her nearest and dearest through an allergy-swollen throat with a hollow plastic tube, and had reminded her of what it was she’d started to say in the first place. With one final gulp, she rose from her chair and strode, a little shakily, towards the kitchen worktop.
“Salad,” she said, gesticulating towards the bowl, and the waiting ingredients for the dressing. “Next month, dig up the roots—coffee, you know, dried and roasted. And no caffeine, either. Could even look for wild garlic—but the oil, Bunny.” She tapped the mellow green clarity of the small glass bottle with a peremptory finger. “Expensive.”
“It’s the best quality, Eric, and you know we agreed it would be false economy to lower our standards and risk being contaminated by—”
“Not saying we didn’t, Bunny. But the admiral—those bees of his. Been thinking. Won’t be buying honey now, will he? Or jam, more than likely.”
“We don’t buy jam either, Eric.” Bunny’s blackcurrant eyes narrowed in annoyance that her yearly efforts with the preserving pan seemed to have been so ignored. Miss Nuttel, who knew her friend’s temper of old (village wags rightly referred to Mrs. Blaine as Hot Cross Bun, though neither of the Nuts ever realised that nicknames had been bestowed upon them), hurried to make amends before Bunny could throw one of her monumental tantrums: quite apart from the inevitable aftermath of tears and headaches, she was looking forward to their early supper, hungry after their afternoon’s brief excursion to the woods.
“Jam’s fine, Bunny—splendid. Delicious. Doesn’t cost a penny, either, except for the cooking . . . and the sugar. Honey, now—free, with bees. But,” loudly, as Mrs. Blaine squeaked again, “can’t say I’m too keen, somehow,” and she thought queasily of ballpoint pens. “No, no—we’ll go on buying sugar. Still, no harm in other ways of economising. Oil, for instance. Been reading it up. Food for Free, from the library. Beech nut oil, he says, every three or four years. With a mincer or something—a muslin bag—three ounces of oil for every pound of nuts, Bunny, and it keeps well. Cooking . . . salads . . . beechnut butter . . .”
Miss Nuttel’s brisk eloquence eventually convinced Mrs. Blaine that it would at least be worth considering the ideas expressed in the book borrowed from Brettenden Library and studied each day with such intensity by her friend, once the evening’s outside work was done. Bunny had been too busy with household tasks to pay particular attention earlier in the week: but now her interest was caught. All through supper she asked questions, and discussed possibilities; and ended up listening to Eric read from Food for Free with more interest than she had expected to feel. Mrs. Blaine was not fond of excessive physical labour, and left all the gardening and other heavy work to Miss Nuttel; but the vision of herself and her friend gathering beechmast in an autumn wood, while the sun shone and birdsong filled the air, was an appealing one.
“We’ll go the day after tomorrow, if the weather’s fine,” she said, as Miss Nuttel marked the page with a careful slip of paper. “The bus runs again then, for one thing—and it’s not as if there’s too much to do in the garden now, is there?”
Miss Nuttel, who secretly felt that there was never any lack of things to do in the garden, was so relieved to have had her suggestion accepted without too much fuss that she merely nodded, and smiled, and spoke of wicker baskets and perhaps a small picnic, if Bunny thought . . .
Miss Nuttel was not the only gardener in Plummergen to feel rather overwhelmed by the size and scope of her horticultural obligations. At the southern end of the village, Miss Emily Dorothea Seeton was coming to the end of a comfortable potter in her small front garden—or what would have been, in more normal circumstances, a comfortable potter. Since the circumstances were not at present normal, Miss Seeton’s involvement with her garden was somewhat greater than it had ever been before; and she wasn’t entirely sure she knew what she was doing.
When Miss Seeton’s godmother and distant cousin, Old Mrs. Bannet, had died and bequeathed to dear Emily her Plummergen cottage, Sweetbriars, and a regrettably small (thought Cousin Flora) sum of money, included in that bequest had been the invaluable services of Stan and Martha Bloomer. Stan, Plummergen born and bred, was a farm worker who had wooed and wed his Martha when she came down from London on one of the annual hop-picking holidays beloved of cockneys through the generations. Martha took to village life with relish, and embarked on a career as general domestic factotum to certain selected households. Rytham Hall was one; Sweetbriars, another. The Colvedens had other people working for them on the farm and in the garden; Mrs. Bannet—and after her Miss Seeton—did not. Martha’s quick wits soon devised the perfect solution to this problem. Stan would tend the chickens, vegetable patch, fruit cage, and flower beds of Sweetbriars, and would fully supply from them every want the occupant of the cottage might express. He would do this at no charge; but he would keep for himself any profit he might make from selling the surplus he was sure, with his renowned industry, to make. His industry was duly rewarded.
The plan worked well from its inception. Mrs. Bannet had been unable to do much around her property for some years before she died at the age of ninety-eight, and the Bloomers had taken great pride in managing her household and treating her almost as a member of the family. Miss Seeton, in her turn, quickly came to rely on them. Martha had an admirably keen eye for dust—even keener than that of her employer, whose former employment as an art teacher had trained her to notice far more than the ordinary person: but Martha Bloomer—where domestic matters were concerned, at any rate—was far from ordinary.
Stan’s services to Miss Seeton were far more than those of one who could coax hens to lay or trees to fruit. Martha’s husband not only knew all about gardening, but was also able (once Miss Seeton had grown accustomed to his strong Kentish accent) to explain its mysteries in simple terms—which is all too seldom the case with experts. Miss Seeton had made the mistake of purchasing (before her first visit, as owner, to the cottage) a gardening manual entitled Greenfinger Points the Way. This tome had been recommended to her by a local bookshop proprietor who clearly had no close understanding of his stock, and Miss Seeton spent much of her first year in Plummergen asking Stan to interpret Greenfinger’s advice for her. Interpret it, to her complete satisfaction, Stan did; under his kindly tutelage, she grew in confidence year by year; and the knowledge that, should help be urgently required, he could (out of working hours) be found just on the other side of The Street, had increased her confidence still further.
So that when, even for one evening, he wasn’t there, her confidence was slightly dented. She couldn’t be altogether certain of what she was doing. With a trowel, a dibber, and a one-foot wooden rule, she was trying to plant bulbs along the lines recommended in the Gospel According to Greenfinger (Revised Bloomer Edition) and, to her regret, had reached a point when she realised she’d forgotten what Stan had said abo
ut the lilies.
“Such beautiful flowers,” lamented Miss Seeton, as she frowned with the effort to remember. “It would be such a pity to make a mistake—yet one cannot help wondering,” and she sighed, “if it would be so very serious to, well, adopt some sort of compromise.” She turned again to Greenfinger’s “Second Week in September” section, and sighed softly as she read it for the fourth time. “At least one can be sure that these are not Lilium candidum, because those must be planted in July, which would be far too late in any case. But both the other kinds need to be set twelve inches apart, which would hardly cause problems, I fancy—yet would an inch either way up or down really make such a great difference? I suppose, to the lily, it would. Oh, dear—and I had so hoped to finish this bed before supper . . .”
“Good evening, Miss Seeton.” The well-known tones hailed her from the front gate. “You look as if you’re enjoying yourself—you’ll have a grand show there next year.”
Miss Seeton smiled with relief on recognising the voice of Miss Molly Treeves, sister to Plummergen’s vicar, the Reverend Arthur, and jumped nimbly—silently blessing the inspiration which had made her, so many years ago now, send away for that copy of Yoga and Younger Every Day—to her feet to welcome one who knew almost as much about gardens as dear Stan.
“Miss Treeves, how very fortunate. I have been trying so hard to recall what he told me about stem-rooting or not—because it does seem to make a difference, from what the books says, and I would not wish to risk killing them when they are such graceful and attractive flowers. Stan, I mean—about the lilies. As I understand it, they should either be six inches or eight inches deep. Perhaps you would be kind enough to advise me whether seven might be acceptable—though not, I agree, ideal—for both kinds?”
Molly Treeves opened the gate and marched up the short front path to stare down at Miss Seeton’s cardboard box of assorted bulbs, saying as she did so: “I gather you haven’t spoken to Mr. Jessyp yet, Miss Seeton—though perhaps there has hardly been time.”
“Mr. Jessyp?” Miss Seeton looked puzzled. “Why, he can know nothing of my little problem, since I have only in the past few minutes realised that I have forgotten what he said—Stan, that is—and, forgive me, Miss Treeves, but may I say that I feel you are being unduly modest? Mr. Jessyp is a most courteous gentleman as well as an excellent headmaster, and no doubt would do his best to offer advice—but I am sure it could never be of as much help as anything you might tell me, if it would not be ungracious of me to say so about a colleague. He is, you see, unfortunately visiting relations this evening—that is, unfortunately for me, not for him, as it must be a most pleasant experience for them all when they see one another so seldom during the rest of the year. And of course, they are not so much his relations as dear Martha’s—Stan, I mean. They come every year for the hop-picking. And whether to top-dress them as well, of course, which also seems to depend on if they are, or are not—stem-rooting, that is. The bulbs. I feel sure, however, that you will be able to tell me.”
Miss Treeves, deflected from her original gambit by the anxious note in Miss Seeton’s voice, gave it as her considered opinion that lily bulbs, whether stem-rooting or not, came to no great harm if planted as close to the surface as five inches, because that was what she always did with hers, resting them (in groups of five, six, or seven rather than singly) on sand and covering them with dried leaves as well as soil. Miss Seeton faintly thanked her, and made a silent resolution to leave the lilies until tomorrow.
Miss Treeves, who knew Miss Seeton of old, realised that the little spinster hadn’t understood her reference to Martin Jessyp: no real reason why she should, of course, but it might be a kindness to warn her what might be in store for her, should she choose to accept her assignment—which, knowing Miss Seeton’s strong sense of duty and wish to be of service to her adopted home, the vicar’s sister was almost certain she would. Molly Treeves was a staunch believer in the community spirit, and considered Miss Seeton an admirable example to one and all.
“Mr. Jessyp,” she said, abandoning the topic of the lily bulbs for one of far greater importance, “is having trouble with Miss Maynard again, I’m sorry to say.”
“Oh, dear.” Miss Seeton shook her head. “Her mother, I suppose—it so often is, poor soul. She had such hopes of the most recent operation, I know, but . . .”
“It’s Miss Maynard herself, this time,” Miss Treeves said, rather grimly. “It makes a change, of course, as I know it usually is her mother or one of those interminable aunts who makes her absent—and it’s particularly inconvenient of her to have put her back out right at the start of the school year. Turning her mother in bed, or something of the sort, I gather—a slipped disc, so I heard. That’s why I wondered if Mr. Jessyp had spoken to you. I felt sure that if he had, and you’d agreed to take her class for the next few days until she’s on her feet again, you’d have been indoors preparing instead of out here. Unless he already has, and you’ve said no, of course.” Molly Treeves uttered a sudden laugh. “Poor Arthur!”
“The dear vicar?” Miss Seeton frowned. “Has he slipped a disc as well? How dreadful—and so awkward, with so many steps in the church tower.” Was there any practical assistance one might offer? Or would it be tactless to imply by such an offer that one thought—which of course one would never be so impertinent as to think—the vicar’s sister incapable of taking proper care of her brother?
“Goodness, no. Arthur’s as fit as he ever was—or he was when I left him to go to my committee. But he does get so terribly agitated, meeting new people, and if Mr. Jessyp brings in a supply teacher from outside the village, he’ll hide in the garden mowing the lawn all week, I expect, in case he has to talk to her. Which is good for the lawn, of course, but only in moderation.”
“Oh. Excuse me, Miss Treeves, but—surely not so early in the term, and at such a difficult time? Mr. Jessyp is a most conscientious teacher, I assure you, and a pleasure to work with.” Miss Seeton blushed in her struggle to pay due compliment. “Oh, dear—I would never dream of causing him so much anxiety by a refusal that he is obliged to employ a substitute with whom he feels himself unable to converse in a . . . in an unagitated fashion. I must telephone at once, and assure him that there can be no doubt of my agreeing to help out in this ... this emergency . . .”
But then Miss Seeton fell silent. She frowned. She ignored Miss Treeves’s gentle assurance that Mr. Jessyp, as far as she knew, had no inhibitions about strangers . . .
“Unless, of course,” said Miss Seeton, “I should be wanted by the police.” And she blushed again.
Miss Seeton, the most modest of maiden ladies, is far from being the desperado her previous words might have led anyone not knowing her unique character to suppose. As a teacher of art, she is inspirational and dedicated; as an artist, she is uninspired, conscientious, and dull . . . most of the time. But there is a hidden spark in Miss Seeton’s nature: a spark she tries hard to quench, feeling it to be not quite, well, respectable. Any artist, unless a genius—which Miss Seeton sadly knows herself not to be—should, in her opinion, draw or paint nothing except what is there to be seen . . . and it embarrasses her greatly to realise that, try as she may to stop herself doing so, there are occasions when what she sees is completely different from that seen by anyone else. And this completely different view of life has been so useful in the past to the police that Miss Seeton is now retained by Scotland Yard as an art consultant, consulted whenever a case involves anything of the bizarre, the freakish, the exotic: cases which, long after she herself has managed to forget her share in them, will be savoured by those fortunate enough to have shared them with her . . .
If savoured and fortunate are the right words to use, that is.
chapter
~ 3 ~
ONCE THE LITTLE misunderstanding had been cleared up, Miss Treeves and Miss Seeton chatted together for a few minutes more about the vicar’s shyness, and poor Miss Maynard’s back, and the possibility that Mr. J
essyp would soon be in touch with Miss Seeton to ask for her help. Miss Treeves then hurried home to the vicarage across the road, while Miss Seeton tidied away her gardening implements and those puzzling lily bulbs about which she would ask Stan tomorrow, or rather would ask dear Martha to ask him to call in when he could spare the time, so that one could ask him—except, of course, that one might not be at home to visitors when he did, if what Miss Treeves had said of poor Miss Maynard’s incapacity was true—if, indeed, one would even be at home to ask dear Martha, in the first place.
Miss Seeton’s knowledge of anatomy was excellent. She had watched bodies being dissected in a local mortuary during her student days; she had attended umpteen life classes; and she had practised yoga for some seven years now. The back—the spine—so very important for one’s basic state of health. The hours spent bending and stooping this afternoon—not a twinge or an ache or a spasm . . . How many times had the purchase of Yoga and Younger Every Day paid for itself, over and over again!
And yet one should not become over-confident. It was of course foolish to think of tempting Fate—but it might well do no harm if, rather than waiting until tonight, one just slipped up to the bedroom and ran through a few of the poses most beneficial to that complicated and delicate column of bone which both supported the body and protected the main pathway of the central nervous system. The Trikonasana or Triangle Pose, she thought, for the lumbar region in particular; the various Uttitha Merudandasanas or Lateral Spine Poses; and the Baddha Padmasana Shirshasana, or Headstand in Bound Lotus, which had taken her some time to perfect—if it wasn’t conceited of her to use such a term. Miss Seeton, as she trotted upstairs, blushed. Perhaps master would be a less, well, exaggerated—a more realistic—term, although even to speak of mastering, when one was the merest beginner—the book spoke of mental planes, of meditation—the Truth of Self or Samadhi which, in its perfect mental stillness, required a lifetime’s study to achieve . . .
Miss Seeton Plants Suspicion (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 15) Page 2