Miss Seeton Plants Suspicion (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 15)

by Hamilton Crane

  “Never mind that!” Brinton was unconscious of any incongruity in the inference that he preferred to clear a murder suspect—who hadn’t even been arrested—than to search for a possible kidnap victim. “What makes you say it was all a mistake about young Colveden?”

  “Easy.” Mel nudged him out of the way as she turned the pages of Miss Seeton’s sketchbook. “Well, easyish, if I’m right—look! The Last Night of the Proms, you said. But how did you know that’s what it was meant to be?”

  “Oh, that was easy,” Brinton told her, before realising what he’d said. Mel’s eyes glittered as he grinned a shamefaced grin. “That’s the bloke,” said Brinton, with a nod for Sir Stanford Rivers, “who was conducting, and the woman who sang ‘Rule Britannia’—I knew them almost straight away, for all she was upside down. We watch the Last Night every year, me and my wife.”

  “Plus about half the population of this country,” Mel told him in tones of triumph. “Including me, in my lonely room at the George,” with a quick wink for Thrudd. “Except that I watched in the Residents’ Lounge while I was chatting to Doris—but that’s the point,” as Brinton moved his hand in an impatient gesture. “Everyone watched it—and especially people from around here, because of the Young Farmers getting up a party and telling all their friends to watch in case they were on—which Nigel,” in even greater triumph, “was. There were two or three close-ups of him waving Miss S.’s umbrella—she told me she’d lent it to him when I saw her Sunday evening—and he hadn’t got flags painted all over his face like the boy standing behind him, or a hat pulled over his eyes like the other young lad they kept showing. Nigel was instantly recogniseable. Identifiable,” she concluded, with emphasis. “As you might say.”

  Brinton let out a long, low sigh. “And as three otherwise honest witnesses might say, too, the chumps. Miss Forby, you—you’re a marvel, girl. Banner, you’re a lucky man! They’d have been idiots if they hadn’t identified him, with the Last Night only two days before, and the murder two days before that . . .”

  Relief gave way to anxiety. Nigel had been cleared—he knew Mel must be right—of suspicion of murder, but could suspicion be lifted with such certainty from Barry Panfield? If it could—if Mel was right about both young men, using Miss Seeton’s sketches to prove her point—then the killer of the two Blondes in the Bag was still at large . . .

  And so was the kidnapper. “Miss Seeton,” said Brinton, pushing the unopened Blonde file away as he bent again to study the sketches. “We’ve got to find her, haven’t we? As soon as possible,” turning to Mel, whose instincts he was inclined to trust.

  Mel nodded, the gleam fading from her beautiful eyes. “If Miss S. is on her usual form, she had one of her—you’d laugh if I said premonitions, but—well, a kind of feeling for what was going to happen before it did. And she’ll have drawn it out of her system in these sketches, if we can only make sense of them. Trouble is, Mr. Brinton, I’m a stranger in these parts. Guess the clues are for you locals to sort out now.”

  Reluctantly, she stepped back, drawing Thrudd (who had long ago stopped hovering and closed in on his lady) back to allow Potter and Martha Bloomer to move towards the table on which lay Miss Seeton’s sketching pad, still open at the Last Night of the Proms cartoon. Martha, grateful to Mel though still uncertain, stared at the clearly limned forms of herself and her husband, and spoke the first words that came into her head.

  “Me with a crown and all that jewellery, and Stan in his overalls carrying them blackberries, or whatever they are—a right pair we look, and no mistake, though I don’t think she was wanting to make fun of us, somehow. More like remind herself of something—which I don’t really see how she can, me never having been much of a one for precious stones, though of course Stan’s a marvel with his fruit and veg, for all she’s drawn brambles as we’d rather find in the hedgerows than taking up space in the garden—” She broke off, remembering, and cast a woeful look about the sitting room before stifling an emotional sniff. “Oh, dear, poor Miss Emily—where on earth can she have gone?”

  Mel uttered a little yelp. Her The Natives Had a Name For It series of articles on dialect words and country customs had been a great success in the Daily Negative; a faint flicker in her subconscious was fanned into flame with every word Martha spoke. Mel blushed as people stared, but held her head high. The flames were starting to crackle . . .

  “Jewellery and blackberries—precious stones and brambles—well, fruit, anyway. But could you swear to it these are blackberries, Martha? Might they be grapes, or cherries—or raspberries?”

  “They’re a sight too dark for raspberries, I’d say—and black grapes they might be, but never green ones—and as to cherries, well, they might and they might not. I mean, in the basket and all, with the shadow, it’s hard to tell.”

  Mel’s eyes gleamed. “Might they be . . . mulberries, for instance? Little and round and dark like that?”

  Again Martha studied the basket shown in her husband’s hands. She looked at PC Potter, fellow countryman, a fascinated observer of the scene. “I suppose they might, since you insist, though I’d have thought there were more important things than worrying about berries, whatever they’re called—”

  “Oh no there aren’t!” Mel whirled to face Brinton, her eyes bright. “Superintendent, do you know what another word for the mulberry is? For the blackberry as well, in some areas, come to that. Have you any idea?”

  Brinton shrugged, and shook his head. PC Potter cleared his throat. “Beg pardon, sir, but if Miss Forby’s thinking of murrey, I believe I’ve heard the term used—”

  “And precious stones!” supplied Mel at once. “Murrey, stone—she’s got to be there, simply got to! How she knew beforehand I don’t know, but—”

  “But that poor girl came from Murreystone, Miss Forby,” Brinton reminded her, sighing: for a moment there, he’d almost thought she’d cracked it. “Myrtle Poppy Juniper Felsted—that’s who Miss Seeton’ll have been thinking about while she was drawing this. Juniper plants have berries as well, don’t they? And myrtle and poppy are more plants—although why she thought the girl was at the Last Night of the Proms when she was already dead—but that doesn’t alter the main point. I’m sorry, I don’t think this is much of a lead, after all.”

  “So far, it’s the only lead we have.” Mel was starting to lose her temper. “Unless you can think of anything else, Mr. Brinton, I can’t see we’d lose much by—well, by going to have a look round Murreystone for, well, clues . . .”

  Even as she spoke, her confidence faltered, and she began to see how hopeless the whole thing was. Miss Seeton’s strange drawings needed more inspiration to interpret them than Amelita Forby felt right now she possessed. But Potter was clearing his throat again, more forcefully this time.

  “Excuse me, sir, but I think I might be, well, getting the hang of all this.” He waved a wary hand over Miss Seeton’s sketches. “And you couldn’t be expected to know, sir—about how Old Man Barnston in Murreystone died a few weeks back, and he’d got no son, and the farm’s been took over by the Chelmers as farm next door, so the farmhouse is empty yet while they make their minds up what to do with it, his nephew and two nieces. Crown House Farm, it’s called, sir, with being on top of the hill . . .”

  Mel could have kissed him. “Crown House Farm in Murreystone, Superintendent—that’s where you’ll find Miss S., or I’m a Dutchman!”

  Her confidence was catching. Brinton nodded. “Could be—yes, I believe it’s worth checking. One of the outbuildings, most likely. Potter, you come in your car, I’ll go with Foxon. Three of us ought to be enough—I don’t want to wait for reinforcements from Ashford, just in case. Is there a way we can reach the place without being spotted?”

  “Four of us,” said Thrudd, speaking for almost the first time. Mel mustn’t be the only one of their partnership to play a starring role—besides, he had a soft spot for Miss Seeton—and, most of all, there was the story . . .

  “Five,
” flashed Mel, reading his mind, before Brinton could say anything. “It’s a free country, Superintendent,” as he glared at her, and opened his mouth to expostulate. “Guess if a lady and gent choose to take a drive in the good old country air, why, it’d be police harassment if anybody tells them there’s places they can’t go—and a pretty good story, too.”

  Brinton eyed her very sternly. His normally ruddy face turned red, then purple—and then, releasing his pent-up breath, he chuckled. “More blackmail, Miss Forby?”

  “Right on, Mr. Brinton.” Mel dug Thrudd sharply in the ribs. “Come on, Banner, we’ve work to do. And nobody tells Amelita Forby it’s man’s work, or I splash you male chauvinist pigs all over the front pages. Do we go in my car, or yours? The more the merrier,” she enquired of Brinton, “or do we play it sneaky and quiet?”

  He thought for only a few moments. “Potter, come with me—Banner, you and Miss Forby follow, and for heaven’s sake try to stay out of sight unless you’re needed. If word gets round there were civilians involved, I’ll be in rather more trouble than I like to think about.”

  “Hang on, Mr. Brinton.” Martha Bloomer had listened with growing incredulity to the quick exchange. “There’s me you seem to be forgetting, not to mention my Stan, if you give me time to run and fetch him—both of us so fond of poor Miss Emily as we are, and with more right than any of you, begging your pardon. We’ll not be left behind when she’s in trouble! She’ll be glad of a friendly face when she’s safely found . . .”

  The look Brinton directed upon Miss Seeton’s loyal servitor would have astounded Foxon, had he observed it. Kindliness was not normally a quality associated with Old Brimstone: but the superintendent’s gaze was now very kindly indeed. “I’m sorry, Martha, but you’ll be more use here,” he said, as the others hurried from the room. “You’re right, Miss Seeton will need you—but she’ll need you once she’s safely home again, with cups of tea and fruitcake and all the fussing you can give her.”

  And, as he followed his troops out of the cottage and down the paved front path, under his breath he repeated: “Once she’s safely home again. If she is . . .”

  chapter

  ~ 22 ~

  CLIVE CHELMER HAD never been an entirely comfortable member of the Brettenden and District Young Farmers. He joined in all their projects with just a little too much enthusiasm, and tried just a little too hard to be the life and soul of whatever parties they held, the charity events they organised, the excursions they made to various places of farming and countryside interest. Superficially, he was popular enough; deep down, he knew he wasn’t. Many social misfits are untroubled by their status, accepting with reasonably good grace that such is the way of the world: Clive Chelmer was not one of these. He longed to mingle with his peers without having to make twice the effort they did, and it disturbed him to realise that this was no more than an impossible dream.

  His parents were evidently unaware of their son’s fish-out-of-water feelings towards his nominal friends, though they did sometimes wonder why the boy was almost always the one who made the telephone calls, never the one who was telephoned. They wondered why his girlfriends seldom seemed to last, and decided in the end it must be because he was too particular in his requirements. His father accused his mother of spoiling the lad, setting their son’s prospective helpmeet an impossible standard. It would do Clive good, said Hubert Chelmer, to get away from home for a while to find his feet.

  “New Zealand,” he pontificated, “is about as far from England as anyone in their right mind could want. And he’d pick up a few tips on sheep,” he added, above the protests of his wife. “I didn’t like the look of Old Man Barnston last time I saw him. I give him another couple of years at most—and you know none of the family’s that keen to take over Crown House Farm when he goes. If I’m any judge, once they’ve inherited they’ll sell off most of the land at a knockdown price, and tart up the buildings for some townies to live in and make pretend they’re proper farmers. And if we can get our hands on those extra acres, we could expand the sheep side very nicely, thank you.”

  Brenda Chelmer, for all her apparent protests, needed less persuasion than Hubert had feared. With her perhaps excessive maternal instinct, Brenda was beginning to feel twinges of . . .nothing so strong as anxiety, but of doubt, indefinable though undeniable, over her only son. As Clive had grown older, she’d heard him grumble less and less about people until, this last year or so, he had never (to her knowledge) uttered a single word of complaint against anyone, not even the all-popular Nigel Colveden: and Brenda had to admit that as she was jealous of Lady Colveden, so it would come as no surprise if Clive had inherited an antipathy towards Lady Colveden’s son. But Clive gave no sign—and such an attitude couldn’t be natural! Surely it was inhuman not to feel like a good moan, once in a while? Yet Clive apparently never felt that way. Which either meant that she had given birth a quarter-century ago to a saint, which seemed most unlikely—or that he was bottling everything up inside him. Which seemed more than likely, if he was trying (as she began to suspect he might be) to boost his reputation for congeniality . . .

  Likely—but, well, as she’d thought before . . . inhuman, to have such superb self-control. Inhuman . . . though not mad, of course! Hadn’t Hubert said that New Zealand was as far away as anyone in their right mind could want? If her son were happy to go Down Under, then wouldn’t his going be all the reassurance his mother needed that she’d been worrying about nothing?

  “I think you’re right, Hubert,” said Brenda, and did not enlarge upon her reasons for agreeing with his proposal.

  And so Clive Chelmer went to New Zealand’s South Island to work on a sheep station. He had accepted the idea, after initial expressions of surprise, with equanimity: he’d tried so hard to be the best of good sports, and had grown a little tired of trying. The year’s absence from everyone who knew him, among people he’d probably never see again, could only, he believed, be a benefit to him. It would be a welcome rest, a chance to relax and be himself where his true self wouldn’t really matter . . .

  It was in celebration of his imminent release from perpetual pretence that he committed the first Blonde in the Bag killing; it was as consolation for having returned from a year’s freedom to the old, sad struggle to conform that he committed the second.

  Myrtle Felsted had hardly recognised Clive, bronzed by twelve months in the antipodean sun, his shoulders broadened by harder work than any he’d ever done on his father’s farm a mile out of Murreystone. Myrtle had been flattered when young Mr. Chelmer stopped for a chat, and insisted she should call him by his given name; she was still smarting from the latest fight with boyfriend Darren, and had been glad of Clive’s company, of his offer to drive her home rather than let her wait for the bus. And when he’d suggested that the next day they could take the roundabout route back to her lodgings, maybe stop for a drink, a meal, a change of scene, it had never entered her head that a son of one of the oldest families in the district could mean her any harm It had never entered the head of Brenda Chelmer, even in her most pessimistic moments, that her son could be a double killer. On Monday, she went shopping in Brettenden; she parked her car near the bus station; she overheard excited chatter, and not unnaturally pricked up her ears as those chatterers on their way to the shops passed her by, and she heard them speak of Plummergen, and Nigel Colveden.

  “You’ll never guess,” she told her husband and son later that afternoon as she took sandwiches and a flask out to the meadow, “what they’re saying in Brettenden.”

  “You’re right, my dear.” Hubert stirred sugar in his tea, and grimaced. “We won’t guess, because we won’t trouble to make the effort. It’s unlikely to be of much importance, whatever it is—Brettenden’s almost as bad as Plummergen for gossip. We’ll stick to hard facts, thank you.”

  “But this is a fact,” protested Brenda, one eye on Clive as he bit thoughtfully on a sandwich. “I wouldn’t be telling you if it wasn’t true, would I? T
hat would be slander! But everyone was talking about it, so it must be true—that Nigel Colveden, of all people, has been arrested for killing that poor Felsted girl, and probably the other one last year as well! They say Sir George,” she added, above the startled exclamations of her husband and son, “is going to pull every string he’s got to get him off, though I suppose you can hardly blame him. Poor Meg Colveden!” Brenda did not sound in the least sorry for her ladyship, with whom she had never been on first-name terms. “She must be having a simply dreadful time, though they say there’s a newspaper reporter already on the spot to help cover it all up, and that funny Miss Seeton of theirs”—everyone within a ten-mile radius of Plummergen had heard of Miss Seeton—“is going to help. I expect she’ll have a word with Scotland Yard—you know how they always do what she says.”

  Hubert blinked. “I’d have said her influence with the police has been much exaggerated, my dear. People do love making mountains out of molehills. If you ask me—”

  “Molehills!” cried Brenda, in triumph. “Remember that business with the Best Kept Village Competition? I agree our people didn’t exactly play fair, but everyone knows Miss Seeton was able to bring in the Yard to stop them cheating, instead of leaving it to the local police, the way anybody else would have had to. Doesn’t that prove she’ll wangle Nigel Colveden off the hook, and there’ll be nothing anyone can do about it? You may laugh,” as Hubert shook his head with a tolerant smile. “But I agree with the ones who say there’s something almost uncanny in the way that woman pokes her nose into what doesn’t concern her, and it’s all sorted out to certain people’s satisfaction.”

  “Don’t you mean her umbrella, my dear?”

  But Hubert’s little joke fell on deaf ears, as Brenda’s tongue wagged faster than ever. “Of course, Plummergen so often gets hold of the wrong end of the stick”—that old village rivalry was never entirely forgotten—“but some of them say she’s a witch—though I don’t believe that for a minute—but I do believe she has, well, power of a sort. Influence. If she hasn’t, why did the Queen invite her to a garden party a couple of years ago? She’s never invited anyone else from around here—except the Colvedens, that is.” And Brenda, after sighing, smirked as she recollected the probable mood of poor Meg Colveden at this moment . . .