Sold to Miss Seeton (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 19)

by Hamilton Crane

  “Not after sunset, thank goodness.” Scrambling up from his knees, with a smile of thanks Nigel accepted the cup of tea—his third—that his hostess had poured as his mother handed him the plate of chocolate biscuits for the fourth (or possibly fifth) time. “I do hate admitting I’ve been beaten by anything mechanical, but umpty-centuries-old padlocks are a bit out of my league. If it had been a tractor engine, or the MG ...”

  “You did your best, Nigel,” Miss Seeton assured him, “and nobody can do more than that. Please don’t think I’m not grateful for all your hard work. Would you rather have some of Martha’s fruit-cake than another biscuit?”

  Mr. Colveden was far too well bred to hint that he would, for preference, have both. “Well, if you twist my arm, I could force down a slice or two. If you can spare them, of course.”

  “I don’t know how you do it.” Nigel’s mother regarded her son with envy as she nibbled daintily on what was still her first digestive. “One hint of a calorie, and I have to diet for a week, whereas you ...”

  “A finely balanced metabolism, tuned to perfection with regular exercise and fresh air.” Then Nigel grinned. “Now, there’s an idea, talking of air—or rather hair. Mother, do you have any grips or pins about your person?”

  Her ladyship shook back from her face the thick, wavy brown locks that had drifted forwards in the excitement of the moment. On the point of uttering a scornful reply, she recollected herself just in time and smiled apologetically at Miss Seeton even as she frowned at her son. “No,” said her ladyship, “I haven’t. As you really ought to know by now, you unnatural child.”

  There was a twinkle in Miss Seeton’s eye as she admitted that she, too, must disappoint her visitor in the matter of pins: she, like dear Nigel’s mother, was fortunate in that her hair had a strong natural wave, and held its shape well without, as it were, artificial aid.

  Nigel, after a moment’s resignation, volunteered with a faint grin that there always remained brute force and Miss Seeton’s poker, if—

  “Nigel, really.” His mother favoured the future baronet with an exasperated glance, but Miss Seeton, having taught for many years, was accustomed to the younger generation’s sense of humor, and replied cheerfully that she had, of course, given due consideration to what she feared one must call the more violent approach. If all else failed, common sense would indeed suggest a poker as the last resort, but on the other hand ...

  “On the other hand, if a hat pin would be of any use, I have several you could try—do excuse me while I slip upstairs—and there are always, of course,” said Miss Seeton, her hand on the doorknob, “the refugees.” Her eyes twinkled still, even as she sighed. “I’m sure they would never miss one or two, if they came in handy for the purpose—yours, that is—for though, naturally, I have done my best, I am, I fear, no great loss, unlike dear Martha, or Miss Armitage, or dear Miss Treeves, for example. And while I agree with you, Nigel, that it is ... disconcerting, to say the least, when one is forced to admit to failure, there are times, I feel, when common sense does require that persistence should yield to realism. Don’t you agree?”

  “Why—yes,” said Lady Colveden on her son’s behalf, as Miss Seeton, smiling again, vanished into the hall. Nigel’s attempt at a reply was mercifully muffled by cake crumbs.

  Mother and son regarded each other in a puzzled silence which was broken only by the sound of their hostess’s feet hurrying hatpinwards up the stairs—and then by a quiet choking, as the last of Nigel’s crumbs went down the wrong way. His mother reached hurriedly for the teapot.

  “I’ll take a chance on the twins,” she said, struggling to keep her voice steady, “if you’ll only promise not to ask about the—about the refugees when she comes back.” And, with a shaking hand, she poured.

  Miss Seeton returned to find Nigel with flushed cheeks and watering eyes, as Lady Colveden thumped him maternally on the back. She uttered a startled little gasp, and her ladyship turned quickly to greet her.

  “Don’t worry, Miss Seeton, it was just a crumb, and I took the liberty of giving him some more tea to wash it down.” She smiled. “I thought it worth risking ginger twins to save Nigel’s life, but I’m afraid I may have emptied the pot. Shall I make amends by clearing away for you while he has another try at the lock?”

  Miss Seeton, no more superstitious than Lady Colveden, had always been quietly amused by the country belief that the second person to pour from a pot is destined to give birth to a brace of redheaded infants. Smiling back, she begged Lady Colveden not to bother about plates and cups, which could wait: would she not find it of far greater interest, if dear Nigel was fully recovered, to watch him picking—if that was the correct word—the lock? She had brought as wide a selection of likely implements as she could find, if he cared to look ...

  “Your knitting needles!” Lady Colveden swooped on the fine metal rods as their owner tumbled them, together with an assortment of still finer rods—sharp at one end, decorated at the other—on the crisp white tablecloth. “And your hatpins—oh, it does seem a shame. But then ...” Miss Seeton was by no means the only member of Plummergen Women’s Institute who had struggled to complete even one of the six-inch knitted squares destined to be sewn into blankets for an international relief organisation. The airy comments of Nigel and his father about birds’ nests and manic wool spaghetti had rather annoyed her ladyship, who was in general resigned to the knowledge that her talents lay in other directions than those of stitchery and fancy needlework. But when it was for charity ...

  “As I mentioned earlier,” said Miss Seeton, with the faintest of sighs, “my contribution is likely to be so—so insignificant, compared to that from others more gifted, that it will be little missed, I fear. And I hoped—that is, thought—that if by any chance hatpins should prove unsuitable, then knitting needles—depending on the size, of course—might well do instead.”

  “They might, indeed. In fact, they’d probably be better,” came the quick response from the gallant Mr. Colveden, who strongly suspected that it had been only her inability to fulfil her guest’s request for hairpins that had prompted the conscientious hostess to volunteer for crib-cracking duty the treasured collection of hat ornaments inherited from her godmother. “I’d certainly hate to bend one of these”—he rattled the exotic pieces with a thoughtful finger—“beyond repair—they’re ... magnificent. You couldn’t hope,” he said, his voice commendably steady, “to buy replacements nowadays—but if anything should happen to your knitting needles—why, we’ve heaps to spare at the Hall.” He grinned at his mother.

  Lady Colveden hastened to give rueful confirmation of this irreverent remark, and Miss Seeton, much relieved, smiled, then nodded as Nigel made a random selection from the knitting needles and gave her an enquiring glance. Observing the nod, he returned her smile, squared his shoulders, excused himself from the table, and prepared to address his attentions once more to the battered, iron-banded wooden box in the middle of the sitting-room floor.

  “I’ll have one more crack at the fastening staples, just in case the oil’s finally condescended to do its stuff with the screws,” he told his audience, which hovered discreetly behind him, peeping curiously over his shoulders towards the treasure chest where it squatted on protective sheets of newspaper, surrounded by discarded tools. “Lucky you keep hens, Miss Seeton, or we’d have had to waste time popping back to the Hall for some of our own feathers.” He substituted for his knitting needle the stoutest among the screwdrivers. “Or we could have risked Martha’s wrath”—he set metal to metal and began the hopeful application of force—“by dismembering one of her—your—dusters—Ouch! Oh, damn and blast the stupid thing!”

  The future baronet was seldom so free with his speech in the presence of ladies, but in moments of acute stress even Jove must nod. He soon recovers himself, however: noblesse will always oblige. Nigel’s apology came swiftly, muffled through tightly clenched teeth as he sucked his gashed finger.

  Even had it not been
muffled, the apology would have been drowned out by the remonstrances of his mother and Miss Seeton. Enough (they insisted) was enough. He had done his best: he could do no more. Not without running the risk of considerable damage—

  “And not just to you,” said her ladyship sternly. “What about poor Miss Seeton’s carpet, with you bleeding to death all over it?”

  “Oh, dear,” said Miss Seeton hurriedly, “I assure you that careful sponging with cold water—not that there seems any particular need, of course. Dear Nigel is so considerate—but that cut looks deep, Nigel. I will fetch bandages and plaster while you cleanse it thoroughly with plenty of soap and hot water. Thoroughly, mind,” she added, reverting automatically to her pedagogic persona, and sounding even more stern in this crisis than his mother.

  Nigel grinned a feeble grin as Lady Colveden applauded the good sense of her hostess and dragged her son—above his protests that it was only a cut—out to the kitchen, where she supervised his ablutions at the sink to an accompaniment of scolding that if he hadn’t kept his tetanus jabs up to date it was nothing to do with her, and if he and his father chose to risk death by lockjaw it was all very well, but she had better things to do with her time than take care of invalids who’d brought their illness on themselves, and neither of them need expect any sympathy from her—

  “I am up to date,” Nigel managed to interject as his fond parent finally drew breath. “And so’s—ouch.”

  “The more it stings, the better it’s working,” came the callous reply. “You need to be sure every single germ is dead—that rust could be hundreds of years old.” Lady Colveden looked up and smiled as Miss Seeton appeared, carrying a small metal box, painted white. “Do you really want to make medical history by dying of some rare blood poisoning that became extinct hundreds of years ago?”

  As Nigel grinned again, Miss Seeton was just about to protest the illogicality of what his mother had said when she recollected herself with a start, and a blush. She set her first aid box quickly on the table, opened it, and began to rummage inside for scissors, lint, and disinfectant ...

  “I am so very, very sorry,” said Miss Seeton, as, with the final inch of sticking-plaster safely stuck, the party repaired once more to the sitting room. “That anyone, and most of all a friend, should have been—been injured in the cause of my—my foolish box. I fear that the—the mystery of the affair blinded me somewhat to the realisation that, though the task of picking a lock is always made to appear comparatively easy in films, or on television, in real life such matters are sadly different. Or possibly,” she added in reflective tones, “not. Sad, I mean, if it serves to deter people of a—a less honest nature than one ought to approve—not,” said Miss Seeton with a blush, “that I wish for one minute to imply—oh, dear ...”

  She subsided into an embarrassed babble of apology, gratitude, and ethical confusion.

  Nigel and Meg Colveden were long accustomed to Miss Seeton. Her ladyship assured their hostess that they entirely understood her meaning; her son insisted that so slight a laceration couldn’t prevent a little judicious prodding with one or other of the knitting needles procured for that very purpose. In the inevitable curiosity of the moment, Miss Seeton’s cheeks soon paled to her habitual shade of modest rose. Neither she nor Nigel’s mother raised any objection as the intrepid mechanic inserted the tip of the first slim, shining metal shaft into the obstinate black mouth of the padlock, and probed. And twisted ... and probed again, and again, in a silence broken only by the breathing of three attentive souls ...

  Whose pent-up breaths were released in a collective sigh as Nigel threw down the last of the needles, and shook his head. “You don’t need oil and feathers and screwdrivers for this, Miss Seeton. You need a blow-torch, or a hammer and chisel—you’ll have to get tough, I’m afraid. It’s beyond me. They don’t build tin-openers strong enough.”

  “But they do,” said his mother, as Miss Seeton struggled to suppress her disappointment, “have people who could make them, if they were asked. People like Dan Eggleden, for example. If he isn’t the strongest man for miles, then I’d like to know who is.”

  And the delighted sparkle in her hostess’s eyes showed Lady Colveden that Miss Seeton more than approved the idea of seeking assistance from Daniel Eggleden, Plummergen’s own captain of that band of mighty men much celebrated in verse: the village blacksmiths.

  chapter

  ~ 10 ~

  LONDON HAS BEEN described as a series of villages, joined companionably together. In one of these villages, in the basement of a tall Georgian house in the middle of an up-and-coming street of Georgian houses, a cat-owning music lover bent to pick up the leather wallet dropped at his feet by an agitated feline friend.

  “You’ve been raiding the dustbins again, you revolting creature.” Philosophically the man retrieved his trophy from the floor. “If I let you eat this, your insides will turn navy blue.” He made for the kitchen and his flip-top, cat-proof waste bin. “Which I suppose would serve you right for—Good heavens!” He stopped in his tracks. “Well, someone’s going to be sorry he emptied his pockets without checking ... I wonder how much—oops.”

  The rain had soaked right through the protective leather, turning the contents of the wallet to a sodden, papier-mâché mess of wadded notes and blurred ink, pink and green and blue and brown. The man contemplated the kitchen range with a calculating eye. “Well, that’s torn it. We haven’t a hope of knowing who owns this lot till it’s been properly dried out—hey!”

  The grey cat had leaped from the floor to the table, and was skidding across the surface, lashing his tail in the manner of a propeller to increase his speed. He skidded to a halt at the table’s edge, reached out a paw, and swiped at the wallet in his owner’s hand.

  “That’s not funny. You know you’re not allowed—I said that’s not funny!” he insisted as there came a second, more vicious swipe from the swift grey paw, and the wallet was dashed to the ground. The man bent to pick it up again, and a hissing, growling complaint rang out from above his head.

  “You’re having haddock for supper,” said the man, “and no arguments, all right? This,” he added, seizing the wallet, “gets dried out and identified and returned to its owner—hey!”

  The grey cat sprang. The wallet flew from the man’s startled hands to a corner of the room. The cat flew after it, twisted somehow in the air, and landed beside rather than on top of it, facing the man, and spitting. Flattened ears and narrowed eyes showed above sharp, pointed teeth as the spitting became a snarl. The plumy tail lashed to and fro across the floor in a nervous, lopsided arc that did not include in its sweeping embrace the damp blue leather bundle in the corner.

  “What’s got into you?” The man’s tone had softened. “I’ve never seen you like this before. Don’t tell me you really wanted to try banknote goulash as a change from fish. Something’s wrong, isn’t it? You don’t like it when I talk about the chap who owns this—ah!” The tail ceased suddenly to lash. The snarl became a warbled squeal, and the fur rose all along the spine as the little grey cat almost doubled in size.

  “You’re going psychic on me,” said the man after a few moments’ frantic thought. “You’re trying to tell me something—and I’m going psychic, too. I’ve the nastiest feeling I’m not going to enjoy the answer to all this once I’ve found out what it is.”

  Pleased that his message had finally begun to penetrate his man’s less speedy brain, the little grey cat allowed his nervous stance to relax. He stopped growling, smoothed his fur, and uttered as emphatic a chirrup as he could achieve in the stress of the moment. He rose to his feet and chirruped again. He padded to the door and glanced over his shoulder to where the man stood scratching his head.

  On the doormat, he stopped. He mewed. He stretched a paw as high as he could reach. The doorknob rattled.

  The man sighed. “You win. I know I won’t have a minute’s peace until we get this sorted out—but if you’re having me on ...”

  He s
natched his hat from the peg, shrugged on a battered mackintosh, and opened the door. The little grey cat danced outside and up the area steps. The man made a quick assessment of the likelihood of further rain, decided not to take his umbrella, locked his door, and set off as quickly as he thought prudent along slippery pavements in pursuit of his eager guide.

  Five minutes later he returned, twice as quickly, with no thought at all of prudence. All his attention was focused on the telephone in his kitchen, and on those three vital numbers on the dial:

  Nine, nine, nine.

  “I was afraid of this,” remarked Chief Superintendent Delphick. He and Bob were, for the present, no more than onlookers in a mean and noisome passage, standing as close as they were allowed to the spot on which lay, where the little grey cat had found it, the body of a man. A body now surrounded by those busy and inevitable attendants upon any sudden, violent death, the medical, the photographic, and the forensic officers. “If my instincts don’t deceive me, Sergeant Ranger, this is only the first in what could well prove a long and bloody series of gangland killings.”

  For a reply, Bob merely nodded. He intended no discourtesy: with his attention, like Delphick’s, fixed on all the activity around the body, he didn’t need to speak. He was in complete agreement with his chief ...

  Who sighed. “We suspected some time ago that Rickling might be poised to set out on the war-path. We heard rumors to the contrary, of course, which were not altogether convincing; and we may now, I believe, not unreasonably suppose our suspicions to have been correct. Unless ...”

  Gazing over the heads of his preoccupied subordinates, he sighed once more. “We have, our best endeavors notwithstanding, entirely failed to discover even the least trace of the missing Cutler. We have assumed, however, that he did not break out of prison for the fun of it. Should we perhaps also assume that it is his hand, and not that of Rickling, which has directed some felonious cohort towards ridding the underworld of Artie Chishall?”