“Crabbe’s,” said a sudden voice in her ear; and Miss Seeton, waking, blushed for a third time.
From what even she had to acknowledge might be the workings of her subconscious, Miss Seeton found herself asking to be set down outside Brettenden’s library, not its museum. In answer to the solicitations of taxi driver Jack Crabbe, she promised to telephone if, once her business in Brettenden was complete, she could find nobody to bring her home; no, she had no idea how long she would be, so it really was not worth dear Mr. Crabbe’s while to wait. In her eagerness for him to be gone, Miss Seeton almost dropped her handbag as she fumbled with the catch in the hunt for her purse and his fare. The ferrule of her umbrella caught in the open door of the cab; her arm jerked sideways, and the half-open bag emptied itself on the ground.
“Careful, now—here, let me.” Gentleman Jack was out of his cab and gathering Miss Seeton’s assorted impedimenta before she could do more than click her tongue and rebuke herself for her carelessness. “Dictionary, eh?” Mr. Crabbe picked it up with a grin. “Setting up in competition, Miss Seeton?” And he laughed richly. It was an open secret in Plummergen that, under the pseudonym “Coronet” (he always said he’d got a kinder heart than folk supposed), the great-grandson of the garage proprietor was a successful composer of cryptic crossword puzzles.
“Hey, now.” Jack whistled. “Latin! My word, you’ll be showing me a clean pair of heels and no mistake, Miss Seeton. Never one for dead languages, I wasn’t. Reckon I’ll be on the dole before—Hey! No,” he said at her anguished exclamation, “I was only kidding. You go ahead, with my compliments, Miss Seeton, I’m not one to stand in anyone’s way. Room for another good ’un any time, the editors allus tell me. Seems those as like ’em can’t get enough. Not as if they stick to just one and won’t dare look at the rest—no more than if a chap as likes Dickens thinks it a disloyalty, dipping into Thackeray once in a while, or Wilkie Collins.”
He handed over the last of his passenger’s belongings—a bulging envelope in stout brown manila—and clapped her kindly on the shoulder. “You need any help, Miss Seeton—get stuck with the grid, or short of the top right-hand corner—you give me a ring, see?”
And he embarrassed Miss Seeton even more by refusing the offered fare, on the grounds that he’d been no more than doing a favour for a fellow professional; and drove off with a merry tootle of the horn which made her feel more guilty than she remembered feeling since she didn’t know when.
Or rather, she did. Since the auction. The auction at which she’d bought the wooden chest ...
The chest which was the reason she’d come to Brettenden in the first place ...
To reconcile her conscience, Miss Seeton returned to the library the Latin lexicon she’d intended to keep until she’d seen Dr. Braxted, and blushed as she agreed with the counter assistant that it had indeed been most helpful. Then, with her heart beating a little faster than usual, she headed out of the library into the High Street, and trotted off in the direction of the museum.
Euphemia had said it was impossible to miss her office. She was, in fact, right, though her visitor was given no chance to test the theory. Dr. Braxted was waiting for Miss Seeton in the entrance hall, her eyes lighting up as the heavy swing door was pushed open and the little figure in the tweed coat and remarkable hat peeped inside.
“Miss Seeton!” Euphemia came leaping from the bench on which she had alternately sat, twiddling her thumbs, and leaned, gossiping with the uniformed guide. “My friend, at last,” she explained, in a whispered aside. “I’ll take her right along with me—we’ll have coffee in my room, Miss Seeton, and I’ll show you my treasures!”
Two turnings off a straight corridor, and they were there. “Told you so,” said Euphemia, opening the door and ushering Miss Seeton into a room that was probably larger than it seemed, so cluttered was it on every side with books and cardboard boxes, with balls of string and pottery shards and—balanced one upon the other—a dustpan, a brush, and a wind-up tape measure in a circular leather case. “I simply couldn’t wait, not once I’d got the final drop on it—by the way, do sit down.” She gesticulated expansively towards what might have been—beneath its high-piled obscurity of learned journals (bound and unbound), and bundles of clipped newspapers—a chair.
“I didn’t want anyone to know what we were up to,” went on Euphemia, oblivious to the confusion of her guest as she darted around the desk to snatch up a notepad, covered in black spider tracks. “Told ’em,” she said, “you were interested in ...” But Miss Seeton was never to know. “Now, you just sit down and we’ll talk!”
Euphemia perched herself on the one clear corner of an otherwise cluttered desk in what must, Miss Seeton supposed, be her habitual spot. So intent was she on the substance of her spider tracks that she had no thought to spare for Miss Seeton: who took one more look at the hypothetical chair, knew she would never dare to touch the teetering heap thereon—knew likewise she would never dare to disobey Euphemia—and sank, after a moment’s pause, to the floor. She knew she would find it difficult, in her skirt, to achieve the Lotus Pose without some unseemly revelation of her person; but the lower half, as it were, of her favourite Cow Face Posture—Gomukkhasana—must be unexceptionable. She duly rucked her skirt up just above the knees to prevent bagging; knelt; spread her back-bent feet far enough apart and no farther; and lowered her rear end neatly between them, at the same time with her hands turning out her heels, to point her toes forwards. When one normally assumed this posture in one’s underwear, it was surprising how inflexible one’s shoes, when worn, could be.
Euphemia didn’t so much ignore these contortions as fail to notice them in the first place. “Listen,” she commanded; and prepared to read aloud from her notes.
“First I’ll give you my translation: see how it compares with yours. This work was made in the Year of Our Lord 1525 at the expense of Adelard Hedgebote, son of Adelard, son of Florence—in this case male, but of course it can be used for females, too—Florence, son of Adelard, son of Bennet, husband of Adeline, daughter and heiress of Adelard Turbary, on whose souls may God have mercy. Interesting,” she added as Miss Seeton sighed with quiet pleasure at the near-accuracy of her own translation. “Propicietur is a post-Augustan usage—Augustan in the Roman sense, not Queen Anne—but it’s interesting in other ways, too. Seems your Benedicta came from pretty remarkable stock, Miss Seeton. Daughter and heiress seems to run in the family, don’t you think? Adeline Turbary way back in the fourteen hundreds, I should guess—and then Duke Bennet in the Regency period.”
She lowered the notepad and regarded Miss Seeton with a glittering eye that entirely overlooked the fact that the object of regard was resting several feet below her on the floor. “Sounds to me as if you could have hit the jackpot again, old girl: mosaics one minute, dukedoms the next—and now let’s see that parchment of yours!”
Meekly Miss Seeton handed up the brown manila envelope. Euphemia opened it. She studied the contents in silence for a while. She frowned.
“I told you I was no expert,” she said at last. “Mind you, even without seeing this, from the inscription I’d have risked a small flutter you and Lady Colveden were absolutely right—but you need to be sure, with a title at stake. And that’s what I’ve tried to do.”
She leaned forward from the desk at a precarious angle and whispered in thrilling tones, “I had a word with Genie, not half an hour ago. Hope that’s okay with you,” she said as Miss Seeton looked somewhat startled, “but we don’t want this hanging around for some outside blighter to pick up and have all the fun with. Do we?”
Miss Seeton, blushing at this echo of her own emotions, relieved that they seemed to be shared by an eminent scientist and were therefore perhaps not as unreasonable as she’d feared, agreed with a gasp that they didn’t. And she didn’t. Mind, she meant. Not at all—apart, of course, from the fear that she might be wasting Dr. Braxted’s time, and that of—of her sister ...
“Dr. Braxted,�
� said Dr. Braxted with a twinkle. “Genie’s a Ph.D., too. And she looks exactly like me. You’ll feel quite at home with her.”
Miss Seeton blinked. Euphemia glanced at her watch. “Now then, if you step on it you’ll make the next fast train to London. Genie’s expecting you. I told her I’d ring,” she said above Miss Seeton’s audible squeak of surprise, “once you were on your way. I’m no mediaevalist, of course, but I’ve picked up a little from Genie over the years: I’ll take some instant snaps of the parchment while you powder your nose—no time for coffee, I’m afraid—then I can give her what I can over the phone before you get there with the real thing. Should give her a head start. From what she’s heard of the story, she’s just as keen as we are to find out what exactly it is we’ve got. Now then!”
Flinging out her arms for balance, she hopped down from the desk and headed for the door before Miss Seeton had even begun to unfold herself. “Come on,” she enjoined with her hand on the knob; and whisked out of the room with Miss Seeton, trying to catch her breath, pattering anxiously down the corridor behind her.
* * *
In London, it was raining again. The queues at the Charing Cross taxi rank were as long as Miss Seeton had ever seen them, and she thought her chances of hailing a cab outside the station very poor; but she was reluctant to entrust herself and her precious burden to either bus or tube. It took ten minutes patrolling the Strand before her quick eye and waving umbrella between them brought one of London’s philosophers to a hissing halt beside her.
“Where to, luv?”
Miss Seeton asked to be taken to the British Museum, and settled herself damply, mourning the cockscomb that drooped over her brow, on the smooth leather seat. Perhaps it was inevitable that the subject on which her driver chose to philosophise all the way to Bloomsbury should be the weather.
There was a distinct sense of déjà vu as Miss Seeton arrived at her destination to be saluted by a vigorous lady in sprightly tweeds.
“Miss Seeton!” It wasn’t a question: umbrellas might, on such a day, be more than fashion accessories, but only a complete disregard for fashion could justify such a hat. “Eugenia Braxted. My word,” she said, shaking hands, “do with warming up, couldn’t you? Come along to my hidey-hole, and we’ll have coffee.”
Dr. Braxted didn’t wait for coffee before, like her sister, she had whipped out a notebook. “Phemie wouldn’t make an archivist, but she knows enough to be a pretty useful long-range assistant. As soon as she’d given me the first few words ...” She cleared her throat. “Let’s see if she was right, shall we?”
Divining her meaning, Miss Seeton reached into her bag and produced the brown manila envelope. Eugenia’s hand was steady as she took it from her and raised the flap.
“Ah,” she breathed, taking out the soft, creamy-grey folds of parchment. “Feels genuine ... and,” she said, opening it, “looks genuine. So far ...” Gently she opened the box on its crimson ribbon. “And so does this. My goodness me. The Royal Seal ... Edward the Second. Ties in with the rest very nicely. Very nicely indeed ...”
She didn’t remove the seal from its box, but studied it carefully. “Edward enthroned recto, on horseback verso—that’s the usual style, and I imagine it’s no different in this case—front and back,” she translated as she looked up and caught Miss Seeton’s eye. “Sorry. My sister may have told you I’m a bit of an enthusiast about my work—and this is such a splendid example ...”
“Then,” Miss Seeton could hardly bring herself to ask, “the document is—is genuine?”
“Looks very much like it.” Eugenia beamed at her. “One of Edward’s Letters Patent—from the Latin, patere, to lie open.” She pronounced the word with three syllables. “Letters Patent are public, that’s to say government, documents, issued through the office of the Lord Chancellor, and sealed with the Great Seal of England.” She launched into what was evidently a set speech, to be delivered to all comers before her ears should be lacerated by a mispronunciation. “Pat, not pate. Patent leather is quite another matter—but you know this, of course,” she said as she recalled that her visitor was no careless student, but a responsible adult, willing to be informed. “Letters Patent: official documents, open”—she spread the parchment on her desk—“to the public, and conferring an exclusive right or privilege, such as the right to exploit an invention to financial advantage. Think of the chaps who thought up safety pins, or ballpoint pens. Or the ownership and inheritance of land. Or ... the right to a title of nobility, Miss Seeton.”
Miss Seeton, holding her breath, nodded.
“Pretty rare, you know.” Eugenia beamed again. She had her notebook in one hand as she smoothed the parchment with the other. “Wonderful, this stuff. Use the whole thickness of the skin, that’s vellum; split it into layers, and it’s parchment. Pickle it in salt, stretch it nice and thin, dry it and bleach it in the sun, and it’ll last a hundred lifetimes. Even the writing. Know what they used for ink?”
Miss Seeton shook her head.
“Oak apples boiled in sulphuric acid. Etches its way into the surface, so it doesn’t matter if it flakes off, we can always read the traces by ultraviolet. Not that Phemie needed to, of course.” She coughed. “Shall we see how she did? Edwardus Dei gracia rex Anglie dominus Hibernie et Dux Aquitannie omnibus ad quos presentes littere pervenerint salutem. ‘Edward, by the grace of God, King of England, Lord of Ireland and Duke of Aquitaine, to all those into whose presence these letters might come, greeting.’ Wonderful!” She flung out her arms, dropped her notebook, and addressed herself gleefully to the original. “Sciatis quod de gracia nostra speciali concessimus et licentiam dedimus pro nobis et heredibus nostris. He wants it known he graciously makes this special promise on behalf of himself and his heirs ... sibi et successoribus suis aut masculi aut mulieres pariter imperpetuum—to the subject of this letter and his heirs in perpetuity. His heirs whether male—or female ...”
Miss Seeton found that she was still holding her breath. She let it out now in a long sigh. Eugenia took no notice; she went on with her translation, muttering to herself and, when audible, sounding pleased. “Heirs male or female, on equal terms ... crown—no, coronet—and the same robes to be worn by both male and female in identical fashion—ha! Never heard of that before: peers and peeresses always dress differently. Touch of the Piers Gaveston here, I fancy ...” She chuckled.
Miss Seeton, whose historical reading had not left her ignorant of the sexual preference of Edward II, nodded; but Eugenia did not see.
“Eldest son to eldest son, and failing sons the eldest daughter ... equal rights and honours of inheritance ...” She looked up. She smiled. “And the inheritance he’s talking about, Miss Seeton, is the duchy of Estover!”
Miss Seeton smiled back a little nervously. “Then this is—is real?”
“As far as I can tell at this stage. I’ll need to study this more closely and consult a few colleagues—swear ’em to secrecy, and so on—before I can give you a definite opinion; but I think you could really be on to something here. You’ve checked in Debrett, Phemie tells me.”
“Only the current volume in our local library.”
“No Estovers?”
“Not as far as I could see, but—”
“Not exactly reliable,” said Eugenia. “Most of what’s in the peerage books is supplied by the peerage themselves, one way or another. If they want to keep something quiet, fudge a few dates, it’s not too hard. Who puts notices in the papers? Births, marriages, deaths? The family,” she stated before Miss Seeton could reply. “Where do Burke and Debrett find most of their information? The papers. Who do they ask to check it before they publish it? The family.” She glanced at Miss Seeton and smiled. “See what I mean?”
Miss Seeton saw. “An injudicious marriage,” she suggested, “would, in the circumstances you describe, be only too easy to ignore.”
“Ignore in the first generation; rumour in the second; forget completely by the third. What was the date on your Be
nedicta’s note? After a couple of hundred years ...”
“Who,” enquired Miss Seeton, “would know now?”
Eugenia shrugged. “Royal College of Heralds? The Lord Chancellor? Far as I remember, anyone who wants to claim a title has to prove his or her identity and descent from the last known incumbent, if that’s the word. Chancellor’s happy, then they go to the House of Lords for a Writ of Summons. The Lords issue the writ, and that creates the title again, as it were—needs an Act of Parliament to revoke it. That’s why it’s so dashed difficult for the nobs to disinherit their sons. They can do the black sheep out of the money, all right, but the title’s another matter altogether. And if the property’s entailed ...”
She favoured Miss Seeton with a searching look. “I’ll give you all the help I can, of course, but I’m a mediaevalist. It’s not really my period. Strikes me, Miss Seeton, you’re in for a pretty interesting few weeks!”
chapter
~ 22 ~
THE ASHFORD POLICE were proceeding about their business as they usually did, at a steady, careful, painstaking pace leavened by the occasional spurt of inspiration. Having two murders to investigate alongside the day-to-day enquiries into such crimes as burglary, assault, and motoring offences might be expected to cramp the investigative style to some extent: but Brinton, as ever, coped. By detailing junior officers to carry out routine legwork, by instructing that each and every resultant report should be duplicated and, in duplicate but digest form, should be sent to him, the superintendent tried to remain abreast of all the most important forensic discoveries while concentrating on that which he saw as his main job: solving the deaths of Terry Mimms and—despite the lapse of time, still no nearer a solution—of Professor Eldred Quendon.
Sold to Miss Seeton (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 19) Page 19