Miss Nuttel and Mrs. Blaine approved the idea of keeping tradesmen in their proper place, but felt it their duty to discover the reason for the admiral’s haste, in case it had sinister undertones. Upon closer interrogation, the builders said they did not know. And the admiral always seemed too busy with carpentry, decoration, gardening, or general supervision of the work force to do more than nod from time to time at his next-door neighbours across the fence . . .
“Too suspicious, Eric,” Mrs. Blaine pointed out, straining on tiptoe to see round the corner from Lilikot’s bathroom window. Miss Nuttel, being so much taller, had elected to stand with one foot on the closed lavatory seat and the other on the laundry basket; a physical advantage which Mrs. Blaine thought too unfair. “Nobody can really be that busy when there’s a whole truckload of builders working about the place—he’s only pretending, I’m sure. Which means he must be up to no good, or else why is he hiding away and not talking to anyone? Except the builders, of course.”
The builders arrived each morning at eight-thirty sharp and worked right through until half past five, with only the shortest of breaks, when absolutely necessary.
“Slave labour,” said Miss Nuttel, who wasn’t afraid of hard work, in moderation, but insisted on making sure Bunny appreciated her efforts with frequent cups of tea, cakes, and insistence that she had a little sit-down from time to time. “Not normal. Probably threatened to keelhaul them. Or the cat,” she added.
Mrs. Blaine frowned. “Not a cat, Eric. Not a retired admiral. Surely he ought to have a parrot?”
“Of nine-tails, Bunny.” Miss Nuttel shook her head for Mrs. Blaine’s innocence. “The lash . . .”
“Oh!” Mrs. Blaine’s blackcurrant eyes widened in terror, and her voice rose to a squeak. “Oh, Eric—you know how I abhor violence! And to think of it so very close—I won’t sleep a wink, knowing he’s just next door! Too dangerous! Unless—well, maybe”—sometimes, the unthinkable did happen—“you’re wrong, Eric. Oh, I do hope so . . .”
Firmly, Miss Nuttel shook her head. “Sorry, Bunny. Not a chance. Not normal to be so reliable—builders, I mean. Ever heard of such a thing before? Stands to reason he must have threatened them.”
“Oh, Eric! Oh dear . . . But you’re so right, of course. Nobody normal ever manages to make builders turn up on time like that every day, and as for getting the work finished when you expect it . . . he must have, well, underworld connections—too horrible to think of, in our peaceful little village! Of course he must be up to no good, else why would he bother? He’s covering up for some dreadful crime—so dreadful, we can’t begin to guess. Which means”—and Mrs. Blaine allowed her voice to sink to its most thrilling depths—“he can’t really be an admiral after all, can he?”
Miss Nuttel was shaking her head again: she had started halfway through Mrs. Blaine’s impassioned speech and looked rather giddy as she finally gave tongue. “Not peaceful, not anymore. Not since . . .”
Mrs. Blaine clasped plump hands together and uttered one of her most horrified squeaks. “Oh, Eric! You can’t mean—an accomplice? Moving in while she’s not here—pretending he knows nothing at all about her, when really . . . Oh, yes! You’re right, of course. It explains everything.”
Miss Nuttel now nodded her head with as much insistence as she had shaken it before. “An accomplice,” she agreed, darkly. “What else? For That Woman . . .”
“Miss Seeton,” breathed Mrs. Blaine, nodding in her turn.
And, having thus come to a conclusion with which both were happy to concur, the Nuts resumed their surveillance upon Ararat Cottage, and upon the self-styled Rear Admiral “Buzzard” Leighton (retired). The post office being conveniently situated almost directly opposite, even when the Nuts were doing the day’s shopping they were able to maintain their watch . . .
“Oh, Eric! What on earth is That Man doing now?”
Mr. Stillman’s other customers also wished to know. They recognised the Brettenden builders’ lorry, which had already arrived once at the cottage that morning and decanted the greater part of its band of workers at the regular hour; it had then driven away with only two men in it. Seasoned observers took this as an indication that work on the cottage was coming to an end. These two were no doubt men whose services could be spared for some new project elsewhere.
But now the lorry was back; the two men were climbing out; their fellows were hurrying from Ararat Cottage, with the admiral close behind . . .
And, before the astonished eyes of Mrs. Blaine, Miss Nuttel, Mrs. Flax, and the rest, the entire band of half a dozen stalwarts began to manoeuvre down from the back of the lorry a very, very long wooden post, painted white. Which, having been duly manoeuvred, was borne out of sight around the side of the lorry; and failed to emerge again. Which could only mean . . .
“They’re taking it into That Man’s garden!” Without another word, Mrs. Blaine pushed through the throng to the post office door, wrenched it open, and hurried outside.
Everyone looked at everyone else; realised she must be right; and hurried after her. Mr. Stillman rolled his eyes at the ceiling and sighed. Mrs. Stillman glared at the assortment of items on the grocery counter and resolved that Emmy Putts would sell them, and Mrs. Blaine buy them, if she had to go out on the pavement and drag both parties back into the shop by force. “Emmeline!” she called, hurrying in turn to the door. “Emmeline!”
But Emmy Putts, in the middle of a cluster of erstwhile customers, was as deaf as they to her employer’s call.
“The strangest thing,” said Lady Colveden, as she passed his loaded plate to her son before settling to her own lunch. “When I drove past the post office, there they were outside—at least half the village, or so it seemed, staring across The Street at Lilikot. But the really strange thing was that Miss Nuttel and Mrs. Blaine were right there in the middle of the crowd, staring as hard as anyone! Well, I could hardly help noticing,” she added, as Nigel’s look of vague interest turned to a broad grin. “It looked so very . . . so very strange.”
“You couldn’t help noticing when you slowed the Hillman down to nought miles per hour, you mean.” Nigel waved a cheerful fork in his mother’s direction, ignoring her frown. “Did you manage to discover the nature of this, er, excessive strangeness before embarrassment caught up with you, and you were forced to drive on?”
“Why should I have been embarrassed?” His mother shook pepper on her vegetables with a careless hand, then sneezed twice. “Bother! When there was that enormous lorry blocking the road, and I wasn’t in the Hillman, I was driving the station wagon. Naturally”—she turned wide, innocent eyes upon her undutiful son—“I had to slow right down. Your father would have been furious if I’d scratched the paint.”
“Can’t use me as an excuse, m’dear. Never been furious in my life.” From behind the hallowed pages of the Farmers Weekly, held in quivering hands at the far end of the table, came the voice of Major-General Sir George Colveden, Bart, KCB, DSO, JP. “Bound to be a few scratches on a working vehicle—never expect anything else.”
Lady Colveden shook her head at the Farmers Weekly, but, as its pages remained steadfastly open between herself and the well-loved, though exasperating, person of her husband, she turned back to her equally loved, and just as exasperating, son. “I shall ask you to remember what your father said, Nigel, when the next bill from Crabbe’s Garage comes in. And if he even tries to grumble . . .”
“He wouldn’t dare.” Nigel raised his voice in the direction of the Farmers Weekly, from the direction of which a snort had emerged. “Besides, Dad has more important things to worry about—so do I, come to that. If it rains again before harvest’s over . . .”
An apprehensive rustle came from the upheld pages at the end of the table, though Sir George still did not speak. On the face of his son and heir, normally so cheerful, a frown had imposed itself. “And if it’s bad on the day of the big match—”
“There!” Lady Colveden clattered her knife in triumph on th
e edge of her plate. “I knew I meant to tell you something important, if you and your father hadn’t muddled me with talking about the Nuts, and the lorry delivering that huge white stick thing to the admiral’s house—”
“Stick?” Nigel looked up from his plate with interest. “Or stake? Perhaps he’s planning to sharpen it and creep out at midnight and skewer Miss Nuttel or Mrs. Blaine through the heart with it. Isn’t that supposed to keep witches well and truly in their place?”
“Vampires, I think,” his mother began, as a muttering was heard from behind the Farmers Weekly, and its pages were lowered to disclose Sir George’s ruddy face.
“Leighton planning to settle the hash of that vicious pair from Lilikot, is he? Good show. Lend him anything he likes.” He nodded to Nigel. “Whetstone in the toolbox, last time I checked. Sickle, scythe—billhook, if he’d prefer.”
“George, really! And Nigel, don’t pay any attention to your father. Admiral Leighton couldn’t carry it on his own, for one thing. It took six men to lift if off the back of the lorry, with the admiral telling them all what to do, and organising it beautifully, what’s more.”
“Trust the Navy. Senior Service. Organisation nearly as good as ours.” Which compliment, from an Army man, was the highest Sir George could pay.
Nigel reached around the Farmers Weekly for his father’s plate. “I suppose you weren’t driving, er, slowly enough to see where they took it and what they did with it, after all the effort, were you?”
“Somebody came up behind me and hooted,” Lady Colveden said, with a sigh, as she rose to collect the empty vegetable dishes. Then she brightened. “But really, it was as well I came home when I did, because otherwise I would have missed Molly’s call, and she seems to think there’s not much time to arrange something before it’s too late. Naturally, I told her that you and Nigel, George”—another wide-eyed stare—“would be the ones who’d know most about that. And especially Nigel, of course,” she added over her shoulder, loading crockery through the hatch into the kitchen.
Father looked at son; son looked at father. Shoulders were raised in identical shrugs. Sir George fingered his moustache thoughtfully. Miss Molly Treeves, sister to the Reverend Arthur Treeves, was—as everyone except the Reverend Arthur recognised—the true power behind the rectory throne; and was forever—or so it seemed to the baronet—approaching his wife with various arrangements, supposedly for the benefit of Plummergen, which always—he felt—ended up with poor Meg doing more than her fair share of the work. Duty to the village, of course: couldn’t deny that. Put in more than you take out: sound motto. Hard work the price you paid for having a good life yourself: matter of giving thanks for one’s own luck—count one’s blessings. If the current plan had the vicar’s approval . . . “Padre in on this as well?” he enquired at last, while Nigel added quickly:
“Whatever it is. Mother darling, do stop rattling and explain. Anyone would think you’d been talking to Miss Seeton—and she’s not due back from Scotland for another few days, surely?”
“Well, of course she isn’t. And that’s why,” said his mother, as if to a very backward child, “Molly says we must decide what needs doing, and how much we need to raise, so that we can tell her as soon as she comes home—well, not the minute she walks through the door, but you know what I mean—and then she can start painting, or whatever she decides to do. Though I imagine she’ll paint—she seems to prefer that, doesn’t she? And isn’t it lucky,” concluded Lady Colveden, “that the admiral has the builders in?”
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“ISN’T IT!” NIGEL followed his mother into the kitchen to help with the coffee, while his father, stifling a groan, gave up the unequal struggle and retired again behind the shelter of Farmers Weekly. “An amazing piece of luck,” said Nigel, putting dishes with saucepans to soak in the sink. Lady Colveden frowned at the percolator and wondered whether it would be too much of an extravagance to drop hints to Sir George in plenty of time for her birthday. “One of the best bits of news I’ve heard for ages . . .”
His mother switched her frown from the slow burps of the percolator to her son’s mischievous face. “Don’t be sarcastic, Nigel. I can’t think why, but you’ve been in a silly mood right through lunch. If you were younger, I’d ask your father to put you across his knee and spank you.”
“Even if you did, he wouldn’t.” Nigel twiddled taps happily, watching detergent bubble. “Cruelty to children—besides, he’d be sarcastic too, if he emerged from his paper long enough. He wouldn’t think it was playing the game to slipper me for what he wanted to do himself—because don’t you understand, Mother darling, that neither of us has the faintest idea what you’re talking about? Except—brilliant guesswork here—it has something to do with Miss Seeton.” He shook his head. “When you start rattling in all directions like that, it usually has. And”—he raised his voice above her indignant protest—“as what began it this time was my mentioning the big match, I suppose there’s some connection with cricket as well, though I hardly see Miss Seeton knocking Murreystone for six all over the field, even with her brolly on top form. And as for letting her loose on the scoring, or the teas—”
“It’s the pavilion.” His mother unplugged the percolator, loaded it on the waiting tray, and handed the tray to Nigel. He took it, staring at her.
“You want Miss Seeton to paint the cricket pavilion? Don’t you think that’s, er, rather beneath a qualified art teacher? Not that she’d see it like that at all, of course, especially if you and Miss Treeves asked her nicely, but—”
“I was talking about the admiral’s builders,” interposed Lady Colveden crossly. “As you knew perfectly well, Nigel.” She held open the kitchen door. Nigel bore the coffee tray with due solemnity into the dining room. Having set it down on the table, he turned to his mother again.
“The admiral’s builders, not the pavilion. You and Miss Treeves want Miss Seeton to paint their great big stick? But I thought you said earlier it was—oh, I see. That was the undercoat. Miss Seeton’s going to give it the gloss. Though what that has to do with cricket . . . Does the admiral know, I wonder, what fate has in store for him?”
He skipped nimbly to his seat as his mother threatened him with a coffee spoon. “What fate ought to have in store for you, Nigel, is . . . is . . . George, do listen to the way your son’s making fun of me. George!”
“Quite right,” replied Sir George, ambiguously. The pages of his journal shook. Lady Colveden caught Nigel’s unrepentant eye and poured coffee into cups with a sigh of resignation. Nigel passed one to his father, collected his own, and courteously passed his mother the sugar bowl.
“Cricket,” he murmured, just loud enough to be heard. “You know, maybe I can visualise it, after all. Miss Seeton at the crease—she takes guard (middle and leg, I should think)—the sunlight from the handle of that gold brolly of hers dazzles the Murreystone bowler—he sends down a bumper—Miss Seeton turns out to have a hitherto unsuspected and distinctive late cut—she whacks the ball straight at—”
“Nigel!” Lady Colveden didn’t know whether to giggle or scold. She took a deep breath. “Molly says her brother was looking for his old cricketing cap this morning, to keep the sun off while he was digging the garden, and he realised he must have left it in the pavilion after the last match. Not that he was playing, of course, but you remember how he does enjoy—yes, well,” as Nigel started grinning again, and the pages of Farmers Weekly quivered. “So the vicar hunted up the key from Mr. Jessyp and went off by himself, because Mr. Jessyp was trying to work out the timetable for next year—you know how quickly the school holidays seem to be over now, almost before they’ve started. And with poor Miss Maynard’s mother still no better . . .”
At another warning look from Nigel, and a pointed cough from her spouse, she had the grace to blush. “Anyway, the vicar was prowling round the pavilion all alone, and goodness knows how, but he managed to trip and almost knocked himself out, Molly says
. She says that if something isn’t done soon about the roof, it’s sure to collapse when the bad weather comes. You know how we’ve had one or two really heavy downpours recently. The floor’s a disgrace, especially in the kitchen.” This, with feeling: Lady Colveden served on the Tea Committee. “The underlay, or whatever it is, seems to have soaked up the damp and buckled dreadfully, so that tiles are coming away all over the place.”
“Floor and roof alike,” agreed Nigel, while his father blew through his moustache and muttered that it was a bally shame things had been allowed to slip so far, but people seemed to have had other things on their minds recently . . .
“So Molly suggested,” ventured Lady Colveden—by what process of thought, her husband and son could only begin to guess—“asking Miss Seeton to paint a picture of a Plummergen cricket match with the refurbished pavilion in the background, to be the star attraction at the auction”—she shot a quick look towards the Farmers Weekly—“where she thought you, George, might like to be the auctioneer. With a gavel, and Nigel to hold the lots up for people to see, and all the trimmings—a catalogue and so on . . .”
Sir George was observed to perk up a little at this suggestion, stroking his moustache with the tip of a thoughtful finger. Lady Colveden smiled, and frowned at Nigel, who had seemed about to speak.
“Of course, if you didn’t fancy that idea, she thought perhaps drawing a plan, and having people put their names on individual tiles—or a raffle . . .” She smiled again as her husband’s face fell. After more than twenty-five years of matrimony, Meg Colveden was an expert at making him do what he hadn’t, at first, supposed he wanted to. “Though that’s so ordinary, isn’t it? Whereas an auction would be different, and much more fun. Everyone can join in together—a real community effort—and it is,” she reminded her menfolk, “for the benefit of the whole village, after all.”
Miss Seeton Goes to Bat (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 14) Page 3