Nigel, full of admiration, drained his cup, and held it out politely for a refill without saying a word, though his smile was as knowing as his mother’s. At the end of the table, his father sat and huffed quietly to himself.
“And if they do a good job on the admiral’s house, Molly says we should be able to trust the builders to do as well with the pavilion. She says we ought to ask them for an estimate—or do I mean a quotation?—while they’re still here, instead of asking them to make a special trip out from Brettenden. Which is why”—and Lady Colveden poured fresh coffee with a defiant air—“I said it was lucky they were still in Plummergen, because it means we’ll know that much sooner how much money we have to find.”
“The pavilion certainly needs some work doing to it,” said Nigel at last. “That storm the other day didn’t help the state of the roof, or the floor.” He raised his voice slightly. “And I must say I think Dad would make a nifty auctioneer—we’ll dig out his old tails, and wax the tips of his moustache to look more the part; and I’ll borrow a set of overalls from Jack Crabbe, if you like, to do the holding-up in real style. Pity there’s no time to arrange it all before the big match, because it’s a splendid idea—on the whole,” honesty made him add. “You know, Mother, I can’t help wondering if it’s altogether wise . . .”
There was a pregnant pause. The brooding look on Sir George’s face was identical to that on his son’s. Lady Colveden glanced from one to the other, puzzled at first; then light dawned, and she was rather annoyed.
“Oh, really! All we’re going to ask her to do is paint a picture of the cricket pavilion on a summer’s day—almost like a chocolate box. For someone like Miss Seeton it would be the easiest thing in the world, and people are sure to want to buy it—so I do wish,” she said firmly, “the two of you wouldn’t sit there making me feel nervous. Whatever trouble could Miss Seeton possibly cause, painting a cricket pavilion?”
“Whatever trouble would anyone have expected Miss Seeton to cause by going to spend a couple of weeks in Scotland?” countered her son, with a rueful grin. “I bet they’ve had a high old time of it in Glenclachan while she’s been there—and another bet says Mel Forby didn’t write half the true story in the Negative. We’ll have to pump her for the rest when she’s down here next. Which will not,” he predicted cheerfully, “be too long, if I’m any judge.”
“Really, Nigel, as if . . .” But Meg Colveden’s protest lacked conviction. She sighed; shook her head; then smiled. “If Mel comes, it’ll be to write up all the burglaries, of course. And nobody could say Miss Seeton’s anything to do with them, because they’ve been happening the whole time she’s been away.”
“They started before she went, though,” Nigel reminded her. “Thrudd Banner had a couple of pieces about them in the Blare a week or so back, and I spotted a full-page article in the latest Anyone’s . . .”
Then it was Nigel’s turn to fall silent with embarrassment, though his blush was less noticeable than his mother’s had been. He was, after all, a working farmer. Lady Colveden and Sir George turned wide, wondering eyes upon their son.
Poor Nigel blushed again. “Well, I just happened to be talking to . . . a friend who happened to have a copy in, er, her gear, and . . .”
“A friend?” His mother’s eyes carefully avoided even an oblique meeting with his father’s. “Somebody from the village, of course. That is . . . nearly everyone in Plummergen reads Anyone’s, don’t they?”
Nigel finished the last of his coffee at one gulp and rose to his feet, at which he found himself staring as he replied. “Well, they may do, but she isn’t—from Plummergen, I mean, though she’s staying at the George and Dragon. She, er, arrived by bicycle this morning—from Brettenden, I think—just as I was popping up to the garage to ask Jack Crabbe about my timing chain—I don’t like the funny sort of jangling sound the MG’s been making over the last day or so—and . . .”
“So it was the MG outside the bakery,” said his mother. “I thought I recognised it, but with being so busy thinking about the admiral and that great stick thing . . . Anyway, at your age you hardly need your mother checking up on you all the time, do you? Nobody,” and Meg Colveden managed to look innocent and indignant at the same time, “could possibly say I was one of those dreadful prying mothers, could they? I’m not what anyone would call nosy, am I?” There was a pause. “Is she a pretty girl?”
“Get it fixed?” was his father’s more pertinent enquiry, as his son choked back an embarrassed laugh, blushing again. The major-general might well have his son’s eye for a pretty girl, but he had also—he hoped—his priorities right. “Do no good to neglect it, y’know. May last awhile longer, but when it goes . . .”
“Oh, well,” said Nigel, relieved to be talking about a less controversial topic. “You know how it is—by the time the engine had warmed up, it didn’t sound so bad. And after I’d helped Annabelle take her things into the George . . .”
He swallowed the rest of the sentence and snatched the empty cup from his father’s hand before Sir George had put it back on its saucer. “I’ll, er, clear away, shall I?” And, as his parents looked at each other and smiled, young Mr. Colveden collected everything together, loaded it on the tray, and scuttled out into the kitchen without a word.
Only three passengers alighted from the train at Brettenden two mornings later: a middle-aged couple and a small, grey-haired woman wearing a tweed suit and a distinctive cockscomb hat, and burdened with two small suitcases, a capacious handbag, a raincoat over one arm, and an umbrella.
The carriage from which this laden little lady alighted had arrived, by sheer chance, at the foot of the stairs; and she stood puzzling now over the baggage which had been taken out by a fellow passenger and deposited for her convenience on the platform. She looked round for a porter: there was none to be seen. She recalled that it was time for the mid-morning break, and that Brettenden’s stationmaster belonged to the Holdfast Brethren. Everyone knew about the Brethren. If the letter of Union law decreed that fifteen minutes must be taken for leisure and refreshment, then fast to the letter of that law would each Brother hold, both on his own account and for the benefit of those working under him. Which was, she reminded herself, only fair—one would not wish to be a nuisance, or to exploit anyone—but it did, one had to admit, have its inconvenient aspect.
She tucked the umbrella under one arm and bent to pick up her cases. As she straightened, her mackintosh slid down and tangled itself round the point of her umbrella. With a clatter, gamp and gaberdine fell to the platform, and their owner was heard to utter a little cry of “Drat!” as, making an instinctive grab for her precipitating property, she let fall both suitcases and narrowly missed her toes.
“Dear, dear. How very careless.” She sighed, shook her head, and bent to retrieve her belongings.
“Allow me.” The elderly lady had been so preoccupied that she had missed the approach from the train’s farther end of the middle-aged couple. Now, above her little squeak of surprise, the husband reached round her to seize a case in either hand. “No, no—nothing to it, believe me. They balance beautifully, and they hardly weigh a thing. Will you manage all right at the other end, though? Where are you going?”
“You’d be welcome to share our taxi,” said his wife, who had slowed her steps to match those of the small woman as she trotted anxiously up the concrete steps in the wake of her vanishing valises.
“That is really most kind, but I have arranged for a car to collect me—from the garage, you know. In Plummergen. That is, the car is from the garage—dear Jack Crabbe is always so reliable—but he is, of course, to collect me from Brettenden. And take me home. To Plummergen, which is where I live. Although I have recently been in Scotland, of course—not to live, but on holiday. Which is why I have so much luggage to carry—and it really is,” she repeated, “most kind of you.”
“Not at all.” The answer came easily—and with truth, the middle-aged man being almost a foot taller, and seve
ral stone of muscle heavier, than the agitated and apologetic little lady in the tweed suit. “Nearly over the footbridge now, and then it’s downhill all the way. Don’t worry about it,” as she began to apologise again. Her knight-errant’s helpmeet, fearing that she would apologise herself into exhaustion, interrupted quickly, but firmly.
“Do excuse me, but—what an unusual umbrella! Black silk and—surely it can’t be a gold handle?”
At once, the flow of breathless apology ceased. A proud smile brightened the brolly-owner’s face. “Indeed, yes—a souvenir from a most courteous gentleman of a little adventure which we shared, some seven years ago now. Not solid gold, of course, for that would have been rather awkward to carry—the weight, you see. And I do not believe superintendents of police, even from Scotland Yard, were paid extravagant salaries—but gold, certainly. Any more than they are now, that is. Hollow, though, not plated—the cost, you see—and of course, staying with an earl, it seemed the least I could do. It is my very best, you see.”
Neither the middle-aged man nor his wife could see very much of all this, but, after the fashion of long-married couples who can almost read each other’s mind, they decided not to press for enlightenment. Life, they felt, was too short. And they had an appointment to keep: though they would dearly have loved to know how their new acquaintance had come, seven years ago, to be sharing little adventures with superintendents from Scotland Yard . . .
chapter
∼ 5 ∼
“HERE WE ARE, then!” The trio had negotiated the downward flight of steps, had passed through the barrier and left their tickets in the labelled box, and were now standing in the station forecourt.
Husband turned to wife. “That taxi might do for us, but what about our friend here? I don’t see anything that looks like a hire car, dear lady. Perhaps you’d better—”
He broke off, interrupted by a brisk tootling from the horn of a vehicle which had just rounded the corner from the main road into the forecourt. The driver, observing three faces turned in his direction and recognising one of them, tootled a second time, even more briskly.
“Sorry, Miss Seeton!” Tall Jack Crabbe came leaping from the car with a wave and a shamefaced grin. “Not like me to be late, I know, only young Nigel’s not too happy about the timing on his MG, and I didn’t rightly see as I ought to let him keep driving without I had a look under the bonnet first. This lot yours?”
He scooped up a case in either hand, nodded vaguely to the middle-aged couple as it became clear they were no more than chance-met travellers with the same destination, and led the way to the car. “You hop in the front while I dump these in the boot—and there’s something for you to take a look at, if you like, seeing as you were so kind as to show an interest in my puzzles.” Jack Crabbe, though he worked regular hours as a mechanic in the family garage, was famed in Plummergen as the village’s resident cruciverbalist, the crosswords he composed being highlights of the learned periodicals to which he regularly contributed. His identity was concealed from the rest of the country under a pseudonym, but it was widely known throughout his native heath that “Coronet” was in truth Jack Crabbe: who had, as he would explain to the curious, a very kind heart, really.
Miss Seeton, who from time to time essayed the crossword in The Times—but with varying success—had always been much impressed by Jack’s skill. When he drove the twice-weekly shoppers’ bus from Plummergen to Brettenden, he would spend the hours between arrival and departure with a thesaurus, a dictionary, and a sheaf of blank forms; it was a bad day when he couldn’t complete at least half of a puzzle, and he generally managed more. Plummergen was proud of Jack; it mostly didn’t understand a word of what he did, but nevertheless was always happy to lean over his shoulder and make helpful comments, to which he would listen with polite and noncommittal interest.
Miss Seeton had recently supplied him with a clue which had greatly pleased him, and he had promised her a copy of the magazine which contained it, when it was published.
“Which there it is,” he said, as he climbed back into the driver’s seat and started the engine. Miss Seeton made appreciative noises as she opened the journal at the page with the slip of paper poking out. She smiled.
“Bird’s cough sounds rough despite inhalation of hydrogen,” she read. “Six letters. Dear me. And all because we visited the Wounded Wings sanctuary . . .”
“You keep that, Miss Seeton—I got one extra, just for you. Brought me luck, so you did. They’re going to pay me five pounds more, starting with this.” Jack brushed aside her exclamations of pleasure with further thanks of his own, then changed the subject by asking if she’d had a good time in Scotland, adding that he hoped she felt back on top form after her holiday because of this cricket picture he’d heard people talking about.
“Cricket?” Miss Seeton, with her mind half on her holiday, half still on the crossword, looked blank. “Picture?” Then, with a sudden smile: “Of course—Charters and Caldicott—Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne. The Lady Vanishes.” Miss Seeton was a keen cinema-goer when circumstances permitted. “Forever worrying about the cricket score . . . Not that I understand the scoring, or indeed much at all about cricket, though of course such an understanding was not, as I recall, essential to the plot. It is many years since I last saw the film, of course. How pleasant that it is to be reissued. I shall make a point of going.”
Gently, Jack explained that as far as he knew there were no plans for a revival of the Hitchcock classic, and he was sorry to have misled her. As for understanding cricket, if kiddies played it in school then it couldn’t be too difficult, could it? Miss Seeton supposed he was right. It was, she remarked, one’s national game, and therefore one could not help but feel some sense of regret that one’s understanding was so very, well, limited . . .
Jack, who kept wicket for Plummergen, was justly proud of his ability to whip off a bail with the best, and decided that he was as good a man as any to explain the basics of the national game to one who—though she did not yet know it—was to immortalise on canvas the climax of Plummergen’s encounter with Murreystone. He cleared his throat. A frown appeared between his brows. He cleared his throat again.
“It’s simple enough, Miss Seeton—the basics, that is. There’s eleven of them, and eleven of us. And our eleven is hell-bent—begging your pardon—on beating theirs. See?”
Cautiously, Miss Seeton admitted that, so far, she saw.
“Well, er, that’s it, really.” Jack frowned again, and with relief saw that they were coming into Plummergen. Perhaps, he reflected, he was not as good a man as he thought he was. It was easy enough to do it—but nowhere near as easy to tell someone else what you did. He drove on slowly down The Street, wondering whether there was anything else helpful he could find to say.
But The Street—Plummergen’s main thoroughfare—is not more than half a mile long. Running in a gentle curve from north to south, it narrows at its southern end to a near-lane between high walls, which lane runs over the Royal Military Canal and, turning sharp right, on to Rye, some six miles to the southwest. Before it crosses the canal. The Street makes another sharp right turn towards Rye, becoming known as Marsh Road. The cottage owned by Miss Seeton is situated on this odd little peninsula of Rye-bound roadways, her back garden having as its southern boundary the canal, and as its eastern, one of the high brick walls.
Sweetbriars is a pleasant spot, of which Miss Seeton is particularly fond; but it is hardly a great distance from a driver’s first glimpse of the village nameplate at Plummergen’s northern boundary. Which gave Jack Crabbe very little time to frame some telling and memorable phrase by which his passenger might feel slightly more conversant with the laws of cricket than she had felt before . . .
The car slowed outside the George and Dragon, and Jack prepared to swing it in a semicircle to stand across The Street outside Miss Seeton’s cottage. His expert eye judged the amount of swing necessary: “swing” reminded him of bowling a cricket ball; and su
dden inspiration struck.
“It’s like this, Miss Seeton. When we’re batting, we want to hit as many runs as we can off their bowling. But when they’re batting, we want to stop them by our fielding. And, er, the same for them, the other way round. See?”
Feeling rather pleased with this, he brought the car to a halt, climbed out to open the passenger door, collected Miss Seeton’s bags and raincoat from the boot, and escorted her up her front path. Then, having seen her safely home and accepted his fee, he swung the steering wheel in another skillful curve, and headed northwards for home.
Inside her cottage, Miss Seeton closed her eyes and gently inhaled all the familiar, welcoming scents. Dear Martha must have come in earlier and left a little snack, though today was not one of her regular days. A fruitcake too, if she was not mistaken! Miss Seeton breathed in once more, savouring the hint of spice, of polish and fresh flowers and . . . well, of home. She had enjoyed her holiday, of course—the scenery of the Scottish Highlands was spectacular, and there were several sketches in her portfolio of which she was rather proud—but there was, indeed, no place like home. Especially if one was, perhaps, rather more tired from one’s journey than one had expected to be, when the sleeping compartment had been so very comfortable . . . And Miss Seeton found herself stifling a yawn.
“Dear me.” She glanced at her watch and clicked her tongue. She could hardly go to bed so soon after having left it—or rather, having left her bunk, she supposed she should say. She sighed; the sigh turned into another yawn. She clicked her tongue again.
“A cup of tea,” she told herself firmly. “And perhaps the unpacking—and the washing—” she sighed again—“could wait until afterwards . . .”
In the kitchen, she found a tray ready laid, the kettle full, and a note from Martha Bloomer saying she’d put all Miss Seeton’s letters in the sitting room, and she wasn’t to go worrying herself over reading them until she’d had a nice sit-down over a good hot cuppa, and a slice of cake as well, always minding to leave room for her lunch, which she’d find in the fridge, being cold meat and a salad, already washed, and some apples and a banana or two, and eggs, of course . . .
Miss Seeton Goes to Bat (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 14) Page 4