The streaker streaked on. Len Hosigg recovered his wits and threw down his bat, running to intercept him. For some strange reason, he found his path impeded by the Murreystone fielders, who seemed unable to decide on a concerted course of action. Plummergen, seeing this, rose growling to its feet and followed Len. The streaker whooped, and swerved.
“He’s coming this way!” Anne jumped up. “Oh, Bob—for goodness’ sake, do something!”
“He’d better,” muttered Delphick, who considered himself twenty years too old for such goings-on. At his side Brinton, likewise, was unprepared to hurl himself into the fray. He glowered at Foxon.
“Don’t just sit there staring, laddie—after him!”
“Er,” said Foxon, bemused, as the streaker pranced from silly mid-off to silly mid-on and back again, doubling in his tracks, thumbing his nose at Len Hosigg, easily avoiding the enormous Bob who, like Len, found the fielders very much in his way. “Er, I’m off-duty, sir,” said Foxon, stifling giggles. “So’s Bob Ranger—and Potter . . .”
Brinton turned purple. “And what the hell—sorry,” to Miss Seeton and Anne, “has that got to do with anything?”
“No—no helmets, sir,” chortled Foxon, as Len made a desperate lunge, and the streaker slipped from his grasp with a shrug and a wriggle. Murreystone roared approval as Sir George’s young farm foreman stared, bewildered, at his hands. “He’ll have g-greased himself, sir,” said Foxon, choking. “Lard, or s-something . . .”
“I’ll lard you, laddie, if you don’t get after him this minute!”
“But, sir—we’ve got nothing to c-cover—to hide . . .” And then Foxon gave up the struggle and collapsed, writhing, on the rug beside Anne: who looked from the hysterical young detective at her feet, to the staring faces of the spectators around the field, to the ominous closing-in of the Plummergen males upon the pale and prancing, jeering figure heading in her direction: and acted.
“Aunt Em, do you mind?” And she snatched the umbrella from its place, gripping it by the handle, spike foremost. She turned, a tiny toreador, to face the onrush of the naked Murreystone bull. She pointed the umbrella directly towards him and twirled it menacingly. The streaker saw her; and for the first time hesitated.
“Bob!” cried Anne, as she ran onto the field; and her husband, jerked out of his trance by her cry, came pounding towards the nude intruder, with other Plummergenites not far behind, Len Hosigg in the van.
“Butter!” Len yelled his warning as Bob prepared to hurl himself upon the streaker, who had realised that Anne’s advance now blocked any direct escape, but who had not realised just how many spectators had been arriving to block the Plummergen side of the ground in recent minutes. The streaker dithered—Bob gathered himself together and pounced—an avalanche of Plummergen joined him; and the streaker vanished beneath a heap of shouting, writhing white flannels.
Sir George and the Murreystone umpire were on the scene, trying to restore order. The streaker emerged from the fray far less pink, stained green with grass and brown with dried mud, but bare as he had ever been. Anne rushed up with Miss Seeton’s umbrella and positioned it quickly over such regions as required its protection, while the Plummergenites seized the streaker by his arms. All traces of butter seemed to have been rubbed off in the turmoil, for his struggles now to escape had little effect; the episode was over. Once he was marched to the boundary, and decency restored, the game could continue . . .
“Behind you!” Delphick, jumping to his feet, made a megaphone out of his hands, and his warning carried far over the ground. Plummergen looked behind: and saw the Murreystoners, angry at their rakish representative’s rough reception, flooding on to the field, while the fielders stood and let them pass unhindered.
And, in a case of invasion, what else could the defending forces be expected to do but retaliate?
Foxon had stopped laughing and was clambering to his feet; Brinton and Delphick were already standing. From all around the Plummergen side, muttering male spectators started to converge on the Murreystone streaker and his friends as they hastened to his support . . .
PC Potter cast an anguished look towards his superiors. Miss Seeton clicked her tongue. The eyes of Sir George met those of the admiral as the noted ginger beard appeared in the throng of later arrivals from the pavilion steps.
“Silence in the ranks!” roared Sir George. “Silence, I say! Halt! Attenshun!”
The roar so startled his hearers that, Plummergen and Murreystone alike, every single one stopped dead, exactly where they were. In the subsequent breathing space the admiral, not to be outdone, bellowed:
“Belay there, the lower deck, or I’ll keelhaul every man jack of you!”
The breathing space continued for a few tense moments, while all present held their breath. Then Murreystone looked at Plummergen, and began to grumble; and Plummergen looked at Murreystone, and began to mutter again.
And then, above the rising tide of discontent which the quick wits of the two former officers had but temporarily stemmed, the voice of Anne was suddenly heard.
“If this man isn’t off the field within half a minute, he’ll be dead.” She twirled the umbrella as she spoke. “Of exposure!”
There was a pause. Not only was the speaker a female—and a tiny female, at that—but everyone in Plummergen knew her for the doctor’s daughter, and a nurse. Much of Murreystone was also privy to that knowledge. And something about the way she’d said her piece caught the fancy of the rivals. There was another pause, for baleful eyeing of one another; then the various factions, repeating her remark to savour it better, began to laugh. Those who had the streaker by the arms allowed him to raise them in a victory salute above his head, before grabbing at him again; Anne continued to hold Miss Seeton’s umbrella in a strategic position, smiling as she did so; Sir George started to wave the Murreystone supporters back to their places; the Murreystone umpire motioned at Plummergen to follow suit. Those spectators who hadn’t stirred from their seats voiced the opinion that it took all sorts, they supposed, though a joke was a joke and they did really ought to be getting on with the game now . . .
It took time for everyone to settle; but, slowly, settle they did. The streaker was escorted towards the dressing room, and a detachment sent in search of his clothes. There was a continuing air of suppressed excitement over the little cricket ground, and Plummergen males bemoaned their lack of eyes in the back of the head to look out for what Murreystone might try next.
“Let’s hope,” growled Brinton, as he, Foxon, Delphick, and Miss Seeton watched the fielders start to reposition themselves, “the blighters don’t try any more daft tricks. It was touch and go there for a while, if you ask me.”
“Not quite so easy to touch, at first,” remarked Delphick, watching Len Hosigg hunting for the bat he’d flung down in his excitement. “It might be considered rather cheering to learn that the old country customs die so hard, even in the nineteen-seventies. Your ancestors, Chris—indeed, all our ancestors, if we trace back to our rural roots—used to grease a pig at fair time and run after the poor creature, grabbing and snatching until, as in this case, enough of the grease had rubbed off for the winner to keep hold of it. No fear of starvation for a while with so much pork to smoke and pickle and cure . . .”
Foxon snorted suddenly. “B-bacon, sir,” he gasped, as the dangerous eye of Superintendent Brinton directed itself upon him. “I just thought—when Mr. Delphick said about curing—not so much streaky bacon, sir, as streaker. Sir.” And he hastily stifled further evidence of mirth, though he didn’t miss the twinkle in Miss Seeton’s eye and the chuckle in Delphick’s voice as he replied:
“Mr. Brinton would no doubt wish to, er, tan the young man’s backside for him . . . But let us hope—” in a more serious voice—“there will be no repetition of the incident, whether here or anywhere else. The imagination boggles at what would happen if such a scene were to take place, say, at a Test Match.” He smiled. “Though I’ve no doubt the commentat
ors would cope in their own inimitable fashion: one can almost hear John Arlott. ‘Oh, we’ve got a streaker down the wicket. Not very shapely, and it’s masculine . . .’ And a detailed description of the offender’s removal from the scene. Arlott, of course, is a former policeman . . .”
But there came no reply. Everyone was too busy watching Len Hosigg, his bat retrieved, take guard. Len’s normally equable temperament was roused by what had just happened: so much so, indeed, that he not only managed to block the ball, but even to hit it—and with force. Plummergen sat up. Lily Hosigg squeezed baby Dulcie Rose so hard in her excitement that the infant yelped. The sun, brighter than ever, glistened on Len’s well-oiled bat and gleamed on the white numbers of the pavilion scoreboard as they were altered yet again . . .
Len made—to his surprise—seven runs before falling at the end of his third over to a vicious—though possibly accidental—high beamer. He returned to the pavilion covered in glory and loudly applauded. Bob, meanwhile, still suffering pangs of conscience about having run Nigel out, found them overcome by annoyance at Murreystone’s behaviour, and walloped everything he could, adding another ten before Len was dismissed.
So that when PC Potter headed out to join his colleague at the crease, the score was seventy-six for four.
Three more runs, and Plummergen would win the match.
chapter
∼ 23 ∼
THE PLUMMERGEN SPECTATORS began to murmur. The Murreystone contingent was conspicuously silent. Inside the pavilion, Lady Colveden and the rest of the washing-up team—into which Anne, still chuckling at the streaker’s behaviour, had been conscripted by her mother—cast aside tea towels and squeezy mops and crowded to the windows to watch.
Potter took guard. The Murreystone bowler, having run out of legitimate tricks, in desperation deliberately sent down a low, fast, potentially lethal bouncer. Breath hissed between Plummergen teeth. Going to play dirty, were they? But Potter could stonewall as well as Len Hosigg, when he had to: and he had to now. He successfully blocked the bouncer, and sighed with relief: no run, but no wicket.
The second ball arrived in similar fashion, and there was increased muttering among the spectators. Bob, at the other end, could have sworn he’d felt the air hiss as the bowler’s arm whirled in its delivery arc and the ball missed his ear by less than an inch. He gulped, and blinked, and followed its flight with a horrified eye—an eye then distracted by a movement just out of his direct vision, in the vicinity of the sight-screen. Who on earth knew so little about cricket that they’d wander around in the middle of an over, and at such an important point in the match, as well?
“Miss Seeton,” breathed Bob, as the Murreystone bowler began his third run-up. What on earth did Aunt Em think she was playing at, trotting along the boundary in the direction of the pavilion, innocent as Dulcie Rose Hosigg of what was going on? Why on earth didn’t somebody . . .?
Somebody—more than a few somebodies—did. “Miss Seeton!” was hissed from half a hundred throats, and hands signalled furiously as the little spinster, her hat tilted over her eyes, stopped, and turned, and gazed about her at the friendly waves. Smiling, she nodded, and waved back.
But once she’d stopped walking, everyone lost interest in her. All eyes returned to the pitch, where Potter stood bracing himself for the fourth ball of the over. He’d clipped the third past forward short-leg, only to have it fielded by the bowler, who was now polishing it on his trousers, ready to hurl it down again. Bob, rubbing a thoughtful ear, moved even farther from the wicket than he’d been for the earlier balls, holding his breath.
Down came the ball, scorching through the air. Potter automatically flinched as it approached him; Bob winced as he followed its flight—a flight for once mistimed. The ball bounced early, and, much to Potter’s relief, shot safely past. Bob watched the dark red dot sizzle across the white sight-screen, presumably to thump to the ground: presumably, because he never knew for sure. “Miss Seeton!” he groaned between his teeth, as the little figure emerged from the other side of the sight-screen and continued on its way to the pavilion . . .
“Hey!” Bob’s yell startled even himself. “The pavilion!” Bat in hand, he came thundering out of his crease down the pitch, past Potter—who spun round to look, saw what Bob had seen, and galloped, shouting, in his wake—towards the pavilion, on the verandah and steps of which the entire Plummergen team and their supporters sat enjoying the sunshine of an August afternoon, the prospect of an early victory, and thoughts of a celebratory evening in the pub. The tea ladies crowded the open windows, chattering with excitement; even Dr. Knight, scoring with his Murreystone opposite number, had carried score book and pencils and table out of doors . . .
And if everyone was either sitting outside, or clearly visible inside—who were those people glimpsed in furtive silhouette through the wide panes of the changing-room windows?
Even as Bob first yelled, the figures stopped being furtive and began, clearly, to fight. Two, perhaps three, silhouettes struggled and swayed to and fro against the light as the batsmen abandoned the wicket with a shout and a rush, their cries raising the alarm even as their fellow players sitting on the pavilion steps started to suspect that something was wrong, and hurried to find out what that something might be.
At exactly the same time, however, Lady Colveden and her colleagues were hurrying from the kitchen in an attempt to learn what was causing all the uproar. And when too many people try to charge in opposite directions through the same door at the same time, the intruders after whom some of the the chargers might, given the chance, wish to go in pursuit are warned well in advance of such pursuit, and have ample opportunity to make their escape through the same back door by which they originally entered.
Which is what happened on this occasion. Bob, Potter, and the Murreystone fielders—who had at last cottoned on to the fact that this was serious—could see, as they drew near the pavilion, the changing-room windows very clearly, and shouted to those on the steps and in the doorway that the quarry was making a break for it and ought to be headed off.
“Tally ho!” cried Sir George, as game as any but twenty years older than most, his pace slowing. There was nothing, however, wrong with his hearing: he knew the sounds of a gunned engine and a retreating vehicle when he heard them. “Tally ho!”
“View halloo!” responded the admiral, to whom the same applied; and he brandished a ferocious bat, requisitioned from the general stock. “After them, at the double!”
Delphick and Brinton, joining them some moments later, felt little difference between themselves and their friends. The senior branch of the Plummergen Protection League stood panting and blown as the younger men grabbed cricket bats and spare stumps and tore round to the rear of the pavilion uttering bloodcurdling cries. Some of the ladies, inspired by the example of their menfolk, snatched up serving spoons and other kitchen implements before rushing after them with these makeshift weapons, although Anne, who hadn’t returned Miss Seeton’s umbrella before she’d been coerced into the kitchen detail, was better equipped than most.
Yet, run as fast as they might, none ran fast enough to catch the fleeing figures in the car nobody recognised as belonging to either village—the car which, screeching on two wheels as it scraped through the playing-field gateway, turned left into The Street and headed south.
“After them!” Sir George’s command outroared Brinton, who’d been trying to suggest exactly the same thing. Those who had car keys about their persons veered off at speed towards their individual vehicles, with quick-witted friends following in their wake; cricketers—with keys in mufti pockets in the changing-room—and ladies—with no keys at all, save in the pockets of husbands and sons—hesitated—stared about them—and were gathered up by Pied Piper Jack Crabbe as he sprinted for the red-and-green coach where his father, who had been a bemused spectator of the rout, was clambering into the driver’s seat, the keys in his waiting hand.
“Come on!” cried Jack, and they came:
car-less cricketers—fleet-footed spectators—tea ladies rattling spoons—and Sir George Colveden, who’d realised what was about to happen and was having none of it.
“No, Meg! Anne, Mrs. Knight—not a show for women.” The major-general had found his second wind and cut across to reach the door of the coach just as the last man scrambled up the steps.
“But—”
“No, Meg!” Nimbly, Sir George blocked his wife’s path and banged the flat of his hand against red-and-green metal. “Carry on, Crabbe!”
“But—”
“Crabbe, drive on!” The baronet’s bellow drowned out his wife’s protest and the start of another from Anne, who frantically waved Miss Seeton’s umbrella as if bidding with it for the right to participate in whatever slaughter might eventually ensue. Very Young Crabbe—who, though his father died in the war, had enjoyed every minute of his National Service—was deaf to the voice of his son at his side, his ears tuned only to the military tones of Sir George. Former Lance-corporal Crabbe, obedient to command, first pulled the lever which closed the coach door, as regulations required, then released the brake, revved the engine, and began to spin the steering wheel, ready to send the coach chasing after everyone else, grass flying up from beneath whirring tyres as he skidded and for one desperate moment looked like slipping backwards.
The squeal of the tyres, the roar of the diesel exhaust drowned out any remonstrance or argument of the female persuasion; and before they could die away, Sir George was gone, leaping into the back seat of Brinton’s police car as Foxon slammed on the brakes and Delphick flung open the door, beckoning wildly.
“Bob, wait!” But her husband ignored Anne’s cry as he swept past in their little car with the admiral beside him, and PC Potter squeezed in the back, urging his colleague to keep up with Brinton and the rest. Very Young Crabbe, with Jack still shouting to let him drive because he knew this coach better than his father, finally moved off in juddering slow motion. With a swirl, a rush, and a rumble, the field was almost empty of pursuers and pursued.
Miss Seeton Goes to Bat (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 14) Page 19