by Heron Carvic
Witch Miss Seeton
A Miss Seeton Mystery
Heron Carvic
FARRAGO
Contents
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Note from the Publisher
Preview
Also Available
About the Miss Seeton series
About Heron Carvic
Copyright
Epigraph
Almost at odds with mourning.
Which is witch?
—not quite SHAKESPEARE
chapter
~1~
Poor Cow.
Chief Inspector Brinton of the Ashford Division stamped cold feet in the damp grass. Five-thirty A.M. was no hour to be up—let alone out. So all right; if farmers liked it, farmers could have it. If they’d the sense they weren’t born with they’d get up at a civilized hour. Then if they must find stiffs lying about in their ditches civilized people’d be prepared to take a civilized interest in ’em.
The chief inspector watched as Potter, Plummergen’s village constable, crouched against the thorn hedge, with two patrol car men and a couple of farmhands, worked ropes under the body and prepared to ease it out of the deep dike that bordered one side of the field. He turned to the man beside him.
“All right, doc, we’ll ship her back to the lab for you and she’s all yours. Let’s have the report soon as possible, though it looks clear enough. From the marks on the legs I’d say tied up and slit open while still alive.”
The other hunched his shoulders. “Wouldn’t be so much blood else.”
Brinton beckoned to the farmer. “Can your men keep their mouths shut?” The farmer nodded. “Good, see they do. Yourself as well. Looks like ritual stuff. Things are bad enough as they are, and that Black Mass business at Malebury church hasn’t helped, so we’ll keep it under wraps for the moment. If this gets out, with everybody seeing witches and devils all over the blasted place, we’ll really start something.”
He moved away. Religions. They’d had a bellyful of ’em. As if they’d not enough on their plate with this other lark, Nuscience, which had got the chief constable climbing trees. After the Maidstone force on the C.C.’s instructions had tried twice and failed to infiltrate the business and find out what it was all in aid of and why half the richer people in Kent seemed to be handing over their money like lambs led to slaughter, the C.C. had called a confab of the heads of all police departments. Some twit had suggested calling in the Yard. Didn’t seem to realize you couldn’t hand over a case you hadn’t got—and for all they could prove Nuscience might be lily white. Brinton smiled slightly. He’d come up with a suggestion of his own on infiltration and the C.C.’d half bought it—especially as if it came off it actually would bring in the Yard in a backhanded sort of way. And with this witch stuff beginning to look serious they could do with any help they could get on Nuscience. Anyway the C.C.’d O.K.’d for him to go to London and have a word with the Oracle on the q.t. and see what could be arranged. Might try and pick the Oracle’s brains on witches at the same time.
Witches. Brinton took a last look at where the men were maneuvering the body onto level ground; glanced down at his shoes, bespattered with reddened mud; scraped them in the grass, making the uppers as wet as the soles; bunched his hands into his pockets and strode back to his car.
Poor old cow.
The chief inspector had had no previous occasion to visit New Scotland Yard. He stared at the building: must cost ’em a bit for window cleaning. He went in; gave his name, rank, address, place of business, proposed business; was handed over to a guide, ushered into a lift and wafted aloft.
Detective Superintendent Delphick rose as his visitor was shown into the office.
“Chris. Good to see you. You know Bob Ranger.” He indicated his sergeant.
“How are you, sir?” Detective Sergeant Ranger gathered some papers from his desk and made for the door.
Brinton waved him back. “Sit down, boy. All right, so this visit’s not official, but we may want you.”
The boy, all six foot seven of him, with breadth in proportion, returned to his place. He put the papers on his desk and sat down with a sinking feeling. What could old Brimstone be wanting with him? The only connection he’d had with Kent, apart from Anne, were those jaunts with the Oracle to Plummergen. Granted but for that he’d never’ve met Anne. But Plummergen? Surely Miss Seeton couldn’t be at it again.
“Coffee or tea?” asked Delphick.
“Thanks, Oracle, coffee,” said Brinton.
The sergeant lifted the telephone receiver and ordered coffee and biscuits for three.
“Well, Chris”—the superintendent settled back in his chair—“what can we do for you, and what brings you to town?”
The chief inspector grunted. “Religion.” He put a briefcase on the floor and dropped his hat beside it.
Religion? Delphick eyed his old friend. “And your visit’s off the record, I gather. Has Canterbury mislaid the Archbishop? What’s the trouble?”
“Imported trouble,” replied Brinton, “or that’s our guess. And your headache—or will be, I hope. Some so-called religious hogwash known as Nuscience with an office address in London.” He grinned at the superintendent. “So all right, Oracle, my coming here’s unofficial, but with official blessing. And our chief constable’s having an unofficial word with your assistant commissioner as well, because of a bright idea I had, since we’ve already got our hands full with another religious lark.”
Delphick was interested. Must be something way out to faze Chris Brinton. “What goes on?”
The other shook his head. “The Devil, an’ all his works. We’ve got an outbreak of tea leaves—not petty thieving—but reading teacups, table rapping, crystal gazing, all that. And it’s spreading.”
Delphick laughed. “What’s so serious about that?”
“You’d know if you had to cope. Black Masses, witchcraft and all that guff. So this other crap that’s got our C.C. in a spin, this Nuscience, is one over the odds.”
The superintendent made a note. “Any connection between the two religions?”
“No. Except that one feeds the other. With all this hoohah about witches and people seeing the Devil round every corner, they begin looking for somebody else to hock their souls to—while there’s time. Witches.” He snorted. “You always get a bit of that here and there—mostly harmless, though it seems to be on the up just now—but this Nuscience lark, end of the world any moment, I gather, ’s got us beat, and the gulls’re flocking to it like wasps to jam. It’s a racket, I’ll swear. It’s so po-faced and pie-eyed it’s got to be crooked.”
Delphic made another note. “Nuscience … End of the world … There’s something there that rings a bell.” He thought for a moment. “No—I can’t get it. Something to do with Scotland, I think. I’ll check.”
“And now,” continued Brinton, “just to help things along, we’ve had a killing.”
“Killing?” Delphick looked up sharply. “When? I hadn’t heard.”
“Night before last sometime. Papers haven’t got it yet—and I don’t intend ’em to. Told everybody
to keep quiet. Don’t want to start a scare.”
The sergeant stared. Had old Brimstone gone off his chump? You couldn’t hush up murder; there’d be hell to pay.
The superintendent leaned forward, pencil poised. “Who’s the victim?”
“A blasted cow.” Delphick put his head down to hide a smile and wrote: Read up on witchcraft. “A farmer named Mulcker called us in yesterday morning when he found the remains,” Brinton went on. “I’ve had the vet’s report and we’ve done a bit of probing around, and I don’t like the look of it—it’s nasty.” He described the scene. The farmer, who lived just outside the village of Plummergen, had rung the local constable soon after 5 A.M. The village P.C. had taken a look and called Brettenden, who, on hearing his report, had called Ashford. The crew of a patrol car who had intercepted the call, after a survey, had reported back to headquarters. The chief inspector, in a glowering temper, had been dragged from his bed and forced to tramp wet fields in drizzling rain to view the carcass of a cow. The view had worsened his temper, although it had changed its direction. The body lay in a ditch which bordered a field. The marks of ropes still showed on the fore and hind legs. A rushed autopsy report had confirmed the police suspicions: the animal had been tied and then the heart and liver cut out while it was still alive.
Delphick dredged his memory. “Was your cow a heifer?” he asked.
Brinton gave a grim smile. “All right, Oracle, so you’ve got the idea.”
The superintendent remarked his sergeant’s bemused expression. “A heifer, Bob, is a virgin cow. The blood sacrifice of a virgin, as in voodoo or black magic. Refertilization of the ground through the blood of the victim.” The sergeant’s expression remained bemused. “Have you found any trace of the heart and liver?” Delphick asked.
“I think so.” A knock on the door heralded the coffee. Settled again, Brinton took three spoonfuls of sugar and stirred slowly. “I alerted all the local lads to keep their eyes open and Potter, our boy in Plummergen, noticed the ashes of a fire in a corner of the graveyard ’longside the old ruined church beyond Iverhurst—Iverhurst’s on his beat, only about a couple of miles from Plummergen. He scoured round, then radioed for us. There were some burnt scraps of offal with the charred remains of thorns still stuck in ’em—or that’s what it looked like. Haven’t had the lab report yet but I’m pretty sure.” He put his cup on Delphick’s desk. “Doesn’t help,” he added, “that Malebury, where they had a Black Mass business two weeks ago, is only an odd ten miles away just over the county line.”
“I see.” Delphick reflected. “Yes. Not pretty. And once they start killing there’s no knowing where they’ll stop.” He considered: so far they’d had religion; Nuscience; witchcraft; Nuscience again; dead cows; then witchcraft again. What was Chris really after? “This bright idea of yours you mentioned—what is it exactly you, or your chief constable, want us to do?”
Brinton was suffering from uncharacteristic embarrassment. Down in Kent his solution had seemed the obvious and practical way out of a difficulty. Here in London in a professional police atmosphere it became suddenly farfetched and amateur, so that now that he had come to his main hurdle he was balking. He looked at the ceiling, at the floor and finally at Delphick. “All right, Oracle, so it’s your drawing teacher girl friend, the Battling Brolly.” The sergeant heaved a sigh. He’d known it. All along. Anything near Plummergen that had anything as off as sacrificial cows and cooking their innards for supper in churchyards was sure to have Miss Seeton in the background somewhere. Or if she wasn’t yet, she would be—he’d take a bet on it.
“What’s poor Miss Seeton done?” inquired Delphick.
“It’s not what she’s done, it’s what we want her to do. We want her to join Nuscience.”
Delphick sat up. “You want her to what?”
“Our C.C.’s worried. We’ve been keeping an eye on some of their public meetings round the country—all very orderly and well run, and all very damn silly on the face of it. But it’s got a nasty taste. Too many people with money joining, and the C.C. thinks they’re being fleeced. So he decided to try a stoolie. Maidstone had a couple of goes but got nowhere. The first, a young detective, went to a meeting at Tonbridge all dewy-eyed and keen but was turned down flat. Their Lord High Muck-a-muck—they call him the Master in Nuscience—told him he hadn’t got the right call. My guess is they thought he hadn’t got the right cash. The C.C. said all right, so he’d dip into funds, and tried again with somebody older, a woman detective sergeant, who was to ante up the three hundred entrance fee you need to become a Greenhorn, their lowest rank.” He grimaced. “And you’d want to be one to pay that to be that. But they’re pretty fly—wouldn’t touch her. To my mind it was the right idea, wrong woman. She was a tough, intelligent type. What you want is some gullible-looking, dowdy old trout—the sort that goes for that kind of twaddle. And then I thought: Blimey, we’ve got the very thing. Miss Seeton, she’s made to measure.”
“Miss Seeton,” objected Delphick, “is not a gullible old trout.”
“Didn’t say she was, said she looked it. A hundred-and-one percent innocent like her—they wouldn’t suspect her in a thousand years. Nuscience’ve got a meeting coming up at Maidstone. She’s local. Who more likely to tool along out of interest and then get all of a twit over the tripe they spout and want to join ’em? They aren’t to know she hasn’t got money. Some of these old girls you get living alone in small cottages are fair stacked.”
Delphick shook his head. “I don’t see it, Chris. Miss Seeton’s got far too much common sense to want to join the sort of setup you describe. How do you expect to persuade her to act as stoolie for you? If you tell her the truth—even if she’d do it, which I doubt—she’s no actress and she’d give the show away at once. Besides, if there’s big money in this racket, as you suggest, it could be dangerous.”
Brinton dismissed this last demur. “Oh, we’d send somebody along with her to see she’s all right. For the rest”—he prodded the edge of the superintendent’s desk with a stubby forefinger—“we’re hoping you’ll persuade her.”
“Me!” exclaimed Delphick. “Oh, no. You do your own dirty work.”
The other ignored him. “You know her better than I do. After all, she’s worked for you—you’ve paid her for odd sketches she’s done—very odd, some of ’em.” He waxed enthusiastic. “Come to that, we could do it the same way. Tell her we’re interested in this Nuscience, need to know a bit more about it, and want a bit of help—she’d fall for that, and anyway it’s true enough—and if she’d go along to a meeting and make some notes and perhaps a sketch or two of anything she thinks interesting, and if after the meeting she could even bring herself to join the gang—we’d supply the cash—it might help us even more.” He grinned. “Might, at that. Things have a knack of starting up when she’s around. I don’t say she starts ’em but you got to admit they start.”
Delphick shrugged and leaned back in his chair. “Try it if you want to, Chris. If you’ve got your chief constable sold on the idea there’s nothing to prevent you, but I don’t see how we come into it.”
“Oh, don’t you!” retorted Brinton. “That’s what our C.C.’s having a word with your Ass. Comm. about—a sort of unofficial hand-over to you of the whole lark. My idea was it’s time your colossus here”—he jerked a thumb at the sergeant—“was due for some leave. Since he’s engaged to Dr. Knight’s daughter, it’s time he got himself down to Plummergen and did a bit of courting. We’ll be wanting somebody on the spot to keep his eyes open with a reason for being there that needn’t connect up with police work.”
Leave? Pop down to Kent and have some time with Anne? Bob Ranger glowed. This was the stuff to give the force. He looked hopefully at his superior.
“Why Plummergen rather than Iverhurst?” asked Delphick.
“Iverhurst’s too small. Three or four farms, a few cottages, and that’s your lot. Not even a general store. Plummergen’s no distance with a population round the
five hundred mark. If your Ass. Comm. agrees, and Miss Seeton agrees, it means we’ll have your sergeant there on the spot with a reasonable cover, to keep an eye on things, to keep you in touch, and also to keep Miss Seeton under control.”
The sergeant’s eyes widened. He blinked. Keep Miss Seeton under control? There was no such animal. She’d go capering off armed with innocence and an umbrella, and everything’d be backsides-up from here to Land’s End in no time flat.
The superintendent dropped his pen back on his desk. “Granted all this, have you checked on Miss Seeton, Chris? What’s she up to? Is she free?”
Brinton laughed. “I asked Potter. He tells me that, like the rest of the countryside, Plummergen’s got the jitters over witchcraft and half the village have more or less made up their minds that Miss Seeton’s the leading witch. From the moment Potter mentioned her and witches it struck me like Fate. I thought, if she’s starting up again at least let’s start her on the right tack. It’d be a positive kindness to winkle her out of witchery and pop her into Nuscience. God knows, if she’d poke that umbrella of hers into Nuscience and pop that for us we’d be grateful. But if she’s going to start midnight baths in ponds again, like she did before, and swimming up and down the canal and generally creating merry hell, I’m not taking the responsibility, not on my own. Besides, we’ll need an allocation for hats and umbrellas—she can run through three a week when she’s in form.” He chuckled. “So all right, you can’t help liking her, but cope with her I can’t.”
It was finally settled that if Sir Hubert Everleigh, Assistant Commissioner, Crime, was agreeable, Delphick should hold a watching brief for the time being and that Sergeant Ranger should be seconded, ostensibly on leave, to the Ashford Division and stationed at Plummergen, while Miss Seeton should be engaged, if possible, to see what she could make, if anything, of Nuscience.
chapter
~2~