chapter
~13~
THE THUNDER HAD come, rumbling its way across Kent, with the spears of rain and daggers of lightning and darkening skies of a really spectacular storm. But, though it had been severe, it had not lasted long, moving eastwards to the sea, leaving everywhere in its wake washed and shining in the lazy summer twilight.
Mindful of the recent power cut she had sustained when a thunderbolt struck her cottage just as she was switching on the electric kettle, Miss Seeton invited Dickie and Juliana into Sweetbriars for a glass of sherry, rather than the cup of tea or coffee which Mr. Nash was still lamenting as they left Mentley Collier and Filkins Farm behind them. Juliana, however, refused the invitation, with regret but firmly: she thought poor Dickie had suffered enough that afternoon and needed something far stronger than sherry to sustain him.
After they had left her and returned to the George and Dragon for spirituous refreshment, Miss Seeton pottered from room to room and stared out of the windows at the different views of the storm until it had safely departed. She then sighed, trotted to the kitchen, and made herself a cup of tea, which she carried into the sitting room and was about to enjoy with some of her favourite chocolate biscuits when a sudden thought came to her. She jumped up from her chair with a little cry.
“Oh, dear! Oh, dear, how could I have been so forgetful? That poor creature—all this time—and I promised Stan I would telephone, too . . .”
She hurried to check on the contents of a packing case which stood in the back garden, sheltered by the high brick wall that faced westward and was, despite the recent rain, still warm with the day’s soaked-up sun. Having reassured herself, she went back to the cottage into the hall, where, racked by guilt, she began to leaf with anxious fingers through the pages of the classified telephone directory. “ ‘Biologists,’ ” she read as she came to the right place. “ ‘Bird breeders and dealers, Bird cages (see Pet Shops), Birth Control’—oh—oh, dear.” And Miss Seeton blushed. “No, I don’t think . . .”
She stood frowning for a while, then turned to letter A and began to hunt again. “ ‘Animal feedstuff and concentrates, Animal sundry manufacturers and suppliers—ah! Animal welfare societies—but now, which one should I choose?”
She cast her eye down the column showing the number and exchange and was delighted to find a Rye entry which looked as if it would suit. She checked her watch, crossed mental fingers, and dialled.
“Wounded Wings Bird Sanctuary,” came the prompt reply at the other end of the line. Miss Seeton sighed with relief.
“Good evening,” she replied thankfully. “I am so sorry to trouble you after working hours, but—”
“We don’t have working hours here,” said the woman from Wounded Wings. “Birds get sick at any time of the day—or night—so you needn’t apologise. I’m Babs Ongar, by the way. Barbara. How can I help you?”
“How do you do, Miss Ongar. That is—er, Mrs. Ongar?” It made it so much more complicated when one could not take a quick look at the speaker’s left hand.
“Mrs., for my sins,” Barbara informed her brightly, “but my other half is in the Merchant Navy, so it might just as well be Miss. Not that it matters either way, so far as the birds are concerned.”
“No, indeed, of course not. You are very sensible, Mrs. Ongar.” Miss Seeton cleared her throat before pressing on with the courtesies. “My name is Seeton, Miss Emily Seeton, and I live in Plummergen. Perhaps you know it? Such a dear place, with all the benefits of village life as well as the convenience of being not too far from Town—which is why I am telephoning you now, you see.”
Babs didn’t see at all. Was this Miss Emily Seeton from Plummergen hoping to sell her a railway season ticket or a new house or something? Before she had time to venture a wary question, Miss Seeton had drawn breath and hurried into the next part of her tale.
“Yesterday, you see, I took a little trip to London and was caught in that dreadful storm—so easy, with a cheap day return ticket, which dear Martha always insists that I should buy—and I would say that it was much worse than today’s, though of course, in London one is never too far from shelter of one sort or another, so it is difficult to judge—but today’s was almost as violent, though it did not last so long—and now you are the closest person I could find. In the telephone directory, that is. Although,” said Miss Seeton, puzzled, “you are not under B for birds, which is naturally where I looked first—because when I came home, I discovered a pigeon in my back garden, utterly exhausted, poor thing. The storm, no doubt.”
Barbara let out a deep sigh. At last she’d made sense of what Miss Seeton was trying to say. “Oh, yes, we’ve had several casualties brought in today. They get battered by the rain, when it’s heavy, and blown into things as well, by a strong wind—and if yours is a homing pigeon, the electrical disturbance of the storm upsets their ability to find their way back—magnetic fields and so on.” She hoped she wouldn’t be pushing her luck too far by putting the straight question that had to be asked. “Is this pigeon injured at all or simply worn out?”
“Stan says—he came over at once, so helpful and kind, and with a tea chest which he turned most cleverly into a cage—not that I believe them to be cage-birds, of course, but in the short term it seemed the best thing to do—and the seed which I bought from the shop said that it was generally suitable for birds, not like Quill, which I gather is for parrots. And those, of course, are tropical, although they might be considered cage-birds, too, I suppose, which must mean that Chirrup would do for them as well as for the pigeon. Which has water, too, in its cage—and straw,” she added, “for the poor thing to rest on, which Stan says seems to be all that is required. There are no bones broken, he thinks, though he considers himself no expert—which is unduly modest of him, you know, because he looks after my chickens for me, as well as working on one of the local farms. But he tells me he feels he cannot offer much more advice on what to do beyond the provision of food and shelter, so . . .”
“So you rang someone who can,” concluded Babs, “which is my job, after all.” And she proceeded to demonstrate her efficiency by asking a series of pertinent questions, including whether or not Miss Seeton had happened to notice if there was a ring on the pigeon’s leg; did it have a serial number stamped inside its wing; and would Miss Seeton like her to come across to Plummergen to collect her unexpected lodger and deal with it as seemed best.
All of these questions Miss Seeton answered to the best of her ability, and Mrs. Ongar rang off with promises to drop over within the hour, all being well. Miss Seeton went back to her long-neglected cup of tea, reproaching herself for the waste as she poured it away and made another pot.
Though Miss Seeton offered both, Barbara Ongar would not stay for tea, or for coffee. She asked for her congratulations to be passed on to Stan, for his careful carpentry and his sound advice; she explained to Miss Seeton how the plastic ring about the leg of the pigeon was marked with an individual reference number, by means of which the bird’s owner could be traced.
“Every owner of racing pigeons has them ringed this way—even the Queen,” she told an enthralled Miss Seeton. “You can tell from the letters which of the pigeon unions registered the bird—this one’s on the files of the Royal Pigeon Racing Association, I can tell just by looking. I’ll phone them first thing tomorrow, and they’ll give me the name and address of the owner. He’ll be glad to have this chap safe home again, I’m sure—they can be pretty valuable birds, if they’re good winners. Do you mind if I mention you? He’ll want to write and thank you, I expect.”
She added a few snippets of information about microfilm and similar uses for carrier pigeons; touched briefly on the differences between sprinters, middle-distance, and marathon birds; discoursed on the dangers from hawks and other avian raptors; admired the chickens in their henhouse, repeating her praise for Stan’s skill; and took her leave, with the pigeon, cooing and fluttering, in the box she had provided for the purpose. Miss Seeton watch
ed her drive off into the near-dark of the summer night, then returned to the kitchen to prepare the evening’s third cup of tea.
Somehow, she had lost her fancy for chocolate biscuits and wondered if by any happy chance Martha had made one of her renowned fruitcakes. What she found, as she explored the tins, was a well-sealed, half-eaten slab of gingerbread which she recalled having bought for dear Bob Ranger’s last visit. She smiled as she remembered how Anne, her nursing knowledge well to the fore, had scolded her spouse about his incipient tummy and had forbidden him to eat more than four slices, though gingerbread was his favourite.
“Which means,” reflected Miss Seeton happily, “that now there is enough left for me,” and she trimmed off the dry end, tossing the crumbs out on the flagstone patio for the benefit of tomorrow morning’s sparrows. She cut herself a generous slice and repaired yet again to the sitting room.
Where she sat, with only a standard lamp to light her thoughts, drinking tea and musing on Bob Ranger, and dear Anne, and Mr. Delphick, and recent events. For the first time she was beginning to feel that she could think about what had happened yesterday in London without shuddering. “Not blood,” Miss Seeton said firmly. “Nothing more than tomato ketchup, as everyone said—although that first man did seem so plausible . . .”
She sat in the lamplight, trying to remember what she could of the plausible man’s face and feeling guilty that she, praised—and paid—by the police for her IdentiKit drawing skills, had been unable to produce a likeness of one who, it seemed, was robbing people of their wallets by the meanest of tricks. Pretending to be so helpful—scaring them into believing they had been hurt—taking advantage of their, natural enough, momentary weakness.
“Which is thoroughly immoral,” concluded Miss Seeton, rising to go in search of her sketch pad and pencils. She did not switch on the main light—the muted gleam of the standard lamp seemed to have relaxed her; she hoped that now her customary skills might return. She came back to her chair, sat down, and, concentrating, tried to conjure up the face of the man who had stolen the wallet of Arthur Havelock Thundridge.
Her hand hovered over the paper—her pencil made a few uncertain darts at the white blankness before her brooding eyes. Miss Seeton sighed, and blinked, and shook her head. Obviously she was still too bothered, in her subconscious, by the shock she had sustained . . .
She stared at the paper and blinked again. “Gracious,” she murmured to herself. “Good gracious me.” Somehow, in a moment’s abstraction, it seemed that she had managed to draw the required picture, after all.
Or—had she? True enough, there was a face in front of her on the paper, and it was the face of a man: but though she realised almost at once that she was looking at someone she knew, she wasn’t altogether sure that what she had drawn much resembled the man who had played the tomato ketchup trick. She had used swift, vivid strokes, giving the clear appearance of a face; yet it was a face surrounded by swirling images and by strange shapes, fantastic in form: animals and birds, rare and gigantic flowers, trees which loomed out of the page and overshadowed the features of . . . Miss Seeton frowned with the effort of recollection . . . of . . .
“Miss Popjoy’s friend Mr. Collier,” Miss Seeton said to herself, remembering. “Of course! At least—yes, it could really be nobody else, I suppose—the hair—although . . .”
She shook her head again, sighing, as she studied what she had drawn without knowing exactly what she did. Mentley Collier (yes, she was in no doubt now) looked back at her from her sketching pad with vague and troubled eyes, not so much out of focus as out of reach. “Not looking at me,” she murmured, “so much as through me, it seems . . .”
His pupils were dark and wide, penetrating yet somehow blank. There was no life, no interest in them: which seemed strange, for an artist. “Unless he is looking through right to the heart of the matter,” mused Miss Seeton. “Seeing the true nature of what he is trying to portray, no doubt—and yet . . . if what he sees is as, well, as peculiar and so very uncomfortable as these strange plants and creatures . . .”
Mentley Collier appeared to be looking upon life with a jaded and distorting eye, seeing nothing in the way more, well, more normal people might be expected to do. “Which is no doubt the artistic view of life,” Miss Seeton tried to reassure herself. “Modern art, perhaps—although, from what Miss Popjoy said of his copying skills, one would have supposed him to prefer . . . and yet, one had no real chance to study his work. Perhaps he has so altered his style from the time when Miss Popjoy and he were friends that now he cannot . . . which would explain why he did not feel able to accept her commission at once. So very disconcerting, however, the anger and, well, fear—there is almost a hurricane blowing in the branches of the trees—those flowers might be huge mouths, ready to devour the poor man whole—and the claws and beaks of those birds . . .”
She had taken the swooping avian forms at first for the rooks (or crows) which had fluttered around Mentley’s studio farmhouse, but closer inspection showed them to be even more raptorian in form. “Like the vultures about which Mr. Nash made his little joke,” she comforted herself firmly. “I am simply muddling our conversation today with, well, with other things—which is hardly surprising, in view of the spectacular storm—and of course,” she reminded herself with a smile, “Mr. Collier’s sensitivity to the weather will have made him feel so very uncomfortable—just like my picture.” She gazed again at the distorted images and the face of the fearful man. “Exactly like dear Martha,” said Miss Seeton. “Thunder upsets her, too—oh, dear.” She cocked her head to one side, listening. “Oh, dear . . .”
In the warm distance of the summer evening, another roll of thunder sounded low.
chapter
~14~
AFTER THEIR FIRST surprise and pleasure at renewing the acquaintance with Miss Seeton, Dickie and Juliana had fallen to discussing some of the other friends they had made during that momentous Aegean cruise on the Eurydice: foremost among these, in the memory of Mr. Nash, being Sir George Colveden, KCB, DSO, JP. Sir George it was who had helped Dickie to stop gambling: he had offered odds of a hundred to one that a Scotland Yard detective would be sent out to the ship and would solve the murder. Out of all the company it had been Dickie who stepped in and cheerfully wagered a tenner.
The sight of the baronet, chequebook in hand, just as cheerfully prepared to pay out the thousand pounds he owed (since it had been not Scotland Yard but Miss Seeton who eventually solved the mystery), startled Mr. Nash into a flutter of protestation from which he was rescued by the good offices of Mel Forby, the Daily Negative’s demon reporter. Mel was as shrewd as she was pretty and knew of his little weakness. She therefore proposed that Dickie should only accept Sir George’s cheque on condition that it was the last money bet he would ever make. Mr. Nash agreed; and had kept nobly to his promise ever since.
Dickie and Juliana had learned from Miss Seeton that the Colvedens lived not half a mile from their hotel, and resolved to telephone Rytham Hall with an invitation to dine at the George and Dragon one evening soon. By some hospitable sleight of hand which, afterwards, Juliana could never quite work out, this invitation had been changed by Lady Colveden into a proposal to eat en famille at the Hall the next day; a proposal which had been gratefully accepted.
“And really,” said Juliana as Dickie zipped her into a delightful little black dress, “it’s just as well that we’re going there, rather than the Colvedens coming here. I’d be a bit embarrassed for them, having to submit to the assault and battery those ghastly brats will keep committing on everybody’s ears.” For the Standon boys were running as much riot as on earlier occasions, and this time there was, to the great regret of almost all who had to hear them, no Miss Seeton to quell them with one of her glances.
“I blame the parents,” said Dickie, smoothing creases from his lady’s sleek satin shoulders. “I can’t think how their poor grandfather puts up with that rumpus day in, day out—it’s odd, isn’t it? He do
esn’t strike me as in the least bit deaf, which might have excused it.”
“He’s not deaf, he’s doting. He thinks those rackety little monsters are absolutely wonderful, and anything they do is all right by him. So of course his daughter and her husband have to humour them, which is what makes it so awful for the rest of us.” Juliana sighed, then brightened.
“Why ‘of course’?” enquired Dickie, watching her fondly as she slipped a pearl necklace from its velvet-lined box and held it out to him with a smile, then turned her back on him. “I do like these on you, you know.”
“Mm.” Juliana was noncommittal: the necklace, which was indeed beautiful, had been paid for by one of Dickie’s rare winning streaks. She would far rather he had given her a string of cultured, cheaper pearls, or even some from a Christmas cracker . . . but, she reminded herself, his betting days were over. “Yes,” she said, turning to place a loving peck on his cheek. “I think they suit me, Dickie darling—you have excellent taste. Thank you.”
“And thank you,” he returned, “for explaining—explaining why of course,” he added as she looked at him with a puzzled expression.
“Oh! Oh, yes, of course—well, Dickie, do think about it. Can’t you see that it’s the old man who has the money, and he seems to think the boys can get away with murder, and his family goes along with him so that he won’t cut them out of his will? Which is the sort of thing tyrannical old gentlemen are doing all the time.”
Dickie rubbed a thoughtful nose and frowned. “I admit I was unusually lucky, with Uncle Brummel. But do you honestly think Standon’s daughter and her husband have such a . . . a calculated eye to the main chance? I’d have called them more . . . overindulgent, the mother in particular. After all, nobody puts up with such a commotion unless they, er, like it. They must be able to shut those kids up properly, if they really want to—Miss Seeton just took one good look at them yesterday, and they went quiet, remember.”
Hands Up, Miss Seeton (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 11) Page 10