Delphick knew that to the determined collector no holds are permanently barred. Every time the matter came under discussion, he insisted that the sketches were in a safe place, and that Sir Hubert had no cause to be concerned. Miss Seeton, and her work, were fully appreciated by all those who had occasion to thank her; after so many years their number was large—and increasing.
Superintendent Kebby, however, had as yet no particular incentive to join that number. As he’d pointed out, the westerly searches inspired by the Traffic Jam and the Crazy Sheep had drawn a total blank in his own case, even if it had prompted Narcotics in the person of Superintendent Snowe to pay particular interest to activities in the Glastonbury area.
“He plans to send one of his men down there undercover,” said Kebby, “rather than rely on the Somerset lot to find someone suitable. Far more likely a local’d be spotted as a cop than one of ours, especially as some of the London druggies have started disappearing for a while and then popping up again flashing the cash. Nick Snowe thinks they head off to the sticks to set up new distribution routes and outlets, then come back to the Smoke once things are running well enough for them to just sit back and rake in the money. His undercover lad can keep his eyes open for anything of that sort at the same time he’s dropping hints about top-quality cannabis and flashing some cash of his own.”
“Or Scotland Yard’s,” amended Delphick, taking the copies of Miss Seeton’s sketches from his desk drawer and setting them before Superintendent Kebby. “Tell him to grow his hair, hang a bell round his neck, sew flares in his trousers and wear sandals.” He looked towards his enormous sidekick, six foot seven and seventeen stone, neat in collar and tie and dark grey jacket. “Tell him he’ll get nowhere if he stands out from the crowd.”
Bob grinned, and the three detectives settled to a further study of Miss Seeton’s drawings, hoping the possible whereabouts of Christy Garth might somehow be revealed. “And your guess, Jasper,” concluded Delphick, “would really be little better than either of ours, at this stage. We might even wonder if she wasn’t thinking of the kidnap at all, but somehow picked up on the drugs business before it happened—while as for the other ...”
He glanced at Bob, who was slowly shaking his head. Miss Seeton’s adopted nephew had never really been able to make sense of her doodles the way the Oracle could. Once they were explained to him—oh, yes, he could see what was going on, but left to his own imagination they were mostly ... well, the scribbles she often called them, though he could chuckle with her over the Traffic Jam play on words just as he’d once seen the funny side of her lascivious nude with suitcases that she’d called Abandoned Baggage. Bob smiled at the memory. Superintendent Kebby shot him a look. He explained.
“Likes a good laugh, does she? You starting to think that might be all that’s behind this row of jam-jars?”
“No,” Delphick replied, as Bob subsided beneath the tornado’s blast. “I don’t believe we are. No fresh interpretation, however, comes to mind as yet. On balance, knowing Miss Seeton, I’m willing to hazard a guess that Evesham may come into your case, but it’s all somewhat vague and we need more to go on—always assuming the false teeth aren’t, as we first wondered, hinting that the kidnap story is likewise false. I think we—you—need further information upon which to rely.”
Superintendent Kebby shot another look at Bob Ranger, then began to twirl his moustache. “See here, Oracle, I’ve already trespassed on your good nature by taking up your time with these sketches, but I’d like to trespass further and borrow your young giant here for a while. I want him to take notes when I have a chat with the sister—brother too, if we can catch him, though I know he’s tied up at work. It will save time, and for all we know time’s fast running out for Christy Garth. Trying to explain your lady-friend’s doodles and why they make me have doubts about the whole kidnap story would take too long even for my sidekick, and he’s been around almost as long as young Ranger here. But Ranger already has an inkling of why I’d want to know what I’m going to ask ’em. He’ll be able to keep an eye open for anything odd in the responses.”
“And can then report to me,” Delphick finished, “should anything, odd or otherwise, make sense in the context of Miss Seeton’s drawings. Be off with you, Sergeant Ranger. Consider yourself temporarily sub-contracted to Mr. Kebby. Produce your own doodles in the form of shorthand pothooks as he applies the third degree to the Garth sister, and possibly brother, and leave me to resume my work in peace. Who knows? By the time you come back, I might even have an in-tray that is merely full, as opposed to overflowing.”
The superintendent, pausing with his hand on the doorknob, looked over his shoulder. Unable to see around, through, and especially not over his huge escort, he uttered a quick “Huh!” before whisking himself, and Bob, out of Delphick’s office, leaving as he went a faint echo of thanks in the turbulent air behind him.
Letty Garth was slim and pale, her blue eyes darkly shadowed, her face puffy from lack of sleep. On hearing that Mr. Kebby brought no definite news of the missing Christy, even more colour had drained from her cheeks and her hands fluttered up to tug at her long, blonde hair, twiddling it round her fingers. Bob felt that if she’d been a few years younger she would have chewed the ends.
“Isn’t there anything we can do?” she begged the two policemen as they settled themselves on not-too-comfortable chairs; Bob discreetly out of sight in a corner with his notebook and pencil, Kebby with a small table between himself and Miss Garth. “There must be something! All this waiting—it’s been so long, and we’ve heard nothing. We did our best to pay the ransom—it wasn’t our fault it went wrong! They surely wouldn’t ... they wouldn’t harm Christy when it wasn’t his fault any more than it was ours—would they?” Her knuckles whitening under the pressure, she knotted her fingers together. Kebby saw how the nails that on his previous visit had been smooth, expensively manicured ovals were now ragged-edged, nibbled close to the quick. The graceful butterfly who flitted with her social conscience from homeless shelter to charity auction was almost unrecognisable in this taut, unhappy figure. “He’ll—be all right, won’t he?”
“I hope so, Miss Garth.” Kebby was grave. “I hope so, but you must understand I can’t promise. We’ve heard nothing new, and I take it you’ve heard nothing either.” Letty shook her head, and once more twisted her fingers. “You’d tell us, wouldn’t you?” urged the superintendent. “You’d not go behind our backs and try to make private arrangements?”
Letty sat up. “With a tap on our phone and our letters being opened, that wouldn’t be easy,” she reminded him, with the most fleeting of smiles. He smiled back. Bob could hardly believe the whirlwind force of the superintendent’s personality could be so quickly muted. Letty’s cheeks even held a little colour as she relaxed, and unlocked her fingers to spread wide her hands. “Honestly, Mr. Kebby, if we knew anything more we would tell you at once. Honestly.”
“Your brother, too?”
“Ben can’t be here—he’s at head office—but he’d say the same, I promise you. If you’d arranged to come later in the evening you could have asked him yourself. We can’t tell you anything you don’t already know, either of us.”
He nodded. “Then it’s time for a different approach, Miss Garth—Letty?” She returned his smile with one of her own, and inclined her head. “I’m sorry, Letty. There is something you can do, though it won’t be pleasant. Of course, we know of Christy’s problems. His drug habit’s no secret any more than your father’s threats to cut him off without a penny if he doesn’t pull himself together—and you said last time that he’d actually gone and done it. Please don’t think I’m trying to insult your older brother, but is it possible that Christy might have—well, faked his own kidnap as a means of getting easy money from the rest of the family, with your parents both away?”
Letty did not tug her hair, knot her fingers, or express outrage. She sat very still, silent for several moments. “We did wonder,” she said at
last. Sadly. “Dad wanted him to have treatment—thought about hiring people to—to scoop him up somehow and force him into a clinic, but the doctors he consulted said that unless a ...” Her voice shook. She blinked rapidly, and took a deep breath. “Unless an addict really wanted to cure his addiction, there’d be no point in—well, in kidnapping him, no matter how well-intentioned it was. He would just ... go back to his old habits once he was out again. Christy isn’t under age. He’s legally free to live his own life—to go to the devil in his own way ...”
“He’s certainly raised a fair bit of hell in his time,” agreed Kebby.
Letty sighed. Her shoulders, her whole body, drooped as she sat. “I can’t really think of a time when my parents weren’t worried about him,” she said. “He’s so much older than me, and he was never particularly close to Ben, though of course there’s an age difference there, too. They even went to different schools. Dad could afford so much more for us younger ones by the time ...” She swallowed further tears as once more her voice began to shake. “It’s awful to say such things of your brother, but Christy did seem to—to resent us both for having the opportunities he’d never been given himself. You could never persuade him it wasn’t—wasn’t favouritism so much as the fact there was more money around later on than there’d been earlier. He said if that was true, his share ought to be larger to—to make up for what he hadn’t had in the past ...”
“And your parents listened to him,” said Kebby, trying not to frown.
She drooped still more. “Yes, for a while—for too long, they agreed afterwards, but by then it—it was too late. He’d got in with a fast-living crowd and they introduced him to drugs. He—he’s perhaps not as strong as he likes to think he is. I don’t know how long it takes to—to hook someone into dependence, but I believe Christy was hooked pretty quickly.” She sat up, and took another deep breath. “Superintendent, I’ve never said this to anyone before, but I sometimes think—wonder—if he might not have done it deliberately, out of spite. It must sound silly to you ...”
“Why should it? It’s the way a child would think.” Kebby thought back to what Delphick had told him of Miss Seeton’s impression of Christy Garth. “A child has little self-discipline, Letty. It’s not fair. I’ll show the grown-ups! I wouldn’t say your brother has ever shown much common sense or self-discipline, would you? Hardly adult behaviour to sulk or throw tantrums when the family fortunes change. Better late than never, you’d hope he’d think. Well done to the old folks for having made it big, hard work paying off at last and so on. You’d hope that even if he’d started going to the bad, he’d try to pull himself together when the chance was offered—as you say it was.” His tone mingled regret and sternness. “But he’s not a child, he’s an adult. He made his choice.”
“Some of his friends did come to their senses as they grew older. Not many, but I remember Christy complaining some of them had been—been got at, and moved on, and even if he did ever see them, they weren’t fun any more.” Her eyes flashed. “Fun! What a—a stupid thing to say!”
“Drugs and drug addiction aren’t fun,” agreed the superintendent. “You said yourself, people go to the devil in their own way—but far too often other people are involved. Innocent people like your family—and there’s crime, too. Not just the dealers and suppliers, but the addicts, having to steal or burgle, or worse, to get stuff to sell to pay for their next fix. Which is why I had to wonder, Letty, if this whole kidnap business might have been faked by your brother for the money. And now you tell me you’ve been wondering, too.”
Chapter Six
“Here we are! Farside Hotel.” The taxi pulled up outside the pleasant guest-house chosen by Miss Seeton from the directories and gazetteers in Crabbe’s Garage—a public service instigated by Jack Crabbe for the benefit of any Plummergenite wishing to travel beyond the limits imposed by a day trip. And it had taken almost a day, even with a taxi at both ends of two main line trains connected by a cross-London cab, for Miss Seeton to travel from Kent to Somerset; but on the whole she had enjoyed the experience. So much easier to have the sandwiches Martha insisted she took, rather than make her way to the dining car and find somewhere to sit when she was so comfortable where she was, in her Reserved seat (again at Martha’s insistence) in a second class carriage. And the hotel, now that she saw it in reality rather than a photograph, looked every bit as comfortable as she had expected.
“Good gracious.” Miss Seeton, as the driver prepared to open the door for her and take her case from the boot, blinked. “Surely not.” She blinked again. On the top step of the Farside Hotel sat a large—it rose, yawned, and stretched—no, a very large pale tabby cat that looked familiar. Surely Tibs, the cherished pet of young Amelia Potter at the police house, had not—could not have—followed her here?
“Hi there, moggy,” said the cab driver, escorting Miss Seeton to the foot of the steps and waiting for her to ring the bell. The cat returned this impertinent salute with a long, green-eyed stare of disdain and sat down again, curling its tail away from careless feet.
The door was opened by a tall, grey-haired woman wearing large spectacles above a friendly smile. “Miss McConchie?” Miss Seeton smiled up at the spectacles.
“Miss Seeton? Yes, I’m Lyn McConchie. Hello, Ted. Here.” Miss McConchie took Miss Seeton’s case before its owner, burrowing in her capacious handbag for her purse, had time to protest. “Now, you settle up with Ted while I put the kettle on. You’ve been travelling for hours—you must be parched. I’ll take you up to your room, and by the time tea’s ready you can sit down quietly with me in the kitchen, if you’ve no objection.”
“None at all,” Miss Seeton assured her. “That would be most kind.” Once more she smiled. “Thank you.” One might almost be at home. Such a warm welcome. She hoped Miss McConchie’s tea would not be too strong, but it was clear she was the sort of person one could happily ask to add more hot water to the pot, or at least to one’s cup; and sugar was always left to personal choice, so that would be all right, too.
Her taxi driver duly thanked with a tip and another smile, Miss Seeton trotted into the lobby of the Farside Hotel. Sounds of movement and the hiss of steam drew her to the small kitchen at the back of what had once been a private house. Edwardian, she rather thought, or late Victorian: a family home where the family would by now have fallen on hard times, or died out. Miss Seeton had read as much about Somerset as the limitations of a Kent library system would, in the time available, permit. This house perhaps had been requisitioned during the war, maybe for evacuees, more likely for workers in various sheepskin and other key local factories: the Royal Air Force in the Second World War had used a great number of sheepskins, for airmen’s boots and bomber jackets and probably, she thought, for the ear-flapped flying helmets one saw in old films, as well ...
Miss Seeton found the kitchen door half open, tapped, and pushed it wide to see Lyn McConchie busy with boiling water and a brown earthenware teapot. Miss Seeton said nothing to distract her hostess, and Miss McConchie called over her shoulder, “Hang on a jiffy and I’ll show you your room.”
Miss Seeton hung on. Miss McConchie finished swilling water round to warm the pot, emptied it away, set down the pot and opened a battered tin tea caddy decorated with bright female figures that were vaguely Chinese, swaying gracefully with long tunics and parasols. She dropped a generous two spoons of loose leaves into the pot, poured in more boiling water, clattered the lid into place and slipped a cosy made from vivid crochet squares over the brown earthenware globe; and at last turned back to her guest.
“We’ll have cake as well,” she promised, “once you’re settled.”
Once settled, Miss Seeton enjoyed a slightly strong but definitely unsugared cup of tea in the kitchen, listening as Miss McConchie chattered her happy explanations of anything Miss Seeton might wish to know. The tabby cat was called Hodge “because his mother lives with the Johnson family”. Miss Seeton nodded her appreciation of this pleasing whi
msy. “He can be a little standoffish, but he’s friendly enough—he doesn’t scratch my guests, or fight other cats, which sounds very different from your Tibs.”
Miss Seeton smiled. “Indeed, yes. Tibs seems fond of Amelia, but of few others, though of course cats by their very nature are said to be rather more distant creatures than dogs.” She returned Miss McConchie's literary allusion with one of her own. “The cat that walked by himself, for instance, waving his wild tail.”
“Through the wild, wet woods on his wild lone.” Miss McConchie likewise knew and loved her Kipling. “It’s certainly been wild and wet over the past week or so. Lots of heavy rain, and rain on grass makes it slippery at best, a quagmire at worst. If you plan to climb the Tor, I hope you’ve brought a pair of good stout shoes with you.” Miss Seeton frowned. “Don’t worry if you haven’t, there are a couple of outdoor clothing shops in the High Street. There’s sometimes talk of concrete steps, but it’s more than five hundred feet to the top, and whether the idea will ever come to anything is anyone’s guess.”
Miss Seeton Flies High (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 23) Page 8