Miss Seeton Flies High (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 23)

by Hamilton Crane

  She was too late. Martha, like her husband Stan, had a key to the door that opened from the garden to the narrow side lane.

  “Oh, dear.” A guilty blush tinged Miss Seeton’s cheeks as Martha stared at her.

  “Miss Emily, your second-best china! What have you got in there?”

  “I thought I would release it out of doors, Martha dear, as the weather is not too cold and it will have ample time to prepare for hibernation—if in fact they do,” she added. When Nigel Colveden had told her so much of interest about sheep and their teeth, pigs and their pillows, and spiders with their makeshift balloons, he hadn’t enlarged on the winter habits of any of them.

  “It’s never a mouse!” The shocked Martha was as pale as her employer was pink.

  “Oh, no.” Miss Seeton presented the cup and saucer for Martha’s inspection. “They can creep through the smallest of cracks, can they not? Under the door, perhaps, or down the chimney. But it has done no harm, that I can see,” she added hastily as Martha took the saucer, removed the cup, clicked her tongue and shook the intruder to the ground.

  “I’ll start with the dishes.” Martha was brisk as she followed Miss Seeton indoors. “But there, I might have known something of the sort would happen. It was in the paper.”

  Miss Seeton read The Times; Martha preferred Anyone’s. “In the paper?” echoed Miss Seeton.

  “In my stars.” Martha began rinsing the cup and saucer vigorously under the cold tap. “Look for an unwelcome visitor, it said. Well, when I looked up The Street as I was coming across here I thought it might be Miss Nuttel and Mrs. Blaine, because they were heading this way, only they went right on past down towards the canal—and anyway there’s two of them. I heard them say something about wool caught in the hedge, and arguing how with so many sheep grazing there ought to be enough to stuff a whole cushion.” Martha sniffed. “If they come knocking at your door, dear, asking what you do with your chicken feathers, you tell them Stan wants them all for his compost.”

  In the half-dozen years she had lived in Plummergen Miss Seeton had never thought to enquire what happened to the feathers produced by the Sweetbriars hens. Stan kept the henhouse clean, the hens fed and watered, and the eggs ranged in order of lay: he would never permit an elderly egg to find its way to her table, or to his own. The garden and the hens were Stan’s private kingdom as his wife reigned supreme in the kitchen.

  “Compost?” Had the mischievous influence of Nigel Colveden been spreading? He had known the Bloomers for most of his life ... But no. The Bloomers had known Nigel and his sense of humour far longer than had Miss Seeton. Martha enjoyed a laugh and a joke, but it was unlikely she’d be fooled by one of Nigel’s extravagant stories.

  “Compost?” said Miss Seeton again. “I had no idea you could.” The idea had received no attention in Greenfinger Points the Way, but Stan took no notice of Greenfinger’s words of what she supposed to be wisdom, and Stan suggested was no more than making it all up as the man went along, born and bred in some town or other as he obviously was.

  “Give them a good soak overnight,” said Martha, splashing busily, “and make sure the wind’s not blowing when you put them on the heap. They rot down lovely, Stan says, and it don’t really smell beyond a whiff on the breeze, and even then you have to stand close.”

  This reminded Miss Seeton of her balloon ride, and Somerset, and King Arthur, and Sir Gawain. With a quick word she left Martha to rinse the spider-cup for a third time, and went back to her interrupted sketching.

  The next interruption came when Martha, the crockery finally scoured to her satisfaction, the house energetically swept, mopped, and dusted, came in with a fresh pot of tea and two cups. “You’ve been working that hard, dear, you never noticed when Bert brought your letters. I didn’t like to disturb you even when I realised there was another from the police. I expect it’s a cheque from that computer of theirs. Didn’t you say you’d been doing some more pictures?”

  Miss Seeton confirmed that she had, while in Somerset, been asked for one or two IdentiKit drawings; and only yesterday Mr. Delphick had borrowed her latest sketchbooks. “That is to say, I hope he understood they were merely a loan. Dear Mr. Jessyp would be so disappointed if I were to let him down and, although my memory as a rule is most reliable, somehow I cannot seem to recall the scenery exactly as I would have wished, and will be glad once they are returned.”

  It took little prompting on Martha’s part for the memory sketches to be displayed. Miss Seeton, concerned for the accuracy of the Sir Gawain backdrops, believed that by having to explain them to her friend she would remember what was not quite right about them, and would be able to correct it.

  “I am sure, you see, that there is no such willow tree on the summit of Glastonbury Tor.” Miss Seeton produced as proof the guide book sold to her by Octavia Callender. “In the photograph there is clearly a ruined church tower, just as I remember it—and yet this is not the first time it has happened. And why there should be such an unusual cloud, I cannot imagine. It was a glorious sunny day when I climbed the Tor. It didn’t rain until the next day, when I went on the bus to Wells.”

  “Why?” chuckled Martha.

  “Because the book said the cathedral was one of the most interesting and beautiful in the country, and the west front one of the most impressive.” Miss Seeton turned back through the pages. “So many statues, including, I believe, Thomas à Becket ...”

  Martha glanced at the tiers of stone figures, and shook her head. “I didn’t mean why go to Wells, I meant that’s what that cloud looks like. A great question mark in the sky, asking everyone Why?”

  “Nigel attended Wye Agricultural College, did he not?” Miss Seeton, turning another page, saw yet another Hereford bull, mighty and white-faced where she was almost sure she remembered the shaggy-coated Highland cattle as being of solid colour, and boasting huge upswept horns rather than almost demure stumps.

  “And as for the Zodiac, I couldn’t even see the sword.” Miss Seeton indicated her third sketch of a woman still masked, still wearing robes, but this time with a rampant lion as her companion rather than a cat, or a Dalmatian dog. “Her cousin did her very best to point it out, but I fear it made no impression. You said, Martha dear, that you had been reading your horoscope, and I believe that Leo is the appropriate sign, her birthday being the eighth of August, which is why she is called Octavia.” Mrs. Bloomer was unable to see why, and said so. Miss Seeton explained the explanation at greater length.

  “Oh,” said Martha. “So that’s why, is it?”

  “That,” Miss Seeton assured her, “is why.”

  And again she looked at the clouded question mark in the sky, and puzzled.

  The photocopying finished, Delphick telephoned Sweetbriars to ask when and how most efficiently he should return Miss Seeton’s property. Would she be content with the registered post, or would she prefer a personal delivery, possibly tomorrow? Miss Seeton, wrestling with wayward memories of the Somerset countryside, said that of course whichever method suited the chief superintendent would likewise suit herself, but perhaps, for the sake of Mr. Jessyp and the Padders, if he did not mind too much she would be glad if it could be as soon as convenient.

  There was a note in her voice that Delphick recognised. He sat up straight. “You’ve been sketching again, Miss Seeton.” Miss Seeton confessed that she had, but that try as she might it still wasn’t coming out quite as she had hoped. Which is why the sketchbooks would help, she felt sure, although he must not go to any trouble over the matter.

  Delphick looked towards his sergeant, who as was his custom had been listening on the extension. “First thing tomorrow, Bob!”

  “Yes, sir,” said Bob, grinning widely. “I’ll go and sort out a car, shall I?”

  “Do, please.” Delphick readdressed the telephone, which was uttering little chirrups of pleasure at the thought of visitors—protests that she was putting everyone to a great deal of bother—and some relief that her sketches would
soon be back and she could try, yet again, to capture something of the atmosphere of that enchanted landscape.

  There was gingerbread, there was rich fruit cake, there was a sponge and there were plain chocolate biscuits, to all of which Bob brought his usual hearty appetite while Delphick, declining more than a welcome cup of tea, discussed with Miss Seeton her latest sketches as well as her earlier efforts.

  “This young woman has made quite an impression on you.” Octavia Callender’s third likeness, to which the artist had added some dashes of colour—green for her robe, tawny gold for her companion—intrigued him. Apart from Glastonbury Tor, Miss Seeton both during and after her visits to Somerset had drawn nothing, and nobody, else in triplicate. Even the Three Swords of Arthur were commemorated but once, in the form of Susan dressed as the Lady of the Lake. Yet Octavia, always masked, nevertheless dominated the pages whether her familiar was a tabby cat, a spotted dog or, as now, a lion rampant. Leo the Zodiac sign, who had a later page to himself in full star-spangled splendour, Delphick understood, but as king of the jungle a lion did not yield his place to another living creature. Miss Seeton’s original lion ramped realistically at Octavia’s side but, on closer inspection, its eyes were wary. Delphick hunted for the two previous drawings. The cat Miss Seeton had called Graymalkin looked no more than smug and self-assured, in the way of cats. The Dalmatian dog, however, flinched away from the wringing hands in her second portrayal.

  The first time he saw this sketch Delphick had supposed the hands to be spraying drops of water in the dog’s direction, even though the water itself was no more than a few swift dots and darts of the pencil to indicate something that, on the stage, is not there at all. But this third likeness of Miss Callender ... Or—was it? Behind that mask, who could tell? Her Lady of the Lake cousin was of a similar build, and Miss Seeton had evidently liked, or at least found some sympathy with, her. But this masked face ...

  “I’m right, am I, that this is the same person in each drawing, Miss Seeton?”

  “I believe so, although I cannot think why she has made so strong an impression, except that she is an excellent actress, as well as a good businesswoman. Her cousin told me she obtained a first class degree at university, too.” Miss Seeton sighed for the brilliance of another when she, herself, had so mediocre a talent. “It is always a pleasure to watch an expert performing with expertise, is it not? I confess to being somewhat apprehensive about returning to her shop, in case she talked me into buying even more books that I probably did not need.”

  Delphick knew Miss Seeton, in some ways, perhaps better than she knew herself. She was not one to be tricked or coerced into doing something she did not wish to do; politeness alone would make her buy the unwanted books, not pressure, no matter how skilful the sales talk—even if on first acquaintance she had seen the saleswoman as ...

  “Lady Macbeth again,” said Delphick.

  Miss Seeton nodded. “A difficult part to play, or rather to cast.” She smiled. “There was much discussion when Mrs. Benn suggested Macbeth as a welcome change for the end of term play from what many might regard as the more normal fare for an all-girls school. I helped with the scenery then, too. The vexed question of how many Macbeth children there were, or were not, was settled by treating him as the lady’s second husband, and herself as an older woman, which also of course explains the ease with which she persuades him to the murder.” She smiled again, ruefully. “Many of our actresses were reluctant to portray a bossy older woman, no matter the strength and depth of the character. Indeed, it was only by allowing a degree of extravagance in the sleep-walking scene—strange lighting effects, and so forth—that anyone could be persuaded to do it. They preferred, you see, to dress in chain mail and fight battles rather than wring their hands and go mad in long green robes—that is, white, of course—or cackle and prophesy as hideous witches.”

  “The clang of sword on sword,” agreed Delphick, contemplating Sir Bedivere’s grasp of a misty Excalibur, “does have a more satisfying sound than the wails of nightmare terrors. Would you say that Miss Callender was the sort to have nightmares?”

  “I would think it unlikely. She seems to have a most practical outlook on life, as her cousin and her former boyfriend both agreed. Indeed, I understood him to suggest that for him she was somewhat too practical.” Vincent Weaver, cocking his cheerful snook at authority, taking whenever he could to the freedom of the skies, must have felt constrained by Octavia Callender’s more energetic style. “I believe,” said Miss Seeton, “that the phrase to describe him would be ‘laid back’, which I would not apply to Miss Callender.”

  “Then I wonder what prompted you to this third sketch, Miss Seeton. Has someone said something to make you revisit the subject?”

  Miss Seeton did her best to give an accurate reply. “Martha spoke of her horoscope,” she offered. “It said she must expect an unwelcome visitor, and she found me putting a spider outside. After Glastonbury I know that many people take such matters seriously, though in Martha’s case I believe it is no more than harmless amusement—the horoscope, not the spider, which some people dislike, and some even fear. Spiders, not star signs. I do not, of course, read my own, but I happen to know my sign is Virgo—” could it be anything else, Delphick mused—“and as a child one learned that clever little rhyme, so I knew that the previous sign, with her birthday on the eighth of August, must be Leo.”

  She saw Delphick’s look of interested ignorance, and began to recite. “The Ram, the Bull, the Heavenly Twins / After the Crab, the Lion shines / The Virgin, and the Scales / The Scorpion, Archer, and Sea-Goat / The Man who bears the Watering Pot / The Fish, with glittering tails.”

  Delphick thanked her. She smiled. “So clever, all twelve in just six lines, even if the idea of a sea-goat is puzzling, but then so can the rest of them be. While I was in the shop someone came in to complain about the Zodiac books he had bought, and how there were only eleven signs and one had to be divided to make twelve, Most puzzling. And she sold him more books, which is why I see her as a clever actress because I strongly suspect that she doesn’t believe a word of it. She has such a sound business brain.”

  Delphick was silent; Bob, who had finished his snack and begun jotting the occasional shorthand note, read through the little Zodiac rhyme and thought it might make a bedtime chant for Gideon as he grew older. Children, Anne had said, enjoyed routine. The same toys in the bath, the same book each night, the same little joke as the covers were pulled up. The Ram, the Bull, the Heavenly Twins ...

  Delphick frowned. He pondered. He coughed, braced himself, and said:

  “Miss Seeton, might I use your telephone?”

  Five minutes later, with the sitting room door firmly closed against laughing incredulity, Delphick was asking Glastonbury’s police station sergeant to run Chief Inspector Faggus, if he was on the premises, to earth. “He’s in the middle of a murder investigation,” he was told. “And I may be able to help him,” said Delphick. “I may be,” he repeated, stressing may because he was starting to lose his nerve. Before, however, he could break the connection the rumbling tones of Tom Faggus came along the line to ask what he wanted.

  “It’s a very long shot,” the chief superintendent warned him.

  “And you’re an oracle,” said the chief inspector. “Specialise in ambiguity and guesswork, don’t they? And looking at life in a cock-eyed way, same as your lady-friend who draws the pretty pictures. She bin up to her tricks again?”

  Delphick hesitated. Faggus laughed. “Well, that’s my long shot, certain sure. Come on now, fair exchange being no robbery, why not tell me yours?”

  “The laws of slander,” began the chief superintendent, “prevent my saying too much without proof, and I stress again that it is an extremely long shot—but if there should be a young woman in town who owns a bookshop and wears long dresses, the date of whose birthday has a decidedly octagonal feel to it ...”

  “Ah,” said Tom Faggus, after working it out. “Yes. An
d if there is?”

  “If there is, she and her associates might—just might—be worth a closer look than any of them may so far have received in your investigations.”

  “None,” said Faggus promptly. “No obvious reason. What put you on to her?”

  Delphick hesitated. If he was wrong, talk of the Sir Bedivere sketch—the emphasis on the knight himself, the apparent unimportance of the sword—might be too slanderous a hint. “Miss Seeton has drawn her likeness three times, always in a mask and remarking, when asked about this peculiarity, that the lady in question is a consummate actress as well as a good businesswoman. Those who excel in the business world often have something of a ruthless streak. From your knowledge of the young woman, would you agree?”

  “Thinking about it, perhaps I would.”

  “Miss Seeton,” said Delphick, “sees her not as a bookseller, but as Lady Macbeth.”

  “Does she, now.” Delphick said nothing. Let Faggus work it out again.

  “I see,” said the chief inspector at last. “Bit of a bossy-boots, right? Told her husband to kill the king and he did, poor sap.”

  “I understand,” offered Delphick, “that a previous male associate of the bookshop lady experienced some relief when she chose to break off their association, as he preferred a quiet life.”

  “Ah, yes.” Tom Faggus could almost always see the lighter side. “A quiet life for a bit of a real high flyer, would you say?”

  The smile in his voice was echoed by Delphick. “Thinking about it, perhaps I would.”

  “We’ll ask around,” said the chief inspector. “And ... thanks.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Miss Seeton had asked if she might attend the first public run-through of Mr. Jessyp’s script so that she could put final touches to her scenery designs. Though her Somerset sketchbooks had been returned, a little more inspiration would not hurt. Mr. Jessyp said it was to be a principals-only performance, with everyone but Daniel Eggleden in plain clothes. Dan would wear the high-collared green cloak essential for the decapitation scene, but chain mail (dishcloths knitted in grey wool) and armour (cardboard shapes cut out and painted by the Junior Mixed Infants, supervised by Miss Maynard) would be absent, as also the gorgeous gowns and gauze-draped hennins the ladies of the court were to wear.