“Oh, I know, we could be eaten alive in our beds. We’re hardly safe with them wandering loose through the village at any time of the night or day.” Mrs. Blaine was being unfair to Mr. Alexander and the Borzois in saying this, for the dogs were always kept on the lead when walked along The Street, which only happened twice a day, morning and evening. And only in the meadows beside the “imperial waterway” were they allowed to run loose. “Too dangerous,” said Mrs. Blaine. “It makes one wonder why anybody would need such ferocious guard dogs without something to hide, doesn’t it?”
She was voicing the same opinion as they finally entered the post office opposite, Miss Nuttel having been reassured that the mysterious Mr. Alexander and his dogs were well out of range. Miss Nuttel was ready to back up Bunny’s opinion with a few choice words of her own; but for once The Nuts were not the centre of attention.
The post office was humming, and Emmy Putts was preening herself as the cause of all the excitement. Her mother, who worked in Brettenden’s biscuit factory, had been on night shift during recent weeks and consequently found out what had been going on in the area long before anyone else.
“Burned down the school, so they’ve done, fire brigade there half the night and poor Wully Boorman with his leg broke falling off the turntable ladder trying to save the caretaker’s cat, that climbed down by itself anyway and not a whisker singed, and the police snooping about in the ashes looking,” said Mrs. Skinner, who’d buttonholed Eric and Bunny before they’d reached the grocery counter behind which Emmy Putts held court, “for clues. Deliberate, that’s what they say it was—and them haystacks on Ted Mulcker’s cousin’s farm over Brettenden way, they was deliberate, too.”
“Arson? But that’s too terrible!” cried Mrs. Blaine, all fears of canine savagery driven from her mind on learning of this new threat. “Why, we could be burned alive in our beds every night for a week, with a maniac at large! What about the police?” She glared round accusingly, looking for Mabel Potter, wife to the village constable. But Mrs. Potter, her husband having warned her of the likely mood abroad today, had decided that her shopping could wait for a while. “What are the police,” demanded Mrs. Blaine, “doing about it?”
“Looking for clues, so me mum said,” Emmy Putts informed her, a little peeved that Mrs. Skinner had stolen her thunder and left her, really, with little to add to what had already been said. Nothing to stop her putting forward her own idea about what had happened, though. “They say,” she announced with a delicious shudder, “that it’s sort of kinky, like, to want to go around setting fire to places—sex, and that.”
“Emmy,” warned Mrs. Stillman, “get back to your work, and don’t talk nonsense. Mrs. Henderson wanted some tomatoes, if I remember rightly.”
But the postmaster’s wife was too late: the seed, once sown, flourished on the fertile soil of Plummergen’s hyperactive mind. “A sex maniac?” squeaked Mrs. Blaine in alarm. She turned to look for Miss Nuttel, who was gazing thoughtfully at the selection of garden gnomes Mr. Stillman, in deference to the Best Kept Village Competition, had brought in to add to his usual more subdued stock. “Eric, did you hear what everyone’s saying? We must go into Brettenden at once and buy a burglar alarm!”
This suggestion was thought by the majority of shoppers to be well worth following, and the post office would have been vacated en masse by the panic-stricken hordes if someone had not remembered that, since the powers-that-be had reduced the bus service to one day a week, the only other way of travelling into Brettenden was on the twice-weekly bus run by Crabbe’s garage.
“Bus don’t run today,” lamented Mrs. Skinner. “We’ll have to lock all our doors and windows tonight, you mark my words, no matter how hot the weather. But tomorrow . . .”
Mrs. Henderson had once quarrelled with Mrs. Skinner over whose turn it was to arrange the church flowers, and never missed a chance to score over her. “And what use would such a thing as a burglar alarm be,” she asked, “when we all know what trouble that one of Miss Seeton’s has always caused her—and us, too, going off at all hours through not being set proper, and a good job, if you ask me, that she’s not fixed it after the lightning struck t’other week. More bother than they’re worth, such contraptions are, and there’d be a sight more sense in getting a dog about the place.”
“Like the ones at Mrs. Venning’s house,” breathed Norah Blaine. “That man was prowling up and down The Street with his dogs this morning—we both saw him, didn’t we, Eric? And he was smiling, too sinister for words. Why would he do that if he hadn’t been up to something? Something,” moaned Mrs. Blaine, “in Brettenden last night—they say that sort of person gets a, . . . a perverse pleasure from setting fire to—well, even the most ordinary places—like a school.”
“Thinking of all them poor innocents frying alive, make no mistake,” suggested Mrs. Skinner. “Gloating, that’s what he’d be about, depend on it.” Everyone shuddered: everyone except Mrs. Henderson, that is.
“Then he’d have done far better to set fire to the place during the daytime, when there’d be some kiddies inside, and a spot of sense to his carrying-on,” she remarked.
“But that’s surely the point!” Bunny Blaine turned upon her at once. “When a maniac’s involved, there’s absolutely no sense to his behaviour whatsoever—they’re completely irrational, everyone knows that, which is what makes them so dangerous. Unpredictable,” said Mrs. Blaine, and everybody shuddered once more.
“Like I said,” sulked Emmy Potts, “kinky.”
“Pyromania,” announced Miss Nuttel in an authoritative tone. It was her first contribution to the discussion, and everyone’s eyes focussed upon her. “Well-known form of sexual deviation.” She flushed slightly as Bunny’s mouth dropped open in shock. “Best keep a lookout for anyone behaving oddly,” she suggested. “Fit locks on windows and doors as well, of course.”
“First thing tomorrow,” decided Mrs. Blaine, “we’ll be on the bus for Brettenden, and we’ll go straight to the ironmonger’s and buy locks for every window in the house! And I know,” she added in a plaintive tone, “I’ll never sleep a wink tonight, with worrying about what will happen next . . .”
A sentiment which was echoed by almost everyone in the post office.
The mingled delights of shock, scandal, and shopping must not be indulged in for too long, lest they lose their force. Plummergen knows this well, and instinctively. Thus, after a pleasurable half-hour or so threshing out the finer points of pyromania, the merits of guard dogs, and various systems of burglar alarm, people began to drift homewards in moods of enjoyable anxiety, casting worried glances over their shoulders and vowing to make Jack Crabbe drive tomorrow’s bus to Brettenden earlier, and faster, than ever before.
The Nuts crossed the road in a thoughtful silence. Poor Bunny was still upset by Eric’s blatant use of the shocking words her friend had hardly realised she’d known, let alone be able to come out with in public like that. Erica Nuttel was brooding on the garden gnome Mr. Stillman had procured; its face wore a lopsided grin which quite unnerved her. And Mr Stillman had chosen it deliberately! Outside the gate of Lilikot, she paused.
“Didn’t like to say anything in the post office, Bunny, but Mr. Stillman’s in a bit of an odd mood recently. Touchy—snapped at us the other day, didn’t he? Wouldn’t let me sit down after those dogs . . . Might just be worry over the Competition, of course—unlikely, though. No front garden, is there?”
“Oh, Eric, surely you don’t mean . . .”
Miss Nuttel put a long finger to her lips. “Walls have ears, Bunny. Best not say too much. Just felt you ought to be warned.”
“Oh, Eric! And the post office so near the house—we’d never know until it was too late! What shall we do?”
Before she could collapse in the hysterics which seemed likely to develop, Miss Nuttel opened the gate and shoved her sharply inside. Bunny squeaked with startled indignation, but her squeak was drowned out by a sudden horrified yelp from Miss Nut
tel.
“The lawn!” she cried and dropped the shopping bag to point with a shaking finger. “My lawn—look at it!”
“Oh, Eric,” gasped Bunny, following her friend’s gaze. “How—how peculiar, those brown patches. Surely they’re not supposed to be there, are they?”
Normally Miss Nuttel humoured her friend’s ignorance about the more practical aspects of home ownership. Bunny cooked the meals, Eric grew the fruit and vegetables essential to their back-to-nature lifestyle. Bunny turned sheets sides-to-middle and hemmed towelling bought by the yard in bargain basements, while Eric slapped paint on peeling woodwork and waged war on black beetles. Bunny pushed the broom and the vacuum cleaner; Eric mowed the lawn.
“Of course they’re not supposed to be there!” snapped Miss Nuttel as her friend repeated the artless question. “Never seen anything like it in my life—ruined, ruined!” She might have been a mother bewailing the lost virginity of a cherished only daughter. “My lawn . . .”
Mrs. Blaine had been staring about her during the lament of Miss Nuttel for the loss of the billiard-table verdure which was the result of so much toil. In times of drought, not a drop of washing-up water was allowed to run down the kitchen drains; Miss Nuttel collected it all and stored it outside in the water-butt, into which she would siphon bath and shower water, as well. The flowers might be allowed to wither, but the lawn was treated as lovingly as those parts of the garden which produced good, wholesome food . . . Small wonder, then, that Eric was upset. But there was a limit to the length of time Bunny was prepared to stand staring at the mottled greensward: her gaze wandered . . .
“Eric!” she clutched Miss Nuttel’s arm. “Eric, do look at the Cape Daisy!”
“Dimorphotheca aurantiaca,” Miss Nuttel corrected her automatically, turning to look at the cherished marigold-like flowers edging the path, expecting to see their usual black-eyed centres nodding up at her. “Bunny! It—it’s got them, too—whatever it is!”
Once they started to look about them, they could see signs of the mysterious brown wilt on several of their prize specimens as well as the lawn. The morning sunlight showed up every stricken stem, every withered leaf. “In too much of a state about those dogs to notice earlier,” Miss Nuttel said, when Bunny, bleating with shock, ventured to ask if it could have happened while they were out. “Must have been during the night—some sort of fungus, maybe, activated by the sun—highly infectious, by the look of it. Better buy a large tin of Cheshunt Compound in Brettenden tomorrow, as well as the window locks.”
“I think,” quavered Mrs. Blaine, who’d been looking over the hedge at their neighbour’s garden, “you’d better make it a really big tin, Eric. Or two, or three—because . . .”
In her turn she pointed, and Miss Nuttel followed her gaze. On the lawn in front of the house next door was a rash of brown patches, more or less regular in shape, as were those on Lilikot’s lawn; and Miss Nuttel’s knowledgeable eye could see that the same tawny blight had disfigured other prize flowers and shrubs.
She glanced up and down The Street: in other front gardens, returning shoppers seemed to be discovering similar problems. Little cries of horror and dismay filled the air.
“And, oh, Eric,” lamented Bunny, wringing plump hands as her friend stood frowning, “what will happen now about the Best Kept Village Competition?”
chapter
~8~
MRS. PUTTS HAD been correct to suggest police suspicions of arson at Brettenden School: Superintendent Brinton had stood and shouted at Detective Constable “Sleaze” Arbuthnott for nearly five minutes before, recollecting himself, he choked out what might have been an apology and motioned the young man to sit down.
“It’s so damned frustrating,” he grumbled as Sleaze set one of the upright chairs neatly in front of Brinton’s desk. “We get you to infiltrate—and now you say it isn’t them, or if it is, you don’t know anything about it.”
“It’s early days yet, sir. They hardly know me, and I’m sure they don’t trust me.” Detective Constable Arbuthnott, having settled himself comfortably on his chair, crossed one leg over the other and began to jog his topmost foot to an unheard rhythm. From a hole in the toe protruded a sock-shrouded lump which marked time; the superintendent shut his eyes briefly, as if in prayer.
“You must fit in with them so well,” he complained, “it seems hard to believe they didn’t let something slip. Half the Choppers went to Brettenden School—not that it did much good, you can’t get most of ’em to sign their names on statements without telling ’em how to spell them—but even the ones who attended Ashford would burn the other place down just for the sheer hell of it.”
“They’re pleased, of course, sir—you can imagine the sort of comments I’ve been hearing—but I honestly couldn’t swear to it that anyone I’ve met was involved.”
“So far as you can tell, on your brief acquaintance,” the superintendent reminded him.
“So far as I can tell on my brief acquaintance.” agreed Sleaze, unruffled. “Do I take it, then, sir, that you wish me to continue to further my acquaintance with the Choppers for a few more days, at least?”
“What’s a week or two, between friends?” Brinton said, with a despairing shrug. “Just see if you can produce a small miracle at the end of it all.” He gestured towards the door. “On your way, laddie, and get infiltrating—and get results, and fast!”
But by the end of that week they were no further forward with the arson enquiry: if anything, they had fallen back. The sports pavilion on Brettenden playing fields had been reduced to ashes, and two empty shops off Ashford High Street had suffered severe fire damage. There were reports of other outbreaks in areas a few miles removed from the Choppers’ usual sphere of influence: another fireman was injured, this time by falling masonry. The Choppers, notorious, had evidently spawned a rash of imitators, and there were no clues to the identity of anyone involved.
Brinton began to suspect that Sleaze Arbuthnott would learn nothing from the original gang because in some way he’d broken his cover; and he began to fear that, if the perpetrators of the arson were not caught soon, someone would be seriously hurt. His one consolation in the middle of all this was that nobody, at any time, had mentioned Miss Seeton’s name in connection with the series of fires; even P. C. Potter’s weekly telephone call from Plummergen seemed to suggest that everyone there was more bothered by a recent outbreak of some peculiar plant disease, and the antics of a few mysterious strangers, than by anything Miss Emily Seeton looked likely to get up to.
“After all,” Brinton told Chief Superintendent Delphick, “she’s teaching at the local primary school, for heaven’s sake, which ought to keep her busy until the end of term, at least. So it looks as if my premonition was wrong—touch wood,” he added with a hasty thump of his desk that set the telephone dancing. “I mean,” said Superintendent Brinton in a wistful tone, “what harm can she do, keeping an eye on a load of children?”
And the Oracle did not feel it appropriate to remind his friend that Miss Seeton, on top form, never needed to do anything at all: adventures just seemed to happen to her, no matter that she would think it improper to encourage them. She had been, after all (he told himself) a teacher before her retirement—surely Brinton was right, that it would keep her out of trouble . . . he devoutly hoped.
If the two anxious policemen who counted themselves as her friends could have observed Miss Seeton at that moment, they would have been uncertain whether to be relieved that she was taking her teaching duties so seriously, or alarmed at the train of thought which appeared to be running through her mind.
During the first occasion of her acting as a stand-in for Miss Maynard, Miss Seeton had taken her entire class to the coast for an afternoon, encouraging them to picture the view in the way they preferred, the resulting works of art to be judged in an end-of-term competition. It says much for her teaching skills that she encouraged one child to write a poem, and others to make collages, and that all were a
utomatically entered: the point of art being, as far as Miss Seeton is concerned, to make people see. How people, individually, choose to see does not matter, provided that they don’t wander around noticing nothing at all . . .
On subsequent occasions Miss Seeton had demonstrated a variety of techniques such as wax scraping, splattering (Mr. Stillman reported a severe shortage of toothbrushes after that particular lesson), and potato printing (the greengrocer sold his entire week’s supply in one afternoon). Every child in Plummergen looked forward to art with Miss Seeton; and, being convinced, as they’d become after that unforgettable excursion to the seaside, of her supernatural powers, they were always almost unnervingly (to their parents) well behaved.
They sat now, arms folded, eyes watchful, waiting, while Miss Seeton delivered her stern warning.
“You must remember, children, that matches are not playthings and that naked flames can be extremely dangerous. I do not wish to hear that any of you have attempted what I am about to show you without your parents’ knowledge, and when there is no grown-up with you. Do you understand?”
Fifty small heads nodded gravely, and there was a murmur of thrilled assent. If she caught any of ’em out, there’d be no saying what she might do—not that they’d dare, the way she had of looking at them and seeing right inside. They squirmed on their seats and shivered.
Miss Seeton smiled with pleasure at observing the force of her words. The dear children, so enthusiastic, barely able to sit still with excitement, but unlikely, she felt confident, to disobey. People spoke of the difficulties of teaching in a modern world: certainly, Miss Seeton had found it rather less enjoyable a profession before she retired, but that was due, no doubt, to the strain of living in London, where one barely knew one’s neighbours and saw one’s pupils once or twice weekly and their parents not at all. Whereas village life, especially in a place such as Plummergen which was so very friendly, meant that one knew not only one’s pupils, but their parents, too—so fortunate: the personal touch, mused Miss Seeton, smiling again.
Miss Seeton Paints the Town (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 10) Page 6