Miss Seeton Paints the Town (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 10)

by Hamilton Crane

  “Oh, dear.” Miss Seeton had now reached the wide grass verge just beyond the George and Dragon, only to be halted in her tracks in some dismay, staring. “Oh, dear, how very vexatious—so many molehills . . .” With her umbrella, she poked cautiously at the nearest little mound of finely turned earth, unsure whether or not she hoped to find the culprit inside. The Committee would be very distressed, especially when the grass was already so scorched and brown. Such an excess of molehills would appear like the last straw—which was what the lawns were beginning to look like, Miss Seeton thought. Yet might it not be possible to sweep the earth together and, well, use it for potting plants, or for window boxes? Waste not, want not . . . Bolder now that no little furry face had shown itself, she stirred the earth with her umbrella point. So very many moles—one hesitated to criticise, of course, but there might well be some justification for those who complained that Mr. Chickney did not perform his duties to everyone’s satisfaction. Miss Seeton sighed. “Professional pride,” she murmured thoughtfully.

  “Caper spurge,” came an unexpected voice right beside her. “And plenty of it.”

  Miss Seeton came out of her daydream with a start, then turned to smile. “Why, Stan, good morning. How is dear Martha today?”

  “Fine—and blooming, thank you,” replied Stan Bloomer, chuckling as he always did when he made this little punning rejoinder. “Caper spurge,” he repeated, and on the repetition Miss Seeton understood.

  It had been difficult, at first, to understand much, or even part, of what Stan said in his strong Kentish accents. Not that he’d said much, in the first few years of his acquaintance with Miss Seeton: his wife talked enough for the two of them, and Stan, with a countryman’s dislike of hurrying himself, had happily left it to Martha to pass on any family news or general gossip that might interest, or amuse, their friend and employer. (Martha Bloomer cleans for Miss Seeton twice a week; Stan, a local farmhand, in his spare time cares for her garden and looks after the hens, selling any surplus for his own profit in place of wages.)

  For some years Stan and Miss Seeton had communicated mostly by smiles, but gradually there had come a greater measure of understanding on Miss Seeton’s part. By now she prided herself on being able to make out what he was saying at least half of the time—although it helped, she had to admit, if one had some inkling of the subject under discussion. Now she frowned, and repeated the strange words with which Stan had accosted her.

  “Caper spurge? Do you mean—not moles, after all?”

  “Get away!” Stan chuckled mightily at Miss Seeton’s display of humour. “Gets rid of the lil gennum wheresoever they shows their snouts, caper spurge do.”

  “Little gentlemen? Oh, in black velvet,” Miss Seeton said, recalling history lessons and the Jacobite cause. “Yes, of course, it would . . . if you say so,” she added in a doubtful tone. “What exactly is caper spurge, Stan?”

  “Skeers the critturs away, iffen it be planted aright. Handsome leaves, it do have, and with flowers all greenery-yallery.”

  “Wilde,” murmured Miss Seeton, “or do I mean Gilbert?”

  “Wild?” Stan shook his head. “You can buy from a nursery, if you’m so minded to spend out the cash. Better nor poisoned smoke nor traps, spurge.”

  “Then if you think we should buy some, Stan, perhaps you could make arrangements,” decided Miss Seeton. Poisoning or smoking small creatures to death was not what she wished to encourage, nor did she trust the idea of traps, even though she had heard that newer models merely caught the animal, so that it could be moved to another area alive, instead of crushing it. “As many plants as seem suitable,” Miss Seeton said, “and as soon as possible, I think.” She stirred the earth once more with her umbrella and sighed.

  “Day after tomorrow, most like,” Stan told her, climbing back on the bicycle from which he had dismounted to accost Miss Seeton in her brown study. With a grunt of effort, he began to pedal his way up The Street towards the farm where he worked, waving a brief farewell to Miss Seeton as he went past. Remembering that she, too, ought to be on her way to work, Miss Seeton moved off in the same direction.

  When she reached the post office, she smiled to think how welcome a red-and-gold striped awning would be on such a sunny day, and hoped Mr. Stillman would approve of the After picture she had painted. Indeed, she hoped everyone would enjoy visiting the village hall to discover how their houses and gardens might look, with a little judicious improvement. For her own part, she had decided that the wooden-paled fence around her tiny front garden should be replaced by one of Dan Eggleden’s wrought-iron works of art: nothing fancy, for Mr. Eggleden was already working extremely hard and would have little time to spare for anything too ornate. But the traditional arrowhead pattern should do very well and look neat, although painting it would be a lengthy job—she would have to ask Stan his opinion some time . . .

  She glanced across at Lilikot. On the wall beside the front door was displayed the name of the cottage, with all the curlicued splendour that a craftsman in wrought iron could achieve. The Nuts were proud of their nameplate; Dan Eggleden could not produce anything ugly or out-of-place if he tried, and while seeming to humour his clients had ended up giving them what he managed to make them believe they had thought of themselves. Miss Seeton gave the sign an approving smile as she passed.

  “Eric,” squeaked Mrs. Blaine, busy laying the table for a rather late breakfast, “do come quick! Never mind making the tea for now—Miss Seeton is walking up The Street, and she just looked over in our direction, and, oh, Eric, she leered! Do you suppose she’s put the evil eye on us?”

  “Never can tell, with that woman.” Miss Nuttel, who had almost dropped the kettle when Bunny sounded the alarm, came hurrying in to peer over her friend’s shoulder through the window. “Feel any different, do you?”

  “I felt a shiver running right down my spine,” promptly returned Mrs. Blaine, “and my legs have gone weak.” She sat down on the nearest chair, breathing hard. “Oh, Eric, maybe I shall faint. You never saw such a look—staring, I think I should call it, and her eyes positively glittered—Eric,” grumbled Mrs. Blaine, “aren’t you interested?”

  For Miss Nuttel, with a sudden exclamation, had wrenched the curtains aside and was gazing through the uncurtained plate glass at the front garden. “Eric,” bleated Mrs. Blaine in some alarm, “what are you doing?”

  For Miss Nuttel was pressing her nose flat against the glass, emitting little startled yelps and groans. “Eric,” quavered Bunny, “what’s wrong? Tell me the worst—has that woman bewitched you, after all? Eric!”

  For Miss Nuttel, emitting a word Bunny had not realised she knew (and which, Mrs. Blaine later decided, she must have learned from Jacob Chickney, the mole catcher), now rushed from the room, flung open the front door, ran down the path, and proceeded to stand in one corner of the lawn, shaking her fists above her head and glaring about her, every bit as glitter-eyed as Miss Seeton had appeared. Bunny gasped at her friend’s uncharacteristic behaviour and shivered. Anxiously she looked around for any of the dried witch herbs which Anyone’s, that popular periodical, had assured its loyal readership would protect against all enchantments. If Miss Seeton, in her passage, had indeed cast a spell over Lilikot and its inhabitants, Bunny Blaine was determined to do all she could to thwart her in her evil purpose.

  Unfortunately, the bunch of herbs was, as Mrs. Blaine now recalled, in the kitchen at the back of the house, where she had taken it one thundery day to prevent the milk curdling. And she was so stricken by the peculiar sight in the garden that she could not have left the front window even, she told herself, at the risk of becoming enchanted in her turn . . .

  She spent an anxious few minutes at her vantage post while Miss Nuttel did what looked like a little war dance on the lawn and scowled up and down into The Street. Suddenly, when Bunny’s nerves were almost in tatters, Eric shrugged her shoulders, stamped, and returned to the house without a backward glance.

  “Oh, Eri
c,” quavered Mrs. Blaine as Miss Nuttel, breathing hard, her hands fisted in the pockets of her slacks, marched back into the room after slamming the front door in a very pointed manner. “Eric . . . is something wrong?”

  “Fool question,” snapped Miss Nuttel. “Think I’m making a fuss about nothing, do you?”

  “Oh, no, Eric, I’m sure you’re not. But—but when I see you so worked up, and I don’t know why, I can’t help wondering . . . I mean, wouldn’t it be sensible if you, well, told me what the trouble was instead of keeping it to yourself? Too like you, hoping to spare me anxiety, but in some ways I think I’d prefer to know the worst.”

  Miss Nuttel jerked a bony finger in the direction of the garden. “Spotted it gone after that Seeton woman went by—not that I’m blaming her, but . . .”

  Her tone did as much as her cryptic words to alert Bunny to the tragedy that had befallen them. “Eric! You mean our garden gnome’s been taken? Stolen? How awful!” She looked at her friend in round-eyed dismay. “Surely you can’t think—surely even Miss Seeton wouldn’t—I mean, what would she want with it? Too eccentric, even for her.”

  “She leered,” Miss Nuttel reminded her. “Said so yourself. Must have had her reasons.”

  There was a thoughtful pause. “That garden of hers,” Mrs. Blaine said at last, “round the back—such a high brick wall, nobody can see inside, and Stan Bloomer would never tell anyone, would he? He’d be terrified of letting people know in case Martha lost her job.” Mrs. Blaine sniffed; she had tried to lure Mrs. Bloomer away from her employment at Sweetbriars when Miss Seeton’s Cousin Flora, the previous owner, died at the age of ninety-eight. Miss Seeton did not take full possession of her inheritance for some while, and Mrs. Blaine had tried to point out to Martha that there would be little sense in tending an empty property when there was every chance she would not be paid for her trouble. Martha had retorted that if she couldn’t trust Miss Emily, then she couldn’t trust anyone, not to mention there were them she trusted more than others anyhow. Mrs. Blaine had not forgotten the exchange, though she maintained that of course she did not hold Miss Seeton in any way responsible.

  “Victimisation,” breathed Mrs. Blaine, “that’s what it is—or do I mean exploitation? In either case, it’s too clear that unless we went looking for ourselves, we’re never going to know the truth—”

  Before she could propose some positive course of action, she was interrupted by the telephone. Miss Nuttel went to answer it, then came back with her eyes wild. Mrs. Blaine leaped to her feet and clasped her hands in anguish.

  “What is it, Eric? Don’t keep me in suspense!”

  “That woman,” said Miss Nuttel slowly. “Gone right off her head at last—always said she would.”

  As she paused to consider how what she had always said was now being proved true, Mrs. Blaine quivered, dumbstruck, her gaze never leaving her friend’s face.

  “Not just our gnome,” said Miss Nuttel. “Mrs. Skinner’s bird table as well—”

  “Not the one Daniel Eggleden sold her only last week!”

  Miss Nuttel nodded, grim-visaged. “Matching pair of flower baskets, too,” she said. “Mrs. Henderson’s . . .”

  “Oh, Eric,” said Mrs. Blaine, aghast. “And they’ve only just bought them! Too dreadful, and so costly to replace—and what can she suppose she’s going to do with them all? Someone’s bound to recognise them.”

  There was another thoughtful pause. Miss Nuttel broke it. “Been wondering about that, Bunny. Too many people go into her garden—bound to chatter, even friends. Unlikely to be that woman after all.”

  “But as it’s only her friends, they might keep quiet—and with that high wall nobody else can see . . .”

  Miss Nuttel was shaking her head to quell Mrs. Blaine’s objections. Bunny subsided. Eric said:

  “Not the only high wall in Plummergen, is it? Remember those guard dogs—that man Alexander—The Meadows . . .”

  And Bunny’s sudden smile was full of congratulation. “Oh, Eric, you’re so right, and I was wrong—it must be the answer. Nobody’s really been in the garden at The Meadows since Mrs. Venning left, and nobody at all since that man and his—well, he called her his mistress, didn’t he?—moved in. We don’t know anything about her, do we? Too mysterious—and the way they keep those huge wooden gates shut so nobody can catch her out . . . And he’s always walking up and down The Street with those dogs. He could be,” breathed Bunny, “spying out the land, don’t you think?”

  And Miss Nuttel nodded gravely.

  chapter

  ~13~

  THIS MORNING WAS rather cooler than previous mornings, and, though the sun still shone, it did not appear to be quite so merciless and persistent in its beaming. Miss Seeton walked along the western side of The Street on her way to school and, as she passed the bakery, reminded herself to buy gingerbread during the lunch break. It looked most appetising through the clear, sun-sparkled glass of the bow window, and it was, moreover, dear Bob Ranger’s favourite. Her adopted nephew had telephoned last night to say that he and Chief Superintendent Delphick would be in the Ashford area for the next few days and hoped to see her before too long.

  Miss Seeton smiled as she looked forward to seeing her friends again, then sighed as she glanced across the road at the grass verge where yesterday the moles had been so busy. It seemed that they had been busy again—or else, perhaps, that nobody had bothered to sweep the earth away. She had meant to take a garden broom and a sack to deal with the matter herself, but somehow it had slipped her mind . . . And here were molehills on the verge this side of The Street, as well. She would have supposed that the noise and vibration from the smithy nearby would have scared them away, but they did not seem to mind. Which was a pity. Moles, Miss Seeton reminded herself firmly, were as much God’s creatures as any bird or butterfly, but one had to admit that they made a most dreadful mess wherever they had their runs. Or should that be earths? Miss Seeton rather thought that referred to foxes—badgers, she remembered, lived in setts, rabbits had their burrows—but moles, she realised, she was unsure about. Perhaps it might make a suitable little quiz for the children, once she had managed to find the answer.

  A scuffling, squeaking, furry commotion in the overgrown hawthorn hedge beside which she was now walking brought Miss Seeton to a halt. The tangled greenery which had obscured Mel Forby’s northward view along The Street a few days earlier—and which nobody had yet pruned, Competition or no Competition—danced a furious tango as, at its base, something, an animal or bird, wrestled in a frenzy with some other animal that was not giving in without a fight.

  The sounds of mortal combat were loud and distressing, and Miss Seeton did not hesitate. She thwacked her umbrella against the hedge, crying, “Stop that! Stop it at once!”

  For a moment the hedge ceased to plunge about, and the angry squawks stopped. Miss Seeton parted the tangle of twiggy branches with her umbrella and bent down to see what the cause of the commotion could be.

  “Tibs,” said Miss Seeton in reproachful tones as the huge tabby cat glared up into the eyes of the interloper who had spoiled her fun. “Oh, Tibs, how cruel to torment that magpie! Just leave the poor thing alone this instant, do you hear?”

  Miss Seeton is one of the few persons in Plummergen who are not wary of Tibs, Amelia Potter’s notorious cat. Amelia is scarcely of school age, but can control the creature when even P.C. Potter, her father, is reluctant to approach her; the rest of the village is even more cautious and will give Tibs a very wide berth when she is in a prowling mood—which is most of the time. Tibs has been known to kill and drag home rabbits and, on occasion, hares; rats and squirrels are routine prey; a magpie is a mere snack, easily dealt with.

  Not on this occasion, however. With her umbrella Miss Seeton prodded Tibs away from the shivering black-and-white bird; the cat, a brooding gleam in her narrowed eyes, spat once, growled deep in her throat, then thought better of an assault on the neat stockinged legs of her assailant, and, one
eye on the umbrella, backed angrily out of the hedge. She stood twitching her tail for a moment, then hissed, and stalked off down The Street towards the Royal Military Canal, where she hoped to encounter Sasha and Boris running free. The two Borzois were well-brought-up, carefully disciplined dogs, and Tibs could tease them with impunity while she regained her self-respect.

  “And now to rescue you, you poor thing,” murmured Miss Seeton to the magpie, which had fluttered wildly when rescue first arrived, then seemed to freeze in a state of shock. One wing drooped along the dusty ground, and dust covered its piebald plumage, but to Miss Seeton’s relief there did not appear to be any sign of more serious damage.

  “But how am I to get you out of there?” she asked sadly, for in the course of its struggle with the cat, the helpless bird had been dragged, or pushed, deep inside the thickety hedge. It would be a difficult job for even an agile person to reach it, and, though her yoga had made Miss Seeton adept at standing on her head, she did not think it would greatly assist her in wriggling into a mass of hawthorn prickles.

  “Oh, dear,” murmured Miss Seeton, trying to hold back the most offending branches with her umbrella, wondering if she might somehow hook them out of the way and pull the poor magpie to safety. She leaned farther into the hedge with a slow, cautious movement.

  “Need any help?” came an unexpected voice behind her as Miss Seeton snagged a tweedy thread on a hawthorn spike and dratted the thing with some force. “Careful, now . . .” it said as she tried to extricate herself, and dropped her umbrella so that the branches bounced back and enmeshed her even more firmly in their embrace. “Keep still,” commanded the voice, and at the third time of utterance Miss Seeton recognised it.

  “Miss Hawke,” she gasped, “good morning—and thank you so very much. These branches, such a nuisance—ouch!”