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

by Hamilton Crane

  “It certainly wasn’t for Miss Hawke,” said Mel. “Maybe Miss S. remembered she was a naturalist—our furred and feathered friends kind of thing. Maybe there’s nothing in it out of the ordinary,” she said, though she did not sound as if she believed this. She looked quizzically at Delphick. “Don’t forget my promised scoop, Oracle. If this turns out to be another Seeton Special—which reminds me, tomorrow there’s the exhibition in the village hall. I just saw Lady Colveden driving back after arranging Sir George’s photos and Miss. S.’s sketches. ‘All welcome,’ the posters say. You plan to come along in case she’s drawn anything else that might be of interest? Hey.” Mel sat up straight. “Your eyebrow twitched, Oracle. She’s done something, hasn’t she, and you know about it already? Come on, give.”

  And trusting Mel as he did, and hoping that perhaps she might suggest some aspect of the case that had not occurred to the police, Delphick, with some assistance from Bob, gave as much as seemed fitting about Miss Seeton’s earlier sketch and the disquieting effect it had had on those who saw it.

  Mel was thoughtful. “You hope she’s on to something in the arson affair? The south end of The Street in flames? That’s kind of spooky, Oracle.” She frowned. “Depends on whether it’s arson or pyromania, I suppose . . .”

  “On whether it’s someone after the insurance, or someone doing it for kicks?” Delphick eyed her with amusement. “We had already considered those as distinct possibilities, Miss Forby. And are pursuing parallel lines of enquiry as a result. Known sexual deviants, local businessmen who are rumoured to be financially insecure—Superintendent Brinton is checking up on everyone.”

  “No need to look down your nose at a poor reporter’s attempts to help solve the mystery,” Mel told him firmly. “You’ve missed out a couple of motives, for a start. Your arsonist might not be doing it for the insurance—he’s maybe trying to get back on someone, or he’s putting the frighteners on someone else. There could be any number of logical reasons—but suppose he’s not logical? Suppose it really is a pyromaniac? That’s one kinky guy, getting his thrills from watching a fire burn and not caring too much what fire it is.” She sat forward and lowered her voice. “Now, this is strictly off the record, Oracle, but I guess you ought to know. The other day, when I was watching the blacksmith at work, there was a man there—makes out he’s a Russian, name of Alexander, lives with some woman in that house with the high wall opposite Dr. Knight’s place—and he was showing more than what I’d call usual interest in Dan Eggleden’s forge. And blacksmiths use fire, remember.”

  “We’ve heard about the mysterious Russian,” Delphick said, “from Superintendent Brinton, courtesy of P. C. Potter: as you suggest, he might well not be a Russian at all. Anyone can buy himself a couple of Borzois to look the part. The question is, what part, and why? Until now we’ve rather tended to dismiss the chap as being altogether too mysterious to be worth suspecting, if you understand me. Perhaps we should follow your advice and look more closely at him—his lady friend too, of course.”

  “Glad to be of service,” said Mel with a smile. “Don’t forget you heard it from me first.”

  “The scoop, when it comes, will be yours.” Delphick had a twinkle in his eye. “If it comes. He may be nothing more or less than he seems, after all.”

  “The village doesn’t think so—although,” admitted Mel, “they’d say anything about anybody, given half the chance. But I’d dearly love to know what a Russian’s up to in a tiny place like Plummergen, in the middle of the country—which reminds me. Country crafts—I’ve been writing an article or two, and the blacksmith, for one, has been very helpful. But the mole catcher . . . forget it, Forby. However, if Miss Seeton’s picture had a mole in the foreground—and they all say he’s one of the most unsavoury characters for miles, and he’d even sell his own grandmother for money . . .”

  Delphick looked at her thoughtfully; nodded; and smiled. “If you’ll excuse me just a moment,” he said, looking at his watch, “I’ll slip out and telephone Superintendent Brinton—it’s not too late in the evening to disturb him, in a good cause. Tomorrow morning, I think, we’ll have a word or two with this unsavoury mole catcher of yours—just to see,” he said, smiling again, “if you and Miss Seeton are correct. Although I never thought”—he turned to walk away—“the police would ever rely so heavily on women’s intuition . . .” And he vanished before Mel could think of a withering reply.

  Next day, before driving to Ashford (“We’ll keep the blighter stewing for a while—by all accounts it’ll do him no harm”), the Scotland Yarders were among the first to visit the Before and After Exhibition. Miss Seeton, fortunately, had drawn various views on paper of different sizes, so that the abbreviated southerly aspect did not stand out too noticeably. Miss Wicks was there, delighted with the suggested improvements to her cottage.

  “I shall instruct the smith to supply me with precisely such a balustrade as dear Miss Seeton has so skilfully sketched,” she whistled through her ill-fitting false teeth. “I shall insist that speed is of the essence. I understand that the initial selection could be in progress this very instant, you see, Chief Superintendent. Anonymously—though no suspicion attaches itself to you or your sergeant, of course,” and she nodded, and smiled, and patted Bob Ranger on the arm before trotting away.

  “Strewth,” muttered Delphick when she was well out of earshot. Then he laughed. “It’s catching, isn’t it?”

  Bob grinned. “I wonder if she’s right—about anonymous spies being competition judges in disguise. I suppose that must be how they have to do it—and I wish any stranger who turns up here the best of luck in trying to stay mysterious. In Plummergen I don’t think it’s possible.”

  “Miss Hawke managed, it, didn’t she? Nobody found out a thing about her—more’s the pity. Miss Seeton seems to have chatted with her a little, but Mel Forby told us more than anyone else, and she’s professionally curious.”

  “So,” said Bob with another grin, “is Plummergen.”

  Delphick chuckled, and they turned to go. As they drew near the door, it was pushed open by a man: tall, erect of bearing, subdued in dress. He eyed the two strangers warily for a moment, then inclined his head in a nod of greeting and passed within to vanish behind a folding screen. Bob looked at Delphick.

  “The notices say that anyone’s welcome,” he hissed as the chief superintendent glanced back in some curiosity to see what the newcomer was doing. “Perhaps he’s a tourist, passing through and stopping for a breather . . . or he might be a competition judge, seeing what they’ve got in mind.”

  Delphick motioned “Wait” to his sergeant, then strolled back into the hall as if to refresh his memory about some finer point of Miss Seeton’s artistic achievement. When he came back, he looked grim.

  “Displaying great interest,” he reported, “in the pictures of that part of The Street showing the smithy. I wish,” he said as they emerged from the hall, “that we had time for a chat with that gentleman. I believe he could be the mystery Russian everyone’s been telling us about.”

  “I’d take a bet on it, sir.” Bob sounded confident.

  Delphick followed his gaze, pulled a face, and said: “No bet. Because, unless Sir George has taken it into his head to post guards at the gates—and I can’t say I’d blame him, in the circumstances—those two dogs tied to that post look remarkably like Borzois to me. But whoever he is, he’ll have to wait. We should have been in Ashford half an hour ago.”

  “What did you mean, sir,” enquired Bob as they climbed into the waiting police car, “about in the circumstances you wouldn’t blame Sir George for posting guards? I know the old boy’s proud of his photographs, and there’s always Miss Seeton’s sketches, but—”

  “I shouldn’t think for a minute that anyone has plans to pinch them,” Delphick said as the car moved off. “But just think of what’s been happening here recently. Plummergen suspects, does it not, that the gnomenapping and related crimes occurred at the instigation o
f the deadly rival? So wouldn’t it be in order for them to worry about someone from Murreystone, doubtless heavily disguised, sneaking into the village hall to check up on their plans? If and when it occurs to him, I’m sure Sir George will post his sentries, because when the competitive blood runs hot, anything may happen . . .”

  When they arrived at last in Ashford, Superintendent Brinton greeted them with relief. “He’s a miserable old sod, right enough,” he said. “Potter had to kick him out of bed with threats I’d rather not know about, officially, and he’s been cursing and complaining ever since he got here.”

  “Perhaps he’s just tired,” Delphick suggested, “although from what we’ve heard about Jacob Chickney, it’s more likely to be general ill-nature. He’d grumble just as much if he’d had time for a three-course breakfast. Have you offered him a cup of tea?”

  “I’d rather offer him arsenic,” growled Brinton. “I had to send Policewoman Laver for a coffee break after he’d said his piece to her as Potter brought him in—and Maggie Laver is no shrinking violet, believe me. She’s heard the lot, or that’s what I’d have thought before this character arrived.”

  “I look forward to extending my vocabulary,” Delphick said. “I take it you’ve been leaving him to cool his heels rather than asking him questions.”

  “Waiting for reinforcements, I’ve been,” Brinton said. “Besides, I wasn’t sure what line of questioning you wanted to follow. I know,” and he sighed, “that it’s something to do with Miss Seeton’s drawing, but . . .”

  Most people would have found it difficult to slouch on an upright chair, but Jacob Chickney seemed able to slouch in comfort. He was smoking his noisome pipe as the three policemen entered the interview room, and did not remove it from his mouth as he greeted their arrival with a hawking mutter, deep in his throat, that sounded very like a curse. His beady, narrowed eyes fastened curiously on the one member of the group he had not seen before.

  “Good morning, Mr. Chickney,” Delphick said, introducing himself and adding that no doubt Detective Sergeant Ranger was known, if only by sight, as someone who now had local connections. Jacob Chickney grunted. A puff of greasy smoke belched from the bowl of his pipe.

  “And Superintendent Brinton, of course, you know,” said Delphick as Brinton cleared his throat very pointedly and coughed. Bob Ranger, too, looked as if he were suffering. Delphick, who sat farthest away, received the effects of the blast a few seconds later. “Perhaps, Mr. Chickney, you would be kind enough to extinguish your pipe while we talk? Some of us are not accustomed to tobacco—certainly not to tobacco as strong as yours.”

  Jacob muttered something which sounded like a reference to fanciful townie ways and contrived to send another rank cloud in the direction of his interlocutor. His eyes, black and glittering, narrowed still further in unspoken challenge—a challenge which Delphick proposed to meet only in an oblique fashion.

  Without a word he rose, strode to the window, opened it, returned to the table, and sat down again. A lifesaving breeze from outside wafted the pipe fumes away. The central electric light danced gently overhead.

  “Trying to make me catch my death, are you?” demanded Jacob Chickney, and hawked, and seemed about to spit—until he met the eyes of Chief Superintendent Delphick, austere and grey and every bit as resolute as he thought his own to be. For the first time in the exchange, Jacob had a feeling he might have met his match. He did not spit.

  He continued to hawk and cough, however, and patted his chest with a gnarled, heavy hand. “Police brutality,” said Jacob. “Freeze an old man into his grave—have the law on you, I will.”

  “Surely, after so many years working in the fresh air,” Delphick remarked, “a slight breeze from an open window should not trouble you overmuch. If it does, however, the remedy is in your own hands—or rather, in your mouth. Put out your pipe, Mr. Chickney, and the window will be shut.”

  For a moment nobody moved. All they could do was wait.

  Then Jacob Chickney removed the pipe from his mouth and banged it furiously on the heavy glass ashtray on the table. Bob prepared to leap to Delphick’s rescue if the old man showed any sign of preparing to assault the chief superintendent, but the ashtray, full of reeking strands which Jacob stirred with a dirty piece of dowelling from his waistcoat pocket, remained on the table. Delphick had won.

  chapter

  ~21~

  DELPHICK MOTIONED TO Sergeant Ranger to stop taking notes for a moment and to close the window. Jacob Chickney’s beady eyes followed the large young man as he crossed the room, and he glowered. He stuck his thumbs in the pockets of his grubby waistcoat and slumped back on the chair, breathing heavily.

  “An unusual waistcoat, Mr. Chickney,” Delphick remarked. “Moleskin, perhaps? I don’t believe I’ve seen one like it before. Interesting in both texture and colour.”

  Jacob growled something about never mind interesting, it was his job to catch moles, and a man was surely entitled to his perks, badly paid though he otherwise might be.

  Delphick nodded and said: “Is it your job to catch anything else besides moles, Mr. Chickney?”

  “Vermin,” replied Jacob at once. “And especially rats,” he said in a tone more surely than ever.

  Delphick had been called worse in his time and chose to ignore the implied insult. “Moles, and rats,” he said with a quick glance at his listening colleagues. They, too, could remember Miss Seeton’s Wind in the Willows sketch. “Badgers as well, by any chance?” he enquired, and as his attention focussed again on Jacob, he saw the old man’s face, weathered and lined as it was, twist momentarily in a spasm of some strong emotion. The mole catcher, sensing the detective’s interest, made an effort to smooth the emotion—whatever it was—away—and slumped even lower on his chair, with a drooping of his head that did not suggest contrition, rather a conscience that was guilty, but determined not to confess.

  Confess—what? Delphick recognised that he had touched a nerve—but which nerve? Maybe the mole catcher was just naturally shifty, after a lifetime spent loathing, and being loathed by, his fellow villagers. Delphick struggled to suppress the feeling that, in the case of Jacob Chickney, Plummergen opinion was probably right: seldom had he met so generally unpleasing an old personage. In Jacob Chickney’s case, the town-held myth of the rustic sage, imparting time-honoured lore to younger generations, was all too clearly a myth. But at least, reflected the chief superintendent, he had spared them the worst of his language: probably used it all up on WPC Laver.

  He must try to put the old man at his ease. He must try to remember that, grudgingly though he had come, Jacob was still only a voluntary witness, in Ashford police station to help with official enquiries—indefinite suspicion of him was not enough. He had to be caught off-balance, if such a thing were possible with such a clearly cunning old man, in the hope that whatever he let slip would present an opening through which the police could thrust home.

  “How do you go about catching moles, Mr. Chickney?” This seemed as good a gambit as any, and Delphick was unprepared for the flush which surged into Jacob’s face. The furious ancient scowled.

  “Trade secrets,” he muttered after a pause. “None of your business how I goes about mine.”

  “Generally speaking, I’d agree with you. In this case, however”—for Delphick was growing convinced that, without knowing how, he had come close to a winning question—“you might make things look black for you if you refuse to tell me. I might start to wonder just what it is that you don’t want the police to know about.” He paused. “The poisons, perhaps? You’ve been careless with them, and somebody has complained—”

  “That’s a blanking lie!”

  “That,” Delphick told him, as after this outburst Jacob said nothing more, “is a suggestion, merely. Then if not poison—the traps, should I guess? Nasty little snappers, aren’t they, if what I’ve seen in hardware shops are indeed traps for moles. You place them in the runs, and the moles are crunched to death between the
walls when there’s no room for them to back out again. You enjoy your work, do you?”

  “It’s a living. Don’t get paid enough, mind. But someone has to do it. No reason it shouldn’t be me.”

  This was the longest reply, and the most audible, Jacob had produced during the entire interview. Once again Chief Superintendent Delphick wondered just what it was the old man was trying to hide.

  He said nothing, as if pondering Jacob’s answer, and the mole catcher added reluctantly: “They’re vermin, ain’t they—always getting in the way. Only one thing to do with vermin—get rid of ’em.”

  “Just as somebody got rid of Miss Ursula Hawke last night in Ashford Forest?” Delphick’s change of tone, from almost casual curiosity to intense probing, startled Jacob. “Was she in somebody’s way?”

  “Nothing to do with me, that weren’t!” The mole catcher no longer slumped on his chair. “You’ve no call to try putting the blame where there’s none! Libel, that’s what it is, and I’ll have the law on you!” He rose to his feet, blazing-eyed, and seemed ready to march straight out of the room. Bob Ranger stopped taking notes and pointedly flexed his limbs, strongly muscled after years of playing football. Jacob gave him a sideways glance, as if sizing him up, then subsided, muttering.

  “I am the law, Mr. Chickney,” replied Delphick sternly, as impressive as Bob could ever remember him. “And it is my duty in the law to find out the truth—just as it is yours to tell it. You were in Ashford Forest last night, weren’t you?”

  Jacob clamped his lips together and glowered. Silence filled the interview room. It appeared that Bob had not properly closed the window, for a faint sound of bird-song began to make itself heard through the gap.

  Delphick said: “Miss Hawke was out looking for birds in the forest last night—we know that. She hoped to find owls’ nests—and I hope that she did, before she died. But why did she die, Mr. Chickney? Was it because, while she was looking for the owls, she found you? What were you doing that meant she had to be killed, rather than tell anyone she had seen you?”