“Oh, I say, sir!”
Delphick ignored Bob’s splutterings. “Since Miss Seeton appears not to resent this, er, obligation, as evidenced by the size of Sergeant Ranger’s waistband—”
“Sir!”
“—we may safely assume, Sir Wormelow, that she would indeed feel able to entrust her brainchild to the tender care of her surrogate family. And,” he added with a frown, “to the tender mercies of the press, which may be rather more difficult to arrange. We require a reporter of great discretion for a trick like this to stand any chance of succeeding. An idea, however, begins to burgeon . . .”
After a search for, and, following that, through, the telephone directory (which Bob swore he’d replaced on top of the filing cabinet, but which Delphick eventually found inside it), Scotland Yard was soon talking to the editorial department of The Blare. The Blare was impressed by the identity of its caller, but regretted that it was unable to help: Thrudd Banner didn’t work for them, not really. He was a freelance, and could be most easily contacted through the offices of World Wide Press.
World Wide Press sounded somewhat doubtful of Delphick’s bona fides, and insisted on calling him back before divulging the sensitive information he’d requested. There was an annoyingly long wait before they did: but at last they produced an address and telephone number, and Delphick sighed in some relief before asking whether Thrudd was likely to be at home. World Wide Press said there was only one way for him to find out, really, wasn’t there? And rang off.
“Some you win,” muttered the chief superintendent, as he spun the dial, “and some you lose. Let’s hope—ah. Well, at least it’s ringing . . .”
He heard only three rhythmic chirrups before somebody at the other end grabbed the receiver. A woman’s voice said, “Banner, if that’s you out there, bring another couple of tins of talcum powder home with you, okay? I’m itching fit to burst myself in here.”
A sudden light danced in the eyes of Chief Superintendent Delphick. “And greetings to you. Miss Forby—er, that is you, Mel, isn’t it?”
“I recognise those dulcet tones,” replied the voice on the other end of the line, after a pause. “Now wait—don’t tell me—Oracle, is that you?”
“If that’s you, Mel, this is me—or possibly I. Chief Superintendent Delphick, at your service.”
“Amelita Forby, at yours.” Mel giggled. “Guess it was hardly my services you wanted, though, or you’d never have rung this number. Thrudd’s not here just now.”
“So I gathered, from your opening words. I won’t ask why you feel in such urgent need of talcum powder, but—”
“If you’d got a plaster cast wrapped round your ankle, driving you half-crazy this hot weather, you’d need talcum powder too! Several hundredweight of the stuff, just for starters—but you don’t want to hear about my problems.” Mel stifled another giggle, as she recalled the circumstances in which she’d received her injury. “You wanted Banner, the Boy Wonder—and I’d like to know why you wanted him. My newshound’s nose is twitching, Oracle. Something tells me there’s a nice juicy exclusive in the offing—and that you were thinking of giving it to Thrudd, you louse. What’s wrong with yours truly?”
“A broken ankle, by all accounts,” returned Delphick at once. “I’m sorry to hear you’ve been in the wars—”
Mel giggled again. “Make love, not war,” she murmured.
“—but it would be unfair to impose on you when you’re unwell. I have an interesting, er, proposition to make to a—an interested reporter—”
“So go ahead and make it. I’m right here listening, as interested as they come. It’s my ankle that’s broken, not my wrist. I can still write every bit as well as Banner—and telephones were made for talking down. I’d be phoning in my copy before the ink was dry.”
“Perhaps not as quickly as that, thanks, Mel. I’m still waiting to talk to—the other person concerned—before the plan can be finalised. The reason I rang was to find out if Thrudd—if a trustworthy reporter—would be willing to go along with me for a while in exchange for an eventual scoop, though it may mean waiting for some time.”
“Banner’s out fixing himself a scoop this very minute, Oracle. You’ll read all about it in tomorrow’s Blare. He needs another right now like I need to run a four-minute mile—but Amelita Forby needs a scoop, all right. Memories are short in Fleet Street. While I’m laid up on my sickbed someone else is writing my column—with me keeping a watchful eye on it, sure, but it isn’t the same. There’s a whole hungry generation of cub reporters howling at my door—so do the hero bit and scare them away for me, okay?”
chapter
~10~
IT WAS LATE next morning when Bob Ranger returned to London from his Plummergen trip. Miss Seeton had been surprised when Delphick telephoned yesterday to say it would greatly oblige him if she could touch up the Grey Day picture along the lines suggested by Sir Wormelow. Not wishing to confuse her, he gave only the basic facts of the case; and Miss Seeton did not press for enlightenment. She feared she understood his motives only too well. While she had been pleased enough with the painting when she first completed it so many years ago, she had since, as she’d told Tump, come to wonder at her (and she blushed) presumption. Naturally, the chief superintendent did not care for being so, well, emblazoned. It was a pity that one could not easily alter watercolour, but she thought something of the required effect might be achieved with pastels. And of course she trusted the dear sergeant to take care of the picture for her—and Anne. To take care of the picture, not his wife—both of them—not that she supposed for one minute he wouldn’t . . . and if Mr. Delphick wished, she could have it ready for dear Bob, she meant the sergeant, to collect next morning.
So Bob left his Bromley home after kissing Anne goodbye, promising her a treasure hunt when she came back that evening from her part-time job in the doctor’s surgery.
“If we’re, or rather you’re, going to have to tell the world the picture was found in our attic,” he pointed out, “it’ll help you no end to put the story over if it actually is—found in the attic, I mean.”
“You’re starting to sound like Aunt Em,” Anne warned him with a laugh. “Not much, but a little—perhaps it’s catching. Give her my love, won’t you?”
Miss Seeton sent back her own, together with the painting, which to Bob’s impressionable eye looked even bleaker and more wintry than it had before. Not so much like the Oracle any longer: just as well. He wouldn’t fancy working for anyone quite as cold and hard as that. But she’d done a marvellous job—if Mel Forby played her part right, Croesus would never be able to resist it.
He shivered once more, wrapped the painting carefully in brown paper, pecked Miss Seeton fondly on the cheek, and set off for Bromley, and his house, and the attic. There was a convenient corner behind the water tank which seemed made for the purpose . . .
Everything was set fair, thought Bob, as he emerged from the lift and headed for the office he shared with the Oracle—time to ring Mel, and report all systems go. For pretty well the first time in their dealings with MissEss, they’d hit on something which didn’t seem likely to involve her and her Misguided Missile personality, as somebody once called it, any farther. No brolly-waving chaos, no frantic chases in police cars, no kidnapping—she could stay nice and quiet in Plummergen, and leave it to him, and especially Anne, to do all the work.
He might have known it was too good to last.
The Oracle was on the telephone as he came in. He waved Bob to his desk, on which that day’s copy of The Blare lay open at the boldly printed heading: Belton Boxes Burglary—Raffles Returns! bearing Thrudd Banner’s byline, and a photograph of the Abbey with arrows superimposed to show the nerve-racking route taken by the ransomeer from the roof, to the windowsills, to the ground two floors below.
Thrudd had obviously done his homework. The rarity and great value of the snuffbox collection was discussed, with historical snippets about the Prince Regent and an oblique refer
ence to the then Duchess of Belton. There was a brief résumé of the Raffles career to date, with emphasis laid on his daring, physical prowess, and remarkable good fortune in escaping detection yet again; there was a society photograph of the current duchess, taken by the renowned Cedric Benbow, showing Her Grace in full court dress. It was lucky, Thrudd pointed out, that the splendid jewels worn in the photograph had been sent to Garrards for cleaning while the duchess was away, their usual place of concealment being a not-very-new or well-hidden wall safe, which Raffles would easily (in the opinion of the reporter) crack.
“The ducal family has a penchant for adventure, but is unlikely to be pleased by the attentions paid it by Raffles, the adventurer thief,” wrote Thrudd. “This is not the first time that Belton Abbey has been in the news . . .” And for the delight of his readership he related a scandal, comfortably distant in time, when a young woman claiming to have been seduced by the then duke stabbed herself in “Belton’s famous Palladian temple to the goddess Hiberna. This temple stands in the Abbey grounds, conveniently near the main building. It was here that the duke and his maidservant used to meet: it was at the feet of the statue to Hiberna that a pool of the young woman’s blood was found next day, staining the white marble red . . .”
“Rubbish,” snorted Bob. “Dried blood’s brown, not red—I’d have expected Thrudd to know that.”
“Reporter’s licence,” said Delphick, who had concluded his telephone conversation while his sergeant read the newspaper. “I’m surprised he didn’t describe her as weltering in gore. It’s the sort of touch the normal Blare reader rather enjoys, I fancy.”
“Too busy giving ’em a potted history lesson,” muttered Bob, re-reading the part about the Prince Regent. “Some of it’s interesting, I suppose, though it isn’t as if anyone’s likely to care much nowadays whether there’s a temple to the goddess of Ireland or not. He only put it in because of the white marble and the blood, of course—but you know, sir, I think it’s probably just as well Mel’s going to write up the Winter Painting discovery. She’ll be a bit more . . . well, a bit more tasteful about it, if that’s the word.”
Delphick shrugged. “Horses for courses, Bob: Mel writes for the Daily Negative, Thrudd for The Blare, among others. It’s a totally different readership. And, for all we know, Croesus reads The Blare avidly. We’ll just have to hope he, or one of his minions, spots the story—talking of which, that was Faulkbourne on the line just now. Not, I suppose, that he’d take too kindly to being thought a minion, but he is one of the duke’s employees, though I’d hesitate to call him ‘mere.’ And very much the loyal retainer. As soon as he learned about this Blare article—I wonder who in the servants’ hall reads so plebeian a publication—it struck him that, with the story out in the open, the police would be duty bound to take notice. Which means he’s asking again about the possibility of having Miss Seeton pop along to perform one of her little miracles . . .”
“She is,” Bob reminded him, “at a bit of a loose end at the moment, sir. And she might enjoy an outing to Belton—the place’ll be swarming with trippers now, mad keen to see the Temple of Hiberna and the bloodstains on the floor, and the window Raffles climbed in by. She’d be invisible among all the rubberneckers, sir.”
“I thought,” said Delphick, regarding him with a curious eye, “that you’d begun to wonder whether it wasn’t the evil influence of the constabulary which was responsible for Miss Seeton’s involvement in so much that is untoward? You tried your best to persuade me to ease up on her—and convinced me, what’s more. Why have you changed your mind?”
Bob looked uneasy. He opened his mouth, hesitated, then shut it again. He took a deep breath. “Croesus, sir,” said Sergeant Ranger; and for the first time sounded worried.
Fifty miles away in Kent, there was a remarkable coincidence of conversational matter: or perhaps, all things considered, not so remarkable. Plummergen’s post office had been humming with hypothesis and conjecture almost since Mr. Stillman opened his doors that morning.
Mrs. Bloomer had provided the stimulus for this particular spasm of speculation, not that Plummergen tongues need any great stimulus to start wagging. Martha had popped in for a tin of scouring powder, two packets of chocolate biscuits, and a slab of gingerbread. It was one of her days for obliging Miss Seeton, so the scouring powder came as no surprise: but Plummergen can read a clue as well as any Scotland Yard detective.
“I thought,” remarked Mrs. Skinner, before the bell above the door had finished tinkling behind Miss Seeton’s cleaning lady, “as Martha Bloomer’s gingerbread was supposed to be so good—I mean, they give her a prize for it at the last village show, didn’t they?” And Martha’s ribbon had rankled with Mrs. Skinner ever since, she herself having been awarded a dubious Commended. “So why d’you reckon she’s buying it now, instead of baking?”
Mrs. Henderson couldn’t resist a little dig. “Her fruitcake’s even better, what with the judges giving her the red rosette over all.” Mrs. Skinner’s fruitcake had sunk disastrously in the middle, so that she hadn’t even dared take it along to the marquee. “But some has a gift for cakes,” said Mrs. Henderson, “and some hasn’t—and you need time to bake a good cake, that’s true. But if there’s a guest expected at short notice, well . . .”
Only one of Miss Seeton’s friends was generally known to enjoy vast quantities of gingerbread. There was a brooding silence, before Mrs. Spice said:
“It was in the paper about that Raffles this morning—how he’s pinched a load of snuffboxes from the Duke of Belton. Him as had his pictures stole a few years back, when Miss Seeton went to Switzerland and found ’em . . .”
“Bought a new washing machine with the insurance money,” said Mrs. Scillicough, with heartfelt envy. Plummergen’s notorious toddling triplets lived with their parents in one of the council houses at the end of the village, and were very hard on clothes. Mrs. Scillicough’s twin-tub tried its best, but was generally supposed to be fighting a losing battle. “Maybe she’s after a reward for them boxes,” she said, and sighed. Life could be so unfair . . .
In Plummergen, everyone knows who is meant by “She” when the word is pronounced in a particular way. Mrs. Skinner was quick to point out, however, that there was little chance of Miss Seeton’s claiming any reward, as Raffles would be holding the boxes to ransom like he always did, and the police never had no clues, did they?
“That’ll be why Bob Ranger’s coming to see her. Stands to reason,” chipped in Mrs. Henderson, with scorn.
“Could be any number of reasons,” retorted Mrs. Skinner. “He’s married to Anne Knight, isn’t he? Suppose the two of them’s coming down to see her family, and calling in just to be polite?”
“There’s nothing been said at the nursing home,” someone pointed out. Dr. and Mrs. Knight did their best to maintain the privacy of themselves, their staff, and their patients; it was uphill work. “So it must be really unexpected, like Mrs. Henderson said . . .”
“Personal, then,” suggested somebody else, and the floor was open now to all.
Several ideas were floated almost at once. Some thought that Bob and Anne, married for two years, had found at last that the strains of a policeman’s career were bringing their marriage to the brink of failure. Anne was therefore coming to confide in her parents, Bob (for some reason unspecified) in Miss Seeton. The latter view was quickly vetoed, on the grounds that, a confirmed spinster, Miss Seeton would be as much use in a marriage guidance capacity as the vicar, who was a bachelor, bullied by his sister. (A minority held Miss Seeton to be rather more effective than the Reverend Arthur Treeves because it would hardly be possible to be less; but this argument was soon abandoned.)
In which case, Anne was going to see her parents, alone, either to say she was coming home for good, or to tell them—what? Married for two years, and her dad, for all he said he’d retired from that classy London practice, a doctor—if it didn’t mean a babby on the way, well, the speaker didn’t know what did.
Married for more than two years, said someone else, and no sign of a babby yet. It only went to show that you could never tell from looking at a man, for all that the sergeant was such a big chap, and poor little Anne crying her heart out over the empty nursery, and wondering whether there was something her father might be able to do . . .
Miss Seeton’s part in all this was still being thrashed out when the doorbell jangled, and The Nuts came in. Every eye brightened. If Miss Nuttel and Mrs. Blaine didn’t know, nobody did.
“We’ve just seen that large young policeman who is such a crony of Miss Seeton driving down The Street towards her cottage,” announced Mrs. Blaine, once the formalities of purchasing a few unimportant items had been completed. “Too suspicious, at this hour of the morning. He must have left home very early to avoid the rush hour.”
“Poor little Anne’ll have bin dropped off at the nursing home, I shouldn’t wonder,” someone said, and others prepared to impart to the newcomers the results of the speculation up until now; but were given no time. Miss Nuttel’s voice rose above all the rest.
“Conspiracy, no doubt about it. The Raffles business in today’s paper. Young Ranger,” enlarged Miss Nuttel darkly. “Strong, physical type . . .”
Along with loyal Bunny’s bleat of “Oh, Eric, of course!” (it seemed that the squabble was, for the moment at least, over) came a general acknowledgement that yes, he certainly was, and they’d all been saying so not a moment since. Miss Nuttel looked slightly resentful at thus having her thunder stolen, and was observed to be thinking fast.
Mrs. Blaine’s blackcurrant eyes gleamed. The squabble, it now seemed, was only in abeyance, not abandoned for good: the chance to go one better than her friend was irresistible. “Raffles, too sinister, yes—but Raffles isn’t the only case that has the police puzzled. Or so they say,” she added, with a wealth of meaning in her tone. “Really, one can’t help thinking—too convenient, the Croesus robberies—anyone might claim that a work of art had been stolen by the gang, and who would know any different?”
Miss Seeton by Moonlight (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 12) Page 8