Brinton’s response was immediate and eloquent, and Delphick waited patiently until he ran out of breath.
“I see you’ve already heard. Yes, of course it’s tiresome for you, but if Colveden’s already talked to your chief constable about it, that lets you out if something does go wrong, doesn’t it. The problem is that from my point of view I’m afraid it isn’t good enough for Sir George to insist that you call off your chaps for the evening. So what I propose is to have a quiet word with a contact of mine in the Sussex police and see if he can insert a couple of plainclothes men into the Glyndebourne grounds at least, and possibly the opera house itself, to keep an eye on the Thumper party. Be on the safe side, even though I can’t imagine that anybody would be so daft as to try to get at Trish there.”
“But I can’t possibly get at the Thumper girl at a place like Glyndebourne,” Parsons protested. “There’ll be hundreds of people around.”
“You can with me an’ ’Arvey to ’elp. Listen, mate, I bin through a lot o’ grief on your account, so you can leave it off comin’ the smarmy Cuthbert with me. I’m tellin’ you, that ol’ cow’s a bleedin’ public menace, an’ I got plans for ’er one o’ these fine days. Meantime I’m ’andin’ you this bird on a plate an’ I’m not takin’ no for an answer.”
The two men were sitting in the pub at Cranhurst where they had met previously, and Parsons glanced again at Norman’s bandaged hands. He had already noticed the slight limp and the way Norman gingerly touched the back of his neck from time to time.
“I appreciate the information, and what you’re offering. Honestly. But I don’t see how I can do a thing about it. To start with, there’ll be regular Red Cross or St. John’s volunteers on duty there.”
“So you go in yer reggeler uniform, cloth-’ead. In yer amberlance. This opera place is in yer own manor, innit? Seven, eight miles away?”
“Well, yes, but—”
“Am I ’earin’ the same geezer what pulled off that sweet little job at the tennis match? Pull yerself together, an’ ’ear me out. Nah this is what we’re gonna do, see . . .”
Reluctantly at first, but with gradually increasing interest, Parsons listened to Norman. Neither of them noticed the sallow young man with the lank, greasy hair who had slouched into the pub shortly after Parsons, bought himself a pint, and stationed himself at a pin-table machine not far away.
Even if they had, one glance at his ripped old leather jacket, unsavory-looking jeans, and dirty shoes would have been enough to keep them off guard. That, plus the fact that the young man was muttering obscenities to himself and furtively shoving at the machine to try to get it to behave differently, but not furtively enough to escape the eagle eye of the barman who shouted at him that if he felt like pushing he could push off.
In short, even to an experienced old hand like Norman, there was nothing whatever about Detective Constable Julian “Sleaze” Arbuthnott’s appearance or manner to suggest that he might be a police officer, or that the packet of cigarettes protruding from the back pocket of his jeans contained a miniature tape recorder.
chapter
~15~
HAVING MADE several other telephone calls during the course of the morning, Mel Forby replaced the receiver this time with an air of finality and turned to Thrudd Banner, a triumphant smile on her face. “Pay up, you owe me a pound. Something to bear in mind for the future, lover boy. When I bet money on my chances of doing something, I don’t reckon on losing it. Glyndebourne tickets are not to be had for love nor money, the man said. Forget it, Forby, he suggested, you’ll just be wasting your time. Well, a pair of tickets will be waiting for us to pick up at the box office when we get there. Meet the Negative’s new music critic. We shall just have time to rush to London, get into our glad rags—you do possess a dinner jacket, I suppose—and make the train from Victoria to Lewes.”
Banner examined the contents of his right-hand jacket pocket, extracted a crumpled pound note, folded it carefully, and inserted it into the front of her blouse. “Music critic forsooth! I’m beginning to wonder just what it is you have on that editor of yours, the way he jumps when you say jump. You know as much about opera as the average Negative reader does, which is that when some guy stabs another guy, they both sing.”
“Not in this one they don’t. It’s Cavalli’s La Calisto, and the stars are Ileana Cotrubas and Janet Baker. Far as I know neither one does any stabbing, and if you think those two dishy creatures’re guys, then you haven’t been paying attention these last few nights.”
“Okay, you win. I still want to know why you came back from your walk this morning all fired up with the idea of going to Glyndebourne.”
“If you’d come with me, you’d already know. I have my sources in Plummergen, mister, and a good journalist shouldn’t reveal them. But now I’ve fixed the tickets I don’t mind coming clean. I met Bob Ranger. He was out taking the air, too, and we got talking. Now that he knows we know about the Trish Thumper thing, he’s loosened up. Admitted that he’s going to Glyndebourne himself to keep an unobtrusive eye on Trish. Then it came out that he’s taking Miss Seeton along, too.”
“So what? A huge guy like Bob prowling around on his own would stick out a mile, so he needs a companion. Maybe Anne can’t get away from the clinic. Miss S. will be perfect cover for him.”
“Dear Thrudd, you’re just too nice to smell a rat, aren’t you? No. If Bob Ranger’s been put on bodyguard duty, it’s by Delphick. And Delphick must have his reasons for wanting him to take Miss S. along. Reasons he didn’t have as recently as yesterday.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I dropped in at Sweetbriars yesterday to see how Miss S. was feeling. She’d heard about the Rytham Hall crowd’s plans for Glyndebourne when she had lunch there on Sunday, and said she hoped the weather would stay nice for them, particularly as Trish’s parents are meeting them there. I didn’t pay too much attention at the time, but now I recall that she sounded a little wistful. She definitely didn’t expect to be going herself or she would have said so.”
“Let me get this straight. Nigel’s been driving Trish in his own car to and from Eastbourne for her training sessions, and the Kent police have been escorting them, right?”
“Sure. The escort’s supposed to be invisible, but it’s common knowledge. As is the fact that Nigel’s goofy about Trish and seems to be getting somewhere with her.”
“So presumably Brinton will have a car trailing the Colvedens to Glyndebourne this afternoon.”
“Seems reasonable. With Bob and Miss S. aboard, perhaps.”
“Okay. Now I can understand Delphick wanting Bob Ranger on parade just to provide routine protection for Trish inside the Glyndebourne grounds, especially if her dad’s due to show up as well. But why on earth would he want Miss S. there, too?”
Mel deliberately made herself go cross-eyed, and aimed an imaginary pistol at him. “Because he thinks something’s going to happen, dummy!”
“Amelita my flower, you’re magnificent when you’re angry. What, for example?”
“How in the world would I know what? But I’ll bet you Delphick’s setting something up.”
“No bets. I’ve lost enough money to you today.”
“Very wise. Anyhow, whatever it is, he won’t have told Ranger in case he lets something slip to Miss Seeton. If I’m right, it’s Miss S. that Delphick’s counting on, and she always operates most spectacularly when she hasn’t a clue what’s happening.”
“You know, I think that’s about the craziest theory I’ve ever heard even you come up with. So you could just possibly be right. Okay, I’ll indulge you.”
“Do that thing, Banner. And bring your camera.”
• • •
“I can of course imagine how busy Anne must be in these last few days before the wedding, but what a great pity she wasn’t able to go with you today!”
It was the second time that Miss Seeton had made this point since being picked up by Ranger in the unmarked
police car made available to him at Delphick’s request by Chief Inspector Brinton. There being no conceivable way in which he could at short notice have got hold of a dinner jacket and trousers to fit him, and having been assured by Delphick that evening dress was optional at Glyndebourne nowadays, Bob was resplendent in the new dark suit he hadn’t reckoned to wear until he took Anne to some smart restaurant during their honeymoon. Advised of this in advance, Miss Seeton had hastily consulted Lady Colveden by telephone and as a result put on her single string of pearls and best blue silk dress. The one Meg Colveden referred to as “that pretty cocktail dress you wore when you came for drinks on George’s birthday.”
“Not really. Anne’s not much of a one for opera. Whereas you are, I know. I say, isn’t that the Colvedens ahead?” In fact Ranger had fully expected to catch them up, having had a quiet word with Nigel who was to drive the big family Rover.
“I do believe it is. Yes, I can see Sir George and Lady Colveden in the back, so Patricia must be sitting beside Nigel in front. Oh dear, I hope so much that Sir George won’t find it tedious, the opera, that is.”
“I see what you mean. It’s hardly likely to be his cup of tea, I suppose. On the other hand, it is his friend who’s laid on the whole thing.”
“Sir Wilfred Thumper, you mean. Such an unhappy man, don’t you think?”
“I’ve never met him, but judging from that sketch you drew and all I hear, he’s certainly not exactly a barrel of laughs. Probably because nobody likes him. And whose fault is that? From all accounts he goes out of his way to make himself disagreeable.”
“But not, it would appear, to Sir George. Don’t you find that interesting, Mr. Rang—I mean, Bob?” Miss Seeton waved, having seen first Lady Colveden’s head turn and then her husband’s, and smiled in satisfaction when her gesture was acknowledged.
“Well, they go back a long way. Sir George probably thinks of him the way he was rather than the way he is.”
“You’re right. That is Ranger behind us, by crikey. Got up like a blessed undertaker. And Miss Seeton with him. Where on earth are they off to, d’you suppose?”
“Why, Glyndebourne, of course. Didn’t I tell you, George? Miss Seeton rang me this morning to say Sergeant Ranger had got hold of a couple of tickets and invited her. He’d explained that he didn’t have any evening dress with him and she asked me what I thought she ought to wear.”
“Lucky beggar. To be able to wear an ordinary suit. While you made Nigel and me climb into these wretched penguin outfits.”
“I think you look smashing, Sir George.”
“Do you really, m’dear? Well, jolly nice of you to say so. Did you hear what Patricia just said, Nigel?”
Nigel glanced at the image reflected by the rear-view mirror. “I heard, and stop stroking your moustache in that odious way, Dad. You look like some Edwardian masher,” he added in a friendlier tone, much cheered when Trish surreptitiously squeezed his thigh.
“Patricia’s quite right,” Lady Colveden said. “And you look very nice too, dear. Men are always so impressive in dinner suits.”
“All the same, Ma, it does make one feel an awful chump dressing up like this in broad daylight. And then going for a drive in the country. Oh well, at least if we get a puncture, Bob Ranger can change the wheel for us.”
“It must be worse for the ones that go by train from London, I should think,” Trish suggested, leaving her hand where it was.
“Perhaps, but on the other hand they all catch the same one so they’ve got plenty of company. Like when you see all the morning suits and gray toppers off to Ascot. You’re very quiet, George.”
“Quiet? Of course I’m quiet, haven’t been able to get a word in edgeways. Besides, I’m thinkin’.”
This was true. The proprietor of Rytham Hall was thinking that it was dashed cunning of that fellow Delphick to fix up his sergeant with a couple of tickets to the opera so that young Patricia there should not be put in any way at risk by his, George Colveden’s, damn pigheadedness; and the thought that six feet seven inches of Bob Ranger was on hand was comforting. Getting the chief constable to tell Brinton to call off his flatfoots for the evening had seemed rather a dashing thing to do at the time. He had soon repented of it, but would have felt a complete ass to have gone cap in hand to Brinton and said so.
Nice for Miss Seeton to have a bit of an outing, too. Odd how one had become quite attached to the dotty old soul, with her extraordinary talent for getting herself into scrapes of one sort and another. Poor as a church mouse, of course, and barely knee-high to a grasshopper, but she must definitely have been officer material in her day. Amazing the way she’d brushed off that nasty business in the church, full of beans as usual over Sunday lunch.
Well, better keep an eye on her at Glyndebourne, make sure she didn’t do any damage with that confounded umbrella of hers, and leave Ranger to watch out for any blighter sidling too close to young Thumper’s girl.
William Parsons took one hand off the wheel and wiped his sweaty palm on his shirt, then repeated the process with the other. He was both excited and nervous, and barely in control of himself or the ambulance. It was one thing to have plotted and schemed for so long, a quite different matter to be on the point of turning a dream into reality.
Sending the letters had done little to assuage the burning need to hurt the bastard Thumper, the obsession he had nourished for so many years. Even the satisfaction of carrying off that brilliant exploit at the Hurlingham Club had not been as longlasting as he’d expected it to be, though it was wonderful to know that Thumper was running sufficiently scared to have put the girl into what the fool imagined to be a safe place and persuaded the police to provide protection. Now, so long as—
“Watch it, mate! Pull up, pull up, yer flippin’ maniac! An’ then come round the back ’ere. Wanna word with yer.” The sliding communicating panel between the driving cab and the back of the ambulance had been left open so that Harvey and Norman could talk to him, but Parsons had been so immersed in his private thoughts that he had quite forgotten their presence. Now he glanced wildly round, saw the agitated, sharp-featured little face in the opening, realized that the ambulance was veering off the road, and righted it. Then he brought it to a halt, got out of the cab, and walked, sweating, to the back of the vehicle. One of the double doors was open, and Norman and Harvey were sitting side by side on the red blanket of the stretcher-bed glaring at him.
To put it more precisely, Norman was glaring at him, while Harvey, his eyes closed, seemed to be whimpering quietly to himself. Norman, who was wearing a dark roll-necked sweater and jeans, spoke more quietly than before, in not much more than a hoarse whisper, but with a compelling intensity. “Listen ’ere, mad-brain, an’ listen good. ’Arvey an’ me, we don’t give a cuss if you wanna write yerself off, s’long as yer do it all on yer tod, right? But while me an’ ’im are on board, be’ave yerself.”
Harvey shuddered delicately and opened his eyes. He looked very pale, and rather ethereal in his beautiful white dinner jacket, worn with a frilled shirt and a pink bow tie and cummerbund that delicately emphasized the blush-tone of his hair. “My dear William,” he began in a sad, long-suffering tone. “I cannot now remember how I allowed myself to be persuaded to join you in this insane venture, and my stomach is much too upset for me to try. So please, dear boy, bear in mind that if you value my goodwill and future cooperation, you must drive us sedately from here, at no time exceeding a speed of thirty miles per hour, until we are safely inside the purlieus of Glyndebourne.”
“Or else we’ll knock yer flippin’ block off,” Norman added succinctly. “Got that?”
“I’m sorry,” Parsons said humbly enough, though Norman didn’t like the bloodshot look of his eyes, or the way his hands were twitching.
“All right, then. Understandable yer a bit uptight, but get a grip, mate. Got yer patter worked out if anybody challenges yer?”
“I have. And please don’t refer to this as an insane venture, Har
vey. I don’t care for that word.” Parsons closed the rear door quietly and the two passengers stared at each other, listening to the crunch of his footsteps outside.
“Norman, I have a sinking feeling that our friend really is off his trolley.”
“Too bleedin’ right ’e is. Yer know, I’m beginnin’ to wonder if we done the right thing.”
chapter
~16~
As A connoisseur not only of English silver but of the finer things in life in general, Harvey had been to Glyndebourne before. He was therefore familiar with the unconventional timing of the performances given there, the very early start allowing for the seventy-five minute dinner interval during which those opera lovers who didn’t patronize the restaurant picnicked elegantly in the grounds. So Harvey it was who had telephoned to inquire the precise timings for La Calisto that evening, and ordained that they should arrive a few minutes before the beginning of that interval, at a time when very few people would be wandering about outside.
It was a wise decision. There was nobody in sight when William Parsons, sweating and trembling with the effort to behave normally, piloted the ambulance slowly and with exaggerated care through the main entrance and into the restricted parking area near the splendid country house and its associated auditorium. Positioning the vehicle in such a way that the rear doors were concealed from general view, he climbed down from the driving seat, walked round to the back after checking that the coast was still clear, and opened the door to allow Harvey to slip out. Harvey’s forehead was damp with perspiration, too, and he looked very pale, but he took a deep breath, straightened his dinner jacket and cummerbund over his enviably flat stomach, and then sauntered with a creditable show of nonchalance into the garden.
Advantage Miss Seeton (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 7) Page 12