Miss Seeton Undercover (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 17)

by Hamilton Crane

  Miss Seeton Undercover

  A Miss Seeton Mystery

  Hamilton Crane

  Series creator Heron Carvic

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Note from the Publisher

  Preview

  Also Available

  About the Miss Seeton series

  About Heron Carvic and Hamilton Crane

  Copyright

  chapter

  ~ 1 ~

  “MOUNTAINS,” SAID AMELITA Forby, with a wistful sigh. “Snow and pine-trees and gambolling goats ...”

  There came no answer from the busy figure on the far side of the room. After a moment, Miss Forby continued: “Ski-slopes and scenery and sparkling fresh air ...”

  “And avalanches—and glaciers—and another broken ankle or two—and frostbite to boot, I shouldn’t wonder,” retorted Thrudd Banner, continuing to throw things into his suitcase without pause. “If, in the midst of your excessive raptures, you’ll—ahem!—excuse the pun, that is.”

  Mel, who had no intention of excusing anything, promptly switched off the pathetic look with which she’d planned to melt his hard heart if he’d turned round as she’d hoped—her undoubtedly beautiful eyes could, as other Fleet Street journalists knew to their cost, cope with whole icebergs if necessary—and substituted for pathos a decidedly accusing glare.

  “So whose fault was it I broke my ankle? Get in training for a decent holiday, you said. Learn to ski, you said. Huh!”

  Her partner, still refusing to turn round, pressed on with the remainder of his packing. “Well, you did—start to learn, anyway.” He permitted himself an amused chortle. “Fun, though, wasn’t it, until you started adding to your collection of broken bones?”

  Despite herself, Mel had to smile.

  “That,” she said, “is hardly the point. Fun’s all very well, in its place, and I guess I can wait a little longer for a holiday, but this is work we’re talking about, Banner—your work and mine—”

  “Not yours,” said Thrudd. “On this occasion, mine—exclusively mine.” He snapped the locks on his suitcase, slipped the keys in his pocket, and seized his camera from the chest of drawers. “Talented though you may be, Mel—for a relative newcomer to journalism, that is—”

  He ducked, dropping his case, as Mel hurled a shorthand notebook at his head. It missed. Mel cursed, and Thrudd straightened, with a broad grin on his face.

  “Talented in many ways, Forby, but take my advice and stick to what you know—or think you do. Don’t bother applying for the netball team, okay? Better not take up clay-pigeon shooting or darts, either—hey!”

  “Bulls-eye,” crowed Mel, as the passport found its target. “So now who’s the one with the talent and know-how—when you don’t even know enough to take the right paperwork with you? A fine thing for the star of World Wide Press to be turned back at the border. You know what the Swiss are like—tidy-minded, law-abiding ... One look at you and they’d run you out of town, and I for one wouldn’t blame them in the least.”

  “So why blame me?” Thrudd bent to retrieve the dark blue card-covered gold-embossed document from the floor. “For not taking you along, I mean. As I started to say before, Forby, talented I’ll grant you may be—may be,” with insulting emphasis, “but even you can’t work flat out for two organisations at the same time. If I’m the acknowledged star of World Wide Press—”

  “Not in my book you aren’t!”

  He ignored the interruption. “—then a judicious observer might just admit you could be called the twinkling candle of the Daily Negative—okay,” as the glint in her eye showed him the joke had gone far enough, “the fullblown searchlight, if you prefer. But the Negative doesn’t send its home-front crime reporters abroad if there’s an international story breaking, and World Wide does. Which I would have thought,” witheringly, “should have been obvious from the name, to a smart sleuth like you—just as it ought to have been equally obvious that I was leaving my passport for last so I could be sure it ended up where I could grab it easily.”

  So saying, he slipped the passport into the breast pocket of his jacket, and smoothed the fabric with a firm hand. “You know what the Swiss are like—efficiency’s their middle name. Wouldn’t want to keep the immigration officer waiting, would I?”

  Mel—whose broken ankle had mended some months earlier—was tempted to kick at this remark, but restrained herself to a further scowl.

  “How should I know what the Swiss are like? I’ve never been there, remember? All I know’s what the travel pages tell me. Chalets, and mulled wine, and cheese fondue—”

  “Alpenstocks and yodelling contests and cuckoo clocks and brotherly love, and Orson Welles—oh, and chocolate, of course. Ask nicely, and could be I’ll bring you back the biggest box you ever saw.

  “I don’t need a consolation prize!” Mel tossed her head, and sniffed. “You get to handle the biggest drugs story for years—and all I get’s the kind offer of a box of lousy soft centres when you come back!”

  “There’s gratitude for you.” Thrudd contrived to look wounded at his lady’s ill humour. “Some of the best chocolate in the world, and you don’t want it? I’ll never understand the female mind—unless—hey, I get it!” He clicked his fingers, and grinned. A mischievous gleam danced in his eyes. “Of course! You’re not a rotten loser after all, Forby. You’d just prefer me to bring back a few bottles of duty-free booze so we can mull our own wine, wouldn’t you—or how about a fondue set, instead?”

  Mel muttered that she would rather enjoy these products on their home territory; but Thrudd wasn’t really listening. The mischievous gleam remained.

  “Talking of fondue sets, since it’s obvious you’re lost without me and absolutely determined to pine while I’m out of the country—if you’re looking for ways to fill the long, lonely hours, how about you watch that television cookery series that’s getting such good reviews? You might learn a trick or two about making gravy without lumps, or—hey, Mel, I didn’t mean it!”

  Thoughtfully, Mel weighed in her hand the heavy—and expensive—table lamp she’d just snatched up, and measured with a calculating eye the length of flex between the lamp and its attendant power socket. “If this,” she enquired sweetly, “hits you before I unplug it, will you be electrocuted?”

  “I don’t know—but if I am, you don’t get to collect on my insurance.”

  Mel choked. She could never—no matter how great the provocation—stay seriously cross with her swain for long, and it was a struggle not to let him see her laughing now. “But if the bad guys get you in the course of duty, you mean, I do? Great! How much?”

  “Not nearly enough.” He winked. “Not to make up for what you’d be missing, Mel ...”
/>
  “What I’m missing is the chance to watch you being the ace investigator you’re always telling me you are—”

  “Plus the chance to see me at the scene of one of my greatest triumphs—I think.” Thrudd’s voice grew softer as, with vacant eyes, he gazed into the past. He frowned. “That was the first time I had any dealings with MissEss ...”

  “And the poor woman’s never been the same since,” came Mel’s automatically acrimonious response. “Now, when I met Miss S. for the first time, the two of us got on like a house on fire ...” She hesitated. Perhaps, given that there had been a later occasion when only the swift actions of Amelita Forby had prevented the lady in question from being burned to death in her bed, that wasn’t the happiest of similes.

  “Well, we got on fine, anyway. She was really helpful, right from the start. Friendly, too—of course, I didn’t make her uneasy the way I bet you do, always thinking the worst of the poor little soul. She could tell I had a pure, unsuspicious mind, unlike—”

  “Pure?”

  “Unsuspicious,” she repeated firmly, feeling her cheeks grow warm. “Unlike some I could mention! I’m not—never have been—one of the evil-minded types like you. I trusted Miss S., from the word go—which I still do, no matter how many faces you make,” as Thrudd rolled his eyes, and let out an exasperated sigh. “I’m sure she can’t help sensing you don’t trust her—you know how she picks things up without realising—and that’s why she’s bound to feel a bit uncomfortable with you around.”

  “So who’s disagreeing with you?” Thrudd gestured expansively, then subsided. “Though I’m not sure uncomfortable’s exactly the word for the rest of us, with MissEss at full throttle ...”

  He couldn’t help it: the very mention of that name had been enough to set memory ablaze. He was back in Switzerland, those—how many?—three, four, five years ago, when he’d first encountered Miss Emily Dorothea Seeton at a press conference: a press conference over which she’d presided in such masterly fashion that she’d won his undying admiration. Mel might (after all these years!) try to tell him the old lady was just so honest she wouldn’t know how to mislead—well, sometimes he could almost believe her, when he heard Miss Seeton burbling (was there a better word?) all injured innocence and honesty—honest as the day was long ...

  But this was October, for heaven’s sake, and well past the longest day. As for Miss Seeton ... if he thought back to that press conference, how could anyone seriously suppose her to be the innocent she seemed? Why, in verbal thrust and parry that sweet little spinster schoolma’am had matched—had outmatched—every reporter present, himself not excluded ...

  And the subsequent complexities of what turned out to be a major currency case, with murder and art theft thrown in, had left him—and the rest of the world’s newshounds—gasping with admiration. How could he forget the night he’d been chased through the steep streets of Geneva Old Town, escorting Miss Seeton, pursued by members of an international gang—and Miss Seeton had emerged (as he, her escort, had likewise emerged) unscathed—although there had been others who hadn’t—including one he’d killed himself ...

  “And look at the way she brought back that severed arm from Paris on a plate for Bob Ranger’s wedding present,” he murmured, so low Mel hardly heard him. He sighed, and shook his head: he knew he’d never really know, know with a reporter’s certainty, whether Miss Seeton was what she seemed—or not. “What a woman ...”

  “You mean me?” Mel now put down the lamp, and was minded to preen herself. “Gee, thanks—though I can’t be so much of one, if you’re happy to hop off abroad and leave me behind without even trying to wangle me along on expenses—though I guess I might just be ... persuaded to forgive you, this once.” She allowed the hint of a smile to soften her expression. “Mind you, I still think it isn’t fair you should get this chance for a scoop while I’m stuck here with nothing.”

  “With no Yours Truly, granted, but—seriously, with nothing? Come on, Mel, how many more scoops do you want? Aren’t you still basking in the glory of having covered the Blondes in the Bag case?”

  “That,” Mel reminded him, “was last month—and even a week’s a long time in Fleet Street. Besides, you were in on the Blonde Bagger business as well. Nobody who knows what’s what could call that an exclusive—”

  She clapped a hand to her mouth as she realised, from Thrudd’s grin, that she’d fallen into his trap. He chuckled gleefully. “And no more would my Swiss Seasickness Scandal be an exclusive, either, if you came tagging along with me and started snooping on World Wide expenses for the Negative’s benefit!”

  He chuckled again. “Be fair, Mel, admit you’ve been beaten to the scoop—if it turns out to be a scoop, and we can’t be sure that it will—by a better man, and wish me luck without grudging it to me ... and, who knows? Your luck might turn. The police may yet come up with something on this Ram Raiding story. Then it could be your byline on the front pages days before mine, because goodness knows how long it’ll take to follow up my theory about the batch numbers being tied in with the account numbers. These Swiss banks’re closer than oysters about their clients’ affairs—and, talking of Switzerland ...”

  He checked his watch. “I must bid you a final, fond farewell, Miss Forby, before I fly off in search of fame and fortune ...”

  “Leaving me to the tender mercies of the Ram Raiders?” Mel pursed her lips. “I’m not so sure that’s much of a bargain, Banner. You’ve got a lead in the drugs case—could be it’s wrong, but at least it’s a lead of sorts—whereas the police don’t seem to know any more than when they started.” She frowned. “Or, if they do, they’re not letting on—not even to me, with my personal hotline to high places!”

  Thrudd watched, grinning, as the pursed lips and frown turned to a martial glare, and Mel muttered grimly, “Wonder if I ought to be down at the Yard right now, bending the Oracle’s ear? He can flannel till the cows come home on the telephone—but if I had the slightest suspicion he was holding out on me ...”

  “He wouldn’t dare.” The grin turned to another chuckle. “Your pet Scotland Yarder has a healthy respect for your talents, Mel. You know darn well he knows you’d eat him for breakfast if you ever caught him keeping you in the dark when there was a story breaking—which, I admit,” as Mel looked slightly mollified by this tribute to her professional acuity, “it doesn’t seem to be doing, or sure as hell one of us would have heard a whisper. Which must mean the police can’t have any leads in this Ram Raiding business, not that they’ve got them and they aren’t sharing them ...”

  His gaze was once more vacant as his thoughts, by what process of logic Mel could only guess, made him add:

  “I wonder what Miss Seeton’s doing now?”

  chapter

  ~ 2 ~

  “THIS,” ANNOUNCED DETECTIVE Chief Superintendent Delphick, as he tossed a bulging buff folder across the room towards the desk of his startled subordinate, “brings the grand total, Bob, to eight in three weeks since they arrived on our patch. And”—he sat down grimly in his swivel chair, frowning—“I don’t like it.”

  “Er—no, sir.” Detective Sergeant Bob Ranger might have added, as his blotter skidded sideways and his in-tray wobbled, that for himself he didn’t much like being bombarded with bumf from a distance by someone whose eye wasn’t quite as keen as his inarguably brilliant brain; but Bob was not only—after more than seven years as the Oracle’s sidekick—tactful, and mindful (being now a married man) of his pension: he was entirely in sympathy with the sentiments of his superior. It didn’t surprise him in the least that his boss wanted to let off a little steam: and who better—Bob, even as his huge hands failed to stem the avalanche of paperwork now spilling all over the floor, suppressed a chuckle—than a chief super’s sergeant to be his safety-valve?

  “No, sir.” Above the Oracle’s apologies as the avalanche began, Bob scrambled from his desk to start collecting things. “Er—neither does Inspector Terling, sir, from what they’re
saying in the canteen.”

  Delphick, after a moment’s silence, in his turn chuckled. “And misery loves company? This, no doubt, is intended to encourage me, Sergeant Ranger. I have to inform you that it does not. In the present circumstances, the company of Inspector Terling and his colleagues of the Art Squad is better, in my opinion, avoided like the proverbial plague.”

  Bob, settling himself at his desk again, risked a quick grin as he opened the buff folder and began to study its contents. “That why you’ve been in hiding the last few days whenever he’s rung, sir?”

  “Hiding?” Delphick uttered the word in his chilliest tones, and raised an oracular eyebrow. Bob, unrepentant, glanced up from his reading and grinned again, allowing his pointed gaze to fall upon the telephone extension to one side of his desk, and its fellow—muffled behind a high-piled in-tray—on his superior’s.

  The eyebrow relaxed; the Oracle sighed, and grinned ruefully back. “On reflection, alas, I fear you may be right. It would seem useless to try to persuade you, of all people, that my, er, apparent reluctance to answer the telephone of recent times, and my unwonted willingness to allow you to take messages which I am regrettably slow to acknowledge, derive from any enthusiasm on my part for concentrating on clearing away my backlog of paperwork.”

  “Absolutely useless, sir.” Bob’s agreement came promptly: he was a realist. “No use at all trying to kid me, sir—you hate paperwork as much as I do.” He scowled at his even higher-piled in-tray, and there was an undertone in his voice which made Delphick chuckle again.

  “Every bit as much,” he cheerfully confirmed. “But until, Sergeant Ranger, you achieve such exalted rank as mine—or even that of a mere inspector ... Ouch.”

  “No getting away from him, is there, sir?” Bob turned a page. “From this, he certainly sounds in a bit of a tizz about what’s been going on—Inspector Terling, I mean. I’d have thought it’d be right up your—our—street, what with ... well, you know, sir.”

  “Indeed I do.” Delphick pushed back his chair, rose, and headed for his sergeant’s desk. “I also know, as I said earlier, that I don’t like it.” Pulling out the visitors’ chair, he sat down, reaching across to tap with a warning finger the buff folder Bob still held. “It is extremely fortunate that no-one has as yet been hurt—as yet,” he repeated, in the same grim tones he’d used before. “For how much longer this good fortune will hold, however, I hesitate to guess. Many antiques dealers sleep above their shops—it amazes me that none of them so far has woken in time to confront the robbers before they’ve made their escape. A healthy dislike of violence, in those not trained to it, is perfectly understandable, but I would have thought there was an even healthier sense of property among the English middle classes ...”