Miss Seeton Undercover (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 17)

by Hamilton Crane

  Delphick stiffened. His voice tailed off, and his grey eyes darkened as he murmured absently: “Consider the example of the noted connoisseur Soames Forsyte, for one—though possibly we should in his particular case amend ‘healthy’ to ‘unhealthy’ ...”

  As the chief superintendent once more drifted to a halt, Bob scratched his head. Like most of the nation, his knowledge of the works of John Galsworthy was based on the television adaptation of The Forsyte Saga some half-dozen years previously, although—again, like most of the nation—he’d dipped into the paperback version. He couldn’t really see much connection between an unlovable man with an overpowering possessive instinct, a beautiful woman with velvet-brown eyes and autumn-leaf hair, and the Ram Raiding thefts from West End antiques shops. Unless ...

  He turned back to the folder. Clipped to the inside cover was a lengthy typewritten list, which he scanned with renewed interest. He looked up, puzzled.

  “Nobody seems to have pinched a portrait of Venus, sir, if that’s what you’re getting at. I mean—Irene, sir. Forsyte. You know how—how, er, beautiful she was supposed to be, in the book ...” Delphick, himself puzzled, stared at his subordinate and saw him blush. “Anna Diomedes, sir,” said poor Bob, blushing still more. “The kid thinks she’s beautiful too, sir—his mother, I mean. Irene.” Bob gulped. “Like—like Venus, sir, only the kid can’t pronounce it properly, and his father—that’d be Young Jolyon, sir—he, well, he does.” And the Oracle’d better not ask him to pronounce it, because no way was he going to make a fool of himself trying—he’d felt sorry for the kid in the book, and that’s why that bit had stuck in his mind after all these years.

  “Ah, yes, of course, Botticelli—Venus Anadyomene.” It was pronounced perfectly: the Oracle, on occasion, could be a kindly man. “You have a good memory. Bob. I’d quite forgotten the scene until you reminded me—it wasn’t shown on television, was it? But I didn’t mean that. I think.” The thoughtful look returned to the grey eyes. “It was—what might be called a slight change of focus, perhaps—the idea of a connoisseur ... But no, it’s surely ridiculous. Though coincidences, I won’t deny, do happen ... And in any case,” shaking himself back to reality, “this has to be the work of experts, Bob. Whoever they are—and whoever they work for—they go straight to what they want. They ignore many more conveniently placed items in favour of the best—they have even ignored those items which, to the relatively expert eye, would appear the best, but which to the superlatively expert eye—or so the legitimate experts tell us—show signs of repair. Repair which makes those items less valuable, less collectible, to the connoisseur ...”

  Bob opened his mouth again. This time, Delphick nodded to him to speak. The sergeant cleared his throat. “That’s—that’s more or less what Inspector Terling says, sir. If you’d only heard him ...”

  “If I hadn’t been avoiding him, you mean? Point taken, Sergeant Ranger. This office, however, only concerns itself with serious, that is to say generally violent, crime—which the inspector knows as well as you or I. And, I repeat, these Ram Raids—or at least those in London—have been—so far—remarkably blessed by an absence of violence ... although we must question for how much longer the blessing will continue ... but they are also the work of experts.” He frowned. “Experts who, at a guess, could well be stealing the various items to order ...”

  Behind his desk, Bob wriggled, if the actions of anyone who stands six foot seven in his socks and is built accordingly can be described in so undignified a word. This time he did not even bother trying to speak. He gulped once or twice, and coughed. Delphick sighed.

  “Inspector Terling is of the same mind, do I gather from your horrible grimaces?” Another gulp, and a nod. Delphick quirked an eyebrow. “Then, Sergeant Ranger, I am in excellent company—as likewise is the inspector.” He leaned forward, and frowned once more. “In which case, since the two of us are so clearly theorising along almost identical lines, it passes my immediate comprehension why any opinions I might offer on the Ram Raiding should be of such interest to him that he persists in sending me updates of every single case report as he receives them ...”

  Bob, having gained his second wind, simply looked at his chief. His look spoke volumes.

  Delphick looked right back at him—sighed—and sat up. “I said before that I did not like it. I was not referring merely to the criminal aspect of this case, Sergeant Ranger, but also to my dislike of the—the professional blackmail to which I am apparently being subjected by those who should know better.” He watched Bob try to smother a sudden grin, and said, as if trying to convince himself:

  “If I may just briefly jog your memory, Sergeant? There is nothing remotely ... boreal about any of the items listed as stolen—that is,” as Bob blinked, “nothing more wintry, either in subject or in title, than might be expected in an average haul of quality antiques.”

  “Er—no, sir.” A light began to gleam at the back of Bob’s eyes as he saw the Oracle building up a head of mental steam. Delphick, hardly hearing the words, noted the gleam, and his own eyes glittered as he went on:

  “I won’t deny the likelihood that these items are being stolen to order, Sergeant Ranger. Nor will I deny that, as the items have all been of the highest quality, it is equally likely that those persons ordering their—their appropriation from their legal owners are more than usually endowed with riches: the impecunious do not commission, as it were, gangs of knowledgeable criminals to commandeer powerful cars, send them at high speed into plate-glass windows, and thereafter help themselves to what we can only assume is a previously-listed selection of display goods ...”

  “Er—no, sir,” said Bob, as Delphick appeared to run out of steam, and stared at his subordinate for some moments in silent irritation before returning:

  “The answer only prudence, presumably, has prevented you offering is surely ‘Don’t you mean person in the singular, sir?’” Delphick stopped steaming, and chuckled. “Confess, Bob. You don’t believe in the—the plurality of the case, do you? You scorn the notion, logical though it may appear to the less, ah, romantic mind, of a syndicate of organised antiques thieves. You don’t even believe the Ram Raids are so cleverly organised they may be, as has been suggested by more than one of our colleagues, the work of drug barons, hoping thereby both to finance their revolting trade and to launder their ill-gotten gains ...”

  He shook his head for his subordinate’s wild imagination. “Admit it, Sergeant Ranger. You, like Inspector Terling, are convinced that we are once more up against our old friend Chrysander Bullian, aren’t you?”

  Bob, grinning, gave a shamefaced nod. Chrysander Bullian could certainly be regarded as an old acquaintance, if not quite a friend, by Scotland Yard, for their paths had indirectly crossed on more than one occasion. Bullian was an American-Armenian multi-millionaire recluse notorious for his acute paranoid delusions, which took the form of an intense fixation with low temperatures. He was believed to inhabit an underground bunker in northern Alaska, waiting for the nuclear winter of World War III: he was said to be furnishing this retreat with works of art—sometimes commissioned, more often than not stolen to order—depicting such subjects as ice, snow, hail and frost, although the most tenuous connection with winter could catch the fancy of Chrysander Bullian—if, indeed, it was Bullian who was behind the recent world-wide outbreak of art theft. It seemed very probable, however, that it was. Could there be two people with not only the same neurosis, but with similar flourishing financial assets to support it, no matter how extreme its manifestation? He—whoever he was—had once instructed his minions to steal a stuffed polar bear from the Bellshire County Museum and freight it laboriously across the Atlantic: he had been thwarted then, but there was always the next time ...

  “Chrysander Bullian.” Delphick’s tone was wary. “You are, I most devoutly trust, mistaken. Sergeant ...” Now it was almost pleading. “Aren’t you?”

  “Er,” said Bob, and blushed again. “Well, sir,” as Delphick r
egarded him quizzically, “it’s—it’s always a possibility, sir. I mean—he’s just about the richest man in the world—and quite barmy enough to organise a scam like this—and, well, we have come up against him before, sir. That is—coincidence, I know, but ...”

  Scarlet, he subsided. The Oracle favoured him with a long, thoughtful look; he frowned; he chuckled.

  “I wonder,” murmured Chief Superintendent Delphick, “what Miss Seeton’s doing now?”

  chapter

  ~ 3 ~

  WHAT MISS SEETON was doing, while so many people wondered, was minding her own business.

  There is nothing at all unusual in this. Miss Emily Dorothea Seeton is the most modest of English gentlewomen: she would feel it an impertinence on her part to display excessive interest in the doings, whereabouts, or business of anyone with whom she was not personally acquainted, whether in the social or professional sense. Similarly, she would feel it an impertinence on the part of anyone else to display such an interest in herself.

  It would therefore seem the greatest of all possible impertinences that the doings of this elderly maiden lady should interest—among others—a pair of high-flying Fleet Street journalists and at least two detectives from Scotland Yard. Miss Seeton, should she ever stoop to eavesdropping on the conversations of strangers—than which almost nothing could be further from her thoughts—would (the casual observer must suppose) be justifiably annoyed at such an invasion of the privacy to which she considers herself entitled ...

  The casual observer would be wrong: Miss Seeton would be neither annoyed, nor even surprised, at such conversations—from the Fleet Street high-fliers and the detective duo, at any rate, for to Miss Seeton they are no strangers ... And she herself, to an extent she cannot fully understand, would also be wrong. Entitled though in many ways she may be to privacy, she is hardly a private person in the way she so fondly believes. Her doings are news. Her escapades make headlines. Her name is known to few; her soubriquet of The Battling Brolly is known to millions.

  Miss Seeton, in short, is one of Scotland Yard’s most unexpected weapons in the constant fight against crime ...

  “It’s criminal, so ’tis,” said Stan Bloomer, as he and Miss Seeton stood in the latter’s back garden and surveyed the damage wrought by the high winds and heavy rain of the previous night. “A regular crying shame!”

  At least, that was what Miss Seeton thought he’d said. Long acquaintance with this hardy son of the Kentish soil—an acquaintance which had ripened, over the last seven years, into friendship—had not proved enough to conquer the richness of Stan’s accent. There were times, as she knew only too well, when it was safer simply to nod, and to smile, and to guess at what he’d been saying from the tone in which he’d said it.

  “A great pity,” agreed Miss Seeton, with a sigh. “October can be such a—such an uncertain month, can it not?”

  Stan chuckled. “Oh, well. Keeps us busy—and they worms’ve had a rare old time of it, anyhow. So long’s they little black gennum devils don’t hear of un’s frolics, dare say we’ll manage.”

  “Moles,” murmured Miss Seeton, from what memory she couldn’t have said, “eat worms backwards, I believe. They nip off their heads, and squeeze out the earth like—like toothpaste. So very clever—but, of course, one would far rather have worms than moles in one’s garden any day, for the sake of the soil—not, of course,” hastily, “that the quality of the soil in my garden is poor, by any means,” in case she had hurt Stan’s feelings.

  Stan Bloomer has cared for the gardens at Sweetbriars, Miss Seeton’s cottage, for twice as long as Miss Seeton has lived in Stan’s birthplace, the village of Plummergen. Stan’s wife Martha, a Londoner who came down to Kent every September for the hop-picking, met and married her farm-worker husband around fifteen years ago, and promptly undertook a new way of life as the local domestic paragon. Anyone having Martha to “do” for them during the week may rest assured that no microbe, germ, or particle of dust will remain in the vicinity once she has bustled through the house with duster, mop, and broom.

  One of the first houses through which the new Mrs. Bloomer bustled was that of Old Mrs. Bannet, who lived almost directly across the lane from the Bloomers’ little home. Old Mrs. Bannet was then approaching her tenth decade, and had come to the reluctant conclusion that housework must at last give way to health. She was growing deaf—which didn’t matter; and arthritic—which did. She could not sweep and scour and polish as she used to ...

  Nor could she dig and mulch and prune; nor care for the chickens as she’d done in a more active past. Martha had been working at Sweetbriars a mere matter of days when she’d suggested to Flora Bannet that Stan might repair the Sweetbriars fowl-house, replace the stock, and supply the old lady with good, fresh eggs on a daily basis, the surplus to be sold by him in lieu of wages. Within weeks, the scheme had proved so beneficial to both parties that it had been extended to include flowers, fruit, and vegetables; and on Mrs. Bannet’s death, her sole legatee, Miss Seeton—whose godmother the old lady, a cousin of young Emily Dorothea’s mother, had been—was delighted to inherit not only Cousin Flora’s dear cottage, but her domestic and horticultural arrangements as well.

  “Moles,” repeated Miss Seeton, in a regretful murmur. “Such attractive creatures—The Wind in the Willows—and yet, one cannot deny, so troublesome in the garden ...”

  “Caper spurge,” said Stan, who had planted numerous sprigs of this hardy perennial around Miss Seeton’s garden when, in the previous spring, the Plummergen area had suffered the attentions of an unusually large number of the little gentlemen in black velvet. Caper spurge, with its yellow flowers and distinctive scent, was a noted country remedy against the incursion of moles, and by both Stan and Miss Seeton was greatly preferred to the spring traps or noxious gases of the more dedicated mole-haters such as the disgraced official catcher, Jacob Chickney.

  “And, I think, the wall, and the canal,” ventured Miss Seeton politely. “They are not, I believe, fond of water—moles, I mean—and the foundations of the wall, perhaps, and the lane ...”

  The topography of Plummergen is simple. The village’s main—indeed, virtually its only—thoroughfare is a long, wide, gently-curving street named, by the prosaic citizenry, The Street. The Street runs from north (where eventually it reaches Brettenden, at six miles distant the nearest town) to south, where it divides in two on a right-angled bend. The angled offshoot, calling itself Marsh Road, winds around and across the Levels and the Marsh until it, too, arrives in Brettenden, after dividing in Wittersham to ramble also towards Rye, five-and-a-half miles away. The Street proper narrows abruptly as Marsh Road saps its strength, and runs on as a mere lane between high walls and cottage gardens to the bridge over the Royal Military Canal, and thence, meandering again, over Walland and Romney marshes to the coast.

  It is on the Marsh Road corner of The Street that Sweetbriars is situated, its front windows looking northwards up the long, gentle curve, its side wall—mellow brick, like that used to build the vicarage opposite—running down the narrow lane into which The Street is metamorphosed. In one of the cottages on the other side of the lane live Stan and Martha Bloomer; between their front garden and Miss Seeton’s wall the foundations of the southbound lane lie deep enough, it seems, to keep out any number of tunnelling moles.

  “Bin a fine ole dinner for ’em here,” Stan said, “if they’d a dug their way unnerneath—which thanks be they’ve not done, seemingly. Better worm-putts nor molehills to be swept away, any day, I reckon ...”

  “Indeed, yes.” Miss Seeton surveyed her leaf-strewn lawn, sparkling with raindrops, spotted with the brown curlicues of myriad worm-casts which, if left to the mercies of wind and weather, would stifle the grass beneath and leave dead patches among the green. “Yes, indeed.” She sighed. “I suppose,” she said humbly, “that it really is beyond repair? I know how clever you have been in the past at mending things—such a useful skill, and quite beyond me, in so many respect
s. If, perhaps, it is simply a matter of tightening the string, or winding it farther up—though you are the expert, Stan, of course ...”

  Stan shook his head as he studied the jagged white cleft in the age-smoothed wooden handle of the birch broom his employer now held out to him. “Bin worse nor trod on, so this has,” he began, taking the broom from her and pointing with a stern finger. Miss Seeton turned pink, and hung her head. Stan ignored her guilty flutters, too preoccupied with his explanation to notice. “No manner of binding’ll hold this here crack from growing to splinters—blood poisoning an’ lockjaw, iffen you’re not careful, which even with gloves you can’t be sure. Safer by far t’buy a new one ...”

  “Oh, dear.” Miss Seeton looked more uncomfortable than ever. She had hoped—dear Stan had worked so many wonders, over the years, with her garden implements—not, of course, that she had been (she believed) unduly careless, always oiling them before putting them away—but the chuck, or was it chock?—anyway, the piece of wood which stopped the garden roller from, well, from rolling down the garden ... not that she grudged the expense, of course, if it was necessary—but that her own (she blushed again) carelessness should have made it necessary—