Miss Seeton Undercover (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 17)

by Hamilton Crane

“I’m afraid it caught, you see,” she said. “The handle—my umbrella, that is, not the broom.” She blushed as Stan stared at her with a might-have-known-it look on his face. “At least, not at first,” she added, with another blush: one had no wish to mislead, but it was sometimes hard to remember everything at once. She sighed, and went on:

  “I took a walk along the canal yesterday afternoon—there are a great many interesting waterfowl to be observed at this time of year, you know. Mrs. Ongar—” Miss Seeton broke off as she recalled that this was no time to be speaking of her friend from the Wounded Wings Bird Sanctuary in Rye. “But I fear I lingered rather longer than I had intended. Shovellers, and gadwall, for instance—and goldeneye, which have just begun to arrive from Scandinavia, and even a pintail or two, I believe. With their moult complete, they look splendid, even though one cannot, of course, reasonably expect to see them so well in the dusk, and, unfortunately, the clouds had been building up without my noticing them. And it began to rain. And I was, perhaps, in a little too much of a hurry to return home ...” Miss Seeton sighed for her impetuosity. “I had a light raincoat, of course, as well as my umbrella, with the weather so uncertain—but I came in through the side gate—so much quicker, as you know, than going on round to the front, when it was really coming down rather heavily by then—the rain, I mean ...”

  Stan, who’d had to cycle home through the same downpour, nodded without saying anything. Miss Seeton, encouraged by this silent sympathy, went on:

  “Although, naturally, one knows exactly where the beds and bushes are, I fear that somehow—in the dark, I mean, despite my flashlight, which was rather awkward, in the circumstances—with the rain, and having it open in front of my face against the wind—my umbrella, that is—they seemed rather to—to shift about a bit and take me by surprise. So that when I stepped sideways, as it were, and slipped on the flagstones—so wet, with the rain—I dropped it. Most unfortunate—trying to save the bulb, you see, thinking it less likely to break, which of course it would be, not being made of glass—likely to, I mean.” She paused. “Although if one could invent an unbreakable glass, which might be folded into a convenient shape ... However.” Miss Seeton coughed, and firmly deflected her wayward thoughts from the possible manufacture of transparent umbrellas, sensible though the idea—now it had occurred to her—seemed.

  “However,” she went on bravely, “I fear that somehow, as I tried to find it, the handle must have caught against the chock, and loosened it. I did think,” she confessed, “that I felt something when I tugged, but it was raining so hard by then ...”

  Stan gazed at her, and then at the broken handle of the besom. “You weren’t never brushing up leaves in all that rain, surely? Nor yet propping rollers with’n.”

  “Oh, dear—no.” Miss Seeton coughed again, and the pink flush returned to her cheeks. “Er—no, indeed. It was just that—this morning, when I noticed how many had come down in the night, and the number of worm-casts on the lawn—leaves, I mean—as soon as I had finished breakfast I fetched it from the shed, and then the telephone went—and I laid it down on the flagstones—the broom, I mean—and they were still a little damp—and ...”

  Stan, who knew Miss Seeton of old, could guess the rest. “Ah, well, best buy new, like I said. You’ll not sweep leaves nor worm-putts with that’n again—though it’s never wasted,” relieving her of the battered besom, “when ’em twigs’ll make fine stringing for seedbeds next spring, and I judge the handle’s long enough for staking, with new apple trees to be planted once the beds is ready.”

  Miss Seeton was greatly relieved to learn that her carelessness, and its resulting damage, could be turned to good use. Black sewing-cotton cat’s cradles over springtime beds were always an excellent method for keeping birds from seedlings, and she had watched Stan plant enough trees and bushes to realise that their stems needed support through the early stages. She wondered why such an invaluable wrinkle for the reuse of damaged garden implements was not, as far as she recalled, to be found among the pages of Greenfinger Points the Way—a book from which she had learned, over the years, so much—though perhaps this was not so remarkable after all, since Greenfinger (she’d noticed very soon after purchasing that invaluable tome) very often pointed in quite the opposite way from Stan, which could make things confusing. In fact, it was sometimes extremely difficult to know whose directions she should follow, and particularly so when Miss Treeves, or Lady Colveden, or other gardening friends might advise a different course of action altogether—and when, if one looked at their gardens, there seemed really very little to choose between them. One could not, of course, say so, for fear of hurting Stan’s feelings ...

  “Monbretia,” murmured Miss Seeton. Stan bristled, and waved the besom as he waxed eloquent.

  “Be dug up, they should,” he insisted. “Cold frames—never! Hang in a shed’s what’s best, till the leaves’re browned down, then cut ’em off and in boxes—apples, too,” he added, casting a proud eye towards the end of the garden as it sloped down to the canal, where the boughs of laden fruit trees bent low to the earth. “Make a grand display, they will, for the church. Vicar’ll be pleased—and iffen I was to enter ’em in the Show, they’d win first prize easy. Save that with they Murreystone lot,” rolling his eyes and gesturing expressively, “there’s no knowing what tricks they won’t be getting up to—and I’ll not,” Stan said grimly, “stoop to their level, no more’n I’ll set meself up to be a mockery in their eyes, the devils!”

  Stan was by no means the only gardener in Plummergen so determined to exhibit none of this year’s produce in this year’s Show. The decision was heart-breaking, but, to many honest souls, inevitable, in the circumstances. Since the parish hall of Murreystone—arch-rival village to Plummergen through the centuries—had been destroyed by fire the previous spring, the two communities—who already shared a vicar in the person of the Reverend Arthur Treeves—had been forced to enter into several joint enterprises they would normally never have dreamed of holding under the same roof: the Produce Show was just one of many. But it was one where opportunities for villainy, chicanery, and downright jiggery-pokery were legion—and confidently expected to be seized: and a large proportion of Plummergen’s horticultural fraternity was resolved to have nothing at all to do with proceedings until the builders had been to Murreystone, and Plummergen’s hall was once more its own.

  “A grand year’s work,” said Stan, with a faint sigh of regret. “But there’s allus next year—and ’tis maybe good for the soul to be humbled, once-a-while, and the church’ll look a regular treat. A good month, October ...”

  And in celebration of the season, he raised his voice in the words of the well-loved Harvest Hymn:

  Come, ye thankful people, come!

  Raise the song of Harvest Home!

  All is safely gathered in,

  Ere the winter storms begin ...

  And Miss Seeton, catching his buoyant mood, joined in, warbling merrily—though not tunefully—beside him:

  God our Maker doth provide

  For our wants to be supplied—

  Come to God’s own temple, come!

  Raise the song of Harvest Home!

  chapter

  ~ 4 ~

  IN PLUMMERGEN’S LITTLE village school, Miss Maynard stood at the front of the classroom holding a stick of chalk. With her free hand, she pointed to a bright face beneath an eager waving arm. “Yes, Laura?”

  “Michaelmas daisies, please. Miss.”

  “Good.” Miss Maynard smiled, nodded, and turned to the blackboard. Under the neatly-printed heading Flowers of Harvest Time, she wrote the letter M, then paused.

  “Who can spell Michaelmas daisy?”

  A chorus of voices answered, most of them giving the correct answer.

  “Very good.” Alice Maynard filled in the rest, then asked if anyone knew why Michaelmas daisies were so called.

  This was a poser. Unlined foreheads creased in frowns; treble voices chirped deni
al. Miss Maynard smiled again.

  “It’s because they first come into flower around the end of September, and Saint Michael’s special day—mass is an old word for a church festival, or feast—is September the twenty-ninth. Now, who was Saint Michael?”

  A louder chorus—Plummergen’s youth prided itself on being very rarely caught napping twice—informed her that he was a saint. Young Gemma, after a pause, tentatively volunteered the additional information that he was the most important of the angels. At this, the chorus erupted into giggles; but Miss Maynard did not laugh.

  “Certainly he was—in fact, he was an archangel, one of the five top angels, and their leader. Now, Gemma, do you happen to know who the others were?”

  Gemma ventured the name of Gabriel, which was upheld by Miss Maynard as others sniggered. Raphael. Uriel, Zadkiel, and their lesser colleagues Chamuel and Jophiel were, however, unknown to any save Miss Maynard, who printed their names carefully to one side of her Harvest listings before continuing:

  “And what is so special about Michaelmas? I imagine almost all of you must know the answer ...”

  “S’a Quarter Day,” the classroom of farm-workers’ children informed her, with one voice. No good trying to catch ’em out with that one: if they didn’t know when the rent was due, it’d only be because their dads’d bin struck dumb and not able to moan about it over the past year, which none of ’em had.

  “A Quarter Day,” confirmed Miss Maynard. “And what are the other three?”

  This caused a little confusion, with everyone shouting at once. Alice Maynard clapped her hands for silence, then instructed that they should call the name when she supplied the date. In this manner Lady Day, Midsummer, and Christmas Day were added to the blackboard, with Miss Maynard explaining to an argumentative few whose die-hard parents still held to the old ways in speech, at least, that the Old Style calendar had undergone its notorious—but necessary—eleven-day shift more than two hundred and twenty years ago, and that the final quarter of the twentieth century might be considered a good time to bow, at last, to change.

  Having thrashed this matter out to the satisfaction of the majority, Miss Maynard returned to her original list, and asked for the names of more autumn flowers. Her pupils, country children all, promptly provided those of the chrysanthemum, sunflower, dahlia, purple crocus, and—another score for the argumentative element—the red-hot poker. Further argument seemed about to break out as the list then veered towards shrubs and their berries, but Alice Maynard decreed that these counted rather as Fruits of Harvest Time than Flowers, even if only birds and other wild creatures would eat them—this being the distinction between fruit and its earlier, decorative flower form ...

  From flowers to fruit—apples, pears, apricots, plums; from fruit to vegetables—onions, potatoes, beetroot, turnips, carrots: all chalked on the blackboard, all discussed, as points of interest arose, with enthusiasm by teacher and pupil alike, The discussion grew quite heated when marrows and tomatoes were mentioned, and Miss Maynard had recourse to the dictionary before the dissenters could be appeased with the printed definition of a fruit as opposed to a vegetable.

  And then: “Other Foods,” announced Miss Maynard, busily writing. The cereals: sun-ripened wheat, oats, and barley. A daring voice suggested nuts—which last raised not a few titters among the other children, while even Miss Maynard had to suppress a smile. For in Plummergen, “nuts” can have more than one meaning ...

  “Conkers, Miss!” The same daring voice was echoed by a dozen more, mostly male, as Miss Maynard’s class recalled the forthcoming Grand Conker Contest against Murreystone, to be held on the same day as the Produce Show. There were mock-indignant groans when Miss Maynard refused to add the fruit of the horse chestnut tree to her list, ruling that other nuts—again she suppressed a smile—such as hazel (the renowned Kent cob), walnut and sweet chestnut—were truly useful to humans, while conkers—admirable sport though they might provide—were of greatest use to wild animals such as squirrels.

  A brisk theological discussion then ensued, some of the die-hards insisting that squirrels were as much God’s creatures as any human, and surely, therefore, equally entitled to give thanks. Someone wanted to know if squirrels and other wild animals went to Heaven, because when her cat had died she was told it had gone to join her granny, only cats lived with people and squirrels didn’t, so ...

  Village schools are seldom the examination-geared hothouses suffered by urban children. Plummergen’s fifty young share but two teachers between them: Headmaster Martin Jessyp instructs the Bigguns, as generations of children have labelled their eight-to-eleven-year-old colleagues, while Miss Maynard tends to the educational needs of the Tiddlers, who range in age from Almost Five to Over Seven. With such a range, it is vital to catch and maintain the interest of the class while, at the same time, encouraging some appreciation of the discipline pertaining later in life.

  Impossible, in such circumstances, to stick to the absolute letter of the timetable. In one short lesson, Alice Maynard contrived to cover, in varying detail, aspects of botany, orthography, religious instruction, economics, history, astronomy, horticulture, agriculture, nutrition, and metaphysics. Her pupils had learned something, and the learning had been painless; Miss Maynard, too, had enjoyed the experience. But now ...

  “Now,” she said, picking up the duster and rubbing it briskly across certain sections of the blackboard. “I should like Laura to hand out sheets of paper—one each for everybody, please. And Rachel, would you please distribute the coloured pencils? Just primary colours today—and who can remember what they are?”

  A deafening chorus reminded her that they were red, yellow, and green. Someone who’d watched a programme on the family’s new colour telly (acquired, to the ambivalent envy of their neighbours, on the costly never-never) about How It Worked smugly suggested blue, amid hoots of derision soon quashed by Miss Maynard: who confirmed that blue was indeed a primary light colour, but that until Kent County Council provided such things as light pencils for its pupils, she’d prefer them to keep to the ordinary sort. This part of the lesson was not Physics, but Art ...

  “And the best drawings,” she said, as Rachel and Laura returned, their tasks completed, to their desks, “will be pinned up on the wall, so long as they’re finished by break. Are there any questions?”

  Fortunately, those that there were caused her no trouble in the answering. Alice Maynard’s talents lay more towards the musical than the visual: Singing, Mime, and Dance were easier by far for her to teach than Drawing and Painting ...

  And as twenty industrious heads bent to the sheets of paper on the desks before them, Miss Maynard wondered idly what Miss Seeton might be doing.

  “What have you been doing? I was starting to think,” said Lady Colveden, “that I must have made a mistake about which day it was, and you’d both gone off to market—and not taken me,” she added, spooning vegetables on her husband’s plate and passing it to her son.

  “Which would,” continued her ladyship, amid the subsequent deafening silence, “have been tremendously unfair, when you know how I enjoy pottering round the stalls and the shops while you two scratch pigs’ backs and make noises at cows and brag to the other farmers about how well our crops are coming along.”

  Nigel, still busy trying to insinuate his father’s lunch beneath the pages of Farmers Weekly, could only answer with a chuckle. Postman Bert had been late with that morning’s delivery, and this was Sir George’s first chance to catch up on the latest agricultural news, views, and theories. Nigel rustled paper, and coughed. Sir George, emitting a vague grunt of acknowledgement, moved Farmers Weekly three-quarters of an inch upward. Nigel relaxed as plate met place-mat in safety.

  He turned back to his mother for his own serving, and a smile danced in his eyes as he accepted the plate, though it was in a solemn voice that he replied:

  “Take you with us to Brettenden on market day? You’re pushing your luck a little there, Mother darli
ng. Do you seriously suppose Dad and I labour day after back-breaking day on the farm for you to spend the resulting all-too-meagre profits on folderols and bargains? Hats,” he enlarged, as her ladyship’s eyes widened. “Besides, if you really wanted to go, there’s nothing to stop you going by yourself, in the Hillman.”

  Wide eyes looked hurt. “With petrol costing so much? And my egg-money’s not enough to pay for even half a Monica Mary hat. Always assuming that’s what I’d be going for, which of course it wouldn’t, because your father never takes me anywhere, so what would be the point?”

  Farmers Weekly danced a dry, rustling little jig as Sir George turned a page: otherwise, a deafening silence continued to be the baronet’s sole response to his wife’s accusations of neglect.

  “Of a new hat, I mean,” went on Lady Colveden, as her son sprinkled pepper and murmured again of money. “I don’t believe we’ve been anywhere smart together since the royal garden party, and goodness knows how long ago that was. Besides, why should you think I’m only interested in hats? I might have wanted to buy new saucepans—or cake tins—or something else equally useful.”

  Farmers Weekly rustled and jigged again as Sir George uttered a choking sound. Nigel’s shoulders heaved as potato went down the wrong way.

  Lady Colveden clattered knife and fork together on her plate. “I do wish the pair of you weren’t always so—so disparaging about when I try to bake cakes. Everyone,” said her ladyship in lofty tones, “has different talents. We may not all be Martha Bloomers, I know, but I’m sure my herbaceous borders are as good as any in the village ...”

  “Blooming good, in fact,” gurgled Nigel. His father lowered Farmers Weekly, and coughed.

  “Er—quite right, m’dear. Nigel,” before his exasperated spouse could respond. “What we were talking about just now—might be worth giving winter barley a try after all, according to this. Seeing you’ve been keen for so long, I mean. How about Upper Cowdown? Seems the best bet, in the circumstances.”