“So where does the music come in? I thought,” Nigel said, thinking of boarding-school mealtimes, “that the cabbage bubbled in the pot, and the potatoes squeaked in the frying-pan, but I wouldn’t call either noise particularly tuneful. Or not, as the case may be.”
“That,” said Lady Colveden, “is because you know nothing of history. Not that I did,” she added honestly, “until the programme, but I must say they did it well, or your friend Jeremy Froste did. It was originally cabbage and beef, not cabbage and potatoes—they showed a World War One housewife, poor thing, having to make do on rations—but you can spell them out on the scale, and Dr. Kitchiner did, in eighteen-hundred-and-something, and that’s what they played. B, E, E, F, C, A, B, B, A, G, E. See?”
“Tonic,” remarked Sir George, without warning. Nigel, startled but ever willing, gazed about him for the bottle, while making a mental note not to let his father drive the tractor until later. “Solfa,” added his father, after a pause; and Nigel relaxed.
“Tonic or fool or pickled walnuts,” said Lady Colveden, once more making to leave her chair, “I’m sure there are more important things to think about this morning. Or,” she added, thoughtfully, “apples ...”
chapter
~ 12 ~
MARTIN JESSYP, EFFICIENT as ever, had confirmed yesterday evening’s telephone conversation by leaving a neatly-typed timetable on Miss Maynard’s—temporarily Miss Seeton’s—desk. After General Assembly, the Bigguns and Tiddlers would divide for their separate classes. For the Tiddlers, the first lesson was Nature Study ...
A great pity (mused Miss Seeton as the school, Assembly over, prepared to settle to its lessons) that it was still raining. The children were unusually restless this morning: one could, had the day been fine, have taken them out for a Nature Study ramble. There would be autumn fruits to sample, nuts and fallen leaves to collect, small branches and twigs, torn down by recent high winds, to be used for decorating the schoolroom, or as objects for sketching in a later Art class.
It was, however, raining. The smell of damp gaberdine wafted through from the cloakroom, mingling with the aroma of warm rubbery footwear and wet hair that did not, to Miss Seeton’s surprise, appear to trouble those underneath it. Country life, of course, must accustom them from their earliest years to the vagaries of the British climate: there was no doubt that the children’s pink cheeks and bright eyes bore witness to bouncing good health rather than incipient fever—but for one whose umbrella (now sedately draining in one of the cloakroom sinks) was an indispensable adjunct, no matter what the weather, it seemed odd that nobody had even thought of wearing a hat. Miss Seeton raised an automatic hand to her head, then clicked her tongue and smiled for her folly as she glanced again towards the cloakroom, where Miss Maynard’s peg—for a few days, her own—held both hat and mackintosh until they should be once more required.
She sighed. It seemed highly probable that they would. She had listened last night to the forecast on the wireless, and had hoped that, for once, Felton Butler of the London Weather Centre had been wrong to predict heavy rain for most of the morning. Be required, she meant. But now she very much feared that he had been absolutely right. Until it was time to go home. No nature ramble, then ...
Her glance drifted to the cupboard in the corner. There were, she knew, wall charts, and posters: one might question the advisability of using so much adhesive tape, where drawing-pins would be inappropriate—she had never managed to work out how her fingers almost invariably became trapped when sticking, or unsticking, anything, but had long ago accepted it as a fact of life ... yet one could not deny that letting the children see what they were being taught, rather than merely reading about it from (one had to admit) perhaps rather old-fashioned textbooks, with their illustrations mostly in black and white ...
A stifled giggle from the back row roused Miss Seeton from the Old Movie daydream into which she found herself in danger of lapsing. She blinked, and shook herself. One was supposed to be teaching a class, not thinking of television.
A waving hand from the front row caught her attention. “Yes, Rachel?”
“Please, Miss, are you going to be on the telly?”
Good gracious. Miss Seeton blinked again, then blushed: she hadn’t realised she’d spoken her final thoughts aloud. What a deplorable example to be setting the children: small wonder they were, as one had already observed, so restless. And so very discourteous. They had, after all, taken the trouble—and it was still raining—to come to school to learn: they deserved one’s fullest attention and encouragement, not a teacher unable to keep her mind on the matter in hand. Discourteous ...
Miss Seeton promptly compensated for her lack of courtesy by giving Rachel’s question—in the circumstances, when one prided oneself on the modest privacy of one’s life, so very surprising—due consideration before replying.
She smiled: considering, she had recalled Martha’s chatter of the previous night. “I think not,” she said. “I am, after all, a teacher of art, not cookery.” Or history, she might have added, but refrained, believing this would be bad for discipline when one remembered that History came next on the timetable. Besides, since one’s retirement, although one kept gratifyingly busy, there had been a pleasing amount of time for reading, for increasing one’s store of general knowledge on a variety of topics ...
“And I hardly think,” she added, “that costume drama, as I believe it is called, could ever be a suitable activity for one such as myself.”
This remark would have much amused, had they heard it, a great many of Miss Seeton’s acquaintance. Unsuited to a costume drama? Why, her whole life, balanced as she is on a tightrope between the orthodox and the outré, is nothing less than a full-scale dramatic production. Costume? While from the neck downwards Miss Seeton always appears the epitome of an English gentlewoman, her hats—which, whether trimmed or not when she buys them, are almost always retrimmed by herself—would, worn by anyone else, seem not so much Costume as Fancy Dress. Indeed, an onlooker with an interest in psychology might suggest that Miss Seeton, in her attire, is subconsciously expressing the dichotomy of her nature. Take her clothes: the discreet tweeds, sensible shoes, and pastel linens are those of the conventionally costumed gentlewoman she remains convinced, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, she is. Take her hats, however, and one finds the Drama. Unique is no understatement of their character: they have been described as godawful, unmistakeable, ill-chosen: but they are Miss Seeton’s deliberate choice, her one (presumably unwitting) concession to the bizarre, the unexpected, the picturesque nature of the adventures in which she is so often, despite herself, embroiled—a concession to the Drama which is her all-too-frequent companion, and which she so resolutely contrives to ignore.
“Miss, you mean you really don’t want never to be on the telly?” Wide-eyed Rachel was not the only Tiddler to be astonished at their preceptress’s evident disinclination for fame and glory. While village parents might be divided as to the wisdom of the entire experience, their children were united. Everyone wished to be a star. The thrilling bombshell dropped by Maureen in the post office yesterday afternoon had ricocheted, with suitable embellishments, around the village for the whole of the subsequent evening (and was likely to continue on its travels, with further embellishments, at least for the remainder of the week). Half the wives and mothers of Plummergen, reluctant to leave their sleeping children, had for the first time in living memory actively encouraged husbands and fathers to pop along to the George: and if so be they should happen to come across that Jeremy Froste, well, t’wouldn’t do no harm to be friendly to the man, would it? Seeing as how he was said to have an interest in gardens, which digging, at least, was mostly the men’s business, and gardens in Plummergen, especially since the Best Kept Village Competition, being well worth a visit ... weren’t they?
The Plummergen men, compared to their womenfolk mere ciphers in local affairs, meekly followed orders and forced themselves down to the pub, where (they took care to rem
ind their wives when they returned, long after official closing time, home) it stood to reason they’d had to take a drink or two—just to be sociable, o’course. Threatened by rolling-pins and shrill voices, they sobered sufficiently to report that Jeremy Froste’d had plenty to say, and a journalist bloke taking notes, and a girl, too, taking notes—a pretty young wench as spent a fair time being chatted up by Nigel Colveden. Which weren’t (grumbled the wives) hardly right, somehow, him and his father without an apple tree to their names, Rytham Hall being mostly arable and sheep, and everyone knowing Sir George was one of them as didn’t want nothing to do with it ...
The wives were still grumbling over breakfast next day; and Plummergen’s little pitchers have genetically long ears, all the better for the assimilation of gossip, scandal, and surmise once their owners have matured sufficiently to take their places in the adult world. Miss Seeton might innocently suppose that the rosy cheeks and general liveliness of her charges denoted good health: Miss Seeton was wrong. Excitement, pure and simple, had occasioned the flurry of whispers, the giggles, the sparkling eyes ...
“I’d like to dress up and be on the telly,” Rachel said, “and dance. I could be an apple blossom. I could have a pretty pink dress with white frills, and green petals on my head for a hat ...”
“’S wrong time of year for apple blossom,” scoffed young Lizzie, as thoughts of Monica Mary, the Brettenden milliner, flashed unbidden across Miss Seeton’s mind. Across the mind of Lizzie, however, had flashed thoughts of yesterday’s conker skirmish in the playground, and how her champion twenty-oncer had fallen victim to Rachel’s seventeener. The chance for revenge now was sweet. “Don’t have blossom in October, you great stupid dummy!”
Miss Seeton, mentally shaking herself, seized her opportunity. “You are correct, Elizabeth, we don’t, though there are rather more courteous ways of advising someone of this. Maybe we should try instead to name what we do have in October—a little competition, something different from each of you, if you can think of it, but if you can’t, it doesn’t matter. Rachel may go first. I’m sure she knows very well that apple trees blossom in the spring, and when she spoke of them just now she was simply using her imagination—though perhaps at not quite the most suitable time, Rachel,” she added gently. “And now, can you name something that we have in October?”
Rachel, who had scowled at Lizzie’s insult, brightened, and there was a note of triumph in her voice as she almost shouted: “Apples, Miss!”
At which even Lizzie had to giggle, while the other Tiddlers laughed aloud and Miss Seeton, smiling, nodded to the next child to continue.
Most suggestions were of things which had been drawn yesterday, in Miss Maynard’s art lesson. The more crafty pupils sneaked backward looks at the picture-pinned wall before volunteering the various nuts, berries, flowers, or fruits; Miss Seeton marked all correct, and chided none for cheating.
“About conkers, however,” she said, “I am not entirely sure.” Her eyes twinkled. “Miss Maynard, after all, did not see fit to add them to her display of Harvest Flowers and Foods, did she?”
The Tiddlers twinkled back, sharing the joke: weren’t nobody as could put one over on Miss, was there? Didn’t seem to mind they’d peeked, though, knowing it’d been just a bit o’ fun first thing in the morning ... The earlier metaphysical speculation as to the nature of squirrels and birds was renewed by one or two children whose parents belonged to Brettenden’s Holdfast Brethren, but Miss Seeton coped with her usual pedagogic calm as matters looked likely to become fraught. Conkers, she decreed, would, for the purposes of today’s discussion, be regarded not as a food—although it was her understanding that, in times of famine, people had indeed been known to eat the fruit of the horse chestnut tree, and some European countries fed them to cattle and horses—but as an Autumn Sport.
“And you will no doubt recall,” she continued, above a doubtful murmuring, “that I asked you to list what we have in autumn. I did not, I believe, specify that the list had to include everything from yesterday’s lesson ...” Another twinkle, returned with delight by the brighter children, who had begun to guess how this might end.
“... nor,” she went on, “did I specify that it should not include such things. I think none of you would deny that we—or rather you—have conker contests in autumn, would you? Especially when the weather,” she added, above a chorus of giggles, “is so frequently wet, as it is today. For which reason, perhaps we should add conkers to our list—but, since this period is not for Games, but for Nature Study, what else can we say about the horse chestnut tree?”
“Sticky-buds, Miss,” suggested someone, with a sideways look for Lizzie. “In the spring!”
The words were an inspiration for Miss Seeton. Sticky? Spring? She had always marvelled that so many children each year so enjoyed picking the red-brown buds and covering their fingers with resin; it was even more marvellous that this annual amusement should this morning have provided her with the answer to her problem. She smiled ...
There was a brisk burst of activity as Miss Seeton requested wall charts and posters to be fetched from the cupboard, while she searched the desk for the bulldog clips she remembered having left behind on a previous occasion when acting as a substitute teacher. There was one anxious moment in case Miss Maynard—though it seemed unlikely, for she was a thrifty soul—might have disposed of them; but then, to her relief, Miss Seeton unearthed the clips from a tin in the bottom drawer. She received the first poster with thanks and fastened it neatly—no more sticky fingers—to the blackboard with the strong spring-clips.
“The horse chestnut tree,” she said, using the wooden pointer to direct attention to the Latin name beneath. She blinked as she read the translation, then took a deep breath and prepared to admit her bewilderment with the best. “Aesculus hippocastanum ...”
“Please, Miss,” someone objected, “why does it say it’s an oak tree, too? Oaks is acorns, not conkers.”
“I really don’t know,” Miss Seeton confessed. “Aesculus means an Italian oak—which is perhaps different from our English variety, which could explain it. And hippos.” she went on quickly, “is, I believe, the Greek for horse, which is why hippopotamus means river horse—because,” she added as the question trembled on curious lips, “potamos is Greek for river. The Romans,” she hurried on, before more objections could be raised, “borrowed and adapted many words from the Greeks—as we have borrowed from both, in English. So, if castana is a chestnut tree ...”
She pointed again to the Latin components, one by one. The class nodded gravely. “The horse chestnut,” she continued, “originally comes from Greece, as it says here.” More nods. “It now grows widely throughout Europe, which is probably why so many of the poorer countries are glad of its nuts as food for their animals—and how are those nuts formed? Who can tell me?”
Not a titter greeted Miss Seeton’s innocent repetition of that four-lettered word with its double meaning. In Miss Maynard’s presence they might share the joke; but Miss Seeton’s reputation permitted no such frivolity.
“Flowers, Miss,” came the chorus. A more observant Tiddler than his peers added primly: “Panicles, Miss!” before Miss Seeton’s pointer had quite reached its goal.
Miss Seeton led her class, chart by chart, through the natural cycle of, in turn, the horse chestnut—digressing briefly to cover the red-flowered ornamental cross between the white original and the American red buckeye, or Aesculus carnea, which produced (the Tiddlers were able to inform their teacher) conkers of very poor quality—and the hazel, or Corylus avellana; the walnut, or Juglans regia; the sweet chestnut, or Castanea sativa; and the English oak, Quercus robur, otherwise known as the pedunculate or common oak.
“Pedunculate,” announced Miss Seeton, having thumbed through the classroom dictionary at her pupils’ request, “means that the stalk hangs down—as one may see, from the illustrations, that it does, in the case of the leaves and the acorns.”
“Then why ar
en’t conkers called that?” demanded Lizzie, on whom the loss of her twenty-oncer still weighed heavily. “I mean—they hang down too, don’t they. Miss?”
Miss Seeton, once again, had to admit her ignorance. Conkers did, undoubtedly, hang downwards: gravity would have its way; but as to why the name should only be applied to the oak ...
“Them ole Latins and Greeks,” suggested someone, as she ran out of ideas. “Talked foreign, didn’t they? Stands to reason it’d not make sense in English!”
This remark, to Miss Seeton’s surprise, pleased everyone save herself. While she made a mental note to check later in one of the larger dictionaries kept in Mr. Jessyp’s classroom, the Tiddlers turned to more pressing topics.
“Them Latins and Greeks, Miss—”
“Romans and Greeks,” the prim one corrected, even more primly.
“Them Romans,” came the amended query, accompanied by a glare for the prim one. “Did they play conkers, Miss?”
And, as the bell rang outside for the end of the lesson, the class erupted into a burst of challenges for playground fights, accompanied by ritual expressions of enmity towards, not only the Tiddlers’ friends, but also their age-old foes in Murreystone, against whom the Grand Conker Contest was yet to come.
“You know what, Miss?” rose a voice above the rest, as Miss Seeton supervised the rolling up of the posters. “They won’t know what’s hit ’em—my dad says we’ll teach that Murreystone lot a lesson ...”
“We’ll smash ’em to bits,” said someone else. “You wait and see, Miss—we’ll murder ’em!”
chapter
~ 13 ~
“MURDER,” SAID SUPERINTENDENT Brinton heavily, as he stood with Foxon in the spacious—more spacious now than usual—sitting-room. “I’ve been afraid of this all along ...”
Together, they stared at the sinister outline chalked on the floor. The preliminaries were over: the photographers and forensic people had played their part; the investigation proper was about to begin.
Miss Seeton Undercover (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 17) Page 10