Miss Seeton Undercover (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 17)

by Hamilton Crane

  Bleating, babbling—hysterics all round; Charley Mountfitchet was minded to take control, insisting that everyone must keep calm. Not as if there was a fire, was it? And if there’d bin a regular car smash, there’d be certain signs of it in The Street, the racket that’d bin going on not five minutes since—and there weren’t, so there hadn’t, and no need for folk to go upsetting themsel—

  “Aaaah!” A terrified scream. Mrs. Blaine, all eyes at once upon her, raised a pointing hand. “Too—too horrible—a headless corpse! I mean—”

  But her meaning was lost in the general outcry which now ensued. Where golden light met and mingled with moon-silver on the ground, a myriad shadows and reflections tricked the eye—made that which was small enormous—gave movement to the stillness of stone and brick—gave life to that which was dead ...

  A shimmering skull, eye-sockets and mouth deep hollows of eternal blackness, floated, shroud-white, down the front path of Miss Seeton’s cottage. Beneath the skull, nothing—the gaping void of the tomb. Wisps of smoke—sulphur fumes from the nether world—eddied where spectral feet walked the ways of the unimaginable ...

  “Aaaah!” Another scream, yet more terrified—but not from Mrs. Blaine. Another pointing hand, raised from the muffled wrappings. “No! Stop her—keep her away from me! She wasn’t meant to die until the bomb went off!”

  It was late next morning when Amelita Forby tapped at Miss Seeton’s door, an enormous box of chocolates in her hand.

  “Hi, Miss S. For you, in exchange”—Mel’s nose twitched—“for coffee, and a slice of Martha’s cake, okay?”

  “Oh, Mel.” Miss Seeton was grateful, but embarrassed. Surely even a reporter as famous and successful as dear Mel could not afford to give such very, well, expensive presents to one who, really, although (she hoped) a friend, had done nothing to deserve such generosity ...

  “Nothing?” Mel followed her hostess down the passage to the kitchen, noting with secret amusement the umbrellas in their clips along the wall. Miss Seeton, she was willing to bet a dozen boxes of chocolates, even now probably had no idea that it was the sight of her apparently ghostly form—not a headless corpse, but a corpseless head—long white nightie discreetly covered, in the emergency of hurrying out of doors with no housecoat, by an opened brolly—which had driven her would-be killer to confess. To confess to more, to Mel’s delight, than just the murder attempt. Another Seeton Scoop for Amelita Forby, and boo to Banner and his Swiss Drugs Scandal.

  “Miss S., you’re a marvel. I’m the editor’s blue-eyed girl again, so you just enjoy your chocs without losing any sleep over them. Talking of which”—she lounged against the table as Miss Seeton busied herself with spoons, cups, and the kettle—“how did you manage in the spare room last night, or rather this morning? And have you done anything yet about getting your windows fixed?”

  Miss Seeton, about to pick up the tray, nodded. “Superintendent Brinton was kind enough to arrange for someone to call. A matter of kindness, or should I say courtesy, to a—a professional colleague, as I understand it, because”—her eyes twinkled—“one does not usually expect them to be so prompt in performing what is, after all, a relatively small task. Might the apposite phrase be pulling rank? And especially since today is Sunday.”

  Mel nodded: she’d had to walk the Ashford streets for some time before finding a newsagent stocking a sufficiently lavish box of chocolates for Miss Seeton’s due reward.

  “Except, of course,” said Miss Seeton, “that he was not a policeman. Tradesmen, that is—but he was here not half an hour ago, and did an excellent job, which is why I was unable to attend morning service, although the dear vicar, I feel sure, will understand. So very kind of him—Mr. Brinton, that is. The glazier, not Mr. Brinton—though I must confess to being a little puzzled when he insisted there was no charge. I even telephoned him to make sure—Mr. Brinton, I mean, but he said he had been quite correct in not accepting any money today, and in saying he would not be presenting his account at a later date. I do hope,” said Miss Seeton, with a pucker between her brows, “that dear Mr. Brinton will not be paying for what was no more than an unfortunate accident out of his own pocket. Or do the police perhaps have some form of—of sinking fund, for such an occurrence? I would hate to think of my little mishap causing any—any financial difficulty ...”

  Mel laughed as she took the tray from Miss Seeton’s anxious hands. “I told you before, Miss S., you can rest easy. One window’s a very small price to pay for what you’ve done—believe me, Brinton and the rest of the boys in blue are mighty pleased with you right now. If I’m the Negative’s golden girl, that’s nothing to what Old Brimstone thinks of you ...”

  Charley Mountfitchet had always entered with enthusiasm into the spirit of whatever remarkable crime the police—from whatever force—might be investigating while staying in his hotel. He would ply the visiting plainclothes officers with after-hours whisky, was always willing to provide late-night sandwiches or bar snacks, and positively revelled in being asked to identify suspects, or to volunteer theories.

  And now his finest hour had come. Mel Forby’s quick wits worked out just five seconds before Charley’s the likely meaning of the hysterical babbling about bombs, the true reason for the terrified response to the innocent sight of Miss Seeton walking quietly down her own front path ...

  “I’ll call the cops!” she snapped, digging Charley in the ribs. “You make a citizen’s arrest!”

  But, though Charley’s moment of glory was not snatched from him, Mel was thwarted of hers. As she was heading back into the hotel, PC Potter, alerted by the earlier sounds of mayhem, arrived in a hastily-buttoned tunic—to see Charley Mountfitchet clapping a hand on the shoulder of a shivering Rodney Roydon, and uttering in a gleeful voice the well-known words of The Usual Warning.

  Mel insisted that Rodney was in such a state he couldn’t be taken to Ashford without medical supervision. She had—she claimed—in far-off times been a Girl Guide: she knew about shock, and faints, and first aid. She directed the full force of her beautiful eyes upon the hapless Potter: who was as putty in her devious hands ...

  “Forby?” Superintendent Brinton was never happy at being dragged out of bed during the hours of darkness. “What the hell is that woman doing here again? Has she taken up residence?”

  Potter shuffled his feet and cast an anguished eye in the direction of Detective Constable Foxon. “She, er, said she was sure you’d want her to be in on all this, sir—seeing how it was her idea in the first place, she said. Sir. She, er, said you knew all about it ...”

  “She’s right, sir.” Foxon rushed to the rescue of his hapless friend as Brinton buried his face in his hands, groaned, and then began tearing at his sleep-ruffled hair. “I know it doesn’t seem to have worked out the way she—we—you planned it, sir, but—well, it’s worked, all right. If this chap’s the front man for the real Sideboard Swipers, I mean. And if Mel—Miss Forby—says he is ...”

  He glanced at what he could see of his tormented chief, and grinned. “... subject, of course, to confirmation from, er, Miss Seeton ...”

  “Foxon!” Brinton leaped from his chair, his eyes wild. “Potter—get out. Go home. And don’t forget to wring that woman’s neck on your way!”

  “Sir,” said Potter, beating a hasty retreat, but not so hasty that he missed Foxon’s mischievous enquiry as to whether it was Miss Forby, or Miss Seeton, who had inspired such unorthodox instructions ...

  They knew that Mel would sit and wait for her story for as long as it took; and they also knew, in fairness—once Brinton had been soothed with a cup of canteen tea and a peppermint or two—that she deserved that story, if anyone did. Indeed, the effect of the peppermints was so soothing that Brinton was prepared to let his suspects pickle quietly in their cells while he and Foxon picked Mel’s brains about exactly what had been going on.

  “Easy,” Mel told them, yawning over the tea she couldn’t believe anyone in their right minds could possibly enjoy,
but more than willing, in the circumstances, to make the effort. “This reporter—so-called. I’ve never heard of Roy Roydon, and I pride myself I know a fair bit about what goes on in and around Fleet Street ...” She gulped a mouthful of tea, made a face, and sat up straight. “Seems he’s been using the excuse of writing an article on that conceited television character to pop in and out of houses up and down the country, snooping. Made quite a pest of himself on occasion, I’ve been told, and ...”

  She tried not to seem affronted at the look on Superintendent Brinton’s face. Amelita Forby was no foot-in-door journalist, as he ought to know by now.

  “... and the poor mugs who ended up being burgled on his say-so had naturally invited their visitors into the sitting-room—nothing but the best for the telly folk—where, of course, smack in front of them were the sideboards, all set out with knick-knacks and ornaments just asking to be pinched ...” She hid another yawn. “Which they duly were, once the Not All Roast Beef caravan had moved on, and Rodney had moved on after it. So nobody made the connection ...”

  Brinton shot her a shrewd glance. “Including you, Miss Forby. The line you spun me—and a pretty convincing line it was, I have to admit—was all to do with obituary columns, and articles in local newspapers, and opportunist burglars homing in on the helpless. Get Miss Seeton to pretend she’s just been bereaved, you said. Set her up to tell the local rag all about poor, dear, dead Cousin Flora, and snap her in the parlour with the deceased’s bits and bobs on display behind her—”

  “Ah,” said Mel; and laughed, her eyes bright. “Well, I got the gist of it, didn’t I?” She laughed again, and the superintendent had an uncomfortable feeling that she was keeping something from him. “I knew,” she went on, before he could voice his suspicions, “there was a newspaper side to this story—and I knew Miss Seeton would come up trumps again ... and I was right. So she did ... er, twice over, if you count the Ram Raiders.” She coughed. “Which, okay, I agree I was more interested in, at the start ...”

  “Come off it,” said Brinton, sidetracked as Mel had meant him to be. “How can you say it’s anything to do with Miss Seeton that the Raiders ran out of petrol just outside Rytham Hall?”

  “Just in time,” she amended, “to end up the meat in the sandwich between those two in the panda car, and a crowd of the Night Watch Men. Sure, the Plummergen Patrol’d already heard the racket from The Street and were heading back that way in any case, but if it hadn’t been for the Nuts throwing a wobbly right outside Sweetbriars, the Rammers would never have turned up Marsh Road because they’d got nervous about cutting across the canal bridge. If they’d gone straight on without ditching that spare wheel, they’d have been over the canal by the time the gas ran out, and with the Night Watch Men half a mile away, the panda pair wouldn’t have had a hope in hell of catching them in the dark.” The expressive eyes fastened soulfully upon Superintendent Brinton’s frowning face. “Be fair, now. Would they?”

  “Local knowledge, sir,” chirped Foxon, as his chief shut his eyes in despair. “If the Nuts hadn’t been so sure Miss Seeton was a witch—if Sir George’s gang hadn’t known the best way to head off the Rammers at the pass—if—”

  “All right!” Brinton slapped a brooding hand on the desk, and sighed. “It’s the wrong time of day—or night—to start trying to work out the cockeyed logic behind whatever fairy story you’re trying to sell me. I’ll buy it—for the sake of peace and quiet, if nothing else. Miss Seeton’s done it again—though I’m blowed if I can quite make out how.”

  Mel tapped the cardboard portfolio she’d been guarding, keeping it on the table just out of the superintendent’s reach. “Here’s how,” she said, with a knowing smile. “You think you’ve seen these sketches before, of course—and a couple of them you have ... but she’s done another one since, and that little number puts quite a different interpretation on the rest.” She smiled again. “The same, but different, if you see what I mean. Which you will,” she added kindly, “once you’ve taken a close look ...”

  Brinton’s features were acquiring an unusual burgundy tint. “Don’t push your luck, Miss Forby,” he growled, as Mel began to untie the strings of the portfolio. “And don’t play games with me. Let’s do all this nice and tidy, shall we? What sketches? Where did you get them? As if,” he added in a hollow voice, “I couldn’t guess ...”

  “These?” Mel was casual. “Oh, I grabbed them once things had calmed down a bit, when people were still pouring cold water over the Nuts—you know, I’m sorry I missed out there—and the awful Roydon, trying to find out what it was all about. But I went right to the heart of the mystery, to Sweetbriars”—she ignored Brinton’s groan—“because Martha Bloomer—you know she lives just across the road from Miss S.—said she thought she’d heard sounds of breaking glass coming from the cottage as well as the hooha she knew must be a car crash. We went back with Miss S. to check ...”

  She shivered, her casual pose forgotten. “Plum in the middle,” she said. “If Miss Seeton hadn’t been on her way downstairs ...”

  “Yes,” said Brinton, “why was she? Not that I’d want her with broken glass and spare wheels all over her, but why wasn’t she in bed, like anyone else at that time of night? And don’t tell me,” sourly, “it was some sort of blasted premonition—though I suppose you will.”

  “I won’t,” said Mel, “though I think you’ll like the truth—as far as I can make it out—even less. It was all thanks to, uh, her umbrella ...”

  chapter

  ~ 32 ~

  “HER UMBRELLA!” BRINTON closed his eyes again, and groaned. “Yes, of course—what else would it be?”

  “Seems she’d been disturbed in the night,” Mel went on. “Thought it must be mice charging about the kitchen with hobnailed boots on—though my guess is, it was Roydon breaking into the place and setting up his ... his bomb.” Even Mel’s insouciance, professional as it was, weakened here: she was truly fond of Miss Seeton, and the realisation of how close her friend had, yet again, come to extinction worried her more than she cared to think.

  She sighed. “I knew there must be something wrong, the way he went over the top when Miss S. appeared—but all that yelling about a bomb, well, I didn’t believe a feeble type like him could have dreamed up anything quite so—so drastic. I just knew he was a wrong ’un, and whatever it was he’d been doing, he had to be stopped, and the bomb made a good excuse. In any case, he started rabbiting about the candle going out—seems when she opened the door to check on the accident, Miss S. raised a bit of a draught—and I ... I was so keen to get the story, I suppose, I told myself whatever he thought he might have done, it must be safe enough to go back in and check, while Charley Mountfitchet stopped him doing a bunk. I guess I figured,” with a wry grin, “Miss S.’s guardian angel would be watching out for her, same as always ...”

  “Certainly did,” grunted Brinton, “getting her out of bed just in time to miss that wheel. She wouldn’t’ve stood much of a chance—sorry,” as Mel winced. She’d seen the damage done to Miss Seeton’s cosy bed: Brinton hadn’t. “Go on.”

  Mel gulped. “Yes, well ... We didn’t spot the candle on the way in, any more than Miss S. had seen it on her way out—we were in a hurry both times, of course—and then we went upstairs and saw the wheel. In all the excitement, of course, we thought that must be what he’d meant about a bomb—flying through the air, loud bangs, lots of mess—just like the starburst sketch, when you stop and think about it. Except when we first saw this,” and Mel waved towards the drawing now in Brinton’s puzzled hand, “we thought it must be something to do with my story about the admiral chasing those characters across The Street, and Mr. Baxter slamming on the brakes and his car not falling to pieces after all—but, well, we were wrong.”

  Mel managed a grin. “Anyway, the Nuts were burbling about Forces and Powers ... and once we’d taken a look at the ... the damage, Miss S. thought a nice cup of tea might not be such a bad idea.” Mel gazed at her own cold, treac
le-brown tea and sighed.

  “And while I helped Martha make up the bed in the spare room, little innocence was down in the kitchen, running the cold tap to clear the nasty grey sludge in the corner of the sink, and wondering if it had come off her umbrella, and thinking wasn’t it lucky it had rained so hard she hadn’t left it in the hall rack to drain, because it would have made such a mess—and if that,” said Mel, “isn’t some sort of guardian angel, or a premonition. I’ll eat my favourite hat. Which,” she added, as Brinton seemed set to argue, “is a Monica Mary special—and they don’t come cheap.”

  “You’re dead right there,” said Brinton automatically. His wife had once visited the renowned Brettenden milliner on the occasion of a family wedding. The remembrance of how much it had cost him to see two distant cousins joined in holy wedlock could still give him nightmares about his overdraft. Then he blinked. “Hats be damned! What,” he demanded, as Foxon sat grinning at his side, “was in this grey sludge that’s obviously the whole point of this damned rigmarole? And how could anyone make a bomb out of it?”

  Mel, who’d kept a creditable hold on proceedings so far, relying on her reporter’s memory as she narrated the facts and the deductions she’d drawn from them, now had, for the first time, to consult her invaluable notebook.

  “Calcium carbide,” she said. “Don’t ask,” as Brinton opened his mouth, “because I don’t know—it’s some sort of chemical, and you can use it to get rid of moles, so Potter told me, and I believe him. But you have to keep it dry, or it turns to, uh, acetylene, which is a gas, and—”

  “I know that,” growled Brinton. “Oxyacetylene torches, welders for the use of, right?”

  “Right.” Mel frowned at her shorthand notes: she’d told the editor of the Negative this bit had better be checked by the science correspondent before it went to press, and she’d passed the same warning to the Sundays who’d run her story as a Late Edition fudge. “You make it wet, it gives off gas—you set it alight, and it explodes. The more gas the merrier, of course. Rodney put the candle on the hall table so that by the time the acetylene reached the flame there’d be more than enough to—to blow Sweetbriars sky high ...”