“Only Miss Seeton,” supplied Brinton, “opened the door to deal with whatever accident she thought there’d been in The Street, and out went the candle, and—and what happened to the acetylene? Granted it hadn’t built up enough to explode by the time the candle went out, but why weren’t the pair of you gassed when you went back into the house?”
“That guardian angel again, I guess.” Mel shrugged. “Our Rodney had been careful to close the door behind him when he smashed a window to get in—the old burgling trick of black treacle and newspaper—and he didn’t want the gas leaking out before it could build up enough to do the damage. But there was a much bigger window broken when the wheel came crashing in—and Miss Seeton left the front door open when she popped out to the accident—and if an angel worth its salt’s going to do anything, it’s going to set up a dandy through-draught to clear every last puff of the stuff out of the cottage before anyone goes back inside.”
As Brinton digested this, Foxon ventured to put a question. “You never said why Miss Seeton wasn’t in bed when the wheel, er, dropped in. Her umbrella, you said?”
Mel giggled. “Or that mouse she was bothered about—or could be both, if you ask me ...” Which was indeed—though neither she nor anyone else ever knew this for certain—the way it had been. “Seems Rodney took her brolly out of the sink so he could mess about in comfort, only it was dark—he dropped his torch, I found it—here, sorry, I forgot, I guess that’s evidence—anyway,” as Brinton groaned to see the handkerchief-wrapped cylinder, brooding on smudged fingerprints, “he somehow mislaid the empty tin, after he’d unloaded the calcium carbide, and I imagine he was too nervous to want to hang around looking for it.
“And something—like I said, that mouse, I’ll bet,” and Mel chuckled, “bumped into it and rolled it into the brolly, and knocked it over—which must have been the noise Miss S. heard, and she came downstairs to check. Only she hadn’t reached the kitchen before there was all that rumpus in the road and she went outside, and—and, well, there you are. When Martha and I found her,” she concluded, “Miss S. was making tea, calm as you like, and just happened to mention she didn’t remember leaving her umbrella over in the corner on the floor, she thought she’d drained it in the sink the way she always does when it’s got really wet, and then opened it up to dry without too many creases. It was her gold one, you see, and she’s always extra careful with that because the Oracle gave it to her. He’ll be pleased,” said Mel, “to think he helped, in a roundabout way. Some coincidence, huh?”
“Coincidence be damned! I suppose you’ll be telling me next,” retorted Brinton, “that it was pure coincidence young Foxon’s Uncle Reg was done in by another set of thugs who just happened to think breaking into his house was a bright idea? He doesn’t sound like the sort of chap who’d let the likes of Jeremy Froste and his crew into his house.”
“He wasn’t, sir.” There was no hint of doubt in Foxon’s reply. “And even if he had been, my gran would’ve known all about it—and she never said a word.”
“And Jeremy Froste didn’t call on people that close to Brettenden—I asked him,” said Mel, putting the clincher on the argument. “Coincidences do happen, Mr. Brinton: like the coincidence that for once it wasn’t ... a certain criminal mastermind,” said Mel, hurriedly hedging her slanderous reference to Chrysander Bullian, “behind the Ram Raiding thefts, if what that crowd you’ve got in the cells told you was the truth.”
“Probably wasn’t.” Brinton was disposed to be glum. He’d grown so accustomed, over the years, to having Miss Seeton pull numerous guilty rabbits out of assorted nefarious hats that he’d almost come to expect it as his right. Now it seemed she hadn’t, for once, come up with one hundred per cent of the goods, he was confused ...
“All right,” he said, helping himself wearily to another peppermint, and pushing what remained of the packet across the table for Mel to help herself. “I’ll buy a coincidence—a whole string of the blasted things, if you insist—but just where does that leave me? Us. I mean—with a murder to investigate”—Foxon frowned—“and an old lady in hospital, not to mention the burglaries ... and with the lot your pal Roydon’s been fronting for not the same lot at all, according to you!”
Mel, about to open the portfolio, hesitated. Then she glanced at Foxon; and grinned. “Guess it leaves you still chasing the theory we handed you yesterday,” she said, producing Miss Seeton’s sketches with a flourish. “Remember these? Well, take a look at the latest addition.”
Triumphantly, she handed Brinton a swift, vivid drawing of a fierce-looking tiger in a policeman’s helmet, with an equally ferocious tabby cat, in a trilby hat, beside it. Each animal had an open notebook in one paw, a pencil in the other; their poses of intense concentration were identical in every respect—save one. They were exact opposites ...
“Mirror images, okay?” Mel saw Brinton’s bewildered eyes raised in disbelief and said cheerfully, “Coincidences do happen, I’ll say that again, but this was no coincidence, it was a deliberate imitation—what we’ve simply got to call a copycat crime—of the original Sideboard Swipers. Except that your copycats never worked out how Rodney and his crowd chose their victims, and had to come up with a method of their own.” And she pondered the first of Miss Seeton’s sketches, the one Delphick had been coerced into showing her: the sleek cat reflected in the mirror, with the ram—the ram from the wrong, confusing case—beneath it on the bonnet of the Rolls-Royce in which Ferencz Szabo, of the Stentorian voice, rode so proudly.
“Copycats—but we’ll catch them,” she said. “I mean, you will, thanks to Miss S., because according to her what you’re after is a gang with the brains to make use of the local newspapers. If that cat’s not wearing a reporter’s trilby, my name isn’t Amelita Forby ... And what you’re going to do is bait a trap, I hope, and wait for them to bite. Be a sport, Mr. Brinton. After all the trouble I went to yesterday, I’d say the least you could do is carry on the way we originally planned. Do you realise”—she did her very best to look aggrieved—“that I passed up the chance for an eye-witness Piece on the Produce Show and the Conker Contest, just so I could do a proper job of sweet-talking the editor of the Brettenden Beacon into playing ball?”
Memories of a highly sociable afternoon and evening in the company of one who’d turned out, to Mel’s delight, to be an old friend—a former Fleet Street hack who’d retired to the country to give his liver a long-overdue rest—sparkled in Mel’s eyes, had Brinton taken the trouble to notice them. He, however, was still brooding on her original suggestion.
“You still want Miss Seeton,” he said, “to act as a—a decoy for these blighters? After all that’s happened?”
Mel shrugged. “So what’s happened? A couple of queer coincidences, as you said yourself—but pretty lucky ones, for you police types.” She pointed to the helmeted tiger, dwarfing the journalist Tibs. “My guess is, you’ve got the Ram Raiders and the front man for the Swipers tucked away in the cells, judging by this. And Rodney Roydon’s no hero, take it from me—he’ll spill the beans on the rest of his gang the minute you ask him, I’ll bet you dinner at the George any time you want.”
She giggled: she was starting to feel light-headed. “Come on,” she said, “enjoy yourself for once, Mr. Brinton. You know I’m right about Rodney, and you know they’re the Ram Raiders—though please don’t take my word for it.” She favoured him with a wide-eyed Forby Special Stare. “Ask the Oracle. I’ve seen Miss Seeton’s sketch, and you haven’t.” Wide-eyed innocence turned into a grin. “Just you phone him at a Christian hour and tell him all about it. He’ll agree with me, bet you anything you like—”
“I’m not arguing with that,” said Brinton, who’d have argued about it until dawn, if Mel hadn’t called his bluff first. “I’m just—well, knowing Miss Seeton ...”
“Knowing Miss Seeton,” supplied Mel, “you know she’ll be only too willing to do her duty by the forces of law and order. Be fair—if she hadn’t been, she’d neve
r have got so muddled when Roydon was chatting with her outside the village hall—and you know how muddled she can get, Mr. Brinton. That’s why he was so positive she’d sussed him as a crook, and thought he had to—to get rid of her ... before she could tell anyone else.”
Mel lifted her cup with shaking hands, and took an absent-minded swallow. “Yuck! This,” she said, wagging an admonitory finger as she set the cup hastily down, “ought to be the best champagne, Superintendent, not dishwater. Save it for Miss S., though,” as he seemed about to protest. “If it takes as long as a week, once the story’s been published, for the crooks to see her as an easy touch, I really will eat my Monica Mary special ...”
Mel’s hat, of course, was in absolutely no danger. It took exactly four days.
chapter
~ 33 ~
IT WOULD TAKE just four days from the appearance of the Brettenden Beacon before the Obituary Opportunists made the mistake of testing the accuracy of the newspaper article in which a grief-stricken, though courageous, Miss Seeton told the world that, despite her sad loss, nothing could stop her travelling by bus to her usual weekly flower-arranging class in the nearby market town. Cousin Flora would have expected her to put a brave face on things—to soldier on regardless—to resume her normal life as soon as possible ...
It was inconvenient, of course, that the ability of Miss Seeton to act was almost nil. If Mel hadn’t known that an obituary by an outsider—especially one from Fleet Street—would generate far more local comment than was wise for the success of the scheme, she would have done the job herself. As it was, she briefed her trusty editorial friend to supply the most sympathetic reporter on the books, and this he duly did. Any awkwardness or embarrassment in Miss Seeton’s manner was attributed to the strain on a gentlewoman of concealing her undoubted grief. Making every allowance for her emotion, the reporter produced a piece of purple prose which needed only a little judicious embellishment to make it completely irresistible, as Mel and Brinton had hoped, to the Obituary Opportunists.
Lady Colveden, sworn to secrecy, whisked Miss Seeton away for tea at Rytham Hall. Foxon, at his own insistence, hid in Miss Seeton’s under-stairs cupboard with a walkie-talkie radio; and there was an unmarked car parked (to the delight of Charley Mountfitchet) in front of the George, with uniformed officers lurking in the after-hours bar. The trap was set—and, as the Opportunists broke into Miss Seeton’s empty cottage, was sprung. Foxon insisted that he had used no more than reasonable force to apprehend the startled burglars: it was three to one, and he’d hardly had time to call for support before they’d realised he was there, and had tried to make a break for it. Brinton wisely chose to ignore the gleeful expression on his subordinate’s face as he contemplated his bruised knuckles. Reginald Easter—Foxon’s Uncle Reg—had been avenged ...
But these stirring events were still in the future when Mel appeared, that Sunday morning, on Miss Seeton’s doorstep with the box of chocolates in her hand, and an invitation to lunch on her lips. Fresh coffee, coupled with generous slices of Martha Bloomer’s fruit-cake, did much to expunge from Mel’s memory the nightmare recollection of Ashford police station’s horribly stewed tea, and the interrupted sleep she’d suffered during the past twelve hours. There were, however, far less advantageous tribulations in a journalist’s life, and Amelita Forby was not complaining. She’d been able to file her story—two of them; she’d roughed out an Obituary Opportunists article, ready to roll once Miss Seeton’s undercover exploits cracked yet another case; and she’d been offered a reduction in her bill by a gratified Charley Mountfitchet, still basking in his moment of glory.
“So I’m taking you out to lunch,” Mel informed Miss Seeton, “and I won’t take no for an answer. Give that umbrella of yours a first-class polish, and let’s go!”
They did not, of course, go at once. Mel had first to deal with Miss Seeton’s modest reluctance to put her friend to any cost or inconvenience; only jocular references to tea at the Ritz managed to convince her that it would not be self-indulgent to accept an invitation which came (said Mel, in a moment of inspiration) not just courtesy of Charley Mountfitchet and the editor of the Daily Negative, but with more than good wishes from Superintendent Brinton and Chief Superintendent Delphick—not to mention Inspector Terling of the Art Squad—as well. Miss Seeton, with a blush of pleasure and only a moment’s anxiety for the small piece of beef in her refrigerator, smiled, and said thank you.
“Afterwards,” promised Mel, as they emerged from Miss Seeton’s front gate and prepared to cross The Street to the George, “we’ll pop into the church to admire the Harvest Festival decorations. Hope the vicar had a good turnout,” she added, catching sight of the tyre-marks burned into the surface of the road. “Guess half the village must’ve slept as late as I did—but then,” as Miss Seeton looked vaguely guilty, “I guess they didn’t, because I saw quite a few familiar faces trotting to church while I was still waking up.” She giggled. “Charley offered me breakfast in bed, but I told him not to bother. Catch young Maureen slogging upstairs with a tray—and even if she did, you bet she’d drop it before I got it!”
Miss Seeton, acknowledging the truth of this remark, had to sigh, though she said nothing: dear Mel, so quick and lively. People in the country were often so much more ... relaxed about things. Everyone had different talents, of course, and it must be conceded that Maureen ... Doris, one had to admit, was far more—alert, perhaps was the word, though there had been a certain degree of animation in poor Maureen over recent days which ...
“The television, of course,” murmured Miss Seeton, following Mel across the George’s forecourt.
“Him, too, would you believe?” Mel had heard the murmur without understanding it. “And young Make-a-Note Bethan, off to church with their tonsils all present and correct. That pair probably went straight back to bed and slept the sleep of the just the minute all the, uh, fuss was over.”
Miss Seeton sighed again; Mel could have kicked herself. “They’d better not,” she said quickly, “try to horn in on my territory—not that I’d get much of a Piece out of Harvest Festival, of course. The Produce Show and the Conkers are more my line—I’ll be staying on a few days to interview everyone who was there, so I can work out my story.” It was good cover for the Obituary Opportunists scoop. Nobody would be surprised that a Fleet Street reporter, known to be an expert on Plummergen, was staying in the village when there was no ostensible reason for her to do so.
The hotel bar and public lounge were far from empty as Mel and Miss Seeton arrived: indeed, the volume of sound and the number of people made Mel’s every journalistic sense start to quiver. She could not, however, abandon her guest before they’d even ordered drinks; and, since Miss Seeton seemed slightly overwhelmed by the barrage of sound reaching her ears from every direction, all Mel could do was find a relatively quiet corner in which to seat herself and her friend, then go in search of someone who knew what on earth was going on.
She giggled at the thought: it was almost becoming a cliché, when Miss Seeton was around. She cleared her throat as Miss Seeton regarded her with polite interest, and said:
“Hang on there, Miss S., and I’ll go rustle up a sherry, or something. And the menus,” she added, as Miss Seeton was obviously about to say she couldn’t possibly. For her own part, Mel knew she not only possibly, but positively, could: she had a feeling there was something about this brouhaha she’d need a stiff drink to help her digest ...
Above a tumultuous sea of heads, she spotted Doris, holding indignant court behind the bar. She managed at last to catch the waitress’s eye, waved, indicated the corner, mimed acute thirst, and, after a few moments, departed, to wait in hopes of the rest of the story whose fundamentals she had finally acquired.
“Seems Jeremy Froste’s gone and upset everyone now,” she told Miss Seeton, as she sat down. “Seems yesterday, before all the, uh, upset at the show, he spotted two entries in the apple class he thought were Plummergen Peculiers—and one wa
s from Mrs. Skinner’s garden, and one was from Mrs. Henderson’s. You know—well, no. I suppose you don’t,” remembering the village innocence of her audience, “but apparently they wouldn’t let him look round before, either of them, because neither of ’em wanted to risk having the other one scoring over her. It would have been,” said Mel, chuckling, “the final straw if he’d found one garden worth putting on film, and not the other, wouldn’t it?”
Miss Seeton, not always quite as innocent as her friends believed, was discreetly amused before remarking, “But if Mr. Froste has found two of the apples, would not an acceptable compromise be to use both in the programme? For myself I would hardly care for such a—but others, I know,” with a hasty blush, “feel very differently, and ...”
“I gather,” said Mel, “he was going to. He told both of them he’d be round to discuss it with them first thing this morning, when he’d had time to think it over. Well, he didn’t make it first thing—but he didn’t,” as Miss Seeton yet again looked guilty, “even hang around after church to catch them then, which is what’s upset everyone on both sides of the quarrel—even if they’re trying their best to make out they’re upset on the vicar’s behalf. Though it doesn’t,” said Mel, “sound that irreverent to me, and to be honest I can’t see Mr. Treeves taking offence so easily—but then, you know what this place can be like.”
Miss Seeton, who was fond of the vicar and friends with his sister, said that she did. Mel grinned.
“I only got the gist of it, but it was something to do with the church decorations—what was that, honey?” as Miss Seeton suddenly turned pink, and coughed.
Miss Seeton Undercover (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 17) Page 27