Miss Seeton Rules (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 18)

by Hamilton Crane

  “Oh, do stop!” Georgina clapped her hands to her ears, and shook her head. The golden curls bounced, the blue eyes danced still more. “As long as you’re not on their side, I’m honestly not bothered—it’s so lovely to see a friendly face, after all this time. Just tell me your name, and forget about the rest. It’s too confusing.”

  “Er—Seeton, Ma’am. Emily Seeton—from Plummergen.” And Miss Seeton bobbed her best curtsey yet.

  Georgina glanced at Miss Seeton’s left hand as it rested on the crook of her umbrella. “Miss Seeton, how do you do? And it would be too silly for me to suppose you don’t know who I am—but please, you must call me Georgy, the way my family does. You’ve no idea how lonely ...” The quiver was back; was gone as she continued:

  “And we can’t afford to be too formal, can we? When—when we could be shut in here for days—though I do hope,” she added, blinking away a hint of further tears, “we won’t be—and then, perhaps we won’t. Two heads are heaps better than one, after all. Don’t you think?”

  Miss Seeton smiled. The child—the princess—seemed so much more cheerful and relaxed than at the start of this rather unorthodox conversation. It was up to an older, if not necessarily a wiser, head to encourage her in her new-found optimism ...

  Besides, she did. “Indeed yes. Ma’am, I do,” said Miss Seeton firmly. “Er—that is,” as Georgina twinkled at her, and waved a warning finger, “that is—er, yes ... Georgy,” in her most respectful tones.

  Georgina beamed. “That’s better! That’s the first kind word anyone’s said to me since ... But never mind. If we just keep going over and over it, we’ll never get anywhere—and we want to, don’t we?” She pulled Miss Seeton across to the bed, and made her sit beside her. “What we want is to get out of here. Have you any ideas?”

  Miss Seeton, still bemused at the turn taken by recent events, blinked. One had seen such situations many times, of course, on the television—Miss Seeton was an Old Movie fan of considerable devotion—but in real, as opposed to black-and-white, life, it was difficult to know exactly how—or, indeed, where—to begin.

  “Begin with what you know about where we are,” Georgina promptly suggested. “I never saw a thing while they were bringing me here, and all the windows are shuttered somehow from the outside, so that I still can’t, any more than I can hear anything, either. And it’s not for want of trying, either, believe me!”

  Miss Seeton sighed. One disliked being the bearer of bad news, but ... “It was, I fear, well after dark when Mr. Rookwood came to fetch me—and he had only the sidelights on, which meant that I could see, unfortunately, very little of where we were going, since it is a cloudy night—which is a pity, as the moon is almost full at the moment. And just before we turned into the drive, he switched them off altogether—the lights, I mean.”

  Georgina muttered about planning. Miss Seeton sighed again. “Although, of course, I have ridden my bicycle on many occasions around my own neighbourhood, I have seldom ventured farther afield—if, indeed, we are. Far afield, I mean—to know now where we are, or to attempt a guess. For all I could tell to the contrary, even though we must have driven for half an hour or more, we might have been travelling in circles, and have ended up no more than a few hundred yards from my home—except, of course, that one would have expected Your Royal—er,” as Georgina shook her head in gentle reproof, “that one would have expected, er, you to have recognised some sounds of village life, which you say you have not. Which means that we probably aren’t. There are, you see, no street lamps in Plummergen, so that sounds would be almost the only way of telling one was not in the very depths of the countryside instead.”

  Georgina sighed. “Which could mean that we really are—in the depths, I mean, miles from anywhere. So even if we managed to escape, we’d have miles to walk afterwards—not that I mind walking, of course. Grouse moors and so on ... It’s just a pity I wasn’t wearing something a bit more suitable for a cross-country hike when they kidnapped me.”

  The mattress lurched as she jumped off the bed to reach beneath it for her shoes—smart, dainty, thin-soled leather shoes which perfectly matched her outfit, but which could not be as comfortable as the slippers she now wore. “Just right,” she said cheerfully, “for opening a power station, but not much use for the great trek, are they?”

  Miss Seeton, surveying her own tiny feet in their best patent leather instead of her usual stout walking shoes, had to agree, sadly, that they were not. If only she had known what Mr. Rookwood really had in mind ...

  “Then you probably wouldn’t have come,” said Georgina. “At least, I hope you’d have rung your friends in the police before you did—you didn’t, did you?” with a wild flash of hope in her eyes—a flash which soon faded as Miss Seeton, sadly, shook her head. Why (she pointed out) should she be supposed to think of telephoning the police when she had been given to understand that they already knew? That was to say Mr. Rookwood had not exactly said as much in so many words; but it was not, she thought, unreasonable of her to have taken him for a colleague of dear Chief Superintendent Delphick, who did from time to time, if Her Royal—if Georgy would not think it immodest of her to say so, choose to—to consult her on certain matters; or even Superintendent Brinton, except that he was from Ashford and Mr. Delphick—being from Scotland Yard, when matters of security were always dealt with in London, as far as she knew—might be more reasonably thought of as being a colleague ...

  “Stop!” cried Georgina again, quite lost in the maze of explanation and counter-confusion. “I’m sorry, but—but it’s all so muddling—I need to sort things out before we even start to plan our escape. First you’re a teacher, then you’ve retired, then you’re on friendly terms with Scotland Yard, and superintendents from Ashford ...”

  She shook her curly head. “Miss Seeton—who exactly are you?”

  chapter

  ~ 20 ~

  “A—A TEACHER.” Miss Seeton was somewhat perplexed. “Of art—or rather—that is ...” She thought she had explained this once before: but it would be a shocking breach of etiquette to contradict Royalty. The princess was, no doubt, a little confused, in the circumstances: circumstances which one understood rather better, perhaps, than Her Royal—than Georgy realised ...

  Miss Seeton was herself no stranger to abduction. There had, in the past, been a red-haired young man who had popped a sack over her head—ruining, to her annoyance, a perfectly good hat—and carried her off in the back of a battered van, causing her to roll around most uncomfortably with boxes of soap flakes and bottles of ginger beer which (and one had to agree that it served him right, even if—as Mr. Delphick and the others afterwards explained—it had done the engine no good at all) she had poured into the petrol tank to stop him.

  “Seven years,” murmured Miss Seeton, remembering. “And then, of course, I retired ...”

  “Apart from helping out,” supplied Georgina, “when Miss Maynard can’t—not to mention being paid a retainer by the police, as well.” Royalty’s training is more thorough, its intellect more lively, than many outsiders ever know. “But do please tell me—what is the retainer paid for? Are you some kind of chaperone for—for kidnapped girls? I can’t imagine they keep you terribly busy, somehow.”

  Her blue-eyed twinkle met Miss Seeton’s own look of calm amusement at the very idea. Miss Seeton twinkled back, and chuckled. “Oh no, my dear—or rather they do, from time to time, but not with chaperoning anyone. Keep me busy, that is. Really, I’m not entirely sure I would be at all the right person for such a task, despite having taught for so long, and the yoga keeping me fitter, I believe, for my age than—that is,” for a lady did not discuss her age, even by mistake, “with IdentiKit drawings. I am often kept very busy with those. Only the other day, indeed ...”

  Her hands began moving to and fro along the gold umbrella on her knees: the gold umbrella which had been given to her by dear Mr. Delphick, who had so very recently asked her for another IdentiKit sketch, and she had s
hown him—oh, dear. Blushing, she remembered her most unusual version of Le Dejeuner sur l’Herbe; and she clutched in some dismay at the umbrella, then blushed all the more as Georgina looked at her with wide-eyed interest.

  “My hat,” murmured Miss Seeton, desperately trying to turn her thoughts back to less—less embarrassing matters, when the subject of her sketch was sitting right beside her quite oblivious of the dreadful—

  “Guy Forks,” said Miss Seeton, firmly. “So very foolish,” as Georgina’s look of interest grew even more intense. Well, better appear foolish than treacherous. “My hat,” she enlarged hastily. “Not the one in the sack with the soap flakes, but the other, which was blown off by the wind when I forgot to put in a hat-pin, and rolled all the way up The Street in the dust. It was quite unwearable by the time they had fetched it down from the awning. And when they came as I was scrambling eggs, I naturally said they could have it for the guy, as it was of no particular use to me any longer—not without a great deal of work, when there are several others which match quite as many of my outfits—the children, I mean. Which was where the forks came in, when I was thinking about the hat-pin. So very foolish,” she said once more. “The play on words, although with it being so close to November the Fifth it is hardly surprising—the bonfire, that is. And the fireworks ...”

  But then Miss Seeton hesitated. Did Royalty indulge in such rituals? Would they really wish to commemorate the remarkably narrow escape of their Jacobean forebear from the Gunpowder Plotters? Was she being—not rude, for such had certainly not been her intention—but perhaps tactless? Miss Seeton blushed again. Her fingers fluttered the full length of the furled umbrella on her knees, and came back restlessly to the handle, and, catching at it, missed. With a clatter, it tumbled again to the floor.

  This time, Georgina did not bend to pick it up. A light of gleeful excitement gleamed in her eyes. “I know who you are!” she cried, as Miss Seeton, pink from stooping, once more retrieved her property and sat upright again. “You’re the one the papers call the Battling Brolly!”

  One should not, Miss Seeton reminded herself, contradict Royalty, much as one would wish to; and, of course, if there was anyone who would know how the newspapers tended to—to distort, to exaggerate, then it must surely be a member of the Royal Family. Miss Seeton, still pink—though now for a different reason than stooping—sighed, and lowered her eyes to the handle of her gold umbrella, and sighed again.

  “I’m sorry,” said Georgina, giving her an impulsive hug. “You must be so tired of people treating you as a celebrity, but I promise I won’t ask for your autograph, or anything.” She smiled. “It’s so lovely, though, to meet someone for once who knows what it’s like!”

  Miss Seeton looked up, and smiled faintly. “It was, of course, a long time ago,” she murmured. “My poor hat ...”

  Georgina, who had not been talking so much about the shared experience of abduction as the similarly shared experience of being the darling of the newspapers, glanced at Miss Seeton’s hat, and smiled; then did more than glance, as she recalled what Miss Seeton had said before.

  “A hat-pin!” she cried, her eyes bright. “Are you wearing one today?”

  It was not the first time since she’d met Georgina that Miss Seeton had been startled by an almost abrupt change of subject: but one had, of course, to follow wherever Royalty—even in the more informal relationship into which it had been proposed one should enter—might lead. Miss Seeton nodded. “It was, as I understood it, a special occasion,” she said. “By Royal command, Mr. Rookwood told me—his idea of a joke, no doubt, since Your Royal—since you, that is, did not know I was coming, and therefore could not possibly have asked for me. Which is why I brought my very best umbrella, of course, as I had no reason to suppose that he was—was guilty of as many untruths as it now appears probable he was ...”

  Georgina seemed not to mind that Miss Seeton had let her explanation run away with her a little. She neither interrupted her, nor fidgeted with boredom: she was frowning in thought, her blue eyes moving repeatedly from Miss Seeton’s hat to the door, and back again. Miss Seeton, suddenly conscious that she must be wearying her royal audience with her chatter, fell silent. Georgina still did not speak. Miss Seeton went pink; her hands plucked at the fastening of the gold umbrella. If only she had her sketching equipment ...

  She did not know she had spoken the wish aloud: but even to this unexpected remark Georgina made no reply. She was still thinking. Miss Seeton, sighing for her absent pencils and paper, continued to sit in silence, waiting.

  “Yes!” Georgina came out of her trance, and clapped her hands. “Two of us—we’ll manage this time, you see if we don’t! I’m not staying here a minute more than I must, and nor are you—and you haven’t had anything to eat this evening, have you, Miss Seeton?”

  Yet another change of subject; but Miss Seeton, at once forgetting her missing sketchpad and fearful of boring her lively young friend, confirmed quickly that she had not; and said nothing more.

  “Goody—then they’ll be back, because they aren’t going to let you starve, any more than they’ve let me.” Georgina grinned. “As I said before, considering they’re kidnappers they’re really rather, um, considerate—gosh, that sounds silly, but you know what I mean. Proper plumbing, and meals three times a day, except for that once ...” She giggled, then sobered. “But then there was only me. With two of us now ...” She seemed sublimely able to ignore the fact that neither she nor Miss Seeton was more than five feet tall, whereas each of the kidnappers she had encountered was a good head taller than they, and far more solidly built.

  “We must be ready the minute they arrive,” she went on, as Miss Seeton listened in a dutiful silence. “We’ll hear the car arrive—at least, I always did before, though he must have left it farther from the house when he brought you.” With a nod, Miss Seeton confirmed that he had.

  With some satisfaction, Georgina nodded back. “That’s how he managed to catch me by surprise, then. They don’t usually bother, not since they’ve taken to coming in pairs—there’s safety in numbers.” She giggled. “Since that kicking business with the tray—but never mind. Safety in numbers: two of them—and two of us. We must use our wits. Miss Seeton ...”

  For the first time, a note of uncertainty entered the confident young voice. The myriad remarkable exploits of the celebrated Battling Brolly, even as reported in the less sensational newspapers read by royal households, had led Georgina to suppose vaguely that the lady in question—seldom, if ever, referred to by name—must be a termagant of far more than Amazonian proportions. The sober reality—inch for inch and ounce for ounce no bigger than Georgina herself, surprisingly smartly dressed (though far more surprisingly hatted)—gave her pause for thought.

  But not for long. One had, after all, to do something. “Use our wits,” repeated Georgina, firmly. “Miss Seeton, do you think you can?”

  Miss Seeton, who hated to dampen enthusiasm in anyone, young or old—and who could not help but feel they should not remain incarcerated here for a moment longer than necessary—nodded again.

  “One carries the tray; the other keeps watch and guards the door,” said Georgina, warming to her theme. “When they come in, you must be ready to jab your hat-pin into—oh, some convenient piece of the one by the door—you’ve taught art, so I bet you’ll think of somewhere absolutely splendid for jabbing. Anatomy, and that sort of thing—and it will make him yell, if you jab hard enough. The one with the tray won’t drop it right away—I think there’s a sort of instinct not to, I had to positively tug and tug before he’d let go, even though he was hopping on one leg and using the sort of language umpty-great-grandma Victoria would not have found amusing—but he’ll be startled, which is what we want, because I’m going to kick him again, and trip him up, then you can grab the tray and hit the other one with it, and they’ll both be knocked off-balance while we throw blankets over their heads and tie them up with sheets and things, and make a run for it—and c
an you drive a car?”

  Miss Seeton, whose vicarious black-and-white experience of battle had never evoked in her any wish to indulge, found herself nodding yet again at this further non sequitur, then shaking her head. One should not, after all, forget that there was once an occasion when a hat-pin applied to a gunman’s hand had saved the daughter of an earl from kidnap, or—Miss Seeton blushed—worse; and if one could justify such action for an Honourable, how much more justified must it be in the case of a princess? If—she gulped—hitting people with trays and tying them up was what patriotism required of Emily Dorothea Seeton, then—she drew a deep breath—hit them and tie them she would. But as for the car ...

  “I can,” said Georgina, interpreting Miss Seeton’s mute signals to her own satisfaction. “Not awfully well, though, when I don’t know the car—still, if it messes up their horrid gearbox, then it will just have to serve the beasts right, won’t it?”

  She sounded so fierce about the prospect of messed-up gears that Miss Seeton would have nodded even if she’d disagreed with her. Since, however, she was coming to feel that the kidnappers deserved every possible punishment for their act of treason—and since behind all the bravado it was not hard to see that poor (mentally, Miss Seeton braced herself) that poor Georgy had been having a bad time of it ... she duly nodded with as much fervour as she could, and added a quiet Yes, it will for good measure.

  Georgina did not hear her. “All we have to do is take the keys from whoever’s pocket they’re in, and that will be that. Freedom!” And the princess cast a most expressive look about the chamber which had been her prison for the past few days.

  Miss Seeton said gently, “Both sets, of course—if you will excuse me, my dear. Keys,” she enlarged, as Georgina blinked at her. “One set for the car,” said Miss Seeton, “because girls are so much more practical nowadays with mechanical matters, but—though yours is an excellent plan, if we can only carry it out successfully—but should we not lock the—the gentlemen in question into this room as they have locked us? One reads so often in books, or sees on the television, or films, that it is comparatively easy to free oneself from bonds of—of an unorthodox nature, and particularly so when they have been fastened in—in something of a hurry, as these, of course, will be.”