Miss Seeton Rules (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 18)

by Hamilton Crane

  As he drew in his breath to ask the first question, he realised he’d left it too late.

  “I told you this place wasn’t as—as civilised as the first one,” said Georgina, who was still young enough to relish the notion of being the heroine of a real adventure, even a kidnap. Hadn’t she, after all, contrived her own escape, as in the very best fiction? “Not as efficient, for a prison. Bars across the windows instead of shutters, for one thing, not that I could loosen them—and they’d put the bars on after they boarded up the windows, because it was too awkward for me to wiggle more than the odd nail out of the frame, no matter how I tried.” She looked sadly at the umbrella. “I do hope Miss Seeton won’t mind: I’ll have it repaired, of course. It’s the very least I can do, because without it I’d never have got away, I think.”

  She sat up, her eyes bright. “The door, you see, didn’t fit as well as the other one—and it didn’t have a proper lock, just bolts, top and bottom. I’d heard him draw them, so I knew there were only two. And at first I thought I’d see if he came back alone at lunch-time, and catch him bending from the lower bolt, and hit him—and then I thought he might have the sense to leave the top one for last, which would be no help to me at all. Besides, there might be two of them again by lunch-time. And then”—her eyes brightened still more—“I realised there was a gap between the door and the frame, and I poked the umbrella through to make it wider—and I jiggled the point, and wobbled it about—and I don’t know what sort of bolts they were, or why he hadn’t twiddled the handle bit up and round to lock it, but he was in a strange mood, I told you—and the more I jiggled the brolly, the looser the bolts seemed to come. And in the end ...” She smiled a dazzling smile of triumph. “They came. And I went. And, well, here I am ...

  “Here I am,” she repeated, her eyes clouding. “Safe and sound—but oh, please,” she begged, leaning forward with clasped hands, “where is poor Miss Seeton?”

  chapter

  ~ 23 ~

  “WELL, THERE GOES one worry the fewer—thank the Lord.” Delphick wasn’t prepared to stand watching the helicopters out of sight. The instant the second—the important—one had risen, rotors clattering, safely into the air, he began to make his way back indoors.

  Superintendent Brinton, with an obscure feeling that you couldn’t just let Royalty vanish into the blue without some sort of ceremony, stood with his hand upraised in a vague gesture of farewell, and watched the choppers of the Queen’s Flight (they’d sent three, one for Georgina and two for her escort) revolve slowly into position—Georgina’s in the middle, the blue-blooded meat in the base metal sandwich—before heading off to London from Ashford Police Station’s hastily-cleared car park. Although it had been explained to them that it was all for Georgy Girl’s benefit, those officers who’d had to move their vehicles out to the road were not happy about the moving: the war which was permanently waged between the town’s motorists and traffic wardens did not admit of a truce, even in these exceptional circumstances. There could well be blood in the streets before long—good red peasant blood, of course, not blue.

  Brinton wondered what sort of welcome young Georgy would get from her loving relatives. Orders had been she was to go straight to Buckingham, not to Kensington, Palace: top-notch doctors and counsellors to check her over, he’d bet. Plenty of fuss and cossetting from Cousin Lilibet (or whatever she called the Queen), and from the Queen Mum, everyone’s favourite granny. And—

  “Chris! What are you waiting for?” Delphick had halted in mid-stride once he’d realised that his friend wasn’t with him. “She’s not our responsibility any longer—for which relief, much thanks: I thought the wretched girl would never leave. Now at last we may direct all our energies towards the finding of Miss Seeton—and the sooner, I would remind you, the better.”

  “Sorry.” Brinton, red-faced from a combination of haste and embarrassment, joined his colleague by the door. “It sort of slipped my mind for the moment—not that I take MissEss for granted, you know I don’t, but when you think of the number of scrapes she’s been in over the years, and how she always seems to survive them—”

  “So far,” Delphick broke in grimly. “Remember the old saw about a first time for everything? And, talking of old, Miss Seeton is growing no younger, Chris. For heaven’s sake let’s find out what’s been happening while we’ve had to dance attendance on HRH half the day and pander to the whims of the security boys with their damned debriefing.”

  He strode off in the direction of the communications room, with Brinton puffing in his wake as he tried to walk and talk at the same time. “Be fair to the girl, Oracle. She gave us enough info to locate the house—the second house, at any rate, and I call that pretty good going, when you think what she’s been through.” He was trying to cheer his friend as much as himself. “It’s not just that she’s a complete stranger to the district—but for a kid like her this sort of thing’s hardly the—the run-of-the-mill affair it is for Miss Seeton, now is it?”

  As he caught up with his colleague, he saw the faint smile of acknowledgement in the cool grey eyes, and nodded. “You know what she’s like, Oracle. Being gassed or coshed or chucked in the canal’s all in a day’s work for MissEss, more or less. Why, she hardly notices it’s happened and even if she does she’s always sure it must have been a mistake to begin with—she’s never had half the nightmares she gives the rest of us, I’ll wager my pension she hasn’t. If that’s what yoga does for you, I’m all in favour of it. Happy as a sand-boy she’ll be when she finally turns up, you mark my words.”

  He was almost starting to convince himself. “And it can’t be that long—we’re sure to find her soon, with the start young Georgy’s given us. She’ll be back at the first house, I imagine—the logical place to take her, keep her out of the way while they collect the ransom or whatever—and they’ll know by now the girl’s escaped. Why, they’ve probably let MissEss go already, and it’s just a question of picking her up from wherever she is once she gets to a phone the way young Georgy did. Nobody’s going to pay a king’s ransom for the poor old biddy, and they know it. I tell you, we’re sure to find her soon ...”

  “If only we knew why they’d snatched her in the first place, it would help.” Delphick frowned as he followed the superintendent—whose headquarters, after all, these were—into the operations room. “If only we had more to go on than Georgina’s garbled memories of what Miss Seeton said—if only she’d been able to draw something ... and then maybe she did, and the princess was too preoccupied to notice—or perhaps it was while she was asleep ... if only they’d forgotten to take her bag, as well as her umbrella ...”

  He was left to lament alone. Brinton’s hurried arrival had set heads turning. Anyone not speaking on the telephone, or making notes, or sticking coloured pins into the large-scale map on the wall, began to gravitate nervously towards the two senior officers as they looked from one face to another, inviting someone to present a more up-to-date report than those they’d been hearing on and off throughout the morning.

  But nobody, it seemed, could update any of the reports in more than a negative manner.

  “Nothing?” Superintendent Brinton’s bark was widely supposed to be far worse than his bite; everyone prayed now that the truth of this supposition would never be put to the test. They couldn’t remember when they’d last seen Old Brimstone in such a state. “Nothing at all?”

  Heads were shaken in dumb regret; guilty boots shuffled on the floor. “Call yourselves detectives?” bellowed Brinton. “The whole boiling shower of you couldn’t detect a—oh, God! What’s the use? Never mind bleating you’re under strength with two suspicious deaths to investigate. Never mind telling us again it’s a derelict property that’s been on the market so long the blasted estate agent’s collected his pension and retired to heaven-knows-where—we know that already! Somebody, somewhere, must know something else! Just keep looking—keep asking questions—ring round every damned estate agent in the country, if you have to�
��and report to me in my office the instant you hear anything. Anything at all!”

  He would have slammed the door on his way out, but Delphick was too close behind him. Brinton groaned, clutched at his hair, and gritted his teeth as he strode off down the corridor in the direction of his office.

  “I was so sure they’d have found her by now,” he threw over his shoulder to Delphick, hard on his heels. “So—so damned sure, I couldn’t believe—” He flung open the door with a crash that had the walls juddering. “You—Foxon! Here, lad—and make it snappy!”

  Detective Constable Foxon, his ears ringing, dropped the box of pins he held, and leaped in three urgent strides across the room to his superior. As Sergeant Ranger rose hurriedly from his borrowed desk, Foxon drew himself as close to attention as anyone can who sports the informality of a flowered shirt and a salmon-pink paisley tie. “Sir!”

  “Never mind sir,” snarled Brinton. “How about sir, something to report instead?”

  Foxon—who was quite as anxious about Miss Seeton as anyone else, and whose blood pressure was in far better shape than Brinton’s—ventured a quick look at Chief Superintendent Delphick. The Oracle’s left eye flickered in the merest suspicion of a wink; and Foxon, reassured, allowed himself the luxury of a faint grin before turning quickly back to Brinton.

  “Funny you should say that now, sir, because not two minutes ago—of course, it might not be anything to do with all this, but—your, er, standing orders, sir—”

  Brinton broke in with a groan. From being red in the face, he turned pale. He clapped a hand to his anguished brow, staggered to a convenient chair, and sat down.

  Foxon stared; Bob smothered a grin; Delphick sighed as he observed his sergeant’s expression. “Break it to us gently, please, Foxon. What news on the Rialto?”

  Foxon looked puzzled. They’d done Macbeth at school: he didn’t recognise the quotation from The Merchant of Venice. “You mean what’s the word on The Street, sir? But how did you guess?”

  Delphick sighed again. “It hardly strains my oracular powers, Detective Constable Foxon. Your mention of standing orders would have warned someone far less astute than I that there have been happenings in Plummergen of which Constable Potter feels his superior should be apprised ...”

  A forceful and heartfelt blasphemy burst from Brinton’s lips, and he shuddered. From his first encounter with Miss Seeton, the superintendent had realised her remarkable, not to say unique, qualities; accordingly, he had issued detailed instructions that PC Potter should advise him—in office hours or out, at home or (heaven forfend) on holiday—of any, repeat any, untoward occurrence in the immediate neighbourhood of Miss Seeton’s cottage, or in the general neighbourhood of the village in which that cottage was situated.

  Police Constable Potter was a man with much insight into local affairs, with an enthusiasm for his work which meant that, had he so wished, he could long ago have put in for promotion and been moved to a larger beat. Potter, however, was possessed of more than insight and enthusiasm. He had a strong preference for a nice, peaceful life, with which was coupled a certain native cunning. Admittedly, his life had been rather less nicely peaceful since Miss Seeton’s arrival in Plummergen seven years earlier: but Potter—whose nerves were stronger than Brinton’s—approved of the little art teacher. He considered her an asset to the community, and was gratified whenever her innocent gyrations contrived (as they so often did) to sweep him into their ultimate toils.

  This sentiment, he knew, was not shared by his Ashford superior. While Brinton was known to like—even to admire—Miss Seeton, she made him uneasy. She set his blood pressure leaping to heights previously unsealed on medical charts, or so he claimed: and who was Potter, a mere uniformed constable, to argue with a superintendent? He would never dare do anything to invoke the wrath of one set in authority above him; nor did he care to cause anxiety to one whose health was apparently in so precarious a state ...

  Which was Potter’s planned defence should Brinton ever discover that an officer under his nominal command had exercised considerable insight and judgement on various occasions in the past, withholding more than one Untoward Occurrence in the neighbourhood of Sweetbriars until it had become absolutely necessary that a report must be made.

  As made, just now, it had been.

  “A punch-up with Murreystone last night,” said Foxon, in succinct response to Brinton’s growled instructions to spill the blasted beans without smothering ’em in a load of sauce. “By the bonfire, at the playing-field—seems they had some notion of pinching the guy, then thought better of it when Nigel Colveden and his pals—er, showed ’em it mightn’t be such a good idea. Sir.”

  Some judicious probing on the part of Delphick—Brinton having been rendered once more speechless by the enormity of his subordinate’s intelligence—extracted the full story of the Last-Minute Bonfire-Building Scheme. Further probing—Foxon was never quite sure how the Oracle had managed it, but decided that a Yard training could overcome any number of scruples about betraying one’s friends—elicited the retribution proposed to be visited by the Village Watch upon their rivals should Murreystone attempt further skulduggery at tonight’s Grand Firework Display and Jacket Potato Roast.

  “No doubt,” Delphick said, “they were inspired to their attempted guynapping by the abduction of Princess Georgina—though it must be said that Murreystone, even in my limited experience of them, have seldom seemed in need of inspiration to the darker shade of deed. There would appear to be an innate strand of wickedness in Plummergen’s near neighbours—but has this current outbreak, do you suppose, anything to do with Miss Seeton?”

  Brinton rolled his eyes, but said nothing. Bob ventured the opinion that it might have. Foxon, grinning faintly, said that he had no idea, but that as occurrences went it was certainly untoward (with a flick of the eyes towards his silent superior). And, with MissEss undoubtedly still missing, perhaps it was a coincidence they ought not to ignore. After all, they hadn’t had much luck so far going along, well, the normal lines of enquiry; and there were, so Potter had said, quite a few empty properties in the Murreystone area—and if the kidnappers were local, as everyone seemed to be starting to think—and with search parties from Plummergen not exactly official, and wanting as little trouble with the authorities as possible ...

  “So Potter says,” supplied Delphick, as Potter’s mouthpiece fell silent, blushing. “I’m inclined to agree with you—with him, that is.” He glanced at Brinton, brooding on his chair. “One village constable, even in a panda, cannot aspire to a thorough search of a wide-ranging area by himself, no matter how large his band of unofficial volunteers. By the way, are we to assume that such extended and multiple searching explains Potter’s ... slowness to report the bonfire incident?”

  “Of course,” said Foxon at once, rushing to the defence of his friend. “Er—sir.” He saw Delphick’s look, and rushed on: “The Colvedens knew last night she was missing, sir, but it was dark, not to mention the bonfire business’d already been set up and they knew they’d be, well, asking for trouble if they left it. So Sir George got them organised for first thing this morning, and off they went as soon as it was light. Potter says the general said they ’d set a limit on how long they’d search before giving up, because even if they just checked the places they could get into it would cut it down for the ones that were locked they’d need warrants and stuff for, sir. So, well, that’s what they’ve done, and we’ve got the list right here. Sir.”

  Bob passed him a sheet of paper, which he took, then hesitated, and handed to Delphick as Brinton, brushing it aside, lumbered to his feet and stumped across to the large-scale map on the office wall. He stared at it, and grunted.

  “Pinned ’em already, have you?”

  “Er—some of them, yes, sir, but ...”

  “But our arrival,” said Delphick, whose brief reference to the list of locations had told him almost nothing, “prevented your completing the task.” The eye with which he gaze
d upon Detective Constable Foxon was now almost warm in its regard. “Pin on, Foxon—unless, that is, your local knowledge is such that you could guide us to each in turn.”

  “Between us, sir, I reckon we could,” replied Foxon after a moment, as Brinton grunted again, and Bob, adopted local, nodded at his friend’s side. “They’re none of ’em close to any of the others, unfortunately, so it wouldn’t be a quick job to check ’em all out—”

  Brinton groaned. Foxon glanced at him, and continued: “But they’re in the general area, sir, so it wouldn’t be all that difficult to check ’em. If that’s what you wanted to do, sir.”

  Brinton turned from his study of the map to glare at his colleagues. His manor: his responsibility: his word of command, to go or to stay. He let out an exasperated snort at the expectant look on the three faces.

  “Want? Good grief, there’s nothing I fancy more than go wandering around Kent in the dark in winter checking a blasted telephone directory of empty houses on the off chance there’s a little old lady tied up in a sack in one of ’em—but it sure as blazes beats sitting on our backsides waiting for news, which is what we’d be doing otherwise, the way things are right now. Dammit, you should be halfway to the car by now, laddie—and you Yard types with him!”

  “Right, sir!” Foxon bounded joyously to his desk, took out a set of keys, then leaped to the peg on which hung his leather jacket. “On my way ...”

  Bob Ranger, for all his size, wasn’t far behind him; and not far behind Bob came Brinton and Delphick, the former detouring via the operations room to bellow the advice that he was going out on patrol, and was to be informed by radio if there should be the slightest breakthrough in any of the three cases under investigation. Then he thundered in Foxon’s wake to the car park, where the engine was already revving for the off. He wrenched open the door, flung himself inside, and buckled the seat-belt as Foxon jammed his foot on the accelerator.