“But then, she was very fidgety, don’t you know. Twitchin’ a good deal—and we were tryin’ to calm her down, so we could well have missed it even if she did. Say anythin’, that is.”
“Twitchy,” repeated Delphick. “Her fingers?” He knew a hint when he heard one.
“Dancin’,” replied the major at once. “Almost as if the poor soul was playin’ the piano in her sleep. And mutterin’ about ...” For the first time in their acquaintance with Matilda Howett, the four policemen saw her blush. “About,” repeated the Howitzer firmly, though her maiden cheeks were pink, “about drugs, and—and about havin’ to—to go to the powder-room ...”
“Aaah,” said Delphick, as light, at last, dawned: and he heaved a great sigh of triumph.
“These are from Bob, these from Chris Brinton, these from my humble self. And Foxon”—Delphick hid a smile—“has been revealed as possessing a far more practical streak than I’d ever given the boy credit for—he sent you this.” Gravely, he handed Miss Seeton in turn three bunches of flowers, and a bronze chrysanthemum in a decorated pot. “I observe,” he went on, as Miss Seeton blushed above her woolly bed-jacket, “that you have some truly splendid floral specimens here—let me guess,” as Miss Seeton blushed still more. “By Royal Command, perhaps?”
Miss Seeton murmured in some embarrassment of the great kindness of Her Royal Highness, then perked up to say how very, very glad she was that the poor young thing had been restored in safety to her family.
“And all thanks to you—to your umbrella, anyway,” amended Delphick, as Miss Seeton voiced a muted, but startled, protest. “Has Georgina explained that it was ... a little damaged during her escape attempt, and that it will be returned to you as soon as it has been repaired?”
“So very kind,” said Miss Seeton, still muted and pink. “Indeed, most gracious, when really, there was no need—to go to so much trouble, I mean. I can only be thankful that, even if I could be of no particular help or comfort to Her Royal Highness during her—during our, that is, I suppose I should say, although I can hardly feel that it can have been in the least deliberate, in my case ... during the incarceration, if that is not too melodramatic a term ... that it should have been of use. My umbrella, I mean. Thankful. Except, of course,” blushing with sudden, dreadful realisation, “that I would naturally have arranged for it to be repaired just as soon as I could—and it would have been no trouble at all, Mr. Delphick, I assure you.”
“I believe you,” Delphick said quickly: he couldn’t bear any longer to see her blush and fluster her way through this tortuous apologia. “And you must believe me, Miss Seeton, when I say that I feel every bit as—as honoured as yourself to think that in some small way the umbrella I gave you has served a purpose of which neither of us, in the beginning, could ever have dreamed.”
“Indeed not.” At the chief superintendent’s matter-of-fact tone, Miss Seeton was almost her old self again, with a smile in her voice and the beginnings of a twinkle in her eye. Only the pallor of her face, and a slight hollowing of her normally smooth cheeks, showed that she had so recently passed through the grim experience of being drugged close to death, then set still closer to death—by combustion—than even the drugs could contrive.
“An honour,” said Miss Seeton, in the assured tones she would use when teaching, “for us both, Mr. Delphick—but oh, dear,” and assurance turned to anxiety. “I fear I had forgotten, in the pleasure of being allowed a visitor—though the dear major—and the Knights, of course—have been more than kind, and I was most certainly not suggesting that she—I mean they—had forbidden ...”
At this point, Miss Seeton’s innate honesty brought her to a blushing halt. Ever since the marriage of Anne Knight to Detective Sergeant Bob Ranger had installed Major Matilda Howett in Plummergen’s private nursing home, the Knights—whose names were on the mortgage as owners of the property, whose signatures were on the cheques which paid wages and rates and running expenses—had bowed to a far superior force, and acknowledged themselves the merest ciphers. The whole village knew that Major Howett was—to mix naval with military metaphor—the captain of the ship, if not the admiral of the fleet. Her word was law, her command absolute. Under the old regime, Miss Seeton would have been permitted without argument to discharge herself and go home straight after breakfast, as she had on more than one occasion in the past. The bed (she had insisted) should be left for others in greater need, the nurses freed to continue with more pressing work ...
“I had forgotten,” said Miss Seeton, recovering herself with a gulp, “that you might reasonably expect to be at work today, rather than waste your time—not, of course, that it is not always a pleasure to see you, Chief Superintendent, but when there are so many demands on ...”
“Not as many as there were,” he told her cheerfully. “Nor on Superintendent Brinton’s, either. Things have been happening while you were, shall we say, sleeping it off under Major Howett’s, ah, protection. The kidnappers have been found—thanks to you, Miss Seeton, as I said earlier. And it may not come as any great surprise to you that it was, indeed, they who were responsible for the death of the caterer Donald Bragbury—and, I’m sorry to say, for the subsequent death of one of their own employees ...”
chapter
~ 27 ~
“THE KARRIKLOZZET COMPANY,” said Delphick, above Miss Seeton’s shocked exclamations of dismay, “has been in financial difficulties for some time. Caroline Kelshall did wonders, mind you, with the firm she inherited from her husband Caradoc—put it on the map, built it up to the third largest portable powder-room supplier in the country—but Caroline isn’t growing any younger, and she hasn’t been in the best of health.” He smiled. “Not everyone, Miss Seeton, is blessed with the stamina and physical fortitude which your yoga has imparted to you—nor, I might add, does everyone possess your strength of character and your high moral scruples.” He sighed. “Few, alas, do. I only wish they did—except, of course, that if they did, I’d be out of a job.” There was a wry twist to his lips as he spoke. “Human nature, however, being what it is, I rather think I’ll be in gainful employment for the rest of my working life ...”
Miss Seeton, likewise sighing, said with regret that she feared the chief superintendent was right. She clicked her tongue, and shook her head. For anyone to—to contrive the death of another was bad enough. Wicked, indeed: but the added wickedness of the—the betrayal of trust in causing the death of one’s own employee ...
“Luke Hadham,” Delphick said. “He’d started with Kelshalls when they were just an ordinary builders’ merchants, and he went along with old Caradoc when he branched out into KarriKlozzet. He knew pretty well as much about running it as Caradoc himself. He watched the children grow up, watched Caroline take over when Caradoc died, offered advice from time to time, especially when things started to go wrong—advice which sometimes she took, and sometimes she didn’t. The layoffs, for instance: he was very much against that idea. He would have preferred reducing overall hours, so that everyone would at least keep some regular income, to reducing staff numbers—but Caroline wouldn’t listen. She considered herself the ultimate boss, you see, even though Caradoc left more shares in the company to his children than to his wife: but the children have always been completely under their mother’s thumb. So what Caroline Kelshall said, went—with everyone except Luke.
“Poor chap.” Delphick shook his head. “He’d begun to think of himself as an éminence grise, which in some ways he was—but he was also, once the Kelshalls decided to turn to crime as a way out of their difficulties, a danger to them. He knew them all so well, you see. Not just the everyday work routines, but their personal foibles, their nervous habits—and some of them grew very nervous, in the course of their illicit activities. He knew enough, in short, to know when they were up to something, or at least to have strong suspicions that something wasn’t right. He noticed when they kept sneaking away for their secret meetings to plot the abduction of young Georgina; he we
nt on noticing whenever one or other of them took time off to give their prisoner her food; and maybe he said something, or perhaps tried a little blackmail—they’re not saying—but it’s clear the Kelshalls decided that he had to go.”
In other circumstances, he would have smiled. “Killing two birds with one stone, it might be said. By the so-called bomb attack on their premises they not only removed the threat of Luke Hadham, they also removed—reduced to smithereens, in fact—all evidence of their original scheme for Georgina’s kidnap. A scheme which ...”
Miss Seeton began blushing once more. Delphick hurried on: “... which your encounter with the radiation meter only served to bring forward, Miss Seeton. Believe me, they would have gone ahead anyway: their plans were all laid, and it was just that they were sufficiently quick-witted to take advantage of the—the inevitable confusion which resulted from the setting off of the alarm.”
“Oh, dear,” breathed Miss Seeton, falling back on her pillows in guilty dismay. “Oh, dear ...”
“Their original scheme,” he went on quickly, “would have been far less dignified for the princess than the actual quick sack over the head and subsequent hustling to a nearby car. Peter Therfield, the husband of Caroline’s daughter Cleopatra—Caroline might be the lady boss herself, but she didn’t hold with other females going into the business world, or taking too much responsibility upon themselves; that’s why she recruited her son-in-law to take Cleopatra’s place—anyway, Therfield, acting as a substitute for his wife, either bribed, or blackmailed, Donald Bragbury into spiking young Georgina’s drink at the opening reception.” He grinned. “Blackmailed, probably—Bragbury’s wife, or rather widow, is hardly ...”
Delphick, himself happily married, shuddered in sympathy for the marital burden borne by the late Mr. Bragbury. “Let us say, Miss Seeton, that Mrs. Bragbury does not give the impression of having been the most affectionate of helpmeets. For Donald to take a mistress would have been hardly surprising: almost predictable, indeed.” Once more, Miss Seeton sighed. Delphick nodded.
“Caroline Kelshall is a shrewd woman. She must have looked for a weak point in the caterer’s armour, guessed at the likelihood of another woman in his life, and instructed Therfield to arrange to have the wretched man slip a diuretic in Georgina’s lemonade.” Miss Seeton clicked her tongue, and murmured with great disapproval of royal dignity. Resting on the bedclothes, her clasped hands gave a sudden twitch.
Delphick nodded again. “That, of course, was the basis of their plan. Where else should a poor sufferer from waterworks trouble go to relieve her sufferings than to the lavatory? And when Royalty visits, it is not necessarily subjected to the indignities of the common cloakroom, particularly in a place which hasn’t long been open, where all the niggling little problems of the plumbing haven’t been entirely ironed out. The country-wide supplying of de luxe portable toilets for royal occasions is a serious business, or so I have been given to understand.”
Miss Seeton’s fingers had begun to dance, despite their owner’s clasping them tight, during the latter part of the Oracle’s explanation. Kindly, he ignored the way she tried—and failed—to still them. “The particular closet the Kelshalls had supplied that day was altered to have an extra door, camouflaged very cleverly in the wall behind the wash-basin, and connected by a most ingenious system of levers to the ballcock in the cistern. As soon as the princess pulled the chain, the noise of rushing water would cover the sound of the levers unlocking the hidden door. When she turned on the tap to wash her hands, the door would open—and bingo.”
“Ingenious,” agreed Miss Seeton, as Delphick came to a temporary halt, “but—but discourteous, in the extreme, and hardly a—a responsible attitude ...”
Her disapproval had, for the moment, quietened her restless fingers: a quietening which Delphick remarked with interest, though he still said nothing.
“To be fair to the Kelshalls,” he continued, “they did their best throughout the remainder of their, ah, involvement with the princess to ensure that her washing and sanitary arrangements were of the highest standard that could, in the circumstances, be achieved. Kidnappers, believe me, are not often so considerate. Perhaps if we had paid more attention to this unusual fact once Georgina had been safely recovered, we would have found you rather more quickly than we did.” His smile was apologetic. “I must tell you, Miss Seeton, that we—that the police—are only too sorry you had to be subjected to such ... unpleasantness. We’re deeply thankful that the outcome of your adventure wasn’t a good deal more serious than it proved, in the end, to be.”
“Oh, dear.” Miss Seeton turned pink with mingled guilt and dismay. “Poor Nigel—he has already been in to see me this morning, and his face—such a dreadful shock. And his hands, with their bandages ... I remember so little, I fear, of what occurred at the time, although dear Major Howett has since explained ... Nigel himself told me almost nothing, beyond the fact that”—the embarrassed note gave way to a hint of amusement—“the major had refused to allow him to go home before breakfast ...”
“Nigel,” said Delphick, “is a born knight-errant. When there is a lady in distress, would you suppose his courage to fail him? As of course last night it did not. But,” he added, as Miss Seeton blushed again, “does it surprise you that his courage did fail him when faced with Major Howett’s ... professional resolution? In order to resist the major in, let us say, full cry, one would need to be more than courageous. One would have to be rash beyond belief, as well as totally lacking in common sense.”
“Nigel,” said Miss Seeton warmly, “is a very intelligent young man, besides being”—a little sniff escaped her, and she blinked rapidly several times—“a true gentleman.”
“Indeed he is.” Delphick grinned. “And bright enough to know when he’s beaten by superior odds: so I’m not surprised he stayed here overnight. He wouldn’t have dared do anything else.” He chuckled. “Not unless he was quite out of his mind, that is; and Nigel is far from crazy.”
Miss Seeton’s fingers suddenly twitched again. Delphick couldn’t help glancing at them; then he dragged his gaze away, and prepared to go on with his exposition.
There was no need to upset Miss Seeton by telling her that it had been the media notoriety she so greatly disliked which had made the Kelshalls suspect her of knowing more than she in fact did. They might, without that notoriety, have been able to ignore the several uncanny coincidences which had occurred: Miss Seeton’s having been in charge of the child who presented the bouquet to their victim; her insistence on searching, as they’d seen it, the booby-trapped lavatory; even her waving of her umbrella in what anyone less guilty must have recognised as an innocent signal for assistance—that same umbrella which had provided so convenient a distraction after the alarm went off that they had been able to swoop upon the princess so much sooner than they’d expected ...
They might have ignored all this: but, in fact, they hadn’t. The newspapers’ insistence on coupling the name of the Battling Brolly with Scotland Yard, the local knowledge that the soubriquet concealed Miss Emily Dorothea Seeton of Plummergen, had pricked the uneasy consciences of the Kelshalls, leading them to case the village joint under the pretext of admiring the many penny-for-the-guy displays along The Street. One of these guys had worn a hat which could only have belonged to Miss Seeton: try as they might, they couldn’t escape her.
Had they balked at killing her outright? Had they left it to chance—to the strength of the barbiturates in the doctored tea? The same devious mind (thought Delphick grimly) as had planned the diuretic spiking had planned that, he’d wager. Miss Seeton was a small woman; the post office guy had been an unusually fine specimen, sufficiently large to accommodate easily two bound, living limbs within one sacking leg, one pinioned torso within its enormous body. It had been a close-run thing. Though the clues towards her ultimate rescue had been plain in her sketchbook, the police—he himself, renowned throughout the force as the Seeton expert—had failed to interpret th
em in time. It had been the quick wits of Nigel Colveden which had saved her ...
Plus her own undoubted stamina, of course. The yoga: how many people of her age could have gone as long as she had without food or drink, yet still have the strength to move and cry out when the effects of the drug had finally worn off?
“Worn off,” muttered Delphick, and caught Miss Seeton’s curious eye. Had it been intended that it should wear off in time—should give her a sporting chance? They’d have the truth out of the Kelshalls, sooner or later. He wouldn’t tell Miss Seeton, of course; there was evidence enough to convict them without that last knowledge—but for his own satisfaction he needed to know whether it had been a deliberate gamble on the kidnappers’ part, or an honest-to-badness in-the-heat-of-the-moment mistake ...
“A mistake,” Miss Seeton broke into his thoughts with a nod and a smile, startling him: he hadn’t realised he’d been thinking aloud. He wondered how much he’d said: she didn’t seem too worried—but then, she never did.
“A mistake,” said Miss Seeton, smiling. “Naturally: why should anyone, especially someone I have never met, wish to harm me? And, as you implied, it is most fortunate that my knowledge of yoga enabled me to overcome the discomfort and inconvenience rather more easily than, for example, might have been the case with Her Royal Highness. Except, of course, that she is so much younger—but one must be thankful that she was spared the experience. After all,” she explained, with a smile, “I was, remember, among friends—a most fortunate circumstance. So very alarming for the poor child to have woken up surrounded by complete strangers, no matter how well-disposed towards her—as, of course, they would be. Nevertheless ...”
Only Miss Seeton could regard her abduction and drugging and narrow escape from death as a positive advantage. One day, Delphick mused, there would be some occurrence which even she couldn’t fail to regard as dangerous, unpleasant, and deliberately aimed against herself: one day. But not, he hoped, just yet ...
Miss Seeton Rules (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 18) Page 25