Sweet Miss Seeton (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 20)

by Hamilton Crane

  His words echoed strangely in Foxon’s muddled brain. He forced his eyes open. “Meat axes and mince, sir? You said steak last time. You want me to try vegetarianism?”

  “If I thought it’d improve your chances of making anything like a decent career in the police I’d force-feed you carrots myself, but you’d still be more donkey than detective by the end of it. However ...” The pleasantries were over. “They tell me you’ll live. Concussion doesn’t kill. But has it affected your memory at all?”

  Concussion might not kill, but its lack of focus can render its victim careless of life and limb. “I remember everything going black,” volunteered Foxon, “just as I was watching Martha Bloomer brush worm-casts off the lawn.”

  “What?”

  “After Miss Seeton waved at me with her umbrella,” said Foxon. “And a trowel. The garden needed a bit of attention, you see ...”

  “Er—yes,” said Brinton, who thought he did. The lad was rambling. So much for learning how many of the houses he’d had time to check before the Abinger bloke had gone into panic overdrive and belted him. And so much for medical science saying there was no lasting damage. If Foxon’d got Miss Seeton and her blasted brolly permanently stuck in his mind, so to speak, then forget about making a detective—he’d be so confused he’d be useless as a traffic warden, for pity’s sake, and as for point duty ...

  “Yes. Well.” The superintendent tried to sound cheerful. “I’ll leave you to sleep it off, shall I? I’ll pop back to the station and have a word with Mutford. What that man doesn’t know about the invalidity rules could be written on a postage stamp.” Desk Sergeant Mutford was a staunch member of Brettenden’s Holdfast Brethren, a small but influential sect noted for its rigid adherence to the letter of biblical and (where the two did not collide) secular law.

  Foxon’s sluggish brain had at last caught up with his ears. “An invalid, sir? Me?” He began struggling to free himself from the double manacles of sheet and blanket clamping him to the bed. “Oh, I’ll be out of here in no time. Honest. I mean, it’s not as if I’m not used to it.”

  Brinton eyed him warily. The lad was sounding a little more back in the real world. “I suppose,” he conceded, “you could say that’s true. What’s a bump on the head between friends for a bloke with a skull as thick as yours?”

  “A couple of days and I’ll be fine,” promised Foxon, freeing one arm to wave it in a gesture emphasising good health, high spirits, and devotion to duty. “But,” he added, wincing, “I dunno about ‘between friends,’ sir. This character who clobbered me. What have we got on him?”

  Brinton stared. “Nothing, except that he overreacts a bit when sinister blokes with black eyes lurk outside his house. Which I’d call a pardonable error, in the circumstances, though I can understand you wouldn’t. Why should you think we’d have anything on him? You might not care for being clobbered, but in some ways this Abinger wasn’t acting unreasonably, and we’ve no call to suppose he makes a habit of assaulting perfect strangers. And it isn’t exactly good for the image of the force to do him for accidental arrest or mistaken identity, if that’s what you had in mind.” The familiar savage grin appeared. “Look at it this way, lad. If we throw the book at him—well, two bops don’t make one right, do they?”

  Foxon essayed his own grin, but his heart wasn’t in it as past and present mingled in bewildering disorder in his mind. “He’s ... got a guilty conscience, sir.” Brinton looked at him.

  Foxon tried to nod, but could only wince. “He must have.” It was not easy to marshal his thoughts into some logical sequence, but he did his best. “I mean—for Buckland to have got there so soon, the bloke must’ve already dialled nine-nine-nine ... so why didn’t he just wait for reinforcements? I wasn’t going anywhere.”

  “You certainly weren’t once he’d finished with you—er, sorry.” The lad had sounded so much better all at once that Brinton had forgotten how sick they’d said he was. “But he wasn’t to know that, was he? Look at it from his point of view. He’s new to this area. He didn’t know—though he damn well does now—how efficient a force we’ve got. He says he had no idea how long it would be before anyone responded to his three-nines, so he thought he’d better hang on to you until they did. It’s all perfectly logical, laddie ...”

  Foxon eyed his superior as balefully as he could through swollen eyelids. “And you don’t believe it either, sir.”

  Brinton hesitated. He shrugged. “Guilty consciences come in all shapes and sizes. Maybe he’s just twitchy about an unpaid parking ticket somewhere, or a traffic offence.”

  “You said he said he didn’t know I was a copper,” Foxon objected, so indignant that he neither winced nor groaned as he sat bolt upright in bed. “And even if your idea’s right, he was happy enough to call us when he wanted me out of his hair. Something smells wrong here, sir. Dunno what it is, but I reckon Abinger could bear a spot of checking.”

  “I hope you’re not planning to start a private vendetta, Detective Constable Foxon.”

  “Come off it, sir. You should know me better than that. ’Specially when it was all your idea in the first place.”

  Now it was the turn of Brinton to be indignant. Just because he might, in moments of stress, in the privacy of the office, hurl the odd missile at his junior—

  “What?” cried Foxon, feeling that assorted peppermints and paperweights dodged over the years were being played decidedly down.

  This did not mean (went on Brinton) that he had given his blessing to more or less unprovoked attacks on said junior, or on any other officer, by unauthorised personnel following his privileged example. The general public (he maintained) had no business taking the law into their own hands: the law was the responsibility of the police.

  “And the safety of my officers,” he concluded, “is the responsibility of me. You’re right, laddie,” he said as Foxon tried to grin. “Abinger could bear looking at.”

  “Which is what I meant,” Foxon said, “about it being all your idea in the first place, sir. For me to go looking at the scenes of the crime, I mean. I dunno what else has been going on, but in my book bashing me on the head’s a crime. Couldn’t we ask ... er, someone at the Yard to run Abinger through that basement computer of theirs?”

  “Someone with the initials A. D., I suppose, although what Chief Superintendent Delphick might say about wasting police time I shudder to think.”

  “He might say thank you,” Foxon said. “For all we know, Abinger’s been on the Wanted list for years.” He closed his eyes and smoothed a gallant hand across his bandaged brow. “If anyone offers me the Police Medal in gratitude for devotion beyond the call of duty, I won’t say no, sir.”

  “You sound perkier by the minute, heaven help us.” The superintendent pushed back his chair: he had just spotted a starched and silver-buckled uniform heading in his direction with a purposeful look in her eye and an ominous metal tray in her hand. “But you’ve done enough thinking for the day. I don’t want your death from brain fever on my conscience, talking of consciences. Assuming you’ve got a brain in there under all that bandage ...”

  And he was gone before Foxon could either register even the slightest protest or demand police protection against the syringe of startling proportion that now appeared in the starched one’s hand.

  “Don’t hover, Buckland.” Brinton stabbed a pencil towards his visitors’ chair. “Sit down. Whatever your sins may be, they haven’t yet been found out. You’re not on the carpet, you’re helping me with my enquiries. Sit down!”

  PC Buckland sat. He coughed. “How’s the invalid, sir?”

  “He’ll live. Not too happy with friend Abinger, though. Thinks he’s worth a look. You’re the panda man around that area. What do we know about him?”

  “Er—them, sir. He’s married,” offered Buckland after a moment.

  “Was it the husband or the wife who beaned young Foxon with a brick?” Brinton glared. “Or whatever it was,” he added as Buckland looked uneasy. �
�Well? Did she join in raising merry hell on Foxon’s noddle or just help to raise the alarm?”

  “Er—neither, sir. She was shopping when it happened, as far as I can make out. Surprised as anyone when she got home and found out what’d been going on.”

  “So the wife’s irrelevant in this particular context. Abinger wasn’t ... protecting her honour because she wasn’t there at the time.” The superintendent sighed. “Unless there’s something you’re not telling me, Buckland.”

  “Like what, sir?”

  “Like have you ever been called to that address in the past, for a Domestic? Does he thump her? Noted for his quick temper, maybe? Jealous? Unstable? Just the type to bash first and ask questions afterwards?”

  Buckland, who as a serving police officer had seen more than most, was still a little shocked at this suggestion. “They seem very happy together, sir. She’s rather nice-looking, in a quiet sort of way. Doesn’t work, though they haven’t got any children. He’s some sort of bank executive, I think.” Brinton’s ears pricked at this, but Buckland was now in full flight. “Started doing the place up almost as soon as they moved in once Mr. Pontefract died—you remember, sir, the chap who tried that snack bar idea in Plummergen and went broke.”

  “Bits ’n’ Pizzas. I remember.” Brinton tried to close his mind to the uncomfortable coincidence of Miss Seeton, albeit by proxy in the form of her village, making yet another appearance in the case—if, he reminded himself, a case it was. “I forget what happened to him afterwards, though.”

  “They tried a Bed and Breakfast, sir, him and his wife.” Buckland, who had kept devoted company since the age of five with the same young lady he had met in his first week at primary school, sighed quietly. “She only stuck it for a few months, then pushed off with a travelling salesman–one of the customers, too.” He shook his head. “Talk about ‘for better, for worse’!”

  “Yes, well.” Brinton did his best not to sound scornful, but it was hard. “There’s ‘for richer, for poorer’ to take into consideration, too. Some women like the high life and get a bit stroppy if they can’t have it anymore. And when you’re married, lad, you’ll know how touchy a woman can get about her kitchen, never mind the rest of the house, if their old man suddenly decides to invite a load of strangers to stay the night day in, day out. Starting with the builders,” he added, with grim memories of how his wife had found the idea of a fitted kitchen, on paper, appealing: and how she had gone home to her mother after a week of argument, dust, and sandwiches at every meal.

  “Oh, they got a fire certificate without any trouble, sir. Staircases and access and—and stuff like that—and the plumbing was all sorted out, too—and the parking. You know how the emergency services complain if there’s too many cars clogging up the roads.”

  Brinton rolled his eyes. He did.

  “Mr. Pontefract,” Buckland continued, “had asphalt laid all over the front for parking, so these new people, the Abingers, one of the first things they did was have the whole lot took up and a lawn put back, with a gravel drive. It was one reason they got the place so cheap, sir, all the money they knew it’d cost to get it back to being just a—a house again.”

  “A successful banker wouldn’t need the extra cash from a B and B,” said Brinton thoughtfully. “Yet he can’t have had that much cash to play with or surely he’d have bought a house that didn’t need any alterations straight off.”

  “Perhaps,” offered the sheepish Buckland, “he didn’t want to ... er, upset his wife by asking her to do it.” He turned pink as Brinton eyed him sourly. “Bed and Breakfast, I mean, sir. I mean, after Mrs. Pontefract ... he might have been, well, superstitious. Or something.”

  “Bankers aren’t superstitious. Folk who mess about with money all day have got to be level-headed or they go under.” Brinton frowned. “And a banker gets preferential rates on his mortgage ... which we can assume this Abinger didn’t, for the same reasons as before. Odd. I hate to say it, but Foxon was right. Our bop-happy friend could do with checking. I wonder if it’s too late to phone the Yard?”

  He decided, in the end, that it was not. Once he had ascertained that his subordinate had no idea which bank had the dubious pleasure of employing Patrick Abinger, but that he thought it was in London, Brinton threw Buckland out of the office and exhorted the switchboard to find an outside line as soon as possible, if not before.

  The tinny voice in Brinton’s ear soon connected him to the office of Chief Superintendent Alan Delphick, where the telephone was picked up by Sergeant Bob Ranger, six-foot-seven, seventeen stone, and afraid of nothing.

  In normal circumstances, that was to say. But ...

  “Good evening, sir.” Bob’s cheery tones were for once tinged with apprehension. “I, er, hope there’s nothing wrong ...”

  Bob had been at Delphick’s side on that momentous occasion seven years earlier when Miss Seeton first appeared on the criminal scene. He had been puzzled and amused by her then; he had been baffled and impressed after her second appearance; and by her third his feelings were such that when his then fiancée Anne—daughter of Plummergen’s Dr. Knight of nursing home fame—had adopted her as an honorary aunt, he’d been happy to go along with the idea. What had started as an expedient measure to justify the whisking of MissEss from under the noses of a group of thugs had become something more. Bob, like his wife Anne, was fond of Miss Emily Dorothea Seeton. Aunt Em. And unexpected telephone calls from the superintendent of police in charge of the district where she lived did nothing for the peace of mind of Aunt Em’s adopted nephew.

  “Wrong?” Brinton knew very well the way Bob’s mind was working. “Relax, she’s fine. I only wanted a bit of info, if you’ve got it, on some people who’ve just moved into the area—and I don’t, for once, mean Plummergen. As far as I know, Miss Seeton’s living a nice peaceful life minding her own business and not stirring up trouble for anyone else—which is just the way I like it.”

  “Me, too, sir,” Bob assured him in relief. “Same here.” His chuckle echoed through fifty miles of electric wires to deafen Brinton’s ear. “So what was it you wanted to know?”

  It was as well for his peace of mind—and Brinton’s—that they had no idea of the truth.

  When they were on speaking terms, Emmy’s best friend was Maureen, who worked—or, to be more accurate, was employed—at the George and Dragon. Plummergen’s favourite hostelry (Prop. C. Mountfitchet) stands beside the church at the southernmost end of The Street just before it narrows and divides in two, directly opposite the bakery—and diagonally opposite Sweetbriars. As they were currently speaking, once Emmy had milked her sensational collapse for every last ounce of drama it contained, she had no hesitation about phoning Maureen to give her the latest intelligence concerning the goings-on between the owner of Sweetbriars and the sinister Antony Scarlett.

  The roar of Maureen’s Wayne’s Kawasaki motorbike was a familiar sound to everyone in the village as he either dropped his lady love off at the start of her daily round or collected her at its finish. Not only was it familiar: it was loud. Doris, head waitress and right hand to Charley Mountfitchet, always knew when Maureen was arriving some minutes before she arrived. Should the girl be late (which she all too often was) the Kawasaki Early Warning System gave Doris ample time to position herself on the George’s front step to deliver a pithy and forthright lecture on punctuality, which the rehearsal of several years had made a model of its type.

  “Beats me, Miss Seeton.” Doris had advanced from her usual place to exchange a few words with the neighbour from over the way on an early trip to the shops. “I mean, how long is The Street? Why that lazy young madam can’t walk here on her own two feet I’ll never know.”

  Miss Seeton had often wondered the same thing herself—the small council estate where Maureen lived was at most a mile from the George—but felt she could say no more than that not everyone had a partiality for fresh air and exercise. People were, after all, different. Some tired more easily than othe
rs, and since Maureen worked so ...

  Miss Seeton’s natural honesty here must curtail the rest of this charitable observation. An arthritic tortoise moved faster than Maureen on even a normal working day, as everyone in Plummergen knew. Perhaps (offered Miss Seeton now) it was one of the few opportunities the young couple had to be ... well, alone together; and she was sure Maureen must appreciate Wayne’s gallantry in driving to and from Brettenden each day simply to suit her convenience. Such little attentions would, she supposed, make all the difference to the progress of a courtship.

  Miss Seeton’s long teaching experience had given a certain clarity to her speaking tones, although a gentlewoman does not raise her voice any more than she must. She spoke her final words to Doris just as the black-leather-clad figure of Wayne steered the motorbike off the road on to the grey asphalt in front of the George. A booted foot kicked downwards, there was a minor upward jerk, and the Kawasaki was on its rest, its engine idling. Miss Seeton, beside a frowning Doris, beamed her approval. In his own way, Maureen’s Wayne had quite as much in him of the Galahad as dear Nigel Colveden.

  Wayne turned to assist Maureen down from the pillion. Doris, whose stern and watchful form had hidden that of the smaller Miss Seeton, moved forward to deliver her customary reprimand. Maureen hopped off her perch, removed her crash helmet, and shook out her hair in readiness.

  “Look here, young Maureen,” began Maureen’s exasperated supervisor and colleague. “This really isn’t good enough, you know, specially when we’ve got guests. I had to do Mrs. Ogden’s breakfast myself, and I’ll have your wages docked if it happens again. I’m sure I don’t see why—”

  Miss Seeton, whose views on punctuality were as firm as those of Doris—to be punctual is to be polite—had nevertheless to hide a smile as Galahad Wayne kicked the motorbike rest upwards, revved the engine, and took off in a roar of exhaust with which not even the scolding voice of Doris could compete. Which was probably the idea. Still smiling, Miss Seeton prepared to take her leave. One would not wish to be thought an eavesdropper on what was likely to be an embarrassing scene. More embarrassing for Doris, of course, than for Maureen. The younger woman’s blissful and voluntary deafness to all instruction was a village byword, while the indignity of being ignored ...