Sweet Miss Seeton (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 20)

by Hamilton Crane

  Buckland scratched his head. This was rather more than he’d been expecting. He blinked. Brinton glared at him. “I ... I reckon,” offered Buckland, “there’s a—a pattern to all this, sir. Not just our area, I mean, or Sussex, but probably other places, too, if we knew. I mean, if the chummies have found something that works, they’re not going to ... stop doing it, are they? Until they’re caught, I mean. It’s—it’s easy money, cheating old folk.”

  “Damnably easy.” Brinton, pleased with his pupil’s deductive abilities, nodded and reached for the telephone again. “Get me Scotland Yard ...”

  chapter

  ~ 11 ~

  “SUPERINTENDENT BRINTON HERE, Ashford. I’d like a word with Chief Superintendent Delphick, if he’s handy. Thanks.” The wires clicked and hummed. There came a rattle as a receiver was picked up. “Sergeant Ranger? Your boss around?”

  His voice, he knew, was unmistakable. So was the instant anxiety in the voice that answered him.

  “Oh—hello, Mr. Brinton.” Bob’s guarded greeting was followed by a pause as Delphick (Brinton guessed) lifted the other extension. “Er,” said Bob before hanging up. As he hadn’t been specifically instructed to keep listening, he wouldn’t; but he did, well, wonder. “Er—is everything ... all right in your neck of the woods, sir?”

  “As far as I know, she’s fine,” Brinton assured him. “This is something else—more or less,” honesty compelled him to add. “But she’s only on the fringe of it, and unless she’s likely to be talked into having her front garden asphalted over by a firm of blasted cowboys, I can’t see there’s anything to worry about.”

  “Touch wood when you say that,” warned Delphick in his most oracular tones. “Although,” he went on cheerfully, “with Stan Bloomer near at hand and notably jealous of his territory, your remark seems less, ah, fatally provocative than similar remarks have been on previous occasions, given what we know of the cowboys’ usual procedure.” Smoothly he ignored the startled exclamation that burst from Brinton’s lips. “Perhaps, however, as his adopted aunt is, albeit peripherally, concerned in your current predicament, the sergeant should continue to eavesdrop—with your permission, of course.”

  “Okay by me,” said Brinton, recovering himself. “You mean you do know this crowd I was ringing about?”

  The Oracle backtracked slightly. “We have some knowledge of what may be the same crowd manifesting itself at different times in different parts of the country, yes. It would appear that there has been quite an epidemic over the past couple of years, although the fine detail escapes me, and for all I know there may be several independent copycat groups. Until now it has been more the province of Fraud rather than of Serious Crime, but ...”

  “Until now? Why, what’s happened?”

  “One of the victims, an old soldier, refused to pay up.” Delphick’s voice was grim. “He was attacked in his own home and left permanently crippled. His wife, who was already in a wheelchair, witnessed the attack and was, the doctors tell us, literally terrified to death.”

  Brinton drew in his breath with an angry hiss. “Heart, I suppose. We’ve had a similar case like that here, if I’m reading it right. The poor old chap ended up in a home, completely doolally—so much so the medics say he’ll never snap out of it. His mind’s gone. No chance of getting a statement out of him—and the other suspected victims are either dead or gone some other way.”

  Buckland, who had heard only one side of this exchange, here stirred on his chair. Brinton looked up. “Oh! Yes, with one exception. A poor old biddy who’s still on the spot was frightened half out of her wits when young Foxon appeared on her doorstep with a black eye and was a bit slow telling her who he was. I should think he struck her as just the sort of hooligan who’d amuse himself by beating up old ladies who didn’t pay their debts—if that’s how these blighters work?”

  “It would seem so.” The Oracle didn’t waste time by asking the reason for Foxon’s black eye. The boy, a mere six-footer, was seven inches shorter than Sergeant Ranger: and even Bob, over the years, had received his share of honourable wounds in the war against crime. “As in your case, witnesses are somewhat thin on the ground, but our old soldier was, let us say, forthright in his account of what happened.” Delphick cleared his throat. “He ... had nothing left to lose, he said.”

  Brinton found himself blinking. “Go on,” he muttered. He coughed. “No, hang on. Buckland, hop across and listen in on the other phone—if that’s all right by you, Oracle?”

  “I deduce,” Delphick observed after a reflective few seconds, “that the presence of PC Buckland in your office has something to do with DC Foxon’s black eye. Buckland, my compliments for accepting the heroic role of understudy.” Buckland mumbled something, and the tips of his ears turned pink. “I won’t,” went on the Oracle, “ask for details just yet—unless Foxon ran foul of the asphalters, that is.”

  “Some young totty kicked up a fuss when he tried to arrest her boyfriend,” Brinton told him. “And then a chap whose hedge he was peering over got a bit—ah!”

  “Oh!” said Sergeant Ranger, sounding guilty. “Er—sir, I’m sorry. The, uh, computer’s still working on that one. As soon as we get anything ...”

  Brinton snorted. “Yes, well, so much for modern technology. Let’s have some details of good old-fashioned fraud instead, shall we?”

  Delphick once more assumed the lead. “Details as far as we know them,” came the quick qualification. “However. The working method, if we may call it that, is fraudulent in the extreme, but so cleverly conceived that there must be many victims around the country who never realise how, or indeed that, they have been defrauded.” The Oracle paused. “In fact, it was the growing unease within the legitimate building industry, rather than complaints from any of the fraud victims, that first alerted the authorities that something might be—in fact, was—wrong.”

  “Oh?”

  “The gang make their initial approach in the guise of established contractors, though they neither make verbal claims to the identity nor put anything in writing.”

  “Clever,” agreed Brinton with a sigh.

  “They say,” Delphick went on, “that they have been doing some work in the vicinity—usually carriageway repairs on a nearby main road—and just happen to have half a load of asphalt left over, which they would be prepared to ...” He hesitated. “To install? To lay,” he amended. “To offer to the householder at a favourable price,” he concluded.

  Brinton groaned. “And if that’s not an argument to appeal to the old folk, I don’t know what is.”

  “Exactly.” Delphick sighed. “The gang members wear uniforms resembling those of recognised companies; their vehicles and plant are dressed in near-genuine colours, and with trade names and logos almost identical to the real thing. Who, when the overall appearance is one of such authenticity, is likely to notice a griffon for a dragon—a letter m for an n—orange rather than yellow paint?”

  “Not too many,” said Brinton. “Especially if they’re getting on in years and don’t spend as much time as younger folk charging up and down motorways with plenty of opportunity to see what’s really what.”

  “Or,” interposed Buckland before he could stop himself, “getting stuck in traffic jams.”

  There was a pause. “Quite so,” said Delphick. “There speaks one who has served his time in Traffic Division. The comment came from the heart, Constable Buckland.”

  “Yes, sir. Sorry.” And once more the tips of PC Buckland’s ears turned pink.

  “Go on,” invited Brinton, directing no more than an upward roll of his eyes for the hapless young man at the other desk. When he started chucking peppermints, the lad could feel at home. Until then ...

  “The gang,” said Delphick, “alter their appearance every few months—or, as we have already mentioned, there may be several gangs using the same trick. In either event, more than one well-known construction company with a deserved reputation for high standards of customer service ha
s been called upon to repair the shoddy work supposedly carried out by some of its employees. In the interests of public relations, they have generally done so.”

  “Explains why you haven’t heard too much about all this until now,” said Brinton. “I take it the building types don’t care to let on how they’ve been gulled, either.”

  “They don’t. Once the trick became general knowledge, the risk of this sort of blackmail would be enormously increased. Reputation is all too easy to wink down,” said Delphick, adapting Swift, “and all too hard to, ah, wink up again.”

  “Oh, they’re clever devils,” Brinton said.

  “They are. Of course, word has gradually spread among those with what we might call a right to know. Chairmen of large companies rub shoulders with chief constables at a variety of public and private functions. Discreet chats take place. Concern is expressed; warnings are passed along the line to those who, being on the spot, are most likely to notice any deviation from routine procedures.” Delphick’s tone became one of moderate frustration. “Of course, by the time anyone has pointed out the risks that might be being run, it is too late. The fraudsters have come—and gone, vanishing without trace.”

  “To gloat a bit and slap a fresh coat of paint on the van,” muttered Brinton, “and start up their tricks all over again somewhere else. So how exactly do they work it?”

  “As I explained, they put nothing in writing. It seems they offer a verbal quotation for the cost of the complete job, and once it is completed they insist that the quoted price was per square foot, not per square yard as the householder believed.” Delphick paused to allow assimilation of this nine-times-the-original-cost formula. “While,” he went on after the pause, “their accounting methods may leave something to be desired, there is no doubting the efficiency of their intimidation techniques as practised on anyone who tries to argue with them.”

  Brinton whistled. “But even a footpath will be several square yards—a driveway can run into dozens!” He glanced across at the equally shocked Buckland. “And blokes who do manual work have to be tough specimens. The old folk aren’t going to argue with ’em. Something big, I said—and big it is—in more ways than one.”

  “It is,” said Delphick. “Big enough, perhaps, for other people to jump on the same bandwagon—or, as it still might be, for the same people to risk the same trick in more or less the same area after the passage of a few months. We don’t know for sure, but there are indications that this is what’s started to happen. Assuming it is, we have absolutely no idea how or why they decide to take that risk ...”

  “But it seems,” said Brinton, “they’ve been taking it here. On my patch. And I don’t like it, Oracle. I don’t like it one little bit. I’d like to collar the blighters and throw the book at them, and you can’t give me any idea where to start ...”

  “Keep an eye open for strangers,” said Delphick.

  “Good evening,” said Miss Seeton as she emerged from the vicarage front garden. “I am so sorry.” Afternoon tea with the Reverend Arthur Treeves and his sister had been a pleasant affair, although the dear vicar was still convalescent after his shocking cold and growing a little tired towards the end, when she had of course excused herself and taken her leave. Colds always seemed to go to his chest, poor man. One had from time to time wondered whether the deep breathing techniques practised in yoga might be beneficial for weak lungs, but to suggest it might be seen as interfering, which one tried never to do. Or (even worse), it might be seen as a slight on the care all Plummergen knew Molly Treeves took of her brother, such as the way she was at present trying to encourage his lost appetite by inviting a different friend to tea every day of the week, when the vicar would (according to Miss Treeves) be obliged, as host, to do rather more than peck at his food, which until now was all he had been doing (again according to his sister). Miss Seeton was flattered to be considered a friend of such standing that the true motive behind the invitation would not be suspected. The vicar was notoriously ill-at-ease with strangers. Some people, after an acquaintance of seven years, might consider shyness with regard to Miss Seeton an affectation on his part, but Miss Seeton (like Molly Treeves) knew that it was not, as well as knowing that a convalescent should, as far as possible, be humoured. Which she, the invited guest, had done her best to do.

  Strangers. “I am so sorry ...” Miss Seeton nodded and (unseen in the twilight) blushed her apology as she greeted the beautiful girl into whom she had, turning to latch the vicarage gate with her umbrella swinging from her free arm, almost bumped. It was only good manners to make a stranger feel welcome ... although somehow one had the feeling that she was not. A stranger, that was to say. The way she held herself; those eyes, those bones were unmistakable, even if—Miss Seeton shook her head—one could not quite remember where ... But there was surely something about the tilt and carriage of her head on that slender neck, the grace of her movements ...

  “H-hello,” said the beautiful girl. “I’m ... sorry to have—I mean, it was my fault, really. I ... wasn’t looking where I was going.”

  “Both of us,” said Miss Seeton absently as she continued to gaze at what she could see of the girl’s loveliness—of which, she was sure, she had seen more on a previous, better-lit occasion. “And in the dusk,” she went on, trying to remember, “it is perhaps not so easy to judge—especially moving backwards, when I should have been looking over my shoulder—so careless—one’s mind on other things—his chest, you know, and the breathing—and tempting his appetite, poor man—”

  “What? Oh! How could you be so cruel?” And the lovely girl burst into tears.

  Dismay descended upon Miss Seeton. It had been, or so she’d thought, only a slight bump—some loss of balance, a stumbled step ... but (one had to admit) easy, in the gloaming, to misjudge the effect. But ... cruel? The young, of course, were often given to exaggeration—and yet ... And, to be fair, with the lovely stranger (if stranger indeed she was: there remained that tantalising hint of memory) not knowing, perhaps, where exactly she might be in relation to anywhere else; not appreciating the difference between a careless bump and—however unlikely, in Plummergen—a deliberate attack ...

  “Shock,” decided Miss Seeton as the girl, with her face buried in her pale, shapely hands, tried to stifle her sobs and could not. If anything, they were growing more wild. One recalled such incidents from school. Gentle firmness and, where possible, a glass of water should be administered.

  Or ...

  “Sugar,” murmured Miss Seeton, whose preference was for weak tea without rather than strong tea with. The girl uttered a bubbling little cry and sobbed even harder. Miss Seeton found herself clearing her throat in sympathy before delivering a breathless admonishment.

  “Come now—this is hardly the time or the place, my dear—so many houses nearby, although fortunately there is no traffic just at present—and you don’t wish to make an exhibition of yourself, do you?”

  “An exhibition? Oh!” cried the girl, bubbling still more and showing no sign of stopping. Miss Seeton regarded her anxiously. Deaf to entreaty she might be, and creating what even in charity one would have to call a scene, but one couldn’t leave the poor child to sob out her heart on the corner of The Street, where—yes, curtains were already twitching in one or two houses—everyone could see. So undignified; so embarrassing to look back on later when the paroxysm of grief had passed, as in time it would, although one accepted that the young could never understand this and tried not to be too impatient with them. Their feelings were always so ... immediate. Intense. One might almost say, in some respects at least, unbalanced. Miss Seeton, who had never been anything other than serenely balanced on life’s emotional scale throughout her entire six decades and a half, found herself sighing. Romeo and Juliet, of course, who were even younger; Carmen and Don José, whose behaviour—either of them—had been hardly discreet. But all of them foreign. And the climate warmer, which in January in England was really no excuse at all.

  �
��You must try to stop,” said Miss Seeton, audibly more stern than sympathetic. “All these tears can’t be good for you—why, I don’t suppose you have a proper handkerchief, have you? Paper ones are far from practical when they are wet as opposed to merely damp.”

  “What? Oh!” After a startled moment or two in which she digested this sage advice, the girl had muted her sobs to a bubble which, Miss Seeton realised with relief, held more of burgeoning mirth than of misery. “Handkerchief,” said the girl in a quavering voice and lowered her hands from her face to thrust them into the pockets of her overcoat. “Oh ...”

  “Now that’s quite enough,” said Miss Seeton sharply. Too sharply? “What you need—my dear—is a nice cup of tea. And a biscuit or two, perhaps, or a slice of cake.”

  “Oh ...” said the girl, quavering again, this time once more like tears than laughter. Her hands fluttered out of her pockets and described agitated shapes in the air.

  Miss Seeton had no intention of allowing the situation to develop, as she suspected it might, into a full-blown scene. There had been far too much of that sort of nonsense in her life of late. She frowned. There was that elusive memory again ... “If,” she said quickly, “you would care to come home with me,” she invited, flourishing her brolly towards Sweetbriars across the road, “you would be most welcome. It is the least I can do in recompense for having ... disturbed you as I did.”

  “No,” said the girl, “it wasn’t you—your fault—you mustn’t think that—it was ...” She gulped. Her fluttering hands fell to her sides. Her shoulders drooped; in her pale face, her eyes were dark pools of raw, burning emotion. Miss Seeton, ducking her head, took an automatic step backwards. One was uncomfortably reminded of—

  “Kristeena!” she cried, remembering. She looked up into those burning pools in their unmistakable, wonderfully sculpted sockets. “Of course!”