Sweet Miss Seeton (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 20)

by Hamilton Crane

  Miss Seeton wondered privately about the integrity of such a scheme, while admitting there was something to be said for subterfuge where serious loss of appetite was concerned. Loss of appetite? “Why,” she exclaimed, relieved at this coincidental chance to change the subject yet again, “there she is!”

  “Who?” Molly, preparing to launch into a discussion of the relative merits of Hamburgh hens (white eggs), Anconas (cream) and Rhode Island Reds (brown), was confused by the unexpected interruption. “Where? Oh,” she said, following Miss Seeton’s gaze and pointing umbrella to the blacksmith’s forge diagonally across The Street. In the deep shadows cast by the double doors, a slim female form could just be seen. “Your young artist friend, of course. She seems to be enjoying her stay in these parts, though I would have thought it on the quiet side for someone her age. She does a lot of sightseeing, I gather.”

  “I believe so,” agreed Miss Seeton. “I know little of her plans—a chance acquaintance more than a close friend—but I know she has been taking the bus a good deal.”

  “Seen her at the stop myself,” said Miss Treeves, then coughed as the bus-taker turned from where, bent over her sketchpad, she leaned against the massive doorpost to wave her pencilled hand towards the approaching pair of amiable gossips.

  Miss Seeton, discreetly pink, waved back. Miss Treeves, who had not been formally introduced, bowed and smiled in her character of The Vicar’s Sister. Tina Holloway waved again, brandishing her sketchpad with evident pride. Miss Seeton, with swift understanding, made gestures of approval and congratulation with her free hand, then excused herself to Miss Treeves on the grounds that she believed her opinion might be being sought. Miss Treeves, knowing her friend’s former occupation as a teacher of art, bowed again, nodded amiably to Tina, and continued to wend her way homewards as Miss Seeton crossed The Street.

  “I haven’t seen you for ages, Miss Seeton!” Miss Seeton stifled a gasp. This bright and lively girl was a far cry from the pale, sad, self-doubting guest of just a few days ago. “I’ve been having a marvellous time,” Tina babbled as her elderly acquaintance drew near. “I did as you suggested and bought myself a fresh sketching kit”—Miss Seeton looked startled at the idea her casual words had been considered firm advice, but said nothing—“and I’ve been hopping on buses all over the place. I went to Rye—look ...”

  She leafed through her sketchbook until she reached the pages dedicated to half-timbered buildings in black and white, cobbled streets, and lobster pots. “What do you think of him?” she asked of a gnarled old man in a peaked cap, repairing nets by the quayside.

  “The minimum of strokes,” said Miss Seeton after a moment, “to the maximum effect. There is ... life in this drawing, my dear. It’s good.”

  “I’m glad you think so.” A few days ago, Miss Seeton’s slightest disapproval would have cast the young artist into the depths of despair: now her decided approval produced no more than a pleased smile from someone clearly confident of her own abilities. Tina was sharing her work with Miss Seeton as one artist to another, not as a nervous pupil begging for reassurance. She flipped to another page.

  “Recognise him?”

  “Naturally,” said Miss Seeton with a twinkle. “Though I must confess my ignorance of exactly what he is doing.”

  “But you’ve known Nigel since you first came to live in Plummergen!” Tina was amazed that someone who had spent more than seven years in the country should be so ignorant of country pursuits: then she realised that her amazement might sound, well, insulting to the older woman who had been so kind to her. “He’s, um, laying a hedge,” she explained quickly. “Hawthorn.” Miss Seeton, not in the least insulted, was all polite interest. Relieved, Tina went on: “You cut almost through the stems just above the ground, then bend them over and weave them in place with stakes and pegs. Nigel told me a properly laid hedge can last for years and only need trimming each winter to keep it tidy.”

  “With ditching,” said Miss Seeton with a nod, remembering. “Yes, of course. They hold competitions sometimes.”

  Tina giggled. “Nigel told me about the last time a team from Murreystone entered.” Miss Seeton recalled the report in the local paper and sighed. “I had no idea,” said Tina with another giggle, “that life outside London could be so interesting. I really must visit Murreystone before much longer. Nigel says I need to widen my horizons.”

  “This,” said Miss Seeton, one of nature’s literalists, “is certainly the place for that. The marsh ...”

  “Oh, yes. I remember how you showed me from the bridge that you can practically see all the way to Dungeness and the coast, and it’s—how far? Ten miles? Nigel’s going to take me to the bird sanctuary there, he says.”

  It was news to Miss Seeton that Mr. Colveden had developed a taste for ornithology, but when there was a pretty girl in the case, his actions were seldom without purpose. “Which will be very interesting,” agreed Miss Seeton, herself no mean wielder of binoculars.

  “And the power station, if he can spare the time.” The lovely eyes gleamed. “They say you can go on guided tours, and it would fit in wonderfully with my plan—the British Workman, Miss Seeton. Honest toil, and so on.” Tina opened her sketchbook to show the first swift lines depicting smith Daniel Eggleden hammering an iron bar. “And Nigel’s friend from the garage ...” She turned back a few pages. “What’s his name? Jack something ...”

  Miss Seeton had no time to murmur “Crabbe” before another sketch was presented for inspection. “Nigel asked him,” Tina said, “if he’d mind my watching him fix a car, and he said he didn’t. What do you think?”

  “Again, good.” Miss Seeton smiled at the sight of Jack Crabbe with a spanner in one hand and some anonymous piece of motor vehicle engine in the other; and at an enormous pair of boots on the next page, shown protruding from underneath the chassis of a car. Boots and no more: but they clearly belonged to the invisible Jack. There was more than everyday talent there. “A series?” guessed Miss Seeton. “Your own exhibition, perhaps?”

  Tina nodded. “When I’m ready—but I’m not going to rush it. I wondered at first, you know, whether I mightn’t try for the Stuttaford Prize. Victorians were great ones for encouraging honest toil, weren’t they? So it would be quite in the spirit of the founder, and if I could put something together before the end of the year ... But then ...” She became grave. “I saw that it would be ... vindictive. I’m not saying I’d stand a chance of winning, any more than I think”—only the briefest hesitation—“Antony does, but I wouldn’t normally enter anything like that because—well, I’m not sure art ought really to be competitive. You can’t judge—oh, sculpture and painting on equal terms, can you? It would be like asking someone to choose between lobster and ice cream.” She did not hesitate to use this culinary simile; neither did she blush or look uneasy. It seemed that Tina’s cure was complete.

  “The terms and conditions, as I read them in the paper, did seem somewhat ... imprecise,” agreed Miss Seeton. “No doubt those wishing to enter will be given more detailed information when they send for the entry form.”

  “No doubt Antony has already done so.” Tina’s voice was not so much grave now as scornful. “I knew there had to be some reason he kept rushing down here every five minutes, as all my so-called friends have been only too eager to tell me—but I don’t know what it is, and I don’t care.” Miss Seeton, who both knew and cared, sighed, but said nothing. “No more grudges,” said Tina with resolution. “I won’t exactly forgive and forget, but I’m not ... out for his blood any longer. If I met him in the street tomorrow, I would nod and smile and walk away. I’ve ... outgrown all that, Miss Seeton.”

  Miss Seeton regarded her thoughtfully. In the end, she smiled. “Yes, my dear,” she said slowly. “I believe you have. Well done.”

  And Tina, once more glowing, began to show her mentor the sketch she had made of a Brettenden road-sweeper leaning on his broom while his partner poured tea from a flask.

 
Gallery owner Genefer Watson, masterminding the publicity campaign of her latest protégé, had decreed that Antony Scarlett must give The People Who Mattered the best possible chance to acquaint themselves with his doings. The Neurotic Hermit had been last year’s success: this year’s was to be the Genius Extrovert. Antony’s flamboyant garb and distinctive mannerisms of swirling cape and booming voice would be wasted if he went everywhere by car. She had toyed with the idea of making him ride a penny farthing, but decided that in London’s traffic there was too great a risk of his cape catching in the spokes and tipping him into the path of a motor vehicle with faulty brakes: besides, Antony had little liking for physical exertion. It had not been for aesthetic reasons alone that he had required his model to resemble one who lived her life entirely between bed, board, and sofa rather than one who rose early, visited the swimming baths after breaking her fast on crispbread, and jogged the rest of the day away before dining on lettuce and spring water.

  It had been with a delightful sense of creative inspiration that Genefer had instructed Antony in how to be Visible from one end of his journey to the other. He must walk to a bus stop two stages from his home and take none but a red double-decker to the nearest Tube station. Should the rush of air up the down escalator, or through the tunnels, cause his cloak to billow artistically in the face of a passerby, so much the better: he must apologise at full volume and at length. Could he bring himself to kiss the hand of the victim (if female), better still. A nonsmoker, he must object forcefully should anyone light up in his presence. Should he decide to take even a small bag with him, he must ensure that he (a) found a porter to carry it and (b) tipped said porter with a bar of chocolate (what else?) as well as with coin of the realm. He must spurn any offer of a taxi at the other end and take the bus (regrettably green, but you couldn’t have everything) from Brettenden to Plummergen ...

  It was the afternoon of market day when Antony arrived for what felt like the umpteenth time at Brettenden railway station. Truth to tell, he was growing weary of these trips down to Kent to talk Miss Seeton into changing her mind. Despite the repeated assurances of Miss Watson, he had a nasty feeling Miss Seeton wasn’t going to change her mind. The more he saw of the woman (on those occasions when he caught her unawares), the more she reminded him—in character, if not in physique—of his Aunt Hilda, deceased this past decade but still a family byword for obstinacy (his female cousins) and sheer awful bloody-mindedness (male ditto). Miss Seeton made him feel uncomfortably as if he were a schoolboy again, not Antony Scarlett the rising young—though not so young as that—conceptual artist. While she had been surprised by his first visit, surprise (he suspected) had soon given way to polite irritation. There hovered about her still the distant air of chalk and sharp knuckle-rapping rulers by which he had been made so wretched at school. The nearest he’d got to making her pay him any serious attention had been when that brolly of hers had clumped him on the chin and almost laid him out; and she hadn’t let him in the house since ...

  The house. Sweetbriars: the perfect site for “Briars Sweet,” his sure-to-be prize winning tribute to the eminence of Sir Andrew Stuttaford. But—perhaps, just perhaps—perfection was beyond his reach? And, if so, could he settle for second best? Antony hadn’t admitted as much to Genefer, but there had been a recent damp and cloudy night when, doffing his distinctive cape, he had sneaked (by taxi) across suburban borders to a library where, unrecognised, he’d consulted a few files of large-scale Ordinance Survey maps for a similar-to-Sweetbriars configuration of canal, road, and dwelling. He had grown bored before long and sneaked home again, but there was at the back of his mind the feeling that he might possibly do as well to cut his losses and try somewhere—someone—else for his Ideal Location. Genefer might say that for True Art No Sacrifice Was Too Great, and it was certainly a good PR line, but Antony had his doubts that Miss Seeton would ever willingly play the PR game. There was always the risk she might make it look as if he’d been bullying her, which would do him no good at all with the singly philanthropic Stuttafords ...

  A gust of wind caught the folds of Antony’s cape as he climbed into the waiting bus. For an instant, he froze with one foot on the step, one off. All heads—and, this being market day, there were many—turned to look, then turned hastily away. Plummergen feet shuffled as people prepared to leave their seats. That mad artist bloke as kept visiting Miss Seeton was back and pulling faces like a regular lunatic. Best keep out of range, just in case ...

  “Damn this wind,” muttered Antony, sitting down to scowl at his reflection in the window opposite as the conductor rang the bell and the bus juddered into life. “Damn this miserable journey! If only the wretched woman would agree ...” If she did, his success was assured once his master work was complete. He would never need to visit Plummergen again—except for photo calls arranged, of course, by the Galerie Genèvre, for which he would arrive by taxi. Fame and fortune and creature comforts would be his, along with the Stuttaford Prize ...

  “Thank you,” said the bus conductor, in a third-time-of-asking voice. Antony surfaced with a blink from his blissful visions of a future financially secured on the strength of his artistic genius and (inevitably) the efforts of the Watson publicity machine. “Plummergen?” guessed the conductor, jingling his money pouch. He remembered (who could forget?) Antony Scarlett from previous visits. “Return?”

  “Naturally.” Antony, radiating delight at this evidence of his growing fame, fished through a flap in his cape for the coins in his trouser pocket. His volatile mood was now so buoyant that he was tempted to tell the man to keep the change, holding back only because an accusation of bribery of a transport official was the sort of publicity he (and by association Genefer) could do without. Handing over instead a bar of chocolate as per instructions, he nodded graciously as he accepted his ticket, then settled with impatience to observe the passing scenery as the outskirts of Plummergen rattled slowly into view.

  The market shoppers, still wary of what he might do—he’d been groaning and pulling faces something awful—waited until the artist had left the bus before hurrying to the doors in a huddle and clustering together beside the bus stop as Antony disappeared southwards down The Street in a black, red-satin-lined flurry.

  “Well!” was the general opinion, offered in muted tones in case the madman should overhear and, enraged, turn back. With one accord everybody moved to the door of the post office, ready to dash inside if danger threatened, but until that time watching eagerly to see what might happen next.

  The Street is long, wide, and almost straight: almost. The gentle curve of its length meant that what happened next was better seen by those Plummergenites who were at home, peeping through the windows of their front rooms, than by those who weren’t. Antony Scarlett, his cape flapping, strode south in the direction of Sweetbriars. Tina Holloway, her sketchbook in her hand, emerged from the door of The George and Dragon heading north towards Crabbe’s Garage, where Jack had promised to do something else, rather more mechanical, for her to admire. Both Antony, leaving the bus, and Tina, making for the garage, walked on the same side of The Street ...

  Where in due course they met.

  chapter

  ~ 14 ~

  MISS SEETON, POISED to pour boiling water from the kettle to the pot, stayed her hand as the doorbell rang. A visitor: perhaps more than one: perhaps the telephone engineer. She would leave making tea until she knew how strong it needed to be. Her preference for weak (one spoon for each person and none for the pot) was shared, she knew, by few. One could always water strong tea to an acceptable weakness, but it wasn’t easy to strengthen, as it were, what others might call weak tea to make its taste acceptable to a true-blue English palate.

  As she set down the kettle and prepared to welcome her guest, personal or professional, the doorbell rang again, impatiently. Not, then, a visitor with whom she was well acquainted. The telephone man, then, eager to finish work for the day. Miss Seeton, with a faint sigh, walked—briskly, a
s a hospitable concession to impatience—down the hall. Unless, of course, it was some kind of emergency, which she hadn’t thought being without a working telephone for twenty-four hours had been, when one could always go to Mr. Stillman at the other end of The Street, where the phones were still working. But an emergency ...

  Miss Seeton walked a little faster and opened the door with something approaching a jerk.

  She stared in surprise at the figure drooping before her with a sketchbook in its hand.

  “Oh, Miss Seeton!” The tearful face of Tina Holloway gazed at her from the step. “Oh, thank goodness you’re in—it’s dreadful!”

  Rightly surmising that it was not her presence at home, but some other circumstance that so exercised her young acquaintance, Miss Seeton clicked her tongue gently, reached out a firm hand, and drew the girl inside. Tear stains and incoherent speech did not mean, thank goodness, too serious an emergency: the young were always so intense. “Suppose,” she suggested, “we have a cup of tea. You will feel so much better, and you can tell me all about it—if, that is, you wish to,” she added. One did not care to pry, even if Tina had seemed more than happy to tell her all about it last time and indeed had asked for her opinion. Depending, of course, on what “it” was this time. And it was somewhat embarrassing to be thought, as the poor child had implied that she did, an oracle. Miss Seeton tried to hide her involuntary smile. Dear Mr. Delphick—tall, distinguished, quick of wits and polished of manner—how very different from her own retiring self ...

  “Oh!” Tina had seen the smile and misinterpreted it. “Oh, Miss Seeton, please don’t laugh—it’s so cruel ...”

  Miss Seeton’s heart sank. Where was the child’s hard-won self-confidence in which she had revelled for the past few days? She was as distressed—as deflated—now as she had been a week ago. The hands that clasped the sketchbook were knotted and white with tension, the voice thick with further unshed tears. “My dear Tina,” said Miss Seeton, after a moment leading her visitor past the sitting room to the kitchen, “this isn’t like you. What could have happened to upset you so? And don’t start crying again,” she warned as Tina’s lovely eyes began to brim. “Sit at the table—that is, no.” She remembered how it never did any harm to take a fretful child’s mind off its woes. “If you could fetch the cups and plates from that cupboard, while I make the tea? Thank you,” she added with a smile and a nod of approval, as Tina, surreptitiously wiping her eyes, hurried to obey.