“I’ll be eating here,” said Antony with a gasp, and Charley Mountfitchet smiled.
Mrs. Ogden, newly returned from a house-hunting expedition, was commiserating with Doris on the aftermath of the cheese plant’s accidental de-potting as Tina Holloway danced in through the George’s main door.
“Someone looks happy,” observed Doris with a cheerful wave of the duster with which she had been polishing the final traces of calamity from the leathery leaves.
Tina radiated happiness. “Isn’t it a lovely evening? Hello, Mrs. Ogden. Doris, I’d better let you know now that I won’t be eating here tonight.” She pointedly ignored the snort of muted fury that burst from over by the entrance to the bar. “Nigel Colveden is taking me out to dinner.”
“Somewhere nice, I’m sure,” said Doris, in turn ignoring what sounded like a second furious snort. “Young Nigel, he knows his stuff when it comes to a fancy dinner.”
Mrs. Ogden, taking her cue from the others, also chose to ignore the snorting figure on the far side of the foyer. “I’ve seen a number of classy restaurants while I’ve been driving around and about.” She chuckled. “Not that somewhere posh to eat is the best way of choosing a place to retire, is it? Still, once in a while you do like to splash out, so I’ve popped into one or two for lunch—and their looks don’t lie. You’re an honest crowd in this part of the world, you know.”
“So we are,” said Doris, pitching her voice a little louder. “There’s been nobody try any tricks about payment at the George for quite a spell, believe you me.”
“I believe you,” said Mrs. Ogden with a wry smile.
Much of the by-play was lost on Tina, whose main concern was to prepare for her night on such town as Nigel decided to show her. “I don’t know when I’ll be back,” she said to Doris. “What time do you lock up?”
Mrs. Ogden’s titter was drowned out by the most furious snort so far, although Antony was still so cowed by recent experiences that he did not dare to speak. “Oh, Miss Holloway,” she said with a light laugh, “you make this lovely old pub sound like a prison!”
Doris smiled, then pursed her lips. “Well, dear, that depends on how busy we are, except being winter like it is we won’t be open all hours as we would in summer. Did you want someone to stay up for you?”
That she hoped Tina wanted no such thing was so obvious the girl’s response was immediate. “Goodness, no thanks, if you can let me have a night key instead.” The distant sound of grinding teeth was music to her ears. “And I suppose it would be a bit silly if I handed in my room key when I left, wouldn’t it? If there’ll be nobody at the desk to give it back to me later, I mean.”
“Because you don’t how much later,” Doris agreed brightly. “You could always ring, I suppose, if you don’t leave it too late,” she said with a nod for Mrs. Ogden, whose sleep might be disturbed by midnight callers. “And if they get the phones fixed like they promised, which I doubt.”
“Nigel said he saw some repairmen up a ladder,” Tina told her. “He said they said it shouldn’t be long—but it would be a shame to wake anyone up just to let me in,” she added sweetly. “Yes, I’ll take a night key, if I may.”
Doris grinned as she handed it over. Mrs. Ogden smiled, and Tina floated blissfully up the stairs, quite failing to notice the large male figure, clad in black, looming with folded arms beside the newel post.
Doris and Mrs. Ogden exchanged amused glances. Antony, intercepting them, emitted one final snort and stamped back to the bar. Charley Mountfitchet, without a word, mixed a fourth cocktail ... and handed him the menu for dinner.
Antony took the hint and was in the dining room waiting for his soup by the time Tina climbed into Nigel’s MG and was whisked off into the starry night. Morosely the artist wondered where the man was taking her, how long they would be gone, and what plots they might contrive to hatch while they—both friends of Miss Seeton—were somewhere he, the victimised Scarlett, could not hear them ... and yet if the pair were indeed elsewhere, they couldn’t be here, could they? There. Over the road in Sweetbriars, protecting Miss Seeton ...
Antony ordered a bottle of red wine in celebration.
Vegetable soup, steak and potatoes, and chocolate (of course) sponge pudding leave a man with a comfortable feeling inside. Antony demanded a second cup of coffee while he brooded some more, then wrapped himself in his cape and went out of the George to do battle again with Miss Emily Seeton. A crisp breeze whistled south down The Street to ruffle the black gaberdine folds and send a draught down the Londoner’s neck. He shivered. The country: you could keep it. Thank heaven he had only a matter of yards to walk before he was at her door ...
There were no lights on at the front of the house. There were—Antony squinted down the narrow passage between the house and the high brick wall—no lights in any of the side rooms, either. Even he did not have the nerve to check the back: and in any case, if he had, he could have guessed at the outcome. Miss Seeton was not at home.
“She was here earlier,” he reminded himself as, to make absolutely sure, he rang the doorbell. “I should have kept a closer watch, but ...” But he did not remind himself of his rout at the hands of Doris, the cheese plant, and Charley Mountfitchet. “To be out on a night like this ...”
Another northerly blast ruffled his cape and made him shiver. He pulled the black folds more closely about him as he extended a frozen finger to press the bell again.
Miss Seeton did not answer. She was definitely not at home. “Out,” groaned Antony Scarlett. “And who knows when she will return? That means tomorrow to speak to her ...”
He so far forgot himself as to fling his arms sideways in the familiar Artistic Gesture. “Gone!” he cried as the breeze billowed his cape into an icy balloon. “Gone with the wind ...” He gathered the black folds about him. “When tomorrow is another day ...”
He paused. He spoke the line again. He nodded, pleased with himself; then he turned on his heel and stalked majestically down Miss Seeton’s path, out of her gate, and back across the road to the George and Dragon.
chapter
~ 15 ~
AS THE SUN went down and the darkling world became stark and cold and cheerless, in a lonely house in a quiet village somewhere in Kent an old man stood at bay.
He was not yet afraid: he was angry. On age-bowed legs he squared up to the burly workman looming over him, ignoring the even burlier companion in the shadows. He shook his withered fist as the large, unwelcome visitor repeated his extortionate demands and he defied him in a voice that sixty years ago had barked orders across a parade ground.
“What d’you mean you want three hundred pounds? Thirty, you said, and thirty’s all you’re getting—and lucky to get that, the shoddy job you’ve made of it!”
“Thirty pounds a square yard, squire. You weren’t listening properly—but at your age that’s no surprise.” The old man uttered an outraged cry, but the burly man talked over him. “Ten square yards in your driveway—that makes it three hundred quid in anyone’s book. And we’re not leaving here till we get it.”
“Then you’ll have a long wait, because you won’t get it from me! I didn’t spend the best years of my life being gassed in the trenches to feather the nests of rotten, cheating scum like you. That stuff you’ve laid out there’s so thin you can almost see through it in places, and if it lasts more than a week once the snow and frost arrive, I’ll be very surprised. Three hundred quid for a job like that? Even thirty’s too much!”
The burly man loomed over him. “Depends on your sense of values, squire. Thirty quid’s dead cheap, I reckon.” In the shadows, the burlier companion sniggered. “Dead cheap,” repeated the burly man, looming closer, breathing hard into the old man’s face. “For three hundred, now—that’s still a bargain. Like insurance, if you know what I mean. You never realize what it’s worth until you use it.” Now it was his turn to snigger. “Or lose it, as you might say. Don’t want to lose—anything—do you, squire?”
; The old soldier’s heart beat faster, but he took only one step backwards before saying: “Don’t you dare threaten me! Get out of my house before I call the police!”
“Not without what’s owed,” said the burly man. “One way or another,” he added as his companion took a silent step forward. “You say we owe you—well, we say you owe us. Three hundred pounds, or ...”
The old man was more than half a century too late to be able to withstand what happened next.
The roar of the motorbike faded swiftly northwards as Wayne tried to catch up the time he had lost waiting for Maureen to finish her face before accepting his escort to work. As the devoted youth disappeared in the direction of Brettenden, Maureen, smothering a yawn, ambled into the George for the ritual morning scold from Doris.
“There’s Mrs. Ogden already up and gone for the day,” Doris told her as she teetered on her platform shoes, “and breakfast to start clearing for lunch while I check the grocery order—except you’d best leave the two corner tables a bit longer, on account of how Miss Holloway and Mr. Scarlett have both put ‘Do Not Disturb’ on their doors, and there’s no telling when they’ll be down.”
Maureen stared. After a moment she sniggered and put her hand in front of her mouth. “Have they?”
“They have,” said Doris. “And there’s no call to think such idiotic thoughts, my girl. Miss Holloway was out with Nigel Colveden till past midnight, and Mr. Scarlett was in the bar most of the evening, saving a short walk for some fresh air after dinner. Don’t stand there gawping like that, Maureen. Get along with you to work—do go on!”
She chivvied Maureen into the dining room and warned her not to use the vacuum cleaner until at least one of the two guests roomed above should wake. Maureen, feeling hard-done-by, clumped wearily from table to kitchen and back with her hands full of plates and dishes, while Doris retreated to the larder armed with a notepad and pencil. Of Charley Mountfitchet there was no sign.
The whites (and rims) of Antony Scarlett’s eyes matched his name as he at last put in an appearance. His face was pale, in his temples beat a pulse visible even to unobservant Maureen, and he kept taking long, shuddering breaths. “Coffee,” he croaked, collapsing on a chair and closing his eyes against the sight of Maureen in the full morning glory of her make-up. “Black,” he added. “Strong.”
Maureen sighed. “Instant okay?” It would be too much effort to drag out the grinder for one miserable cup, which was all he looked as if he’d be able to get down him before, well, the worst happened. If it hadn’t already, of course. And if it had, she wasn’t going to be the one to do his room once he signed out, not blooming likely she wasn’t.
Antony sighed, too. “Instant.” Anything more witty and cosmopolitan was beyond him, and he could not have nodded—or boomed—to save his life. “Okay,” he said and closed his eyes in dismissal. His head fell back, and the artistic lock of hair across his brow slipped to one side, disclosing a darkening bruise. Maureen vaguely assumed he must have taken a tumble getting into bed last night. It wasn’t likely anyone had thumped him. Was it?
The thump of the service door was a torment to Antony, and when a second thump was followed by the clatter of cup on saucer as Maureen dropped them on the table, his torment was even greater. He opened his eyes again. “Ugh,” he said as he saw what it was. Maureen chose to take this remark as a personal affront and clumped off in the direction of the service door, behind which she vanished, never to return.
“The cheek of him,” she moaned to Doris, who had temporarily abandoned her shopping list to check the balance of the loaded dishwasher before switching it on. “Rolled his eyes at me real horrible, too, he did.”
“Did he?” Doris darted back to her list, scribbled “lge” after “salt,” dashed back to the machine, and switched it on. Maureen blinked at the energy of her example and yawned in heartfelt sympathy as Doris said: “He made a night of it last night, by all accounts. When you come to do the rooms, best leave his for last in case he wants to go back and sleep it off. Save changing the sheets twice.” She dashed back to her pad and made another note to charge him for a second day if he did.
“Well then, there’s only Mrs. Ogden,” said Maureen, “with Miss Holloway still not down.” She yawned massively and sat down on the nearest chair. “So I might as well leave the whole blooming lot to do together later. Save disturbing anyone with the vacuum, and that.”
Doris, underlining “lge,” wondered whether Maureen’s instinct for survival was rather more than the George could be expected to cope with. Lazy Maureen, obedient to instruction because she couldn’t be bothered to be anything else, was one thing. Maureen thinking for herself might result in mutiny. “Now, you just get along,” snapped Doris, “and don’t argue, all right?”
“Oh ... all right,” said Maureen. Doris had sounded unaccountably fierce. Maybe it had been her who’d thumped Mr. Scarlett, though why she should Maureen couldn’t imagine, Doris not being the sort men got fresh with even if they’d drunk the barrel dry. It was too early in the morning, however, for the spark of rebellion to stay alight for long. “Just get along,” she’d been told.
She got. Yawning again, she drifted out of the kitchen through the green baize door into the hall, pausing en route to pick up a feather duster from the broom cupboard. Feathers didn’t make a noise. She could do the stairs, the corners of the corridor ceiling, and ...
And answer the telephone, which was shrilling rhythmically on its rubber mat in one corner of the reception desk. Maureen glanced over her shoulder before approaching it. No sign of Doris; of Mr. Mountfitchet. She wasn’t paid to do it, but she supposed she’d better.
She picked up the receiver. “Hello,” she said, with no elaboration beyond a weary sigh.
“Is that the George and Dragon?” enquired a young man’s voice, sounding hurried and a little puzzled.
“Yes,” said Maureen, sighing again.
“Oh.” Despite the hurry, there was a pause. “Is that Maureen?” came the next enquiry as the puzzle was solved.
“Yes,” said Maureen: of this fact she was sure. Gears began to mesh slowly in her mind. “Who’s that?”
“Nigel Colveden. Look, I’m calling from a box in Ashford and I’m short of change, but I just wanted a quick word with Miss Holloway. Can you fetch her?”
“She’s not down yet.” In sympathy, Maureen yawned for the umpteenth time. “She had a late night, Doris says.”
“Yes, I know.” Nigel’s smugness was twofold: Tina’s late night had been spent with him, and he, a working farmer, had managed to rise at six the next day. “I suppose she’s posted ‘Do Not Disturb,’ so I won’t ask you to put me through to her room, but could you take a message?”
“A message. Hang on.” Maureen looked about her for something on, and something else with, which to write. The frantic cries of Nigel, abandoned with a clunk on the rubber mat, called her back.
“Maureen, wait! There’s no time—I told you I was running out of change—just tell her, please, that she’s not to worry, I found her earring in my car and I’ll drop it in around lunchtime when I’ve finished here. Could you—?”
“Could I what?” Maureen regarded the telephone doubtfully as it beeped in her hand. There was no knowing what Nigel Colveden might not ask a girl to do ... if she was lucky. If what folk said was true. As if the likes of her would ever find out! The disconnection beeps turned to the dialling tone, and she sighed. She replaced the receiver, sighed again, and picked up her feather duster. Some girls had all the luck. That Miss Holloway—looked good, lovely clothes, lived in London ... Some girls didn’t know they were born, unlike others stuck in Plummergen from one year’s end to the next. It wasn’t fair.
Maureen’s nature was too idle to bear a grudge, except against her worst best friend Emmy Putts, but her feeling of wistful envy turned to dull resentment against the more fortunate Tina Holloway. The feather duster was exchanged for the vacuum cleaner, and Maureen bumped it step by step up
the stairs to start rolling it at full throttle back and forth along the corridor in which lay Tina’s room. Lazy cow. If Nigel Colveden could wake up, so could she. Everyone else was out of bed, even Mr. Scarlett ...
Antony was still downstairs, recovering over his coffee; Mrs. Ogden was (Maureen supposed) out on her regular retirement cottage hunt. Maureen herself was left to trundle the cleaner up and down and to bump it against the skirting board and the base of Tina’s door for a quarter of an hour before Doris wondered where she was and came looking for her. The cleaner was an old and noisy one: Doris wasted no time in shouting. She bent to switch off the plug at the socket, and as Maureen turned to find out where the power had suddenly gone, Doris let rip.
“You stupid girl, what are you playing at? Can’t you read? Didn’t I tell you there was ‘Do Not Disturb’ up and you weren’t to do along here until everyone was down?” And more in similar vein.
“Sorry,” mumbled Maureen when Doris finally ran out of steam and realised that her shrill harangue must have been the final straw for the weary, trying-to-sleep-late Miss Holloway. “Didn’t think.”
“You never do.” Doris stifled a groan. As Maureen’s superior, she must shoulder the ultimate blame for Maureen’s faults and make such reparation as seemed suitable. A bit knocked off the bill, perhaps? Apology alone wouldn’t be enough. Breakfast in bed today at no extra charge? She couldn’t have slept through that little lot. Room service would be a start ...
Doris tapped on Tina’s door. “Miss Holloway!” There was no reply. She tapped again with the tip of her pass key, a distinct, unmissable sound. Still no reply.
“She’ll be in the bath, I dare say,” said Doris. She tapped once more, announced herself, and cautiously opened the door, calling Tina’s name as she did so.
Sweet Miss Seeton (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 20) Page 20
