Sweet Miss Seeton (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 20)

by Hamilton Crane

  “A sketchbook,” suggested Foxon, not quite bold enough to suggest that Brinton should open it and find out for himself, and sympathetic to his unspoken reasons for not doing so. “This Tina was some sort of artist, sir, Ned Potter says. She’s been sketching people like Jack Crabbe and Dan Eggleden while they work.”

  Brinton, who’d instinctively winced on hearing Tina’s calling, relaxed a little and nodded. “Makes what MissEss was saying a bit clearer, then: it’s logical artistic types will pal up with one another when their paths cross. Unless the girl came to Plummergen on purpose to meet her—or was a former pupil or something. We’ll find out later when we start talking to people—but first things first, laddie. If they’re ready for us, we’d better go.”

  chapter

  ~ 17 ~

  THEY REACHED THE third doorway on the left of the main corridor and halted on the threshold to survey the scene within. Those blocking their line of sight—the photographer, a man with a tape measure, another with an assortment of labelled plastic bags—moved hurriedly out of the way and received their official congé from Brinton, who dismissed them about their business with the warning that he expected full reports to be on his desk by the time he was back in the office.

  “Potter, you stay,” he added as the rest of the team disappeared in the direction of the stairs. “First things first. Who certified the death?”

  “Dr. Knight, sir. Charley—Mr. Mountfitchet,” amended Potter quickly, recollecting that his friend must be legally as much of a suspect as the scarlet stranger, “he thought she was dead the minute he saw her, but with young Maureen having hysterics and even Doris in a state, not to mention that artist bloke”—once more Brinton winced—“with a hangover, he phoned up to the nursing home even before he phoned me. Sir.”

  Potter had observed the wince and stood sharply to attention as he pressed on with his apologia. “With him being on the spot anyway, so to speak, I didn’t think it was worth troubling Doc Wyddial all the way from Brettenden. Sir.”

  Brinton grunted. Potter shuffled his boots but said nothing further. Brinton nodded. “Dr. Knight still around?”

  “Yes, sir, downstairs in the restaurant. I got Charley—that is, Mr. Mountfitchet—sorry, sir,” he apologised as a curse burst from the superintendent, who then looked about him for some suitable missile to relieve his complex emotions. His grasp tightened on the brown-paper package, but with a visible effort he held himself in check. “I asked Charley,” said Potter, giving up, “to keep an eye at the front—stop folk peering through the windows as they’d otherwise be sure to do.”

  Again Brinton grunted and nodded. Slowly Potter’s shoulders relaxed. “And seeing as I had to secure the scene of the crime, sir, and couldn’t be in two places at once, and with Scarlett—Mr. Scarlett—under the weather and no knowing how he might react, I asked the doctor if he wouldn’t mind sort of keeping an eye on him until you got here, sir, and had a word with him. If that’s all right, sir.”

  “All right, Potter. I doubt if I could’ve arranged it any better. Well done.” Potter allowed himself a grin of relief. Brinton decided to make him earn it. “Talking of keeping an eye, you go on down now and ask the doctor to join us, if he will.” He handed him the brown-paper package. “I’ll take a look later, but you keep an eye on this at the same time you keep the other on this Scarlett who seems to be Suspect Number One in most people’s book—but who’s innocent until proved guilty,” Brinton added grimly. He had no need to add the name of an even more promising Number One. Nigel Colveden, as he had said earlier to Foxon, was definitely in the frame for this one ...

  “Right,” reiterated Brinton as Potter clumped off in the direction of the dining room. “Can’t put off the evil hour any longer, Foxon.”

  “Er—no, sir.”

  “Come on, then.” The superintendent took his first cautious step over the threshold of the bedroom of the late Miss Tina Holloway.

  The two detectives stood for a few moments in respectful silence beside the young woman’s body before Foxon ventured to speak. “She must have been a real looker, sir. That figure—that hair ...”

  “She might have been,” Brinton corrected him gloomily. “Unless there are any Before photographs of the poor kid, we’ve only got the After to go on, and with her face in such a state we can’t tell, can we?”

  “No, sir.” Foxon sighed for the tragic waste of a human life, especially a human no older (as far as he could judge) than himself. “Well, blue’s never been one of my favourite colours.” Cracking a joke—it didn’t matter how feeble—was often the only way a police officer could keep his sanity when the circumstances were warranted to send those unused to horrors screaming from the room, as had happened with Maureen and, more discreetly, to Doris.

  Brinton averted his gaze from that bruised, bloated face with its undignified scarlet petechial dots. Thank goodness her eyes were closed. With that hair (if it was natural, which they’d know soon enough) her eyes would most likely be green—or grey. He shuddered. Grey was horribly close to blue; to black. Bruised black and blue ...

  Time to get to work. “Attacked from the front,” he began. “No sign of a ligature, so it’s not the old catch-her-by-surprise over-the-head-and-pull trick. She’ll have seen him coming—could have been chatting to him friendly as you please and been so startled by the change there was nothing she could do about it.” He did not mention Nigel Colveden as the most likely male to have been chatting in friendly fashion to Tina alone in her room at midnight.

  Foxon knew the way his chief’s mind was working. “He could have pushed inside when she opened the door and caught her off guard that way, sir. Just because there are no obvious signs of a struggle doesn’t necessarily mean she knew him well enough to have, uh, asked him in.”

  Brinton grunted. “He was right-handed,” he observed after a pause. “Look at the bruises on her neck.”

  Foxon looked; nodded. With this, at least, he was happy to agree at once. “Fingers on the left, thumb on the right, fainter marks the other side: yes, sir. And he moved her afterwards,” he went on, though he hardly needed to. Tina lay with her arms across her chest and her legs together, discreetly covered by the folds of the long skirt she had worn for her night out with Nigel—was there no avoiding that young man’s name? Victims of violent death never fall so neatly. “Tidied her up, if you like.”

  “Odd how some of ’em do that.” Brinton scowled at the silent figure on the floor by his feet without seeing her. “They don’t want to think they’ve really done anything so very bad, after all. Reduces the impact for ’em if they don’t leave her lying in a heap the way she fell, but nice and tidy as if she’d just dropped off to sleep. The trick cyclists have a fancier explanation for it, I dare say.” He glanced at Foxon. “What do you say, laddie?”

  Foxon sighed. One of them had to say it: and he was the junior officer. “She was a tall girl: no featherweight, even if she was slim. Not easy to drag her around without leaving traces unless ...”

  “Unless he was a weightlifter. Of sorts,” Brinton finished for him. “Mountfitchet spends half his time humping barrels of beer and crates of wine up and down the cellar steps. Young Colveden’s a farmer—and show me a single farmer who’s a nine-stone weakling. It’s no good, Foxon. Artists just don’t need that much muscle, do they?”

  “Depends what sort they are, sir. I mean, dabbing paint from a brush is one thing—but a sculptor ...”

  “Ah. Yes. You did say something about that, I remember.” He brightened. “Yes, a sculptor. Before he got on to chocolate he’ll have used chunks of stone, lumps of metal, bits of concrete. Good. Maybe we won’t go rushing off to Rytham Hall the minute we’re done here.” He brightened further. “Maybe we’ll have more than a preliminary chat with Antony Scarlett, after all.”

  Dr. Knight confirmed their theories, adding that Tina had died between midnight and dawn: the post mortem (which he, as an unofficial party, would not be conducting) ought to give them a b
etter idea. She had put up only a little fight: her killer had indeed taken her by surprise. She would have lapsed very quickly into unconsciousness. The scratches and marks on her hands were probably the result of instinctive rather than deliberate movement.

  “You mean she won’t have marked chummie’s face for him?” Brinton sounded disappointed to have his (unspoken) guess confirmed.

  Dr. Knight hesitated.

  “Interesting you should say that. As you know, I was summoned here by the admirable Charley to minister to Doris and Maureen. The silly young wench is enjoying all this, I’m afraid. Likes to score over her friend Emmy about being where the action is.” Dr. Knight rolled his eyes. Brinton snorted. Foxon grimaced. “I gave her a good whiff of smelling salts and a lecture,” said the doctor with relish. “Told her to make a pot of strong tea—yours is downstairs; hope you don’t mind it stewed—but poor old Doris is in deep shock. I’d prefer it if you didn’t talk to her until tomorrow, if you can wait—not that I think a woman did this, from my limited experience of these matters.”

  “Neither do we,” Brinton told him.

  Dr. Knight nodded.

  “Once I’d seen to the ladies, Ned Potter asked if I’d take a look at the artist chap who’s been staying here.” The doctor smiled. “Stand guard, he meant. Well, I looked. He’s in the late stages of a hangover, so he’s not saying much, but if you’d like an off-the-cuff view of his mental state, I’d say he appears to be genuinely shocked by what’s happened. Appears to be,” he repeated. “Appearances can be deceptive, as you know. I’m a nerve man rather than a shrink, so I’m not going to swear it either is or isn’t a nice convenient bout of hysterical amnesia ... he’s got a lovely bruise on his temple, you see. And he can’t—or won’t—say where or how he got it.”

  “Then maybe we should ask him,” Brinton said. “As soon as we can. Thank you, Doctor.” They would’ve spotted it for themselves, of course, but going in already knowing about the bruise would give them a head start. Especially if the bloke was also recovering from a heavy night. Unnoticed, the doctor departed as Brinton wondered whether Scarlett had taken to drink before or after Tina’s death. And (if the latter) why so late at night. They’d have a word with Charley Mountfitchet first, to ask how much the man had drunk at the bar before closing time ...

  “He might’ve brought a bottle from outside, sir.” Foxon adopted his customary Devil’s Advocate role as Brinton tested his tentative hypothesis. “Perhaps the very first thing to do would be to search his room for empties.”

  “Leave him to sweat for a while?” Brinton approved this Fabian approach. Even an unimaginative bloke would start to feel a bit uneasy if left alone with a uniformed police constable watching over him, and artists were supposed to have more than their fair share of imagination, weren’t they? He tried not to think of Miss Seeton. Not yet. Not just yet. “Hop along and get the master key, Foxon.”

  Foxon hopped and got. He was soon back, reporting that he had looked in on the dining room, caught Potter’s eye and exchanged a few words out of Scarlett’s earshot, and had the pleasure of seeing the grey-faced man turn green. “He’s sweating, sir,” he concluded. “Nicely. If there are beans to spill, by the time we talk to him, they’ll be rolling.”

  The personal contents of Antony’s bedroom seemed to be few. “Slept in the altogether,” suggested Brinton, directing Foxon to shake the covers while he opened various doors and drawers. “Or his underpants—it’s the sort of thing you can do when you’re young and don’t have any luggage, especially the Bohemian types. Wonder what the beggar used to clean his teeth?”

  “Charley keeps an emergency supply, sir. Travellers’ samples of toothpaste, throwaway razors—bingo!” Foxon had shaken to good effect.

  Brinton gaped. “Good lord. A nightshirt. Haven’t seen one of those for years. Where the devil did he get it?”

  “I told you, sir. Charley keeps an emergency supply.” Foxon’s grin was infectious: Brinton found himself chuckling. “He says if the George burns down in the middle of the night, he doesn’t want his guests embarrassing the firemen or catching double pneumonia. Nightshirts are unisex, too. He only has to keep a few in stock, and they’ll do for anyone—and who’s going to pinch a nightshirt? They’re all enormous. Pyjamas fold up small and are far more likely to go for a walk in somebody’s coat pocket or handbag.”

  “Queer guests they get here,” observed Brinton, pouncing on the last word with glee as he brandished the folds of the black gaberdine cape. “As you might say.”

  “Yes, sir.” Foxon’s voice was muffled; having searched the bed, he was now peering under it. “No bottles,” he told Brinton, who was closing the door of the wardrobe. “Unless he’s hidden ’em on top of there. Those old-fashioned types have a sort of parapet round the edge to hide hat-boxes and things—my gran’s got a couple,” he explained, seeing the question in Brinton’s eyes. “If I climb on the chair and balance one foot on the bedside table, I can—”

  “You could finish the day back in hospital, you young idiot. Twice in one week is going it a bit. Why not just buy a season ticket and have done with it? I need you in one piece, laddie, not crippled from tying yourself in knots doing—ugh—acrobatics.” He was not going to think about yoga. Or Miss Seeton. “We’ll assume Scarlett isn’t the acrobatic type either. You can’t turn handstands if you’re forever wrapped in yards of cloth.” His glare dared Foxon to comment on the flaw in this reasoning. The disappointed acrobat did not speak. Brinton grunted. “No extra booze, then. Whatever he got, he got from Charley: and you know what they say about drink loosening the tongue. We’ll leave Scarlett to sweat a little longer, Foxon. I want to know what Mountfitchet might have heard from him last night on the subject of Tina Holloway ...”

  Charley Mountfitchet had grown accustomed over the years to the descent of members of Her Majesty’s Constabulary upon his formerly quiet little country hotel. With an enthusiasm to gladden the heart of any modern Antisthenes, the landlord would serve drinks after hours; cut piles of sandwiches; and volunteer statements, opinions, and advice even when nobody had asked him.

  Helping the police with their enquiries took on a new aspect when, for the first time, Mr. Mountfitchet found himself being addressed in formal terms by one officer he knew well, while another officer he knew even better wrote down in his regulation notebook everything he said. Charley was not exactly nervous, but he was relieved that his conscience was clear. Now it was simply a matter of convincing Brinton and Foxon that he had nothing to hide.

  The preliminaries were done. The serious questioning began. Brinton, watching the other’s face for the slightest giveaway, asked his opinion of Tina.

  “Oh, a nice girl,” said Charley at once and apparently with no reservation. “Not one of your flighty pieces, if you were thinking she might’ve been on the game. You get to know the type in this business, and I’ll stake my oath she wasn’t, for all she was so good-looking. A sad, shy little thing she was at first, mind you, so it didn’t show, but once she’d been here a few days—Miss Seeton had her to tea, and that seemed to cheer her up, and o’ course she’d met Nigel Colveden ...”

  There was an uncomfortable pause. Each man in the room could hazard a guess at what the other two were thinking.

  “Anyway, she was a different girl,” said Charley. “Had a smile for everyone, passed the time of day, stopped hiding in her room and got out and about on buses sightseeing like Mrs. Ogden—except she’s looking for somewhere to retire, and young Tina, she was drawing all over the place, all sorts of people.” He grinned. “Even drew me the other night, pulling pints behind the bar. Right handsome she made me, too. Something about an exhibition, she said. Poor kid,” he added as memory returned. “Who’d want to do a thing like that to a nice girl like her?”

  “Who, indeed.” Brinton cocked his head to one side as he fixed the landlord with a penetrating gaze. “Someone a bit the worse for drink, maybe?”

  “You mean Scarlett.” It was no
t a question. “Well, she and him were giving each other funny looks in reception, so Doris said, like as if he was chasing after her and she didn’t want to know—but I’ll say this, Mr. Brinton, if he did it—and I’m not saying he did—then I doubt you can blame the drink. While I’ll allow he was merry by the end of the evening ... well, more than merry, to tell the truth—but it was nothing ... nasty. He never got going about Miss Holloway, if that’s what you’re asking. Never said anything unpleasant at all—not that he was over-friendly, the way they sometimes are. None of this draping himself about the place telling you you’re his best pal. He’s not the type to be friendly, even in his cups. The whole time he was full of himself, bumptious little squirt, bragging and chattering how wonderful he was—but it was all brag and bluster, and it wasn’t as if he’d be driving home. You know I never let my customers get themselves in too much of a state. It’s bad business, that is.”

  Brinton nodded. There were never any complaints from the Watch Committee when the licence of the George came up for renewal. “Chattering, you say. About anything in particular, if it wasn’t about Miss Holloway?”

  Charley shrugged. “I’m not one for old films, but when a bloke wants to talk, then you try to keep up your end of the conversation if he asks, so I kept an ear open, but he didn’t ask. Quite happy by himself most of the time, he was.”

  “Old films?” Probably wanted to mix reels of celluloid with the chocolate and the briar pipes. “Is that all?”