Sweet Miss Seeton (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 20)

by Hamilton Crane

  “Gone With the Wind, he kept muttering about.” Charley shrugged again. “Laughing to himself. Quite a change from the way he’d been before dinner, grumbling and scowling with a face like thunder, but then he popped out for a breath of air and was chirpy as a cricket afterwards. That’s when the bragging and boasting started. Waving his arms about all excited, he was. Tumbled off his stool once and bumped his head”—the two detectives exchanged glances—“but it didn’t make no difference. I helped him upstairs in the end. Had to keep shushing him for singing his way to bed, with Mrs. Ogden asleep even if young Tina was still out ...”

  He hesitated. “She wasn’t ... interfered with, was she? When the hullabaloo started and I went to see, I didn’t care to look too close, just got the womenfolk out o’ there and rang for the doctor. But she was a decent girl, Mr. Brinton, and spoke everyone fair and caused no bother. I wouldn’t like to think as—anyone—had done her wrong on wrong ...”

  It was a good point. The post mortem would confirm it, but Brinton’s view was that sexual assault had not been the reason for Tina’s death. The “tidying” of her body into a less disturbing pose might well have involved some readjustment of her clothing, but instinct honed over decades of detection cried that this murder had been a hurried affair, and its aftermath likewise.

  Charley Mountfitchet was a steady, reliable, intelligent man. Granted, nobody could ever be sure of how anyone would react given the right (or wrong) provocation: it was his pub, and the girl had arguably been in his power. He might have lost his head: he might. But a sordid, spur-of-the-moment killing like this ...

  And if instinct was right and sex wasn’t why she’d been killed, then didn’t that rule out Nigel Colveden, too?

  Brinton made up his mind. “Don’t you go wandering off, because we’ll want to talk to you again later,” he told Charley. “But I think the person we ought to talk to next is this Antony Scarlett bloke ...”

  chapter

  ~ 18 ~

  “IT’S NOT THAT I’m prejudiced against the chap because he’s a stranger.” Brinton watched Foxon turn in silence to a fresh page in his notebook. “Oh, well, I suppose in a way I am.” He shrugged. “But there’s the artistic connection we mustn’t forget, and I don’t mean Miss Seeton.” Now that the superintendent was at last in full cry, he was able to speak her name without wincing. “Tina’s an artist—well, she was talking about an exhibition—and if you ask me she can certainly draw.” He jerked a thumb towards the sketchpad where it lay in the middle of its brown-paper wrapping. For the past ten minutes it had been the centre of their attention. “Mind you, I’m no expert. Neither are you—but we’ve both looked through the book, and we like what we’ve seen.”

  “Yes, sir. That one of Jack Crabbe’s boots ...” Foxon smothered a gurgle of mirth. Things were too serious for laughter. “But she got him pat, sir, even though you can’t see his face. And the others, too. You’d know them anywhere, even if some of them’re just a few lines in pencil, and there’s others with every last little dot in ink.”

  “Experimenting, I suppose. We’ll ask MissEss what she thinks of the girl’s stuff when we see her—and Scarlett might be a lunatic, but he’s a sculptor. Of sorts. We’ll ask her about him, too. If he’s any good, she’ll know the blighter—and not just because he wants to demolish her house. But to have two artistic types wandering about a place the size of Plummergen when it isn’t the tourist season’s too much of a coincidence for me, even before Charley started talking about Doris and funny looks in reception. I reckon Tina and Scarlett know—knew—each other—and not simply through a mutual acquaintance with Miss Seeton.”

  “I reckon so, too, sir.” Foxon rose from his chair. “Shall I fetch him out of the restaurant now? He’s had a fair amount of pickling, and we don’t want the civil liberties people after us.”

  “Fetch him out, laddie—and I’ll wrap this up again while you do the fetching.” Brinton fingered the sketchpad thoughtfully. “I don’t know if it’s anything to do with what’s happened, but if it is, it might come better as a surprise than if the blighter sees it and has time to invent something.”

  There are cures for a hangover more ferocious than the hangover itself. There is the well-known Prairie Oyster: there is the George’s lesser known, but locally infamous variation on that theme to which, in an ideal world, digestive resistance has been built up over several generations. Dr. Knight had been swift to dispense something fizzy and sinister from his little black bag once he realised to what extreme lengths the George’s landlord had gone to sober his guest for what was to come. It had taken some minutes to work, but Antony Scarlett was no longer green. He might be pale, and still somewhat shaky on his legs, but he followed Foxon into what had become the interview room with his head held high.

  “Morning, Mr. Scarlett.” Brinton nodded to a chair. “I won’t call it good,” he went on as Antony sat. “Not when there’s been murder done.”

  “I should think not,” muttered Antony. Despite the dual efficacy of the Plummergen Oyster and the sinister fizz, he didn’t yet feel quite able to boom in the usual way.

  “A very proper observation, sir. So what can you tell us about this shocking affair?” Never mind the preliminaries: catch him off balance and, with luck, keep him there.

  Once the fizzing had settled, Antony’s less-befuddled brain had started to work. “I didn’t do it,” he now said, letting his voice rise in pitch. “I am innocent!”

  “I never said you weren’t, sir.”

  “You do not think I am.” Antony contrived, even while seated, to strike an attitude. “After all, I am the obvious suspect, am I not?”

  “Are you, sir? Now what makes you say a thing like that?” Brinton had long since decided the man must be a lunatic: was he an exhibitionist lunatic? The superintendent’s glance gauged the distance from the suspect’s chair to his own; and he wondered if Foxon would, after all, end the day in hospital.

  “Kristeena and I are—were—old acquaintances,” said Antony. Brinton’s eyes narrowed. He’d guessed as much, but he would’ve expected a bit more hedging than this. It was as if the bloke was enjoying himself. Well, he’d thought all along that he was crazy ...

  “Very old,” said Antony. “No ... more than that. Why should I beat about the bush, Inspector?” He was so intent on his confession that he missed Brinton’s intake of demoted breath. “I,” announced Antony Scarlett, “am a sculptor. For three years Kristeena was my model: I shared my life with her, in every possible sense.” His tone implied that by this sharing he had conferred upon Miss Holloway the greatest of favours. “Last year,” said Antony, allowing his voice to throb with tormented regret, “after an artistic disagreement of no concern to any but ourselves, we parted company.” He sat up and fixed Brinton with an accusing eye. “Whereupon the wretched girl chose to pursue what I can only call a vendetta against me. She slandered me to colleagues—damaged my most promising work—behaved in a totally irrational manner, Inspector.”

  Antony flung out his arms to express the totality of Tina’s irrational behaviour, but he had forgotten that his cape was still on a hanger in his bedroom. The gesture lost much of its customary force, although he did knock one of Foxon’s spare pencils from the table to the floor.

  “Totally irrational,” reiterated Antony, barely losing a beat. The pencil lay where it had fallen. “I resented that behaviour, Inspector. What artist—what red-blooded man—would not?”

  “I wouldn’t know. Sir.”

  Antony, warming to his theme, ignored the careful interpolation. “Then came the chance for which I had waited: the chance to bring my name before a wider audience: the chance to enter—to win—the Stuttaford Competition!” His eyes were bright, his colour returned, and now he began to boom. “I sought high and low, Inspector, for the ideal setting for the most ambitious undertaking of my career. I found it, I thought, in Plummergen—in the cottage owned by Miss Seeton on the corner where three roads meet near a bridge over t
he canal. It was ... symbolic. I had to have it. I pressed my claim: Miss Seeton rejected it.” Antony’s gesture was suggestive of the folly of elderly, philistine spinsters. “She,” he went on, “remained firm in her rejection, I in my purpose. I visited Plummergen repeatedly. The more Miss Seeton refused me, the greater became my desire to possess—I was a soul in torment, Inspector, unable to rest ...”

  “Are you pleading ‘while the balance of the mind was disturbed’?” snapped Brinton, wondering how much more of this he would have to suffer before the man got to the point. He seemed to be enjoying himself, blast him. Still, the more he talked, the more he might say that was worth hearing, buried in all the rigmarole.

  He might.

  “I was,” replied Antony with dignity, “under considerable mental stress, Superintendent.” Foxon hid a grin: so the bloke had been listening when he fetched him, after all. Pretty smart of Old Brimstone to let him rabbit on without stopping the flow: something would come out of it, sooner or later. He hoped, though, that it would be sooner. Too much of this barmy talk, and he’d start wondering whether it was him or—he grinned again—him. He hoped it wasn’t.

  “Imagine my feelings,” Antony cried, “when I saw Nemesis stalking the Plummergen streets in the person of Kristeena!” He leaped to his feet. Foxon dropped a pencil of his own accord; Brinton involuntarily ducked his head. “Not only,” boomed Antony, flinging out his arms, “had the wretched girl attempted to poison the minds of my colleagues against me—it was clear that her next aim was to sabotage my grand design! She insinuated herself into the confidence of Miss Seeton—the woman would never let me have her cottage now—she flaunted her affections for another man to arouse my jealousy ... Can you wonder, Superintendent, that now I hear the chink of handcuffs in your every word?”

  It was a stirring speech and a majestic final line. Antony collapsed on his chair, mopping his brow. Brinton shot a sideways look at Foxon. Foxon looked back at his superior. Their eyes telegraphed the same signal.

  “I suppose,” said Brinton heavily, “you’d like us to call your solicitor, wouldn’t you?”

  Antony waved his hand. “Miss Genefer Watson, of the Galerie Genèvre in London, will deal with all that,” he said smugly. “I understand that I am permitted one telephone call. If you will allow me—”

  “No,” said Brinton. Antony blinked. There had been a note in the superintendent’s voice he hadn’t heard before.

  “No telephone calls,” said Brinton. “You haven’t been arrested; you’re just helping us with our enquiries, and it won’t help if you take time out just to warn this Watson female that you’ve landed in the middle of a murder case that’ll puff your blasted exhibition in every paper in the land. Do you take me for a fool? I know damned well why it’s not your solicitor you want to call! You’re trying to milk this for everything you can get—and I’m not going to let you. Maybe you killed that poor girl—though my gut feeling is you didn’t, because I don’t think you’re bright enough to work a double-bluff—but she deserves more than having a—a posturing little twerp like you cashing in on her death! Oh, yes, you’re a suspect—and I’m going to have every last inch of you investigated until you’ll wish you’d never set eyes on Sweetbriars—and so you’ll learn not to play games with the police when there’s murder been done! And if you let one word of this out to the papers ... Well then, be damned to your nonsense, because I don’t care! Nobody likes a hypocrite—and they’re not too keen on opportunists, either. Foxon, have you got all that?”

  Foxon, who had been gaping open-mouthed at his chief, gulped. Did Brimmers want him to say yes or no?

  Brinton hadn’t really meant him to answer what had been a rhetorical question. “You can go, Mr. Scarlett, but don’t try leaving the hotel. One of my men will be on the door, and not just to stop the crowd outside from coming in. I’m sure we’ll talk again later.”

  When a crestfallen Antony had crept out of the room, Foxon drew a deep, shuddering breath. “I can’t believe it, sir. Are you feeling okay? I’ve never heard you sound off like that at a suspect before—and he’s the best we’ve got, if we don’t want to finger Charley or Nigel. Why don’t you think he did it?”

  “As a matter of fact,” said Brinton mildly, “I think he did.” Foxon stared at him. “I think,” said the superintendent, “he waited up for Tina to come back from her date with Nigel, tried to reason with her, and lost his rag when she made it clear she’d well and truly scuppered his chances of getting Miss Seeton’s cottage, never mind that she’d enjoyed herself with another man and wouldn’t give tuppence anymore for him. I think once we hear from Forensics, we’ll find the marks on her neck match his hands exactly. I know I said I didn’t, but I do think he’s quite smart enough to work out a double-bluff of protesting his innocence and kidding the dumb country coppers he means it when it’s far too obvious he doesn’t.” Brinton moved restlessly on his chair. “The man’s an exhibitionist, Foxon, and mad with it—and I don’t like dealing with loonies. I’m letting him pickle until I’ve got the expert evidence I need, which is going to take time—and then I’ll throw the book at him, hard, when he isn’t expecting it. It won’t do him any harm to wait a bit.” He pushed back his chair and stood up. “Come on.”

  “Come on where, sir?”

  “Where do you think? Out of this hotel, so that Master Scarlett can relax again—so that I don’t risk bumping into him every five minutes—and so I can get a second opinion from you-know-who.” He jerked a thumb in the direction of Sweetbriars. “I said I needed expert evidence, didn’t I? I’ve never said she’s a loony, but you can’t deny Miss Seeton’s not on the same wavelength as everyone else. It takes one to know one, Foxon: and she’s an artist as well.” He snatched up the brown-paper parcel of Tina’s sketchbook. “There may be something in here that would give us a firmer line to work on when we come to press charges. There could well be more to it than the cottage business or sheer jealousy of Nigel: the blighter’s too willing to admit to them as motives, though I suppose that could be another blasted double-bluff. If,” he added thoughtfully, “that’s the game he’s playing. Monkeying about with my name, blast him! I don’t play games, Foxon.”

  “No, sir.” It seemed the wisest reply.

  “No.” Brinton was striding towards the main door—nodding to Potter—ignoring the goggle-eyed crowd as he crossed the road with Foxon close behind him. “Or maybe,” said Brinton, almost to himself, “I do. I could’ve arrested the blighter then and there—but ...”

  He flung open Miss Seeton’s gate, marched up the path, and rapped on the knocker with a resolute hand.

  In deference to the gravity of the situation, Miss Seeton’s welcome to her visitors was muted. She instinctively offered them cups of tea, but when the tea arrived, it was served in the unpatterned cups, without cake, and with the very plainest of Marie biscuits. It would, she feared, be some while before she could readily contemplate eating chocolate biscuits again.

  “A foolish fancy, of course.” Miss Seeton sighed for her folly, then smiled faintly. “When I recall that it was I who chided the poor girl for—well, for overreacting—and naturally I meant it for the best ... but memory can be a most awkward taskmaster for one’s conscience, can it not, Mr. Brinton?”

  Brinton sat up. There had been something in the way she said that ... “I’d be interested in your memories, Miss Seeton. From a professional point of view, that is,” he added and looked a little embarrassed as she sighed again. “But nothing too ... personal,” he said quickly. “I’d never want you to go against your conscience—but anything you feel that you can tell us about Miss Holloway—you seem to have got to know her pretty well during her stay here—and if we don’t ask you,” he concluded, to clinch his argument, “we’ll have to ask young Nigel Colveden. And from what I’ve heard of his relationship with the dead girl I imagine he’s a bit upset about what’s happened to her—or he will be when he finds out.”

  For a third time, Miss Seeton si
ghed. “I had thought them rather well-suited,” she said sadly. “The attraction of opposites, you know. Dear Nigel—such an open-air young man—while poor Tina seemed at first so—so cosmopolitan, yet proved so willing to adapt herself—and with such success. And then ...” She shook her head and blinked once or twice. “Oh, dear ... He promised to take her bird-watching—and she enjoyed herself so much taking the bus to some of the nearby villages and towns to go sightseeing and to—to sketch ...”

  The delicate pink now mantling her cheeks did not pass unnoticed by Superintendent Brinton. Hadn’t MissEss been blushing when she returned the dead girl’s sketchbook? Just what was there about those drawings to make the Oracle’s favourite sensitive so uneasy? Only one way to find out.

  “Miss Seeton, you say Tina went out sketching. She showed you her sketches, of course. One artist to another, that sort of thing.” Brinton’s voice was urgent now. “Was there anything about her sketches you weren’t happy with? Anything ... special?”

  He snatched the brown-paper parcel from Foxon and handed it to their hostess. “Show me,” he begged as she accepted the offering with considerable reluctance, her blush deepening. “Whatever it is in here that you think’s not quite right—it’ll help, I’m sure it will.” He knew the old girl wasn’t usually so ... fanciful in her behaviour unless ... She saved all that sort of thing for her Drawings, when her confounded instinct took over. And whenever it did, there was always something ... even if just thinking about the way she did—whatever she did—made him feel uneasy ... And maybe she’d done it this time by remote control, as you might say, through Tina Holloway ...

  A faint memory tugged at his brain, but he had no time to capture it before Miss Seeton sighed. “She drew so many sketches in the last few days, and all of them of the highest quality.” She paused, as if not entirely sure of what she said. “It is,” she went on firmly, “most gratifying to see a young person find something unexpected at which she might excel.” Now she spoke without hesitation. “It was such a pleasure to her—rebuilding her confidence, you know, after the personal difficulties she had overcome, and she was so pleased and proud when she came to show me her work.” Again that faint hesitation. “As I, naturally, was pleased for her. Tina showed more than ordinary promise, Mr. Brinton. Her death ...” She coughed. “It is a tragic waste of more than just a life.”