“The same. Everyone kept saying that they’d go too far some time, or get it wrong—and now, they have. A fatality. I don’t suppose they intended it to end like this, but someone has died, and it’s entirely due to them.” His face hardened. “Any death is bad news, Bob, but this—this sick preying on the elderly, taking advantage of people who are alone in their declining years, when they ought to be treated with respect and left their personal dignity—” He slammed shut the file he’d barely begun to read, and dumped it back with irritation on the top of the tilting heap. But he utterly ignored the Pisa-like result, though there was an ominous slither and rustling noise before they had left the room. “I didn’t like the sound of them when we first heard about them, and I like it still less now they’ve become responsible for someone’s death. They’d better not try any we didn’t really mean it when we finally catch up with them, because that’s about the worst defence for the worst kind of killing I’ve heard of in a very long time.”
“Let’s hope that’s what we manage to send them down for, then,” said Bob, who agreed entirely. “What happened? The usual, I suppose, but—man or woman dead? And how?”
“The usual. How exactly they got into the house on this occasion, nobody seems to know just yet—but it’s sure to have been the usual.”
“Meet someone in the town laden with shopping, offer them a lift home, be ever so helpful when they’re trying to cross a busy road,” enumerated Bob, who’d heard the sorry tale more than once in recent weeks. “Weasel their way into the poor old soul’s house under the pretence of being just a good neighbour, get pressed to stay for a bit of a chat and a cup of tea. You know, sir, I think somehow that was worst of all, putting the dope in the drinks the grateful victim had gone to the trouble of making.”
“Denying them even a modicum of dignity,” Delphick agreed. “At least once they switched to suggesting a little drink from a bottle of sherry they just happened to have with them, it took away the cheap nastiness of it, somehow. It’s still a wicked way of robbing anybody—using gratitude to take advantage like that—but it’s not quite so sick, if that’s the word I want. Maybe somebody’s begun to develop a bit of a conscience about it all.”
“Or maybe they found it easier to disguise the taste of the sedative in sherry,” said Bob. “Either way, you’ve got to hand it to them—it’s a clever plan.”
“Very clever, and very simple—planned by a pretty good amateur psychologist, too. Understanding how people, and the older generation especially, like to give thanks of some sort for an unexpected kindness. Exploiting the way so many old folk either can’t, or won’t, spend money on those little luxuries their Victorian consciences still tell them they ought not to enjoy. And sherry’s respectable to the most maidenly of teetotal aunts. They wouldn’t have much difficulty in persuading their mark, poor soul, to indulge in a little tipple . . . but this time they overdosed on the sedatives, and the poor old chap died.”
“Ugly,” said Sergeant Ranger.
“Very ugly,” said Delphick. “He was found this morning by his Home Help. She’s still very shocked, but had enough of her wits about her to be able to give a fair description of what’s missing—all his treasures, of course. Even his medals, she said. Went right through World War One without a scratch, and ends up choking to death on his own vomit. Not the nicest way for someone who risked his life for his country to lose it, Sergeant Ranger . . .”
“No, sir,” said Bob. “Not nice at all,” and his face was as grim as the chief superintendent’s. He could not help thinking of his own, adopted, maidenly aunt Miss Seeton (known ever since a tricky moment in a case involving witchcraft and a sinister, thug-patrolled cult called Nuscience to himself and Anne as Aunt Em) and her own trusting, open nature. Any stranger who offered to help her home with her shopping would be more than welcome to a cup of tea and a slice or two of cake; too easy to slip something into that cup, or persuade her to sip a little sherry . . .
Miss Seeton was not sipping sherry at present, nor did she have any plans to do so: her mind was sufficiently confused as it was without adding to her problems. She was about to set forth to the shops, and what in happier times past had taken a matter of minutes—the leaving of her cottage and the closing of her front door—now seemed to take forever to achieve. So very kind of Chief Superintendent Delphick—so gratifying for him to be doing well in his career, he having been only a superintendent when they first met—to think of her as he’d done, and of course it was setting a good example to others as well as accommodating the wishes of the chief constable of Kent, but there were times when the security system which had been installed was really more of a burden than the benefit she’d been led to believe it would be.
Besides, living so quietly in the country as she did, she really had no need of any such protection: against what was she being protected? If she ever returned to live in London, perhaps there might be some sense in sirens and bells which would erupt into life if anyone tried to break in; or if she lived in a large and obviously expensive house likely to contain anything worth the efforts of any burglar. Rytham Hall, for instance, right at the end of Marsh Road—such a lonely spot, and the Colvedens must have a great many heirlooms and antiques—she would certainly suggest that they ought to think about having a burglar alarm put in. But Sweetbriars was a cottage, not a stately home, and she herself not an aristocrat, but a retired teacher of art. Her little knick-knacks, while of sentimental and some practical value to herself, could never interest the criminal classes any more than she, Emily Dorothea Seeton, could be of interest to them . . .
It had been in just such innocence that Miss Seeton had reluctantly accepted Delphick’s offer to hurry through the installation of the burglar alarm, such innocence that she failed to understand how she might be at risk from the heavies of the gambling syndicate in whose affairs she and her brolly had become embroiled not so long ago. The chief superintendent, worried that she might suffer a repeat performance of a past criminal incursion into her cottage, had arranged with his colleague Superintendent Brinton of Ashford to have a reliable security firm install a suitable system as a matter of urgency; the explanation best understood by Miss Seeton being that the chief constable was having a campaign to encourage householders to help protect their own property, in this way saving the police both time and money.
The argument had, as he’d known it would, appealed to the conscientious nature of Miss Seeton, and she had come, slowly, around to the idea that she was being used as what might be called, inelegantly but she could not think of a better term, a guinea pig. Or perhaps a market research project, she wasn’t entirely sure—but whatever she might be, in the eyes of the police, she felt it now her duty to make full use of the alarm system so that when she told other people about its merits she could truthfully say that she found it helpful. Only she didn’t . . . or rather, that was hardly the first adjective which sprang to mind. Complicated . . . vexatious . . . time-consuming . . .
Wearing her distinctive cockscomb hat she stood now in the little hallway, with her basket beside the telephone on its table, and studied her instruction leaflet yet again. She felt guilty that she had not been able to memorise all the contents properly by now, but somehow she never felt that in a matter as important as this she ought to rely on her memory alone. She had pressed Tet and the green light had come on. She had turned the oddly-fashioned key in the lock of the main alarm box on the stairs. The next stage must be to turn the same key in a different lock—the one set in the jamb of the front door—and then to be sure to lock the front door in its usual fashion as well.
Miss Seeton sighed, then reproached herself. She shook her head, put down the leaflet, picked up her basket, took the key to that extra keyhole in the door and turned it, stepped out of the door and pulled it firmly closed, then locked it with her own familiar key. She sighed again, with relief, and prepared to set off down the path.
It was another glorious day, with a sparkling sun high in the
sky and the only visible clouds far off on the wide Kentish horizon. Spring in the Garden of England, breathed Miss Seeton, savouring the perfumes of—of whatever flowers Stan had so kindly planted in her borders. Although autumn might be her favourite season of the year, on such a day as this she did not find it hard to see why poets celebrated the spring. She smiled at the thought of how her colleagues at that little Hampstead school would have teased her for carrying her umbrella with her—
“Oh, how annoying!” With all the worry of the oddly-shaped key and the green Tet light and the final locking of the front door, she had left her umbrella behind. She could see it now, in her mind’s eye, clipped on the wall over the drip tray, beside the table she’d been so careful to pick up her basket from: she’d put on her hat, collected her basket, and been so preoccupied with the alarm system she’d forgotten her brolly. Such a thing had hardly ever happened to her before. “Old age, I suppose,” murmured Miss Seeton, hurrying back up the path to her front door and hunting for her key. “Although I wouldn’t have thought—they have done me so much good in the past—but maybe one can only hold nature back for so long—yet it’s impossible to deny that physically, at any rate, they continue to keep me in excellent shape,” musing on the exercises she studied in Yoga and Younger Every Day as she rattled her key in the lock.
The bells and sirens exploded all about her into the normally peaceful Plummergen air. “Not again!” pleaded Miss Seeton, knowing that there could be no restoration of silence until she had attended to the main box halfway up the stairs. The bells and sirens continued to jangle her nerves as she made for the switch—exploded certainly wasn’t too strong a word for the experience, she told herself as she turned the right key in the lock and everything went quiet. Those dratted bells—a kind thought, but nevertheless a nuisance—surely they could be made a little quieter, not so, so noticeable, so intrusive. Miss Seeton was sure that when she finally emerged from the door of Sweetbriars, a crowd of Plummergen residents would be clustering outside her gate with offers of help. So very kind of them, but irksome that her own carelessness should cause them all to interrupt whatever they had been doing to attend her little mishap.
But to her surprise, when for a second time she emerged from the cottage and, her umbrella and basket safely in her grasp, made her way down the path, there was nobody in sight at all. Not even PC Potter, who had been so prompt to ask her if everything was in order on the first few occasions when she’d made the same foolish mistake . . . Nobody, as far as the eye could see.
Yet Miss Seeton, instead of wondering where everyone might be, uttered a silent word of thanks that her blushes on this occasion had been spared, and headed for the shops without arousing a quiver of curiosity.
chapter
~3~
SCOTLAND YARD—OR rather those members of it with whom Miss Seeton was most closely acquainted—stood grimly in the neat little parlour of the terraced house formerly owned by an old soldier. Formerly, because he was now dead.
“Yes, feel free to call it murder,” invited the police doctor, after Delphick posed the question. “Whoever nobbled him is responsible for letting this chap die, whether they meant it to happen or not. He lay on the ground and choked to death—so why did he vomit? Shock after his fall—so why did he fall? Nothing obvious here to trip him up, no shiny lino with rugs to slip on, no rucks in the carpet or bits of nonsense on the floor to catch his feet—so, maybe a sudden dizzy spell? But his Home Help says he was the fittest old chap for his age she’s ever known, and she’s worked with ’em for long enough to be a good judge. And I’d agree with her; he’s on the list in my group practice, but I can’t say I’ve ever had him coming in for a consultation. Maybe he’s seen one of the others, but . . .”
“But,” supplied Delphick, “considering the almost-full bottle of sherry on the table, added to the fact that the house has been ransacked—in a manner with which we’re all too accustomed in recent weeks, unfortunately—it would be a fair assumption that it wasn’t an accident or some health problem that might have caused him to lose his balance.”
“It wasn’t,” said Dr. Hallingbury. “Call it murder, and you won’t be far wrong. But,” he added, as he could see the next question coming, “don’t ask me to say yes or no to the sherry lot until I’ve had a chance to do a proper check that the poor old chap’s been drinking the horrible stuff. It might just be some ghastly coincidence—I want to be sure—but off the record I think you can assume it was, unless you yourselves turn up any evidence to the contrary.”
He nodded a brisk farewell to Sergeant Ranger, who was busy in the background making notes, and pulled a battered soft hat from his pocket, clapping it on his bald head with an explanatory, “The sun. Gives me hell every year—comes of having what little hair’s left round the edges ginger, and pale skin to match. Hang on to your hair, young man, while you can—life’s a misery without it.”
Before Bob could reply, Dr. Hallingbury was gone, with an instruction to have the late Regimental Sergeant Major Brent delivered to him for autopsy as soon as possible, “So that I can confirm what we think we already know. But it’s as well to be certain which villains you’re chasing . . .”
Delphick gazed round him at what remained of the home of RSM Brent. It was clearly the room of someone with military training: a place for everything and everything in its place—only everything wasn’t anymore, according to Mrs. Pelham.
“If he was such a fit old boy, how come he needed a Home Help?” Bob Ranger suddenly wanted to know.
Delphick looked at him. “He may well have been fit, but as you yourself said, he was old, or heading that way. We’re half a century and more beyond the end of World War One: even supposing he lied about his age, as so many of those poor devils did, he can’t have been much under seventy-five. And by then you’re beginning to lose your friends. It’s not so easy to make new ones. You can go for days without talking to anyone except the milkman when he takes your money, or people in shops—which is exactly what the Sherry Gang didn’t need to have explained to them. They knew it, and exploited it.”
A bleak look flickered across his face, then was almost gone when he continued: “Someone to talk to, that’s often all these old folk need—and besides, he’d recently lost his wife, they tell me. I’ve no doubt your wife—” Bob was observed to grin in a fond, embarrassed fashion—“intends to train you well, so that when she’s busy in the evenings and you’re hoping to toast your toes by the fire, she’ll have you toasting your own muffins and not dying of starvation before she gets back from work. But RSM Brent wasn’t the generation that knows anything about this women’s lib that’s come on the scene in the last few years . . .”
Which Mrs. Pelham was quick to confirm, when Delphick and Ranger spoke with her. Several cups of well-sugared tea and the chance to have a little weep into her handkerchief had settled her initial shock, and she was able to talk brightly to the detectives about “her old man” and his habits.
“Ever so friendly, he was, and polite with it, never missed saying thank-you before I went, and giving me a bunch of flowers out of the garden, not that we’re supposed to take presents but you’d never get him to see it, returning thanks for a favour, he called it, and honest as the day is long. Break his heart, it would, to know they’d gone poking and prying about his things, never mind poisoning him, and all because he was such an old-fashioned sort, tip his hat to you in the street and always open doors, which, believe me, you don’t always find in this job. Some of them treat you like nothing better than a servant, not that I expect them to fall on their knees being grateful because, after all, they pay for it, don’t they, but it never hurts to be polite . . .”
She broke off with a choke in her voice as she recalled how being polite had done more than hurt Regimental Sergeant Major Brent. Her eyes began to fill with tears again, and she fumbled in her pocket. “Oh, dear . . .”
“Mrs. Pelham,” Delphick said quickly, “you’ve been very helpful in sup
plying the local police with a list of what you believe to be missing. But if you wouldn’t mind going over it again with my sergeant here—a double check, just to be absolutely sure—now that you’ve had time to catch your breath, as it were. You might just remember something else—or be able to enlarge on the understandably brief descriptions you first gave . . .”
It was a heartbreaking list over which Delphick and his sergeant pored: the treasured accumulations of a lifetime, gone, probably for good, as the detectives feared only too likely. “No need even for a fence,” grumbled Ranger. “Pop along to the nearest street market, no questions asked. It makes me sick, sir. His wife’s photo in a solid silver frame, and they’ll chuck the picture out with the rubbish as if she’d never mattered in her life at all. Ghouls, that’s the only word for them. I wish we could catch them, but we just don’t seem to be able to get a lead on them. Too canny to leave prints on the bottle of sherry, and they seem to be practically invisible except to their victims, who’re all too upset to tell us anything useful. Could be almost anyone, from the descriptions, and the IdentiKit even looks like almost anyone.”
“We never supposed it was going to be easy, Bob. That’s precisely what they’ve relied on all this time—their very ordinariness. One middle-aged woman, one younger woman, one in-between-age man—could be the boyfriend of one or other of them, perhaps. That much the few neighbours who’ve seen anything at all have agreed on. One or both of the women make the first contact, and the man follows along and helps shift the stuff out of the house into a small, dark van while the poor old soul is presumably asleep inside. When the victim wakes up, he or she is too upset and muddled to give any coherent picture of what they looked like—”
Delphick broke off, and slapped his hand on the table so that Bob jumped. “Old people—picture—IdentiKits—we’re idiots for not thinking of it before, Bob.”
Miss Seeton Cracks the Case (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 9) Page 2
