Ranger was there as quickly as the chief superintendent. “Her, you mean, sir. For not thinking of her—Miss Seeton. But it wasn’t rightly our case before, was it?”
“True enough. But, since it is now, we’ll call on the good services of MissEss as soon as we can. I won’t ask her to draw poor Brent for us, unless it’s absolutely necessary, but I’d love to get her talking to some of the other victims—the set-a-thief-to-catch-a-thief principle. They’ll look on her as someone exactly like themselves—”
He broke off as Bob spluttered, turning it too late into a cough. “Yes, I know, Sergeant, that to you and me and the world in general, Miss Seeton is far from being exactly like anyone else. But I’m willing to bet that’s not how she sees herself. She’ll think she really is like them, and they’ll treat her that way as well, with luck. She won’t be as intimidating as someone official. The uniform’s bound to make them nervous, even when they’ve done nothing except been taken advantage of and made to feel a bit foolish . . . but she’ll know how to talk to them to save their pride and, if we’re lucky, one of her sketches will produce something to give us a lead on these crooks.”
“It’s a good idea, sir,” said Bob, regarding his chief with some awe. “In theory, that is. Honestly, I can see why you’re so keen on it, but . . .”
“But you can’t help wondering what hornets’ nest will be stirred up by having her umbrella poked into it?” Delphick laughed. “Forget it, Bob. I know how things never turn out the way anyone expects when Miss Seeton is involved—but it can’t possibly be asking for trouble if we simply send her to talk to a few old people and draw a few sketches, can it? If I know her, she’ll jump at the chance of furthering the cause of justice. All we’ll have to do is explain the cheap and sneaky method they’ve used to steal from old age pensioners, and we can safely leave it to Miss Seeton’s sense of duty to take it from there.”
It was an inspired plan. “At least it doesn’t sound like any syndicate effort,” Ranger murmured, thinking of some of the large and sinister concerns against whom the Battling Brolly had waged genteel warfare. “Just three people—which hardly counts as big-time crime, does it?”
“It didn’t,” Delphick corrected him, “but it does now, because it is. Murder is no small-time stuff, Sergeant, and we both know it. In any case, you needn’t worry about Miss Seeton taking on more than she can handle—I’m fast coming to the conclusion that she bears a charmed life. For which we should be thankful, Bob, and leave her to live it in her own . . .” It was rare for the Oracle to be pressed for words. But anyone, Bob thought, would find it hard to describe Miss Seeton succinctly: her quality was, well, it was—
“Unique,” Delphick produced after a lengthy pause, and echoed Bob’s own choice. “Her own unique way of life—the quiet tenor of which we from time to time have to disturb, as we’re going to on this occasion. But Miss Seeton will understand, I’m sure, and think it goes with the territory of the retainer we pay her. I’ll telephone and tell her I’m sending you down with a car to collect her—”
He regarded his sergeant with an amused air. “Yes, I know what you’re thinking. But I’m not suggesting you turn up in Plummergen in a Panda car with the blue light flashing at full throttle. What I had in mind was more in the nature of a private visit from a family friend, dropping in after a duty call on his in-laws. Does a man need an excuse to talk to his wife’s parents? Take Anne with you, if you like.”
“Well, sir, I’m not sure about that. She hasn’t been in her new job long enough to start asking for time off—but it’s a pity she can’t.” He grimaced. “The way that village gets the wrong end of the stick about Miss Seeton, they’ll be convinced she’s been nicked for something or other. Half of ’em already suspect her of practically every crime in the book, and when they see her driving away with me . . .”
“Try to make it look convincingly casual,” Delphick told him. “We owe a lot to Miss Seeton, and the least we can do when we’re using her services is treat her nicely. I know she’ll insist it’s no bother to ride her bicycle to the station and catch a train, but I’ll point out that it’ll take too long. Which is partly true, of course, although I consider it important not to act as if we’re taking her too much for granted . . .”
Bob Ranger grinned. “Be honest, sir. That’s not the real reason, is it?”
The Oracle hesitated, then almost grinned back as he replied: “Well—if you bring her up to London by car, we can be reasonably sure that, when she’s supposed to be in a certain place at a certain time, she will be.”
Sergeant Ranger, remembering some of the gyrations of Miss Seeton on occasions past, added under his breath the rider, “Deo volente.” Because with Miss Seeton, you could never be entirely sure . . .
chapter
~4~
MISS SEETON WAS not entirely sure that the main street of Plummergen—The Street, as it was known with prosaic civic pride—was usually so quiet at this time of day. Apart from Tibs the tabby (the worst-tempered cat in Plummergen, plump and smug and belonging to PC Potter’s little girl Amelia, who alone had any control over the creature) there was not a living soul in sight. Everything was so very peaceful, indeed, that Tibs had set herself down in the sun in the middle of the road, a striped lazy form with a glossy coat and eyes shut, weary from the effort of basking. Miss Seeton tutted and clicked her tongue at Tibs, who twitched the tip of her tail and would not open an eye.
“You foolish creature,” chided Miss Seeton. “If you lie here too long, you will be run over. Or you will be responsible for a serious accident, should a car try to drive around you and hit one of the trees. Wake up, do,” and with the tip of her umbrella she gently prodded the tabby in her well-covered ribs.
Tibs raised her head and blinked up at Miss Seeton, then uttered a little growl, flattened her ears, and lashed her tail. Miss Seeton, who had controlled an entire classroom, was not intimidated by one fat tabby, especially one whose life could be in danger. “Wake up and move, you silly cat,” commanded Miss Seeton, and poked at Tibs again in a more assertive manner. “I won’t let you stay here, so you need not adopt that attitude with me.”
The voice of authority, crisp and compelling, penetrated the wilfully deaf feline ears. With a long, leisured stretch and an impertinent yawn, Tibs grudgingly bestirred herself to move to the side of the road. She would sunbathe somewhere else, far removed from umbrellas and those who wielded them; she glared over her shoulder at Miss Seeton as she stalked slowly away, and the uttermost tip of her tail jerked in an angry, twitching little dance.
Normally, the sight of Miss Seeton—concerning whose true character the villagers were hotly divided—dallying in the centre of the main road with a cat (a cat, moreover, notorious for her spiteful nature) would have given rise once more to those deeply-rooted suspicions of her held, among others, by an entire generation of schoolchildren, who had fixed it well in their heads that she was possessed of remarkable powers. The escapade which had led them to this conclusion could have been simply enough explained, if any of them had cared, or dared, to ask; but their parents had already sown the seeds of acceptance of Miss Seeton’s supernatural gifts long before that momentous visit to the seashore, and from that day in certain houses Miss Seeton’s name was mentioned only with furtive crossing of fingers, or a backward, wary look as if she might lurk in some corner ready to pounce.
But there had been nobody in The Street—nobody behind net curtains, afraid of missing out on any item of gossip—nobody to see at all.
“It seems rather strange,” murmured Miss Seeton. “Early closing day, perhaps? But today is Tuesday. Would it have been changed without my remembering? Surely not—at least, I suppose Martha may have told me and it slipped my mind, but . . . In any case,” with a firm shake of her head to settle her wandering wits, “how silly of me, for nobody closes early in the mornings, and it can hardly be eleven o’clock yet.” She glanced at her wristwatch, a sensible silver mounting fastened by a neat leathe
r strap. “Well, just after,” she admitted, “but still nowhere near afternoon. I wonder whether there is some interesting programme on the wireless which is keeping everyone indoors? And if that is the case,” she brightened, “I shall finish my shopping so much sooner, then I may return to the garden and remove some more of those wretched weeds . . .”
There was indeed something of interest on the wireless: the eleven o’clock news from the BBC. The News came almost every hour on the hour during the day, and so those people who first heard it at six were able to warn others to be sure not to miss it at seven, and anyone who had listened at seven could barely wait until eight in case more details had emerged.
Not for the first time, a Plummergen resident—a brace of residents, in fact—was likely to feature in the headlines. Daily papers were being studied in depth and swapped from house to house; speculation and surmise were being exchanged at an ever-increasing rate and degree of inaccuracy. The Press, and maybe Television as well, were expected any minute, and there was a general sense of indignation that they had not so far arrived.
But Plummergen, for once, was not the seat of the action. Winchelsea and Rye, or rather the road which joined them, had the best claim to that title. The modern highwaymen—the New Dick Turpins, as they were called in some journals—had carried out their latest daring daylight robbery in Sussex, not Kent, and the Plummergen connection of Miss Nuttel and Mrs. Blaine had not yet been made.
Their startling experience had left both The Nuts a prey to all manner of nervous reactions. In Mrs. Blaine’s case these had been manifested in an insistent demand for herbal tea—chamomile for preference—to soothe her quivering sensibilities, a demand which the police station was quite unable to fulfil. Mrs. Blaine’s frantic, high-pitched and repetitive refusal of the dark brown syrup tasting of tannin and dashed with milk which passed for tea in the constabulary canteen had been echoed, with less hysteria and more aggression, by her friend Miss Nuttel.
“Never touch the stuff,” she snapped, “and nor should you. Coats the stomach, rots the insides—not surprising criminals get away with highway robbery in broad daylight if the police don’t keep themselves fit. Drink rubbish, and rubbish is what you’ll turn into—”
“Now, that’s uncalled for, Miss Nuttel,” the inspector was moved to protest. He’d had a long struggle with himself all the time The Nuts were complaining their exaggerated complaints: Nobody had come near them for hours; they’d been shunted into a corner and simply left there while everyone else was being looked after. This was hardly the way to treat anyone who’d gone through all they had so recently suffered . . . It was too much not to expect the inspector to snap back when something inside him did. “It’s not going to help anyone if you waste everybody’s time in hurling insults when it would make more sense, and be far more productive, for you to settle down and make your statements and help us get a line on these characters.”
Inspector Furneux had been trying to work out some sort of line on the robbers for over two hours. He had interviewed all the other trippers from the stricken coach; he’d left The Nuts until last, partly because Mrs. Blaine’s hysterical seizures stopped her saying anything useful, and partly because most of the others were foreigners, and he wanted no accusations of discourtesy to tourists appearing later in the newspapers, which had already turned previous Turpin incidents into full-blown sensations.
But now he felt sorely tempted to be brutal. He thought wistfully of having himself put on a charge—either for boxing Mrs. Blaine’s ears or for wringing Miss Nuttel’s neck. Nobody would blame him after the amount of aggro they’d been giving him, worse than all the other passengers on the coach put together. And if he went on a charge, he wouldn’t have to listen to either of them ever again . . .
He forced himself, with a real effort, to dismiss these glorious daydreams, and returned sternly to the present. If chamomile tea was unforthcoming, and they were positive they didn’t fancy the canteen tea, which everybody else had been pleased to drink, might the ladies—gritted teeth just prevented him from using a stronger word—prefer lemonade? There was a small sweetshop and general store just around the corner: he believed that cans of soft drinks were kept permanently chilled in hot weather . . .
“Sugar,” said Miss Nuttel, as Mrs. Blaine closed her eyes in a despairing gesture. Furneux noticed this almost normal reaction, and uttered a silent prayer that his luck might be changing. The hysterics seemed to have died down, whether from scandalised shock at his suggestion, or from physical exhaustion, he did not dare guess.
“Bad for the teeth,” said Miss Nuttel. “Artificial—no sugar needed if the body balance is right. Plain water’ll do, if you’ve nothing better. Day like this, even tap has to be better than sugar.”
Mrs. Blaine opened one black-currant eye in mute protest, but nobody noticed. She wondered whether to throw another fit of hysterics, but Eric was so right, it was a very hot day, and emotion was always exhausting. Mrs. Blaine slumped in her chair and looked as pathetic as possible.
“Water, two glasses, with ice—and quickly!” instructed Inspector Furneux, opening the door of the interview room and venting his feelings in a bellow. Every inch of the corridor hummed and echoed as his command bounced off walls and ceiling and linoleumed floor; the double swing doors to the street quivered; the station sergeant’s helmet clattered from its customary hook to the ground, there to roll about in nervous arcs, a residual echo still vibrating round its rim many minutes afterwards, an object of interest to all who saw—and heard—it.
Furneux closed the interview door with a slam that sent flakes of plaster snow drifting from the ceiling down to the table on which his notebook—filled so far with nothing of use from these two nuisances—lay open. He brushed off the snow with an impatient sleeve, and took a deep breath.
“Suppose we begin again,” he suggested. “Miss Nuttel—Mrs. Blaine, you’re still obviously in deep shock, suppose you just listen quietly until it’s your turn? Miss Nuttel, this coach trip you were on. Unusual, isn’t it, for someone who lives as close to Rye as you claim to do to take such a rather touristy excursion?”
“No claim about it,” Erica Nuttel informed him. “Twelve years, more or less—”
“More, Eric,” chimed in Mrs. Blaine, roused from her dumb slumping. “Nearly thirteen years, it must be by now.”
“Mrs. Blaine, please!” Furneux barely stopped himself uttering some unfortunate remark about thirteen which would have lost him the small advantage he’d managed to win. “Your turn will come, I assure you. But for now—you’d say you think of yourselves as locals, Miss Nuttel?”
“Not ashamed of it, Inspector.” She threw back her head and bridled. “Nothing wrong with living in Plummergen—at least,” as a sudden thought came to her, “not really.”
“But, Miss Nuttel?” She’d sounded as if she’d like to change the subject; Furneux decided that if he kept her off-balance, he might stand a better chance of making her talk some sense . . . he hoped.
“But what, Inspector? But nothing.”
“I hardly think it’s nothing, Miss Nuttel. You seem to be implying that life in Plummergen isn’t what it was twelve or thirteen years ago when you first moved there . . .” With the cunning of a fisherman playing a pike—only in natural history terms it was rather a horse of which Erica Nuttel reminded him—Furneux left the bait dangling.
The bait was taken. Miss Nuttel snapped at it with eager jaws and swallowed it whole. “That woman,” she said, and Mrs. Blaine nodded fervently. “Never had this sort of carry-on before she came to live in the village—murders and robbery and kidnapping and drugs and gas and witchcraft and goodness knows what else, not to mention today’s effort. More than coincidence, if you ask me!”
Mrs. Blaine nodded again in silent agreement; and Furneux turned pale. “Miss Seeton,” he breathed. He’d wondered why the name of Plummergen, that little village just across the county border, had sounded so familiar—notorious—to his ears; he tho
ught he’d left the interviewing of The Nuts till last because he’d recognised them as troublemakers—but not so, he now realised. As soon as it learned where they came from, his subconscious must have been trying to protect him. He knew—everyone knew—about Miss Seeton. Superintendent Brinton from nearby Ashford, in Kent, had waxed eloquent about her, one inebriated evening at some inter-county bash: the papers didn’t know the half of it, he’d said. “Battling Brolly? Boomerang Bomb, they ought to say. Never know where she’s going to turn up or what she’s going to do when she does—nor does she, if it comes to that. If there was some logic to what happens when she’s around, you wouldn’t worry so much, because you could make some sense of it all—but even she can’t do that, most of the time; she’s a law unto herself. Just be thankful she’s stayed out of your hair so far,” he’d warned Inspector Furneux, and thankful the inspector had been.
He should have known it was tempting fate . . . But there was still hope, he thought. “You’re not seriously accusing Miss Seeton of being one of the, the highwaymen, are you? Surely her age, apart from anything else—”
He had no idea how pleading his voice now sounded. Gone was all the stentorian command, the air of interrogation. The very thought of Miss Seeton’s possible involvement in this case had shaken him to the depths.
“Wore masks, didn’t they? Stockings—and helmets, all the motorbike gear, shapeless, could be anyone inside. Only one of ’em spoke—man’s voice—who’s to say a woman wasn’t at least one of the others?”
“One man,” Inspector Furneux noted down; curious, how his hand had begun to shake. Tiredness, no doubt—couldn’t be anything to do with this Plummergen news, surely. “One man, possibly a woman. How many others were there?”
“Two, maybe three—hard to tell,” said Miss Nuttel.
Mrs. Blaine perked up again. “There must have been at least three of them, Eric, when you start to work it out. Remember? The one in the front car, who had the shotgun and did all the talking. There was that other person with him who collected all our valuables while he kept that poor driver covered—”
Miss Seeton Cracks the Case (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 9) Page 3
