“Collector didn’t speak,” Miss Nuttel remembered. “Odd, not even a mumble. Tried to keep her head down, too—as if she didn’t want to be recognised.”
“Her?” Furneux needed details and reasons for such a suggestion; none of the other victims of this robbery, or indeed any of the others, had made it. They’d all assumed that the Turpins were male—although, as the Nuts had implied, in these days of unisex costume there was no good reason why they should have been. Then again, there was no good reason why they should not. Levi Strauss had much to answer for . . . “Can you give any particular reason why you thought it was a woman?”
Erica Nuttel looked blank. Bunny Blaine rushed into speech once more: really, now her nerves were feeling better, she was almost starting to enjoy this. Assisting the police with their enquiries—working for law and order—no doubt the newspapers would want to interview her, especially if she could perform well enough to be the star witness. And Eric not saying much would mean . . .
She sat up straighter and could almost hear the flashbulbs popping. “The way she walked, I suppose. And a different shape,” she added, but as an afterthought. “We were sitting right in the front—” which didn’t surprise Furneux one jot—“and could see everything, much more clearly than anybody else. So we saw her walking about properly, if you understand me, not in the coach squeezing sideways down the aisle, which was all the others could have seen of her. Or him.” Star witness, Norah Blaine! And she began composing headlines, and wondering which was her best side for photographs.
“And you’d agree that’s what made you suggest a woman, Miss Nuttel? The better view of her—if it was a woman—you were able to have, sitting in the front?” He’d have to check again with the courier and the driver, who’d also been at the front of the coach; but the driver was in hospital with shock and a suspected heart attack, while the courier had fainted three times before collapsing into genuine hysterics. All he’d got from either of them was name, rank, and number, and the medicos hadn’t even wanted him to have that much.
“Could have been a woman,” muttered Erica Nuttel, with a blush that Furneux at first thought he was imagining. “Hard to tell,” she repeated, looking uncomfortable.
She was too embarrassed to admit that she’d spent much of the time with her eyes tightly shut, perhaps on the principle that if you can’t see trouble it can’t trouble you. The very thought of guns, violence, blood . . . Miss Nuttel gulped and closed her eyes again.
Furneux realised that they weren’t going to enlarge just yet on their suspicions—perhaps they were really as shocked as they’d made out earlier—and was grateful for the timely arrival of the iced water, which revived the subdued spirits of Miss Nuttel and perked up Mrs. Blaine still more. “Let’s continue, shall we?” he urged, striking while the iron was at least lukewarm.
“So, tell me, what were you doing on this trip, anyway?” he asked again, determined not to let them divert him for a second time. He couldn’t help being suspicious of The Nuts: so convenient, the swollen ankle (easy to damage yourself just a little) which delayed the departure of the coach—perhaps to a time pre-arranged with the rest of the gang? So convenient, those seats in the front which blocked a proper view of the robbers from everyone else on the coach. The more he thought about it, the blacker the picture looked for Miss Nuttel and Mrs. Blaine. And their paranoia about Miss Seeton—Scotland Yard’s own unlikely secret weapon—could derive from a guilty pair of consciences . . .
“Won it,” said Miss Nuttel, while Mrs. Blaine smirked. “Competition—Anyone’s, last month.”
“Oh. Yes, I seem to recall . . .” Furneux, like many of its detractors, never actually read the notorious newspaper: but when it was left lying around in the police canteen, he might dip into it—the odd spare moment, nothing deliberate—and, strangely, could, if pressed, give chapter and verse for any of the scandals and exposures it was currently running. “Anyone’s—yes, of course. Famous Royal Mistresses, wasn’t it? And you won?”
“Historical, Inspector,” Miss Nuttel hastened to assure him. “Perfectly respectable people, king’s mistresses—not like some I could mention. Shady—often wondered how she gets away with it . . .”
Mrs. Blaine nodded wisely, her plump cheeks puckered in a knowing grimace. “Not that we’re mentioning any names, you understand, Inspector, but strange things have happened . . . iron filings, and magnets—no smoke without fire . . .”
Inspector Furneux was speechless. He’d never met Miss Seeton—it was obviously the Battling Brolly they were so busy hinting at—but he’d heard, and read, a lot about her. The idea of Miss Seeton setting up as a royal mistress—a latter-day Jane Shore, or Anne Boleyn, if you were Roman Catholic—was ludicrous. If people could make accusations like that and expect him to take them seriously, they had another think coming.
Or might that be what they wanted? Were they playing a clever double game of their own, to direct suspicion from themselves by acting and speaking so strangely that nobody would dream of taking them seriously?
On the other hand, people who read Anyone’s were an odd enough lot that he was prepared to believe almost anything of them—connivance with highway robbery not excluded . . .
And Inspector Furneux resolved to get in touch with Superintendent Brinton at Ashford, to learn what he could tell him about the two women who claimed to be Miss Erica Nuttel and Mrs. Norah Blaine.
chapter
~5~
“THE NUTS—YOU do mean that pair from Plummergen, don’t you?—in league with highway robbers?” Superintendent Chris Brinton spluttered briefly into the telephone receiver and then gave up the struggle. He laughed. The ears of Inspector Furneux, already pink with embarrassment at having had to consult his Ashford colleague on such a remarkable matter as waylaid tourist coaches and shotgun-toting crooks with masks over their faces, turned scarlet. He cleared his throat in a manner that was both apologetic and reproachful.
“Then I was correct in my supposition, sir. That you’d know of the ladies through the, er, Plummergen connection, that’s to say.” But I’d infinitely prefer you not to make fun of me for asking, came the underlying message, which Brinton could hardly miss.
“Sorry, Harry.” He sobered at once. “I shouldn’t laugh, but the thought of those two . . . those two Nuts . . .” With a further brief burst of mirth, he coughed, and continued in a voice that barely quivered: “So, having had me explode one fine theory for you, how else can I be of help?”
Well, he’d rung to ask for advice, so he’d better take whatever was on offer. Furneux allowed his tone to become less oppressively formal. “Can you tell me a bit about them, sir? I gather I can rule them out for complicity, but I don’t think you can really blame me for wondering. I can’t exactly make sense of them; they’re an odd pair. Is that why you called them The Nuts?”
“Not just me, Harry. Everyone in the village, from what Potter—he’s the local bobby—says. Everyone except Miss Seeton, that is . . .” Trust her never to be like the rest of them. And, though Plummergen might claim the nutty nomenclature derived from the grimly vegetarian stance taken by Miss Nuttel and Mrs. Blaine, there were still two ways of looking at this derivation. They avoided meat and ate nut cutlets (factual nicknaming) or they were crazy to do so (character assessment, and from what Potter said not far wrong, either).
“The Nuts,” repeated Superintendent Brinton, with a sigh as he thought of Miss Seeton. “Barmy but harmless—from our point of view, that is. Unlikely to commit any crime worse than slander. According to Potter, they’re as evil-tongued a brace of biddies as you’re likely to come across in several months of Sundays, though there’s always going to be someone like that in every village, I suppose.”
“They certainly did a bit of nasturtium-casting at Miss Seeton. Made out they recognised one of the robbers as a woman, which is possible, of course, but hinted that it might be the Battling Brolly, which I find hard to credit, from what I’ve heard of her.”
Brinton exploded again, but whether from mirth or shock at the slander Furneux couldn’t tell. He held the receiver away from his ear until the curious spluttering sounds had decreased in decibel level.
“Miss Seeton a highwayman?” gasped Brinton at last, with wild visions before his eyes. “Don’t let The Oracle hear you or he’ll wash your mouth out with soap—or get that tame giant of his to do it for him. Delphick and Bob Ranger think the world of Miss Seeton, though sometimes I wonder why, the mayhem that woman causes without meaning to. Did I ever tell you about those three police cars she managed to reduce to scrap iron even while she was fast asleep?”
“You did,” Furneux informed him with a grin. The superintendent had been purple in the face during the narration, and needed several whiskies to soothe him after the tale was fully told.
“Then, if you know the risks you’re running, why are you deliberately asking for trouble by getting involved with the woman? And don’t,” snarled Brinton, “try telling me it’s an indirect association. Everything about Miss Seeton is indirect, and woolly-minded—but catastrophic, nevertheless. Take it from one who knows!”
“I can hardly,” pointed out Furneux, “ignore two vital witnesses just because they happen to live in Plummergen and that’s where Miss Seeton happens to live. I do understand the problem, sir, but there are these—these damned Dick Turpin types to be caught, and The Nuts do seem to be some of the more noticing witnesses we’ve had, plus they were in the front seat. Now you’ve given me the all-clear, I can start to take what they say rather more seriously. Let’s face it, we need as much information as possible, and in the nature of things they’ve more than most of the other passengers to tell us.”
“If you want my advice—” began Brinton, then stopped. “Well, it’s probably too late now in any case, and what’s more it’s hardly the usual way for an investigating officer to behave. You’d best ignore it—I’m rambling. But . . .”
“Then what would your advice be, if I decided that I wanted to behave in an unusual investigative manner?”
“To wait until the next time and get all the information you need from those front-seat witnesses. Do yourself a big favour—stay away from The Nuts.”
“The next time?” Furneux was appalled. “What makes you think there’ll be a next time?”
Brinton uttered a scornful snort. “Just use the brains you were born with, Harry. Of course there’ll be a next time, and for at least two good reasons. One, it works, doesn’t it? Every time! A guaranteed method of collaring a fine and varied haul of swag. Tourists always cart cameras and travellers’ cheques and their best jewellery for dressing up on holiday with them. All you need to help yourself is a couple of cars to block the road, and someone who can look menacing behind a shotgun.” He paused. “Mind you, most people would look menacing behind a shotgun . . .”
“And the second reason, sir?”
Brinton emerged from his daydream—or was it a nightmare—of Miss Seeton, armed cap a pied with pistols and shotguns and the inevitable umbrella. He knew which he’d bet his boots on her causing the most commotion with . . .
“The second reason? I’ve already told you that, Harry, if you’d bothered to listen. Miss Seeton! Never mind how distant the connection—when that woman’s involved, there’s bound to be a recurrence of whatever trouble she’s involved in, only double. Or squared. Or cubed, or whatever the biggest magnification of anything is. I confidently predict a rash of highway robberies right through the summer—but I won’t bother to bet on having Miss Seeton turn up in it all somehow or somewhere. I can guarantee she will. So, don’t say I didn’t warn you!”
• • •
Inspector Furneux was more unnerved than he might care to admit by the doom-laden prophecies of his Ashford colleague, but, having asked the superintendent for advice, he would have thought himself a fool not to take at least part of it. His subsequent questioning of The Nuts was completed with their signing of the most detailed statements for which anyone could have wished—too detailed, perhaps. Did Norah Blaine’s sprained (or ricked) ankle, and her subsequent search for the herbalist, have to be excused and explained by her at such length? But the statements were signed at last, and these troublesome witnesses smuggled by a back-door route out of Hastings police station and into an unmarked car. The driver had his orders to deposit them safely in Plummergen without any of the crowd of journalists and television reporters catching sight of so much as the tip of Miss Nuttel’s equine nose.
“Let ’em chatter away all they like to the tourists,” Furneux decided. “The Americans’ll love it—their pictures in the English papers. They’ll buy hundreds of copies to take home as souvenirs. Compensation, perhaps, for having had pretty well everything else pinched. As for the other two, they’re the home-grown variety. Only on the trip because of some daft competition run by a newspaper. And we know,” he said cunningly, “how the English gentlewoman dislikes seeing her name in the papers. We’ll be doing them a favour by keeping a low profile for them . . .”
For there was, apart from Superintendent Brinton’s quite understandable pessimism concerning the Seeton connection, an obvious and serious justification for keeping quiet about The Nuts. They had, after all, been star witnesses: Miss Nuttel might have had her eyes closed for most of the time, but the Dick Turpins weren’t to know that. As far as they were concerned, the two front passengers had seen them; and could be asked to identify them, masks or not; and were therefore as much of a threat as all the previous front-seaters whose identities were being kept secret. Let their names and even partial addresses be published abroad, and Furneux wouldn’t care to take a bet that they might not be in danger . . .
This constabulary regard for their safety left The Nuts in peevish mood. Mrs. Blaine had been eagerly anticipating the sight of her photograph in the papers alongside articles she would deign to dictate to eager newshounds clamouring for audience; Miss Nuttel had been willing, in the interests of law, order, and justice, to do every citizen’s duty and speak the truth, which all had a right to know.
But, having been kept until last to be interviewed; and then being taken twice (or was it three times?) through their statements when before he’d gone out to telephone the inspector hadn’t paid proper attention; and then being asked whether they mightn’t care for something to eat after their ordeal, and having sausage and chips or pie and chips or fish and chips offered to them despite their protests . . . it was a grim-faced pair of Nuts who finally disappeared in the unmarked police car in the direction of Plummergen.
It was a silent journey. Once or twice Mrs. Blaine, with an exasperated air, attempted to break that silence, trying to pass comment—which surely was not an unnatural thing to wish—on all that had befallen the two friends during that momentous Monday afternoon. But every time she opened her plump little mouth, Erica Nuttel would nudge her crossly or—and this would hurt—kick her ankle, which happened to be the injured one. Bunny was not used to such harsh treatment from Eric, and she wasn’t sure whether her eyes should flash or fill with tears. While she made up her mind, she pursed her lips and decided to say nothing at all.
Thus it was a silent journey back to Lilikot, and the plate-glass windows seemed to mock the brooding Nuts as they made their weary way up the stone-flagged path to the welcoming front door and the longed-for chamomile tea. Once inside the house, Mrs. Blaine flopped sulkily on the sofa and propped her injured ankle high on a pile of cushions, while Erica Nuttel, with a gruff and indistinct mutter of what might have been apology, busied herself in the kitchen with boiling the kettle (using water drawn from their very own well) and thoroughly warming the teapot before spooning in double the usual amount of herb mixture. “Dollop of honey each, for shock,” prescribed Miss Nuttel, reaching for the rustic earthenware jar next to the bread crock. She took mugs from the carved wooden stand, and clattered a tin tray out of the cupboard. “Seaweed biscuits,” she added, as a nearby container caught her eye.
Miss N
uttel at last returned to the sitting room with the laden tray and handed Mrs. Blaine her mug and plate. Bunny took them as her due, and still said nothing. For the next few minutes, only a grateful, crunching, busy drinking broke the silence of the sitting room. But it was a silence that was thoughtful . . .
“Another cup, Bunny?” Erica Nuttel gestured towards the fat brown teapot. “Topped it up well, just in case. Likely to need something extra for our nerves, after the day we’ve both had.”
“What a day!” agreed Mrs. Blaine, as she held out her mug and helped herself to another seaweed biscuit. Really, she felt much better about everything now that she’d had time to catch her breath and take in some proper healthy nourishment instead of those terrible, animal snacks the policeman had tried to force upon them. And Eric seemed in a more approachable mood, too, now that she’d stopped brooding and started talking. Maybe she could be persuaded to explain her extraordinary behaviour in the car.
“There was no need for you to kick me quite so hard,” she complained, dipping her biscuit in the chamomile tea and looking hurt. “On top of everything else, I do think that was a bit much. Whatever possessed you?”
“Not to be trusted,” said Erica Nuttel, shaking her head with disapproval as she stared down her nose at unseen mischief.
“If you’re talking about me, Eric, I must say I don’t think that’s very—”
“Police driver, Bunny, not you. Probably a spy—finding out how much we know—inspector’s orders, mark my words. That change in his attitude to us—too dramatic, about-face—didn’t believe us at first, can’t think why, then deliberately made us late and kept us back, not allowed to join the others, went on checking and rechecking our statements, far too much of a good thing. Can’t believe they normally behave like that—suspicious, all right.”
Miss Seeton Cracks the Case (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 9) Page 4
