Miss Seeton's Finest Hour (A Miss Seeton Mystery)

by Hamilton Crane

  “Argue it whichever way you want, Haynes,” he hurried on as the major looked about to protest. “Seeton is dangerous. She knows too much—far more than anyone who isn’t in the intelligence racket has a right to know—and she’s playing some damned cunning double game with the knowledge, I’m sure of it.” He waved the sketchbook in the air and glowered at every face around the table in turn, quelling all attempted interruption. “What we can’t be sure of,” he went on, “is whether or not she’s telling anyone about it, although from the lack of known contact, it’s possible she might not be, just yet—but she’s getting in a hell of a lot of practice disguising the important stuff among the rest of it, which is what I meant about wise men hiding leaves in the forest.”

  “It—” began Chandler, but Captain Grange steamed over his beginning at full verbal speed ahead.

  “In my opinion,” he said, “she was simply ... biding her time. Of course, now that she knows we’ve broken her cover she’ll wait to see if we manage to crack her blasted code—which brings me,” he repeated grimly, “to this, gentlemen. An operation even more vital—even more secret—than the Walpole business—and yet Emily Seeton seems to have known about Operation Fish more than a week before it started!”

  chapter

  ~ 6 ~

  ONCE MORE THE tubby policeman pedalled his regulation black bicycle along the road, his gas mask in its canvas bag bumping against his hip. He reached his destination, propped his bike against the wall, and marched up the short flight of steps to the bell, which he rang in his most official manner. There was a rattle at the lock, and the door swung open.

  PC Badgery touched his helmet in salute. “Miss Emily Dorothea Seeton?” he asked in his most official tones.

  “Why, yes, of course,” said Miss Seeton, with a welcoming smile. “How may I be of assistance, Mr. Badgery?”

  PC Badgery glanced warily over his shoulder and then bent forward to whisper, although there was nobody within half a mile of the little porch as far as he could see. “Orders,” he hissed, fishing an envelope out of his pocket and again glancing warily around before passing it to Miss Seeton. “Best wait till you’re inside before you read ’em,” he went on in the same low voice. This was noble of PC Badgery, for his curiosity was very great—but his patriotism was even greater, and the superintendent had emphasised that nobody was to know what any of this was about. A friendly visit from the neighbourhood bobby would probably pass unnoticed: if it didn’t, he was to say, if anyone asked, that there had been some complaint about the blackout, unlikely though this was in the case of the Seeton ladies—but it was what he was to say, and all he was to know.

  PC Badgery had responded that it was all he knew. He didn’t have a clue, and hadn’t known from the start, what any of this was about, just that they’d wanted him to invite Miss Seeton to the cop shop for a chat and then, when she was out, they’d sent someone else along to chat with her at home. And now, with this letter, he supposed they wanted to chat with her somewhere else ...

  “Don’t suppose anything,” the superintendent told him. “Just do what you’re told and forget all about it. Right?”

  “Right you are, sir,” said PC Badgery, who had a cheery suspicion the super didn’t have any more of a clue what was going on than he himself did.

  That suspicion was, of course, correct. Secrecy was all-important. Nobody must ever be allowed to forget there was a war on ...

  The envelope was neatly typed, with OHMS in the top right-hand corner, and was firmly sealed. Miss Seeton slit it carefully across the top with a knife so that it could be reused with a sticky label. There was a war on, and it was the patriotic duty of everybody not to be wasteful.

  She was rather surprised to find a second, smaller envelope, even more firmly sealed than the first, inside. The direction on the second envelope was in handwritten capital letters, in red ink.

  “Dear me,” murmured Miss Seeton, whose preference was for a less flamboyant mode of address. She slit the second envelope with the same care she had applied to the first and shook out a folded paper that, unfolded, proved to be—as PC Badgery had said—her orders.

  “The Tower of London?” Miss Seeton meditated on this startling instruction for some minutes, but could arrive at no logical conclusion. Had she been told to report, say, to the headquarters of the Women’s Voluntary Service, it would have made sense. While there was as yet no compulsory registration scheme for female workers, everyone throughout the country was doing what she could—even her dear mother, who had never been strong, but who was happy to stay quietly at home sewing, or knitting comforts for the troops with wool from unravelled sweaters, taking a gentle stroll twice a week to the local WVS to collect more sweaters because she didn’t care to put people to the bother of bringing them to the house when petrol was in such short supply, and when public transport was so ... unreliable.

  Despite the unreliability:

  “I’ll go by tube,” Miss Seeton resolved after reading her letter again and noting the time at which she was required to be at the Tower. “A taxi, could I even find one, would be so expensive, and these days there are so few buses going where one wants. With the new line it should be so much easier than it used to be—I hope ...”

  Her hope was fulfilled. She waited only seven minutes at Finchley Road underground station for a through train to Charing Cross on the Bakerloo Line. As the doors opened and Miss Seeton climbed on board, she glanced back with approval to the platform and the lively young woman in her still-unfamiliar guard’s uniform, whistle and flag at the ready to signal the driver it was safe to move off. Really, it was splendid that so many men were being replaced, and with such ready efficiency, by their female counterparts—even if (and here Miss Seeton’s smile faded) the men were leaving to join the armed forces. She sighed. Leaving to risk their lives. Leaving to fight an enemy roused to war by an evil madman ...

  Miss Seeton left her train at Charing Cross and hurried up and down stairs and along various tunnels to the District Line, hoping that a change of scene would help to change the direction of her thoughts. One was not normally so—so morbid, and while it might be argued that in such times of national emergency there was every reason to be concerned, it was surely more sensible—so much better for morale—if that concern did not so much remain unvoiced as even ... unthought. One had one’s patriotic duty to remain, or at least to appear to remain, optimistic at all times. What was the phrase? Spreading alarm and despondency. There was that new, special Act of Parliament that could send alarmists to prison—perhaps (she supposed) as in the old days to the Tower of London ...

  But Miss Seeton did not (she told herself) seriously believe that a charge of treason was the cause of her summons—and in so curious a manner—to the Tower, although she suspected there might be rather more to it than the theory she had proposed to her anxious mother. Alice Seeton, upon learning what was in her daughter’s letter (though Emily had given her only the gist of its contents, for to allow anyone else to read it might be a breach of security), had agreed with her daughter’s cheerful assumption that it was probably a mistake: no doubt something to do with the sketches and leaflets Mr. Steptoe had said they might ask her to draw, and in the way of government offices they had used the wrong address. It would soon be sorted out, as such things always were. When there was a war on, it must come as no great surprise if wires, or rather letters, were on occasion crossed. Indeed, it was surprising that, in such circumstances, more letters than hers did not go astray, but the postmen were so clever ...

  By the time Miss Seeton had reached Mark Lane and emerged into the fresh air, she was smiling once more. Even the somehow unexpected sight—one had of course read about it, but it was the first time she had actually been there and seen it—of the Tower of London’s grassy moat turned over entirely to rows of vegetables did no more than moderate her smile to a still-optimistic upward curve of the lips. It was truly splendid, the way everyone was playing his part—even the Beefeaters. W
ho, perhaps, one might whimsically suppose to have somewhat less cause than others to be interested in a vegetable diet. Miss Seeton’s smile broadened again. Or more. Roast beef and two veg was, after all, the traditional English Sunday lunch, and could anyone doubt the traditionally English nature of the Tower of London and its Beefeater guards? For hundreds of years they had watched and protected ...

  “Halt!” cried the sentry as Miss Seeton, still smiling, set foot on the bridge. He snatched the gun at his shoulder to the “present” position. “Who goes there?”

  Miss Seeton had not fully emerged from her daydreams of King Henry VII, upon whose authority the Beefeaters—though one should not forget their correct nomenclature was the Yeomen of the Guard—had been formed. She blinked at this modern khaki-clad guard with his gun at the ready, and waited politely for the rest of the traditional challenge. She waited some moments before it became clear it was not to be uttered.

  “Who goes there?” cried the sentry again, rattling the bolt of his gun in a purposeful manner. As other khaki-clad figures along the bridge arranged themselves and their weapons in attitudes of readiness, the man confronting Miss Seeton stamped his heavy boots on the flagstone paving and glared through narrowed eyes at the young woman who stood blinking at him in such a peculiar way.

  “Friend,” Miss Seeton replied with a gasp, startled by the booted stamp out of 1485 and back to 1940 in the space of one quick breath. “Oh, yes, friend—not foe, I do assure you. I—I have this letter ...”

  “Let’s see,” said the sentry, reaching out with his free hand to take the OHMS envelope even as his other hand tightened on the gun. “Right—wait there ...”

  He took three or four steps back towards his comrades in arms, out of range of any tricks this self-styled “friend” might decide to try to stop him giving the letter the thorough once-over it deserved. He glanced quickly at the young woman before he pulled the letter from its envelope; she was standing meekly waiting as he’d instructed, her fingers idly twisting at the string that tied her gas mask in its cardboard box to the strap of her handbag. Good-quality leather, that looked, same as her shoes. Clothes respectable, apart from the hat, which was—well, like no hat he’d ever seen before—but then, everyone was trimming and refurbishing these days, and perhaps she’d just got carried away once she started. Some women were like that. You couldn’t say the same for her makeup—very restrained, that was. A dab of powder, a smudge of lipstick, and her light brown hair looked as if it waved naturally, which it probably did, as she hardly seemed the type for a perm.

  Even as his quick eye summed up the meekly waiting Miss Seeton, his study of the letter within the red-ink envelope showed him he had been right to be ready to accept her for what she seemed to be, a conventional young woman of the English middle classes, here at the Tower on official business—and what sort of business he knew damn well it wasn’t his place to start wondering. He’d heard too many tales of young women applying for what people told ’em would be a routine job—translating from the foreign papers, maybe—and never seen a second time on account of being parachuted somewhere abroad, in disguise, though if anyone asked his opinion, the high-ups’d gone badly wrong with this one, who wouldn’t—couldn’t—pass for anything but English, not if she tried for a thousand years ...

  “Pass, friend,” said the sentry with a grin, returning the letter to its owner and snapping off a ferocious salute. English as they came, and away to fight the Hun on his own territory—why, if it wasn’t against standing orders, he’d take off his hat to her!

  Miss Seeton’s identity was checked, rechecked, and confirmed all along the bridge. At the final checkpoint the sentry asked her to wait while he called for assistance. He retreated into his box, cranked a handle, and spoke urgently into a field telephone.

  “Someone’ll be down for you in a minute, miss,” he said as he emerged from the box. “Lovely day, innit?”

  “Oh, it is indeed,” said Miss Seeton, thankful for the gambit. After such a display of military efficiency she was starting to feel just a little apprehensive about what might be in store once the Tower gates were closed behind her. So many people had entered the Norman fortress, never to leave again. She thought of tragic Lady Jane Grey, the youthful Nine Days’ Queen, at first ruling from, and then imprisoned in, the Tower, to be beheaded on the orders of Mary Tudor, at just sixteen—Thomas Seymour, Lord High Admiral of England—Sir Walter Ralegh, Elizabeth’s gallant pirate, whom her successor James had taken in such dislike, if that wasn’t a ridiculous meiosis—Anne Boleyn—Catherine Howard—Sir Thomas More ... Traitors’ Gate, and the courageous behaviour of the young, innocent Princess Elizabeth—

  “Miss Seeton?” From the tone of voice it was evident this was at least the second time of asking.

  Miss Seeton blushed and once more emerged from history to confront the present day, which stood before her now in natty gents’ tailoring, complete with buttonhole rose.

  “Oh,” said Miss Seeton, blinking. “Oh ... yes, I am Emily Seeton.” She had been expecting she knew not what, but certainly someone in uniform. Except that she supposed one could regard pin-striped trousers and a well-cut black jacket as a uniform, of sorts. Didn’t a humorous popular song refer to the Bowler Brigade? Not, of course, that this gentleman was wearing a bowler, but it was not difficult to envisage such a hat on a mahogany stand in his office ...

  “My name is Chandler,” said he of the pinstripes and flowered lapel, as the sentry snapped off a salute to the newcomer and then, turning slightly to one side, grinned and winked at Miss Seeton. “If you would care to follow me,” went on Chandler, ignoring both the grin and the wink, “I’ll take you to meet Major Haynes.”

  As his victim pattered in his wake—he did his best to shorten his six-foot stride to accommodate her, but he kept forgetting—Chandler wondered, not for the first time in his present employment, at the contrast between vision and reality. Between them they’d all—except Steptoe, who’d actually met the girl—built her up into some sort of ... genteel bogey woman. They knew her personal details and family background, and on paper she looked about as great a threat to national security as he himself did—but in view of those damning sketches, they still had to play safe. She could yet turn out to be dangerous: even without concrete proof they’d decided she probably was, or at least the risk couldn’t be taken that she wasn’t without a good deal more investigation. Which is why the interview between her and Haynes would be monitored to the hilt, with hidden microphones and, if it could be wangled, someone watching through a convenient hole—not eyes cut out of portraits on the wall, which was very old hat, and she’d be bound to spot it, art being her speciality, as they well knew ...

  They knew everything about her, yet they knew nothing about her. It was up to Major Haynes, the only one who’d been able to hold a totally balanced position about the girl all the way through that intense discussion the other day, to find out just what made Miss Seeton tick ...

  With the long practice of the intelligence officer who could live life on several levels at once, Chandler was busy pointing out sights of historical interest to his companion even as, on a different mental plane, he continued to wonder about her.

  “... school parties, in happier days,” Miss Seeton was telling him as they crossed a small courtyard and headed for a discreet wooden door reinforced with iron studs that after so many centuries were rather more rust than iron. “The children do so revel in all the bloodthirsty stories, you know. I find that once they are back in the classroom they throw themselves with the greatest enthusiasm into the task of drawing whatever has made the most impression on them.” Miss Seeton’s manner showed that she held enthusiasm in very high esteem. “It’s a curious thing,” she added as Chandler produced a small, shiny key and applied it to a surprisingly modern keyhole, “but the girls seem to enjoy quite as many beheadings and gory splashes of blood as any of the boys I have taught.” She smiled faintly. “Until, that is, they reach a certain age
.”

  “The female of the species, Miss Seeton,” said Chandler as he ushered her through the door, locked it behind them, and slipped the key back in his pocket. Was her remark one of the Freudian slips the shrinks and trick cyclists warned you about? Was her subconscious boasting that she, one of your typical English middle-class girls, could be as bloodthirsty—as dangerous—as anyone, if she wanted? She’d retrieved her mistake quickly enough—if it was a mistake, of course ...

  “In here, Miss Seeton.” They had climbed some narrow twisting stone steps and walked along an even more narrow corridor painted a dull, faded green and lit by electric bulbs that were no substitute for daylight. Now they stood outside one of the many doors—identical, except for the numbers and letters in their metal frames—past which they had walked in the gloom.

  Chandler raised his hand, knocked a sharp rat-tat, and opened the door without waiting for an invitation from within. “After you, Miss Seeton,” he said with a courteous nod; and as she entered, he followed her. “Miss Seeton, Major Haynes,” he said, and then said nothing more.

  chapter

  ~ 7 ~

  MAJOR HAYNES HAD been sitting at his desk when Chandler knocked, but was already on his feet as the door opened and Miss Seeton walked in.

  For several seconds the two regarded each other in a thoughtful silence Chandler did not break. At last, Haynes nodded and smiled.

  “Good morning, Miss Seeton,” he said.

  “Good morning, Major Haynes,” replied Miss Seeton with a shy smile of her own. “It—it is Major Haynes, isn’t it? I thought Mr. Chandler told me—but without a uniform ...”