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

by Hamilton Crane

  Or was she worrying about nothing? There was, she must likewise remember—as must the doctor—a war on. Everyone—the newspapers, the wireless, people in shops and in the street—had repeatedly warned that things would be very, very different in the future.

  “Dr. Huxter—” she ventured, but the doctor did not hear her brave beginning.

  “... because,” he continued his explanation at exactly the same time, “after most private motorists laid up their cars last Easter for the duration, there’s really only the key personnel like doctors and farmers and tradesmen left on the road.” Miss Seeton blushed again at this reference to matters financial. “And if,” he went on, “the U-boats do as well with their blockading as the rumours say they might, it won’t be long before even the likes of us are off the road for good.”

  Miss Seeton felt a sudden stiffening of her spine. “If you will excuse me, Doctor,” she said firmly, “there are some who might regard such words as—as defeatist. Which, with all due respect—”

  She broke off, once more remembering his kindness and the inconvenience—and expense—it had cost him.

  “Sorry, Miss Seeton.” The doctor chuckled again. “ ‘We are not,’ ” he intoned in the words of the popular slogan, “ ‘interested in the possibilities of defeat.’ Are we?”

  “We are not,” said Miss Seeton, stiffer than ever. She was her father’s daughter as well as her mother’s. “Even if—if the worst comes to the worst ...”

  “You can always take one with you?” She could not see his expression, but from his tone it seemed he was smiling as he quoted yet another of the slogans that were meant to inspire the nation to resist to the end—and beyond it. “With—ah—all due respect, Miss Seeton, if German troops invade, they are going to be large, muscular, highly trained, and extremely determined gentlemen. Don’t let’s delude ourselves. I think we should amend that phrase to ‘You can try to take one with you’—wouldn’t you agree?”

  Miss Seeton’s innate honesty acknowledged that she, for one, at five foot nothing in her bare toes and a mere seven stone fully clothed, would stand little chance of resisting—let alone despatching—a Nazi paratrooper. “But we certainly have to try,” she said, still firm; and with this the doctor could not argue.

  “Let me throw a little light on the subject for you,” he offered as once more Miss Seeton began to swing herself out of the passenger seat into the blackout gloom. “That is—you can,” he amended once she was safely on her feet. “You stay there, and I’ll fetch your things.” He hopped out of the car—for so large a young man he was surprisingly agile—and Miss Seeton could hear him rummaging on the back seat for her belongings. At least he was unlikely to confuse her two small cases with his one bulky Gladstone bag ...

  “You’d better go in front with the flashlight,” he said as he materialised out of the darkness at her side, dropped her cases within half an inch of her toes, and ducked back inside the car to produce the same large torch that had guided him across the station forecourt. “I wouldn’t want you signing on with a broken leg before you’ve signed Mother Beamish’s register, now would I?”

  Miss Seeton, who had taken a swift step backwards when the suitcases arrived, thanked him for his kindness, but begged him not to waste his battery on one whose eyes, adjusting (if a little slowly) to the dark, were—if he would forgive her—perhaps rather sharper than his, to judge by his earlier remarks about poor night vision.

  “I’ll have to watch what I say with you, Miss Seeton.” Was that a note of amusement in his voice? Impossible, in a virtual stranger, to be sure. “Quick as a wink, you are,” he went on after she had opened the gate and begun a careful advance up the Beamish front path. “If anyone tries the odd tall story on you, I bet you’d spot it straightaway. Not a schoolmarm, are you, by any chance?”

  Miss Seeton admitted that she had, in the days of peace, been a teacher. In deference to her employment by Section G (Gervase?) as an information leaflet artist, she did not enlarge upon what subject she had taught.

  “And now you’ve volunteered for factory work,” said Dr. Huxter, his voice this time holding a clear note of admiration. “If my hands were free, I’d take my hat off to you, Miss Seeton. It’ll be quite a shock to your system, I’ve no doubt-just as I’ve no doubt you’ll cope wonderfully, once you’ve found your feet.”

  “Without breaking a leg,” said Miss Seeton as the beam of the flashlight fell upon a low stone step, much worn in the centre by generations of rustic feet. Dr. Huxter chuckled at her neat capping of his previous warning, and set her cases down by the step before retrieving his torch, mounting to the door, and rapping briskly on the knocker.

  “The Nine O’Clock News is long over, so Tilly will be at the back, in the kitchen,” he told Miss Seeton when there was no immediate answer to his rapping. “Doing the dishes, or wondering what she can contrive with half a pound of offal and a few spuds from the garden—ah!”

  Miss Seeton, too, had caught the noise of feet approaching the door along what sounded like an uncarpeted passage. There came a swish and the rattle of rings as the blackout curtain was drawn back, and then a suspicious query through the letter box.

  “Who is it?”

  “Your newest lodger, Mrs. Beamish,” Dr. Huxter told the letter box. “Miss Seeton.”

  “Is that you, Doctor?” asked the letter box.

  “It’s an imposter,” returned the doctor promptly. The letter box snorted and fell shut with a clunk. Once more there came a swish and rattle as the blackout was replaced, and then the door swung open.

  “You and your nonsense,” said the massive female form that now appeared on the threshold. “Take no notice of the doctor, Miss Seeton. A regular humorist, he thinks he is. You come on in—mind the step—them two bags all you’ve got?—right—and wait while I shut the door.”

  “I’ll be off,” said the doctor. “It’s only a slow puncture, from the sound of it ...” His chuckle suggested that he knew and understood the problem only too well. “And I ought to make it home without too much bother,” he went on cheerily. “I leave you in Mrs. Beamish’s capable hands, Miss Seeton. Good night—but we’ll be meeting again before long, I’ve no doubt.” He flicked the torch quickly upwards so that Miss Seeton could see him tip his hat, and then lowered the beam and headed off back down the path. When she heard the gate click shut behind him, Miss Seeton felt as if she had lost a friend.

  “A shocking bad driver, he is,” said Mrs. Beamish as, having observed the courtesies, she drew Miss Seeton inside and closed the door. “You’ll have met at the station.” she went on, pulling the blackout curtain so that her guest could step through into the light, “and being the gentleman he is he’ll have brought you here with your heart in your mouth every inch of the way, or so I’d guess.”

  She gave Miss Seeton no time either to deny or to confirm the guess, but hurried on: “You’ve come from London, haven’t you? And a fair old way you’ve travelled—all day long and half the night—and you’ll want a bite to eat before you take to your bed. Talking of which, I’ll show you where everything is, and you can let me have your ration book so’s I know how much I’ll have and for how many.”

  “How many—?” Miss Seeton managed to slip in as Tilly Beamish stopped talking to inhale, bending down and taking—above the protests of her guest—the two suitcases in her large, capable hands.

  “Five altogether, with you, and most of them good girls—this way, and try to be quiet on account of them that are asleep—but young to be away from home,” was the reply. Miss Seeton wondered about most of them, but said nothing as she followed her landlady up the narrow, uncarpeted stairs and did her best not to clatter.

  “You,” Mrs. Beamish told her as they reached the top, “oughtn’t to have too much bother fitting in, being not so much older, but ...” She lowered her voice, and Miss Seeton suspected that this was not entirely in deference to the sleepers. “But there’s one calls herself an actress.”

  “
Er—oh,” said Miss Seeton as it became clear that an answer was expected. Was it the actress to whom Mrs. Beamish had objections, or the claim? Did she suspect her lodger of immorality or of falsehood? Not (Miss Seeton hastened to remind herself) that actresses were any less moral than anyone else. Or—well—any more. They were people: good or bad like everyone else, some with talent, some without, and if the girl in question had been a poor actress, then—well—as Dr. Huxter had said, one took off one’s hat to her for having volunteered for war work in a factory when she could have wangled (if that was the word) her way into one of the forces entertainment groups such as ENSA—Every Night Something Awful, as Tommy Trinder so amusingly had it—which would have been ...

  “A cushy number,” murmured Miss Seeton, unsure of the slang but feeling it suited her requirements, as Mrs. Beamish threw open a bedroom door.

  “Glad you’re pleased,” said Mrs. Beamish, preening herself. “But then, I look after all my girls, as anyone in the village will tell you, without fear or favour.” The gentle emphasis on all was clearly the landlady’s way of reminding this new arrival that not everyone in the house was, in her opinion, necessarily as respectable as her fellow lodgers.

  In her opinion. Miss Seeton, who always tried to keep an open mind, decided that much of the landlady’s suspicion arose from the country’s lack of knowledge of the town. Not that she, Emily Dorothea Seeton, would call herself exactly cosmopolitan—the life of an English gentlewoman, whether in Hampstead or Herefordshire, was always quiet and uneventful—but one did, from time to time, attend theatres and the opera, and read about the “doings” of the stars in the newspapers and, occasionally captive under the hairdresser’s dryer, the magazines ...

  “Stars,” murmured Miss Seeton, stifling a yawn. It had indeed been a long, tiring day.

  “Lovely clear night,” agreed Mrs. Beamish, dropping the cases beside the bed and dusting her hands together. “For a change. So let’s hope they don’t take it into their heads to bomb us—I must show you where the shelter is in case they do—but even if they don’t, there’ll be no stargazing for you, Miss Seeton, until you’ve had a bite to eat. After which you’ll be more than ready for bed, I’ve no doubt.” She coughed. “The bathroom’s back along the passage to your left, and the whatever’s right next to it, with another in the garden if you’re desperate, only it doesn’t flush so well, being—excuse me—earth, see. I’ll show you when I take you out to the shelter.” She coughed again and then pointed sternly at the window.

  “If you’re still awake enough when all’s done, you know not to open the blackout until you’ve switched the light off, don’t you? I’m having no air-raid warden—or anyone else—knocking on my door in the middle of the night, and this always a decent house. Don’t you ever forget, Miss Seeton, there’s a war on.”

  chapter

  ~ 13 ~

  MISS SEETON WAS anxious not to oversleep on her first day at work. She had finished in the bathroom and was downstairs, fully dressed but yawning, before anyone in the house except Mrs. Beamish was properly awake.

  “Did you sleep well, dear?” asked Tilly, once the morning salutations had been exchanged and she could return to her domestic duties. From above came the sound of shrill, muffled giggles and pattering feet as other sleepers began to bestir themselves. “Them bombers—and wasn’t I right to say they’d come?—didn’t disturb you, did they?”

  “Er—yes, thank you. And no, they didn’t,” replied Miss Seeton, somewhat startled to learn that she had slept right through an air raid. The journey from home must have taken rather more out of her than she had realised.

  “I’d have woken you if they looked like coming close,” Tilly told her, “but they didn’t—well, they never do. It was that factory again, and I shan’t rest until them night shift girls are safely back—but we’re tucked nicely out of the way here. Them devils haven’t hit more than a couple of houses on the outskirts of the village since they started bombing—and even then there was nobody killed, which is a mercy.”

  “Oh,” said Miss Seeton, and sat down. “Yes, of course.” Tilly’s calm disdain for the enemy set an admirable example she would do well to emulate. “Of course, it really is a most comfortable bed,” she said in a voice she was pleased did not tremble. “And a very pleasant room.”

  Mrs. Beamish nodded amiably as she poured boiling water into a large brown teapot, and then started the egg timer. “That’s right,” she said with pride. “It was good enough for my Beamish to die in, that room, which until the billeting officer insisted, I wanted to keep in his memory, war or no war.” With her gaze fastened on the tumbling grains of egg-timer sand she did not notice Miss Seeton’s startled expression.

  “Not that I’d dream of putting kiddies in there, and so I told her when the evacuees came—but oh, he made a lovely corpse,” enthused the relict of the late Beamish. “Mind you—he’d had a cruel time of it, poor man: his chest, it was—but he laid out lovely, and the wreath was worth every penny I paid for it, as everyone said when they came to see him. Young Dr. Huxter’s dad, he was still with us then, and of course he did what he could, but this is a terrible area for chests, being a valley, and the hills so high all around.”

  “I’m very sorry,” said Miss Seeton, hoping this would be an acceptable response. Mrs. Beamish had not volunteered the date of her husband’s demise, and it seemed impertinent to inquire, though she had to concede that the widow seemed remarkably ... cheerful about her loss.

  Cheerful she was. “Oh, well, it’s an ill wind,” philosophised Mrs. Beamish. “It wasn’t yesterday he went—and of course it’s why they built the factory here, on account of the fog. Comes up real sudden, it does. Last night with all the stars and the bombs—you take it from me, Emily, that’s not what it’s usually like ...”

  Once more she missed Miss Seeton’s start of surprise. Miss Seeton hoped that she was not so foolish as to mistake informality for deliberate discourtesy; the world she knew was changing—changing fast—and if survival depended on one’s ability to adapt to change, then she, Emily Dorothea Seeton, would adapt with the best. It was, after all, only what Dr. Huxter had tried to tell her—warn her—about last night. Miss Seeton silently thanked him for the warning, but trusted to her native common sense not to need it.

  “... like a bowl of whipped cream, sometimes.” Mrs. Beamish sighed as the last grains of sand trickled through to the lower glass compartment. “Though dear knows how much longer they’ll let us have cream, whipped or not.” She put the egg timer back on its shelf, picked up a spoon, lifted the teapot lid, and embarked on a bout of loud and vigorous stirring. “You mark my words,” she said above the clatter of metal on earthenware. “It won’t be so very long before cream’s on the ration, too.”

  Miss Seeton said that she supposed not, but looking on the bright side, for proper enjoyment of a cup of tea one only needed milk. And could she help by fetching the jug from the larder?

  “It’s there on the table, thanks for asking, but them girls need to get a move on, or they’ll miss the bus as well as the News. You might give ’em a shout while I warm up the wireless, seeing as if they miss it, so will you, and them supposed to be showing you the ropes this first day until you find your way around.” Tilly Beamish favoured Miss Seeton with a long, appraising look as the newest lodger prepared to alert her unknown mentors that they were likely to be late for work. Miss Seeton, sensing that the older woman had something of significance to add, waited a few moments to hear it before she went to the kitchen door.

  Whatever it might have been, Mrs. Beamish thought better of saying it. “But don’t shout,” she begged, waving Miss Seeton on her way. “It’s my head. What with them devils keeping me awake half the night, I tell you, Emily, if Hitler don’t watch out, he’s going to make himself very unpopular around these parts.”

  Miss Seeton approved this meiosis, but was still wondering how to answer when she realised there was no need. The giggles and pattering had grown sudde
nly louder, and even as Mrs. Beamish poured tea through a strainer from one pot to another, two young women erupted down the stairs and ran side by side along the hall to the kitchen.

  “Morning!”

  “Morning!”

  The two spoke almost as one. For Miss Seeton (who did not know them) this came as no more of a surprise than it did to Tilly Beamish (who knew them well). Family likeness—the set of the ears, the shape of the eye sockets, hairline, colouring, the overall build—could be neither missed nor mistaken, by an artist; and such likeness was, as often as not, far more than merely physical. For one thing, they seemed to share—Miss Seeton sniffed—a strange taste in perfume ...

  “Morning, you two,” said Mrs. Beamish, still busy with the straining. “Sleep well? Them bombers didn’t wake you?”

  Miss Seeton, about to introduce herself, recalled that she was not the hostess, and compromised with a welcoming smile. The sisters smiled back at her and told Tilly they had slept like the dead as, her delicate task complete and the leaves set aside to be dried and used again, their landlady made the introductions.

  “This, girls, is Miss Seeton—Miss Emily Seeton, your new assistant almoner or what d’you call it at the factory, so just you watch your step or she’ll have you sent home in disgrace.” Miss Seeton opened her mouth to deny the charge, but just in time realised from the girls’ smothered giggles that it was Tilly’s idea of a joke. “Emily,” Mrs. Beamish continued, “this here is Beryl, and this is Ruby.”

  “We’re not twins,” said Beryl, “though everyone thinks we are.”

  “But there’s only ten months between us,” said Ruby.

  “And we do everything together,” said Beryl.

  “Which is why we’re here,” said Ruby.

  Miss Seeton expressed her pleasure at meeting them and hid a twinkle of amusement in case it should encourage them in their quick-fire cross-talk. They were hardly more than school-girls—and children did not always know where the boundaries were. As she was to have some (admittedly small) authority over them, it would not do to let matters get out of hand so early in the working relationship.