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

by Hamilton Crane

  “Ah,” said George, in quite a different tone, narrowing his eyes into slits of suspicion as he aimed his rifle with more spirit than skill. “And what were you expecting to have happened, my girl, hey? Only bloody murder again, that’s what!”

  “What?” cried Miss Seeton, distinctly shaken. She had realised even as soon as she uttered her earlier words that the presence of the police should come as no surprise, as they would be continuing to investigate the death of Raymond Raybould. She had been prepared to laugh at her folly for having thought the worst; but now ...

  “As if you didn’t know,” scoffed George, stepping a few paces nearer. “With the doctor giving you a lift and all, trying to pretend he didn’t tell you, you—you damnable fifth columnist!”

  Miss Seeton turned to look at Dr. Huxter, who managed a rueful smile. “I’m afraid so,” he said. “I wasn’t driving this way for pleasure, you know, or even on a routine call. One of the Beaver’s Army was found with his head smashed in a couple of hours ago, but I was at hospital, and the message only just reached me.”

  “Oh,” said Miss Seeton. “Oh ...” It was not that she thought herself unduly squeamish—indeed, she was grateful to the doctor for having broken the news without feeling the need to wrap her in cotton wool, although she wondered that he had not mentioned it on the journey—but it was nonetheless a shock to learn that within the space of twenty-four hours two violent deaths had occurred in this out-of-the-way place, as well as an accident that, the more she considered it, might not have been an accident after all.

  She had to telephone the major. Quickly.

  “I assure you,” she said with a smile to George, “that I am nothing so despicable as a fifth columnist, or a spy, or—or anything but a patriotic Englishwoman. And as such my place is inside those gates, at work, not—not wasting time out here. Doctor, don’t you agree?”

  “Well,” said Dr. Huxter. Miss Seeton followed his gaze to the business end of George’s rifle and understood why he had temporised.

  “I assure you,” she reiterated, and then came to a halt as she realised that she did not know George’s name, which made making a direct appeal somewhat awkward. In the circumstances, one could hardly feel the tu form of address entirely suitable. “I assure you,” she said for the third time, “that—that my intentions are—are as honourable as yours, and—”

  “Quiet!” George’s bellow was urgent, not angry. With his free hand he shaded his eyes and squinted upwards into the distance. “Listen!”

  Dr. Huxter stuck his head right out of the window and turned in the same direction. “Theirs,” he said grimly after a few tense moments. “More than one, by the sound of it. Let us in, man—you can’t expect a woman to stay outside during an air raid!”

  George was about to speak when the siren began to wail. He shouted something Miss Seeton could not quite catch as the barrage balloons were winched into the sky and the ack-ack guns started blazing, and ran to open the gates, first darting into the wooden hut for his steel helmet, which he clapped on his head even as he gestured with his rifle for the doctor to make haste.

  Dr. Huxter needed no second bidding. The gates were open the merest crack, and his foot was on the accelerator, urging the car through the widening gap with a scream of tortured metalwork that set Miss Seeton’s teeth on edge. The whine of the balloon winches and the pounding snarl of the ack-ack guns—so few of them—was joined by the clatter of falling shrapnel, and Huxter cursed as he pulled the car against a breezeblock wall.

  “This’ll be the last of my paint,” he told Miss Seeton as he switched off the engine. “And I think we’ll have to run for it ...”

  They were outside the car, staring together into the heavens. Miss Seeton’s eye was keener than the doctor’s. “I think so, too,” she said. “I see five aircraft and I don’t believe they’re ours.”

  “Nor does anyone else,” he returned, seizing her by the hand and cursing as he tangled with her gas mask and bag. “We run for it, same as the rest of ’em—there’s a shelter over there and a slit trench a bit closer. Which do you prefer?”

  Miss Seeton glanced at the mass of people now erupting from the various factory buildings, all of whom seemed to be heading for the shelter. “The trench,” she said, “if it’s closer—I don’t know—”

  “I do,” he told her. “It is,” and he began to run. For so large a man he moved speedily, and Miss Seeton’s shorter legs had to work hard to keep up with his stride. Every time she slackened her pace or faltered, he tugged on her hand, which made the bag and gas mask bump and tangle. But Miss Seeton ignored them: she ran and ran.

  Others ran, too, as the droning thud-thud-thud of enemy engines drew ever nearer. Out on the airfield they were abandoning the tractors used to disperse the Spitfires on the ground and were plunging into trenches, or taking cover by the few trees left standing when the ministry acquired the land. The siren wailed, the ack-ack blazed, the shrapnel clattered, and Emily Seeton ran, hand in hand with Samuel Huxter, running for their lives.

  But not fast enough. One of the aircraft peeled away from its fellows to swoop overhead in a long, vicious curve.

  “He’s making a dummy run!” cried the doctor, panting.

  There came a swift, sharp series of bangs, and Miss Seeton saw dust spurting up in a moving line a few yards ahead of her. Huxter cursed once, glanced up, and ran on.

  “Missed,” he wheezed, still running. “Machine gun ...”

  Even at such a moment Miss Seeton found time to be shocked at the very idea of being machine-gunned on English soil. They had no right—

  There came a roar behind her, and a thump, and a shower of earth through which she felt herself flying ...

  And Miss Seeton knew no more.

  chapter

  ~ 24 ~

  HER HEAD WAS throbbing with sharp, vicious needle-darts. It felt strangely ... heavy, like the rest of her small person, and hot. Or possibly cold. Miss Seeton wondered if she might, for the first time in her life, be suffering from a migraine. If she was, she hoped it would be the last.

  Cautiously she opened her eyes.

  She closed them again at once. The glaring white light all around her turned the needles into daggers, and she felt more than a little sick.

  She moved her head on the pillow and tried to stifle a moan as the daggers turned into corkscrews and sickness bubbled its acid way up into her throat. She gulped and began to shiver—and gulped a second time—and groaned.

  “Easy, now,” said a woman’s voice that rang with a curious echo. A cool hand rested for a moment on her cheek and then slipped round under the back of her head. “It’ll make you feel even worse if you’re sick, but if you really can’t keep it back, don’t worry. There’s something here to catch it ...”

  The nurse—that voice, those words, could belong only to a nurse—produced a kidney-shaped white enamel bowl into which Miss Seeton, as corkscrew points scored painful lines across her brain, vomited with impressive accuracy and thoroughness. With her eyes blurred by tears and exhaustion, she fell—or rather, was gently laid back—on the pillow, and as her head filled with a slow, rushing roar Miss Seeton drifted out of the all-white echoing world into velvety, pain-sparkled darkness.

  The next time she opened her eyes the pain was almost gone, replaced by a dull, general ache. The light still glared but held fewer daggers, and the world, ever white, was less blurred. The rushing roar, like the pain, was almost gone. She moved her head on the pillow and caught her breath as ... nothing happened.

  She sighed, relaxed, and warily tried to move—to test—the rest of herself. Hands: bandaged, but at least the fingers worked well, if a little stiffly, though the palms—ouch—were sore. Arms, shoulders—more stiffness there ... feet, toes, legs—

  “Oh,” gasped Miss Seeton, wincing. “My legs ...”

  The violent spasm on top of the general ache made her eyes water. As she blinked and sniffed away the tears she realised that one of the white blurs that ha
d seemed to fill her troubled vision was the hump of bedclothes—hospital bedclothes—on a frame over the lower part of her body.

  “My legs ... must be ... broken,” whispered Miss Seeton.

  But she knew that the only way to face up to a problem was not to ignore it in the hope that it would vanish of its own accord: problems never did that.

  “My legs,” said Miss Seeton out loud in a voice that barely shook, “are broken.”

  “No, they aren’t,” said another voice, even louder, and if it shook, Miss Seeton did not notice. “Don’t you worry,” the voice went on. “You’ll be all right, duck. I’ve heard them say so more than once these past couple of days.” The voice took on a slightly apologetic note. “Well, it’s not that I’m given to eavesdropping, I wouldn’t want anyone to think that, but when they’re right beside the bed talking you can’t help hearing them, with the curtains so thin and all. Can you?”

  “I—I suppose,” Miss Seeton conceded, “you c-can’t.” She turned her head, without the daggers and corkscrews, to look in the direction of the voice. Beyond the immediate focus of her blankets and a wooden locker at the side of the bed, everything began to blur again. “I c-can’t see you.” Miss Seeton faltered. “My eyes ...”

  “Concussion,” said the voice. “They said that, too.” The voice coughed. “And you’ll be over the worst in another day or so, and off home to free the bed for some other poor basket, no offence meant. My name’s Ivy, by the way,” the voice continued as Miss Seeton began blinking and sniffing again, and shivered with (she supposed) shock.

  Or relief. Ivy had spoken with conviction: there seemed no reason to doubt her optimistic forecast. Miss Seeton would soon be safe at home ...

  “Home? No ...” Miss Seeton’s memory lurched, lunged, and dragged the name out of the depths. “Mrs. Beamish . . .”

  “Not me,” said Ivy. “Not guilty! And you can’t blame anyone but them bloody Germans for you being in here with your head in a turban and your poor brains scrambled like eggs, not to mention your knees—blown clean off your feet you were, I heard, and not the only one.”

  Miss Seeton’s memory lurched again. “The ... doctor?” she brought out, once more feeling his grip tighten on her hand as they ran beneath—ran in fear of their lives away from—the swooping Nazi plane towards the shelter of the slit trench she did not believe they had reached ...

  Or had they? Memory’s faulty display showed Day George brandishing his rifle at the sky as the face of Mr. Coleman bent over her, blurred and twisted, anxious, out of focus, while Samuel Huxter’s voice issued instructions ...

  “The doctor?” Miss Seeton asked again, more loudly.

  “He’ll be along in an hour or so,” Ivy told her. “When they brought you in you were right out of it, believe me, and sick as a dog when you finally came round, so they’ll be pleased as Punch when you start talking to them sensible like the way you are now, and not just on account of wanting the bed.”

  “Oh,” said Miss Seeton, somehow too tired to make the effort to explain. She closed her eyes again and slept.

  • • •

  The aftermath of her experience left Miss Seeton too weak to argue when the nurses replied to her questions about Dr. Huxter that she was not to worry about anything except getting well soon. Shock (they insisted) took different people different ways. To be within an inch of your life from a machine gun and then being blown off your feet by a bomb, bashing your knees and almost cracking your skull, would be enough to give anyone a shock. She was to lie quiet and rest, and soon, if she was good, the hospital doctors would discharge her into the care of her landlady.

  Although the raid on the factory had been heavy, because normal round-the-clock service was resumed within a matter of hours, none of the girls was able to visit Miss Seeton to cheer her weary days with their giggles and gossip. They did not, however, forget their new friend, sending messages and picture papers when Tilly Beamish struggled into town, just once, to see her, bringing in lieu of garden flowers (the Dig for Victory campaign had had its effect) a bunch of hedgerow blossoms for her lodger’s enjoyment. Miss Seeton thanked her, smelled them, sneezed, and had a relapse.

  “We’re sending you home today,” the consultant informed her when he did his rounds on what she understood to be the fifth day since the bombing. “Nurse will come by later to remove your bandages and give you sticking plaster and—and so forth, instead. Then, if you take things easy most of the time, and do your physio exactly as we showed you, you should be good as new within the week—and, yes, back at work,” he added, answering the question he thought he saw in her eyes.

  “Thank you,” said Miss Seeton. “But talking of nurses—and doctors—”

  This neat thematic link to her most pressing question was ignored by the doctor as he continued his professional harangue. “But I have to warn you,” he said gravely, “that those knees could give you trouble in later years no matter how thorough the physiotherapy.”

  “Doctor,” said Miss Seeton with a faint smile, “if you can guarantee that I will live to see my later years, and to see them in freedom, you might be surprised at the thoroughness with which I shall apply myself to my physiotherapy.”

  For the first time he looked at her as a person, and not as a case history propped up on pillows with a temperature chart hanging on the end of the bed. “Yes,” he said slowly. “Ah, yes, if we could only see into the future ...”

  But this was neither the place nor the time. The consultant became brisk and professional once more. “We’ll leave it to your good sense, Miss Seeton,” he said with a nod, and moved on to talk with Ivy.

  Tilly Beamish had accepted Miss Seeton (and the weekly rent that came with her) as a lodger under the impression that she was a small but essential cog in the mighty ministry wheel. She had accepted with even more enthusiasm, because it was more exciting, her supposed identity as a spy. The message from the police, alerting her to the young woman’s imminent release on the highest authority, had left Mrs. Beamish quite bewildered, but after milking the situation for all it was worth in the village tea-shop, she had resolved to make the best of things by spoiling Miss Seeton as the heroine of the hour.

  Heroines do not sneeze themselves into unconsciousness at the first sniff of kingcups, charlock, and herb robert. After alerting the nurses, Tilly had hurried away, telling Ivy to be sure to tell Miss Seeton they were looking forward to having her home again. Her room (she promised) would be ready and waiting, and the only flowers in it would be the wax wreath from Beamish’s funeral, which it had always seemed a crying shame to tidy away, and now she would get it out again as something for Miss Seeton to look at while she was resting in bed, her being an artist as she was.

  “That is a kind thought,” said Miss Seeton when Ivy had broken the macabre news; she supposed that it was, even as she recalled Dr. Huxter’s warning the first night that if she didn’t keep her suitcase locked, Tilly Beamish would know all there was to know about her, and more. “But I doubt if I’ll feel like sketching for a little while yet. My eyes don’t blur the way they did, but they grow tired so very easily ...”

  “Well, you do look tired,” was Tilly’s greeting as Miss Seeton yawned her way down from the bus in which she had dozed most of the way home. The conductress had shaken her awake as they rumbled into the village, and Miss Seeton’s eyes had blurred not from weariness but from relief as she saw Mrs. Beamish waiting for her at the stop.

  Tilly kept up a flow of chatter as they made their way along the street to the cottage, after which journey Miss Seeton felt uncertain of her legs, and sat breathing heavily for a while before forcing herself to climb the stairs. Tilly had told her she could go straight to bed, and this now seemed the most sensible thing she could do, despite the ache in her knees at every upward step.

  She was recovering her breath in bed, with a woollen shawl crocheted in happier days by her mother around her shoulders, when she heard a brisk rapping at the front door. One of the neighb
ours, no doubt, dropping by for a chat, which Mrs. Beamish was sure to enjoy. A man? Delivering a parcel, perhaps, although why Mrs. Beamish should sound so indignant about it—but a gentlewoman does not snoop. And she was really very tired after her exertions. Miss Seeton let her weary gaze drift across to the wax-flower wreath under its glass dome set by Tilly in proud splendour on the chest of drawers, and closed her eyes.

  She opened them again as the castanet clatter of feet up the stairs was followed by another brisk rapping, this time on her bedroom door, accompanied by an enquiry from Mrs. Beamish—who sounded most annoyed—as to whether or not she was decent. Miss Seeton blinked, adjusted her shawl, and after a puzzled moment or two intimated that she was.

  The door opened.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Beamish,” said a voice that had the invalid sitting up on her pillows. “I’ll do my best not to tire her, I promise ...”

  And in walked Major Haynes.

  He was dressed in tweeds, and his neatly furled umbrella was brown. He smiled at Miss Seeton before turning back to close the door, very firmly, in Tilly’s face, and paused to listen for retreating footsteps.

  There were none.

  He grinned as he approached the bed. “Mrs. Beamish, it seems, means to defend your honour to the death,” he said as Miss Seeton smiled shyly up at him. “Let me know when you want to scream, and I’ll open the door so that she doesn’t miss it.”

  Miss Seeton’s smile became a twinkle of mischief. “That would be most considerate of you,” she replied, “and I thank you. But—such a surprise to see you ...”

  “I’d have been here earlier, if I could—as soon as we learned of your little contretemps with the police—but at least we managed to sort it out for you in the end.” The major glanced at the chair on which Miss Seeton had made a neat pile of her discarded clothing, raised his eyebrows in a silent query, and received Miss Seeton’s nod. He laid his umbrella on the bed, swept the clothes up in his arms, looked for somewhere to put them, and reeled back in horror as he saw the wax wreath.