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

by Hamilton Crane

  chapter

  ~ 26 ~

  WHEN WAR HAD been declared on Germany in September of the previous year, more expensive branded petrol was immediately replaced by blended “pool” at a cost of one shilling and sixpence per gallon. Petrol was rationed from the twenty-second of the month, and while every car owner could obtain his basic coupons by presenting the car’s logbook at his post office, the amount of petrol thus permitted did not take him far. Supplementary coupons could be issued for such domestic or business purposes that were deemed essential, though drivers’ views on what might or might not be essential seldom agreed with those of the authorities to whom they had to apply. Only if one was engaged upon work of national importance could a car’s use be considered patriotically permissible, given the growing efficiency of the U-boat blockade.

  By the late summer of 1940, even to visit the convalescent Emily Dorothea Seeton, civilian war artist seconded to MI5 Section G and injured in its service, Major Haynes had not been granted the use of a car. He had followed in Miss Seeton’s wake and come by train from London, although at his destination he had been met by a police car with a uniformed driver who was bursting to know who the stranger—and what his business, so obviously secret—might be.

  “Why, they told us she wasn’t a wrong ’un,” he had said as the car drew up outside Tilly Beamish’s house. “Phoned from London to say to let her go. Was that you? Changed your mind? Or is she really one of yours?”

  Major Haynes looked with new interest at this young man who, without being told, had deduced so much so quickly. He countered these questions with questions of his own. “Do you enjoy being a policeman? Have you ever thought about a more ... challenging job?”

  “Ah,” said his chauffeur. “Well, now.” He turned to focus on the major a gaze that was both contemplative and shrewd. “More of a challenge than being a village bobby? Well, and maybe I have, at that.” Then he grinned as he jerked his head in the direction of Tilly’s front gate. “Don’t you go rushing into things, mind. Think it over. I’ll still be here when you get back.”

  When Major Haynes emerged from Mrs. Beamish’s house and made his way down the path, he saw the young policeman slumped in the driver’s seat, dozing in the warmth of the July sun. Something about the nonchalance of the posture made Haynes open the front gate very quietly and shut it with even greater care. He walked almost on tiptoe to the passenger door, but was forestalled when, without appearing to notice him, the young policeman reached out a long arm to click the handle down. The door drifted open, and Haynes climbed in.

  “Watched for you in the glass,” came the greeting as the major settled himself on his seat. “Easy enough to tilt the wing mirror—and easy enough for folks to think I’m asleep on the job, isn’t it?”

  “It is,” said Haynes, impressed. “Yes, indeed. Tell me, are you local to these parts?”

  The young policeman chuckled. “Ah, we ain’t all of us in the country the idiots you city types like to think, even if what education’s come our way’s been a bit basic. But a bloke with common sense picks things up—and goes on learning—right the way down the line. Doesn’t he?”

  “He does,” Haynes agreed with approval. “Then you must know the Huxter family pretty well.”

  “Oh, it’s not him,” was the prompt and confident reply. “Whoever your lot’s after, it’s no more the doctor than that welfare girl of yours lodging along of Mother Beamish—not that I’d care to be so sure about the rest of ’em up at the factory, mind. Naming no names, but if you was to ask ...”

  Haynes looked at him. In silence, he looked back. Haynes nodded. “I’m asking,” he said slowly, “whether Mr. Coleman is quite as ... competent as the manager responsible for the production of aeroplanes vital to this country’s survival ought to be—a manager who, until the war came, was happily running one of the largest motorcar factories in the country. A factory that was a byword for efficient productivity ...”

  “Ah,” said the young policeman.

  That was all he said, and as soon as he had spoken, he started the car and drove off. He did not need to ask where the major wished to go, and Haynes saw no need to tell him.

  When they arrived at the factory gates, there was some argument with Day George, whose temper had not been improved by the recent bombing incident, and who was determined to let nobody in without authorisation. He still felt guilty for having weakened under the persuasion of Dr. Huxter and Miss Seeton: had they not been running for shelter when the Nazi plane made its first attack, they might not have been injured. Day George and his numerous siblings had been brought into the world by Samuel Huxter’s father; George did not care for the idea that it might be partly his fault that the son had only by inches missed a premature reunion with his deceased parent.

  “Well, look here, if you don’t believe him,” said the young policeman at last, with a jerk of his thumb towards Major Haynes, “or them papers he’s shown you—you know who I am right enough, don’t you?”

  George conceded that he did, adding hastily as he sighted along his rifle that the place could be full of fifth columnists for all he’d been told to the contrary, and it was his job to stop them.

  “Then I’ll be a hostage.” The young policeman turned to wink at Haynes, and turned back before the other had time to speak. “For the major’s good behaviour, see? Just let me pull the car off the road, and you can keep me in sight the whole time he’s inside. What about that for an offer?”

  Quite how it happened George never knew, but within a minute the police car and its young driver were the only witnesses to the presence of Major Haynes on the factory premises. The major had nodded his thanks to the young man whose noble sacrifice (his curiosity by now must be almost unbearable) had made access possible, and slipped past the sentry hut before George worked out what was going on.

  Military intelligence had obtained a floor plan from the Ministry of Aircraft Production, but Haynes knew that the manager, working with the rest of the factory around the clock, might be anywhere on the site at any time. It would be a matter of hunting him down and luring him into a quiet corner for a serious talk. The admin, block might be a good starting point for his tour: he was curious to meet, if he could, the woman whose suspicions of Miss Seeton had landed the young artist in police custody.

  One-armed George popped his head through the hatch and glared at Major Haynes. The major, recognising a martial gleam in the older man’s eye, uttered a few cryptic phrases that had the Great War veteran grinning with pleased reminiscence, and waving the newcomer past with only a cursory look at his papers. “Third door on the left, sir,” he said. “And don’t bother to knock.”

  There was, however, no Mrs. Morris to be found in the Welfare Office. Haynes took advantage of her absence to check one or two of those filing-cabinet drawers with the most promising labels. He was delighted to discover that all, without exception, were locked.

  “Easy to pick, of course,” he reflected as he jingled the short lengths of hooked wire kept always in his jacket pocket. “Most people couldn’t, though, so Morris scores on security. That’s a point in her favour ... unless it’s a double bluff.” Such ploys were not unknown in his line of business.

  And the business of ... what other person, or persons, in the Spitfire factory?

  He tried the manager’s office next. He did not knock on the door. He opened it and saw a male figure draped across a blotter on the desk. At the sound of the opening latch the figure shot upright, its thin frame quivering in alarm.

  “Wh-ho are you?” demanded Mr. Coleman, his eyes bright. “What do you mean by b-bursting in here?”

  Once more Major Haynes produced the identity papers over which Day George had cast so suspicious, and Old George so casual, an eye. “I would hardly call it bursting,” he said quietly as he laid them on the yawning manager’s desk. “But I apologise for having startled you. From the look and the sound of you, you need all the sleep you can get.”

  Mr. Cole
man swallowed the rest of his yawn, and shuddered. “Your people must know more about that than I do, Major Haynes—if that is your name.” The major bowed, but said nothing. “I’ve no doubt you are kept informed by B-Beaverbrook’s minions as to the exact number of hours each and any of us manages to snatch from working.” Mr. Coleman took a deep breath, blinked, pushed the papers back across the desk, and waved towards a chair piled with papers that, to the major’s keen eye, looked like blueprints. “Please sit down,” he invited.

  Major Haynes hesitated. Mr. Coleman began to look uneasy rather than drowsy. The major swept the pile of blueprints up in his arms and dropped them on the floor. He took the chair, carried it to the door, closed the door, tipped the chair on its back legs and its back under the door handle, and walked back to Mr. Coleman ... his prisoner.

  “Why,” asked Major Haynes softly, “did you do it?”

  The factory manager gaped at him. “What?”

  Major Haynes did not reply.

  “Did I do what?” persisted the factory manager. “What—what in heaven’s name do you mean?”

  Sadly Major Haynes shook his head. “A man with a clear conscience,” he said, “would have asked me what the devil I meant by jamming his office door with a chair and locking him in. You merely ask what in heaven’s name I mean. You can’t be that sleepy. The game’s up, Coleman.” He added in a sympathetic tone: “And it’s hardly been either a game or heavenly for you—has it? Though I’ve no doubt your conscience is clear, in your own morally contorted fashion.”

  The works manager gaped at him again. Major Haynes nodded. “An innocent man would by now either be telling me I’ve gone raving mad,” he said, “or shouting for help. You, on the other hand, have done no more than twitter. On the whole I don’t care for the philosophy that silence is proof of guilt, but in this particular case I’m willing to make an exception.”

  Mr. Coleman’s eyes darted from the door, blocked by the chair, to the window—which, despite the heat, was closed against the factory sounds from outside. He had, after all, been trying to sleep when Major Haynes arrived. He looked at the metal paperweight gleaming on his desk, but there would have been little point in trying to throw it to break the glass. He would not have been able to climb through even the largest panes, which in any case were so heavily taped with brown paper against blast they would probably not have broken.

  “Better give in gracefully,” advised Major Haynes, who had watched the other man closely, reading his mind in his expression. “There’s no escape. We’ll probably see you hanged for a murderer, but we might, and I stress the might, not use our option to have you shot as a traitor. We know about you, you see.”

  “Do you?” Coleman, whose shoulders had sagged, pulled himself together. “Then I wonder that I was ever appointed to this job ... if you knew all about me. Perhaps you knew less than you ought.”

  “Or thought,” amended the major neatly. “There’s something in that line of reasoning, I agree, but we know rather more now—and what we know is enough to know the charges will stick. Don’t think I’m bluffing,” he added as the manager’s face registered scornful disbelief. “We have a witness statement that you are the one behind the sabotage—for which we concede there might have been some sympathy for you—as well as the one who killed two people within a space of twenty-four hours last week, for which we can feel no sympathy at all.”

  His hand had strayed to the sketchbook in his pocket as he spoke of a witness statement, but his eyes never left those of the works manager—who, now that the accusation had been made, seemed almost relieved.

  “Sympathy?” he cried, his mouth twisting sideways in a rictus of ironic mirth. “Sympathy? My son—my only son—killed fighting—flying—in Spain—my wife dead of a broken heart within the year—everything I’ve worked and cared for in my life, lost—wasted—senselessly—and you talk to me of sympathy?” He reached for the paperweight and gripped it in a white-knuckled fist. “You can always take one with you,” he quoted grimly, his thin body tensed as if to spring.

  “And that one won’t be me,” said the major. “Untrained killers need luck, and surprise, on their side. You have neither just now ... But last week was a different story.”

  “Last week,” echoed the manager. Once more his shoulders sagged. He let the paperweight thump from his opened fist on to the desk. “Luck ...”

  “Bad luck, the worst possible, for them,” said Haynes. “But good luck for you in the furtherance of what we’ll call your campaign. For you, the killing of a couple of people who learned too much counted for nothing against the greater number of deaths—pointless deaths, in your view, of young fighting men in their prime—you were hoping to prevent by your sabotage. You tried all along not to do any serious damage, didn’t you? That’s why it took a while to register that there really was something sinister about the number of mishaps that were occurring on this site—although never to a finished plane, when a test pilot might have been killed.”

  Haynes sighed. “Perhaps that very fact should have been a pointer, but we missed it. The pilots were safe. They never had to use their parachutes on your account ...” Even at such a time he had to smile. Mr. Coleman, his eyes clouded with misery, did not notice. “You spared them,” Haynes hurried on, “and it wasn’t just because you knew them as individuals, colleagues, with names and families of their own ... You could, I’m sure, have squared your conscience as you squared it when you killed the other two—but they were young, as your son was young, and like him they had lives to live, a future to look forward to. You could see no reason why even one young man should lose his life, his future, in support of this war ... any war.”

  The major’s voice was low as he ended: “I told you that we knew about you—that we had some sympathy—but we make no allowances when national security is at stake. You were believed to be setting patriotism above your personal philosophy in your work here—and that belief of ours was mistaken. We do not often make such mistakes.” Once more the major’s hand strayed to the sketchbook in his pocket. “Fortunately this mistake was retrieved before things went too far in the wrong direction.”

  “The wrong direction?” In his white face the eyes of the manager suddenly blazed. “War is wrong! Fighting is wrong! The waste of a single life is wrong, never mind the thousands—millions—who will die in the very near future thanks to the stubborn blindness of the politicians!”

  Haynes regarded him sadly. “In the very near future,” he echoed. “Yes. Let me tell you, Mr. Coleman, that by your actions you may, you may, have saved the lives of a handful of airmen for a brief period—but believe me, it has been only a delay. And I know that you do believe me. The time is fast approaching when every man, woman, and child in this island will have to face up to the realisation that it is fight, or go under. Kill, or be killed. I regret as much as anyone that this is not an ideal world—but it is not. In an ideal world, I agree, pacifism would hold sway above all else. In an ideal world, there would be no room for Hitler. But Hitler, Coleman, has found plenty of room for himself and is making more—by invasion, by conquest, by terror—every minute of every day.”

  He paused. Mr. Coleman said nothing. The major picked up the paperweight. It was a brass shell case. He sighed for the irony.

  “Kill, or be killed,” he repeated. “You have two deaths on your conscience. The Home Guard and the cleaner—were they going to kill you? An elderly man, and a conscientious objector? I think not.”

  “They ... knew too much,” said the manager, unable to resist the stern challenge in the major’s eyes.

  “They found out too much,” Haynes amended. “No doubt it was by accident, as there have been so many other accidents at this factory over the past few months—but you couldn’t make their deaths look like accidents, could you? There was no time. They might reveal what they had found out to someone with the authority to stop you. You killed them as soon as you knew that they knew, and it was impossible to avoid having the police
called in.”

  “The police learned nothing,” said Coleman quickly. “If—if there was, as you say, a witness to ... what happened, why was I not ... questioned—arrested—earlier?”

  “This,” the major told him, “was a very special witness. Very special indeed.” And his hand strayed once more to the pocket that held Miss Seeton’s very special sketchbook.

  chapter

  ~ 27 ~

  “HE RELIED ON the Chesterton effect,” Haynes explained to his colleagues back at the Tower. “In the same way that the postman in the celebrated short story was invisible, so was Coleman. As works manager he could go anywhere on the premises at any hour, day or night, and nobody would be in the least surprised to see him.”

  “Except that they didn’t see him,” said Chandler. “Not to notice him, that is. Thank you, Haynes. We take the point.”

  “Not too sharply, though,” said Aylwin. “He’d obviously been seen—noticed—on two occasions at least, or he would never have killed those chaps. Odd sort of behaviour, for a pacifist.”

  “For the greater good,” said Chandler. “That was his justification, of course. Did he tell you what exactly it was they noticed?”

  The major shook his head. “He babbled on at me for a while about war, and waste, and government skulduggery and so forth—not that it was all entirely babble, of course, if it could only be applied in an ideal world. Or applied rather earlier in the proceedings than where we are now.”

  “This house,” muttered Captain Grange through his beard, “will under no circumstances ever fight for its King and country. Ha!”

  “Don’t let’s get started on the Oxford Union,” begged Chandler as Cox, the cynical, uttered a loud snort. “It was seven years ago and a different world.” And with this plea he successfully squashed any attempt to argue (as many did) that the notorious university debate of 1933 had done much to encourage Hitler in his grandiose national land-expansion schemes. Hindsight suggested the vote might not have been carried with such enthusiasm had the voters possessed foresight ... but it was, as Chandler said, seven years ago.