Miss Seeton Quilts the Village

by Hamilton Crane

  “Good gracious!” she gasped. “It is!”

  “Old Scratch himself,” said Euphemia, rolling over and scrambling to her feet with a perfunctory dusting-down movement once she was upright. She studied the far from upright shape beside her. “I say! Pretty impressive, Miss Seeton.”

  Miss Seeton blushed. Yoga was a private matter; one was not supposed to assume a pose with any intention of display. She began, as discreetly as possible, to uncurl.

  Both ladies stood together, staring at Henry VIII.

  “A mirror,” said Euphemia. “I’ve one in my bag somewhere...”

  “As have I.”

  Both ladies stood staring down at an unmistakeable picture of the Devil. The rich red cloth over Henry’s parted knees was now a frowning forehead. The grasping, pudgy hands were the whites of eyes whose brows had been the dark trim of the right-way-up sleeves. The nose was shaped by the dark fur edging of the lavish robe—the tip of the nose was the elaborate brooch—and the mouth, formed of shadows, opened wide to engulf Henry’s head, with his crown the beard at the end of the Devil’s jaws.

  “That,” said Miss Seeton, “is a remarkable piece of work. And most unpleasant.”

  “Answers your question,” said Euphemia. “Why Summerset? Because it was a hint—a clue—to those in the know, recusant Catholics, I imagine.”

  She saw that Miss Seeton did not understand. “You’ve met my sister.” Miss Seeton nodded. “When we had the measles poor Genie had them far worse than me, which is why she needs glasses and I don’t. A year or so back she treated herself to some of those new gold frames with eight sides, and when she put them on the first time she almost fell over. The optician tried to tell her she’d grow used to them in time, but my sister has worn specs since we were seven. She knew they weren’t right. She took ’em off and turned ’em upside down and—bingo. They’d fitted the lenses the wrong way round.”

  “I trust the mistake was soon corrected...” And Miss Seeton still could not see how it explained the cottage’s unusual name.

  Euphemia smiled. “It was, though she never went there again. But she said it gave her a different perspective on the world for a moment or two. She let me try to look through them, both ways, and she was right. I really ought to have guessed about Summerset—it’s not a misspelling of Somerset, it’s an old word for a somersault.”

  “Oh,” breathed Miss Seeton. “Telling one to look at the painting the other way up...”

  “And who in the normal course of things ever does that? If I hadn’t tripped and fallen, I certainly wouldn’t have spotted it. But I did, and,” she chuckled, “I did.”

  Miss Seeton looked into the small mirror she still held, and shivered. “I have always told my pupils that at the start they should try to see exactly what is there—and only what is there, until they have progressed—but this must surely be a unique exception to that rule, because it both is and is not, depending on which way up you look at it. There, that is. And both at the same time, of course. Remarkable,” she said again, “but unpleasant.”

  “Unique, as far as I know,” said Euphemia.

  “As a fresco, it may be. My knowledge of mediaeval art is limited—but as to unique, forgive me, the concept is far from unknown. My godmother, whose cottage I inherited, also left me its contents, which included the books, many of which belonged to her parents. I dip into them from time to time, and some are most interesting. Cole’s Funny Picture-Book, for instance, contains several comic faces that can be inverted to form faces equally comic, or intended as such,” honesty made her add. “A sense of humour is a very individual matter, and I would rather call them clever—a clean-shaven youth with a head of curly hair becomes a bald man with a curly beard, or a bearded man with an elaborate collar is revealed as an old woman in a fantastical hat.”

  “When we were children,” said Euphemia, “I remember we each had one of those twin dolls in a long dress, and when you flipped the dress to the other side there was a different doll in a different dress underneath.”

  Miss Seeton nodded. She had been given one herself. Or did she mean two? A baby with blue eyes, a baby with brown... “Very clever indeed—the artist, that is. It must, in such perilous times, have been a risk even to sketch out the basic drawing.” She glanced at the magnificent chimney breast. “That fireplace must have a few stories to tell.”

  “Just as I am sure this house must have more secrets to unearth.” Dr. Braxted flung out her arms, her eyes sparkling. “Priest’s holes, secret passages—the smuggling that used to go on in these parts! Oh, Miss Seeton, it doesn’t bear thinking about—suppose the builders had gone ahead without the sense to tell the Colvedens! They might have plastered over everything and boarded up goodness knows how many fascinating nooks and crannies!”

  Miss Seeton agreed that they might, but privately found it hard to enthuse as Euphemia was doing. The historian saw Summerset Cottage as a fascinating long-term project. The Colvedens, who owned the house, saw it as the future home of Nigel and Louise. She wondered how the family would take this news. Naturally they would be interested, as she was herself, but from their point of view it would be disconcerting to have no idea when the young couple might be able to move in.

  She remembered something Lady Colveden, laughing fondly, had shared as a private joke. “His breakfast newspaper,” sighed Miss Seeton. “Poor Sir George.” But she spoke in vain. Euphemia was still enthusing.

  “Luckiest chap in Plummergen, I should call him,” she corrected Miss Seeton, with one of her chuckles. “Nobody else owns anything like this!”

  Miss Seeton stifled another sigh as she thought of how long it might now take for Sir George to feel comfortable reading Farmers Weekly over his breakfast coffee.

  Euphemia did concede that a sketch of the complete fresco, even in pencil, would be a slow process, impossible to complete before the light faded. “I’d pop to the shops for new torch batteries, but that’s not going to be good enough. I’ll go back to the museum—phone the Colvedens if I’ve time, but there’s far more to organise now. Cameras and so forth, as well as students. I hate to leave the place, but I’ll be back tomorrow, and far better equipped to deal with all this.” The wide-flung arms again. “Isn’t it splendid, Miss Seeton?”

  It would be churlish to deny her, so Miss Seeton said nothing. She smiled, retrieved her belongings from the floor, shook them free of dust and said goodbye.

  On her way home she wondered if Henry the Devil had disturbed her more than she cared to think. Nobody could wish so spectacular a discovery to be lost for ever, but somehow...Tomorrow, whatever the lure of the sunshine, she would not try to sketch the cottage. She would leave Dr. Braxted, and her cameras, and her students, and Henry VIII and—so fanciful—his evil twin, and pay a sadly overdue visit to dear Anne Ranger and her baby at the nursing home her parents owned out on the Brettenden Road. In fine weather it would be a good day for a bicycle ride.

  And she might begin work on her mural contribution. Louise had demonstrated how fabric folded over shaped card, or thick paper, and then pressed, could be sewn by hand on other fabric to good effect once the card was removed, without the need for buttonhole stitch and requiring less effort and skill. Even Lady Colveden, still laughing over Nigel’s naughty fire-screen, had thought there might be something in this way of layering and stitching similar to the Overlord Embroidery method. After tea, Miss Seeton would sketch her own dear cottage on cartridge paper, and cut out various shapes that—if she could only decide which to use, and find material of the right colours—might make a quilted (or appliquéd) likeness that might, just might, be suitable for submission to the Plummergen Quilt Committee. With pleasing, if perhaps optimistic, visions in mind and Devil Henry completely exorcised, Miss Seeton hurried happily up her front path.

  With the aid of the office dictionary, Chief Superintendent Delphick pored over the closely typed pages of the post-mortem report on Gabriel Crassweller. Bob in his corner was quietly amused by muted ora
cular complaints from the other side of the office in the matter of charts, graphs, tables, and the Queen’s English.

  “I,” announced the Oracle at last, “have reached the conclusion that P.M. reports should come with an interpreter attached. However, they don’t, but I have a kindly nature, Sergeant Ranger. Rather than subject you to the torture of this doctor’s opinions, I will do my poor best to summarise the findings.”

  Bob, smothering a grin, sat up and looked alert. “Thank you very much, sir.”

  “It would seem that Crassweller’s car and the definitive tree met at speed after the man fell asleep at the wheel. Barbiturates, no matter what their derivation or how many syllables their names contain, do tend to have a certain soporific effect.”

  “You mean it might not be suicide after all, sir? It was an accident?”

  “It is certainly not unknown for someone to take a pill and then discover a later reason to go out rather than to bed. Careless, but hardly criminal.”

  “Suicide isn’t a crime any more, sir,” Bob reminded his superior, who could remember when it had been.

  “Or it may be suicide disguised as an accident. As far as I recall, one of the possible side-effects of all forms of barbiturate may be a degree of confusion. It is also not unknown for someone to take a pill, fall asleep, wake up and forget that a pill has been taken...”

  “And he takes another,” supplied Bob as his superior waited. “And ends up with too much of the stuff swilling about inside him for safety. Shall I get on to his doctor to check the dose he was supposed to be taking, sir?”

  “At once, please. And,” Delphick added, “should his doctor deny prescribing barbiturates for Mr. Crassweller, it will open up several new possible lines of enquiry. There is a regrettably flourishing black market in such drugs. Crassweller may have had another hidden life besides the homosexual underworld...”

  “Or someone else may have slipped him the stuff to bump him off,” suggested Bob. “For reasons that Oblon chap and the others will expect us to find out,” he added bitterly. “Meaning more paperwork, sir—whichever way you look at it.”

  “One step at a time, Bob.” Delphick balefully surveyed his paper-cluttered office, closed his eyes, and drew a deep, resolute breath. “I beg of you, Detective Sergeant Ranger—one step at a time.”

  Dr. Braxted stayed late in Brettenden, her address book and telephone in constant use. She spent longer than she wanted tracking down people who could drop everything at once to commit their time (unspecified) and effort (guaranteed worth it) to a mysterious Project, no matter how enticing she assured them it was. Having at last exacted promises from two young people who planned to marry once they could afford a flat, she decided she must talk to her sister. Eugenia enjoyed her work at the British Museum, and would still be there.

  Euphemia swore her twin to secrecy, and told her what she could. At the end of the thrilled and lengthy recital, Eugenia was silent. “Well, Genie? What do you think?”

  “I’m sorry, old thing,” said Eugenia at last. “It’s a wonderful find, and you could be right about priest’s holes and so forth, but I don’t think it’s unique—not in a general sense. I’ve a feeling I’ve read about a fresco along similar lines in Somerset.”

  “Summerset Cottage,” said Euphemia promptly.

  “Yes, I know, and very clever of somebody, but this painting I seem to recall is in an old house near Taunton. The county town of Somerset.”

  “Oh.” Euphemia didn’t ask if Genie was sure: her twin was generally right in matters of this nature. “Oh, dash it all—and heck!” The learned article she had begun composing in her head as—leaving several motorists badly shaken—she cycled back from Plummergen, was placed regretfully in the Redraft folder. “Oh, what a shame.”

  “Nonsense. You’d like to find a priest’s hole or a smugglers’ tunnel, you said. There’s more than one of those in the country. Rare, but not unique. Don’t be greedy. Think of the fun we’ll have tracking down the artist. It could have been anyone! A travelling fresco-painter, devoutly Catholic, loathing Henry, seeing his dissolution of the monasteries and the Reformation in general as satanic destruction of the one true faith—foreign, perhaps—Italian or Spanish...”

  “There are some Spaniards on holiday in Plummergen. Sightseeing and taking photos and trying to ask the locals about village history, I heard in the shop. They even drove down Nowhere Lane, and there’s nothing much to see there...”

  “Oh?” said Eugenia, a smile in her voice.

  “Nothing in the open air,” amended her sister. “Just trees, houses, a couple of farms at the end. Not even that good a view of the canal.”

  “Is it worth asking if one of them knows anything about art?”

  “I’m not sure their English is good enough. As for art, I told you Miss Seeton was there. She didn’t leap up and acknowledge it as the work of the celebrated El Satirico, though she said it wasn’t really her period. No reason it should be, of course. And I don’t want people to find out too soon.” Euphemia sighed. “Even if I’ll have to pitch my article in quite a different way now...”

  “Cheer up, Phemie. Start hunting out your camera, and a tripod, and lots of colour film. And be sure to let me have decent copies of the prints as soon as they’re developed!”

  Next morning was one of Martha’s days. Miss Seeton explained that she would shortly be taking her bicycle and delivering her little gifts at the nursing home.

  Martha grinned. “So long as you don’t take the baby a bag of toffees. That’s what young Trev Newport did when their first was born, knowing no better.”

  Miss Seeton smiled. “King Richard III was said by some to have been born with a full set of teeth, though I suspect this may have been a tale put about by the Tudors to discredit him further.” Among Cousin Flora’s books Miss Seeton had found a copy of Richard IV, Plantagenet dating from 1888. She had first been drawn to it by the gold-embossed figures fighting on the brown cloth spine, then by the young man astride his caparisoned horse on the cover. It had been, she found, dipping into the book, a story typical of its era, most likely a Sunday School prize for a boy interested in history. Miss Seeton had been inspired to read around the general topic of the Wars of the Roses, and was persuaded by Josephine Tey’s arguments in The Daughter of Time. She wondered if that might be why she had so disliked the portrait of Henry VIII, even before Dr. Braxted’s momentous discovery. “Although of course that was his father,” she murmured.

  “He’s a father, all right.” Martha sniffed. “Four of them under five, and now there’s talk there might be another. Some people have got no sense.”

  “Or no self control,” suggested Miss Seeton. “Or at least, very little—though we must remember, Martha dear, that some women dote on babies and when they stop—being babies, that is—they wish to have another. For myself, I regard babies as far more interesting when they stop. When they are small children one may have a conversation with them rather than—than not.”

  “Doubt if young Anne’ll expect you to go coochy-cooing over him.” Martha grinned. “She knows you too well, dear.”

  It was not until Miss Seeton and her bicycle were almost at the gates of the nursing home that she realised she had forgotten the presents.

  “Bother,” said Miss Seeton. She stopped, dismounted, looked carefully for traffic and crossed the road to start her return journey.

  Out from the narrow twisting lane that led to the house of Mrs. Venning swept a large black car. It made straight for the pedalling Miss Seeton. Quickly she closed her hands around the brakes. On tarmac, rubber squealed. Miss Seeton, with a gleaming silver radiator no more than six feet from her nose, rocked sideways and fell off her bike.

  Four car doors were flung open. A gabble of Italian? Spanish? drowned out the sound of wheels spinning and an ominous clatter. Oh, dear. A slipped chain. Miss Seeton pondered the contents of her tiny toolkit in its saddlebag, and sighed as she picked herself up. “Excusez-moi,” she ventured. It di
dn’t sound as if they were talking French, but it was the best she could do. “Er, aidez-moi, sivoo play?”

  “Madame!” The two back doors had closed, although the people behind them watched through the windows. “Señora! Ten thousand forgive!” The uniformed driver and his front-seat passenger were full of remorse at the sight of the overturned and wounded bicycle, even if the right words failed them. “Zuniga!” snapped the uniformed driver. Zuniga, muttering, climbed from the car.

  As the chauffeur dusted Miss Seeton down with a huge white handkerchief from his breast pocket, Zuniga righted her bicycle and looked at the chain. Miss Seeton kept it very well greased. Zuniga addressed the chauffeur in tones of complaint. Something sharp was said. The handkerchief was passed to him, and the chauffeur turned back to Miss Seeton.

  “Señora, please?” He gestured towards the saddlebag. “Your herramienta—tools?”

  “Wee,” said Miss Seeton, nodding for good measure. Foreigners—one could never be sure how much they understood.

  “Side of the road, for blame.” The chauffeur eyed Miss Seeton warily. “No harm, yourself? Your biciclo alone?”

  “Wee.” This time her nod was a touch brisk. She recalled some tale about postman Bert, in his van. There could be no excuse, surely, even for tourists? It was not as if they had only just arrived in Plummergen, as she understood it. Of course, she herself did not drive, but one would have supposed the rules of the road must be the first thing one should learn if determined on driving when abroad. Even on holiday.

  The chauffeur struggled on with his broken—very broken—apology as Zuniga wrestled with spanners and the back wheel and chain of Miss Seeton’s upturned bicycle. Even the apology did not muffle her ears to what that kind (though now sadly besmeared) Mr. Zuniga was saying. And not exactly under his breath. Italian, or was it Spanish, seemed to be a most expressive language. How fortunate that one’s own languages were not fluent.

  And—good gracious—still more fortunate! An approaching rumble announced the bus, coming up from the village on its way to Brettenden. Suppose it had been going the other way? As she herself had been doing? Miss Seeton saw how close to herself the car had stopped. Fortunate, indeed, and her little mishap a timely reminder to this gentleman as to which side of the road he must use in future.