And so, once Barry had been escorted back to the interview room, and the rest of the parade had been dismissed by Brinton with further thanks, Nigel Colveden was asked if he wouldn’t mind staying behind, for a while, just to answer a few questions.
chapter
~ 18 ~
THOUGH THEIR FIRST efforts at self-sufficiency in oil had been so dramatically thwarted, Miss Nuttel and Mrs. Blaine, after a suitable period for recuperation, were minded to try again. After all—as Mrs. Blaine sulkily pointed out—they might as well find something to do with their spare time, since it seemed nobody was showing any interest whatsoever in their adventures.
Thwarted also in their ambitions to appear in the national press, both Nuts were in an irritable mood by Monday morning. Mrs. Blaine had spent most of the weekend alternately washing and setting her hair, or peeking through the net curtains to see if the expected press and broadcasting hordes were in sight—which they never were. Monday’s breakfast was cooked and served with a very bad grace, for Mrs. Blaine was barely on speaking terms with Miss Nuttel—as is often the case with persons immured in close proximity for any length of time.
Miss Nuttel had used her period of self-imposed seclusion in the thoughtful rereading of Food for Free and various other of her small collection of practical literature intended to assist those pursuing an independent lifestyle. She had gleaned several new ideas, and was fired with a fresh enthusiasm for her original project which, eventually, she persuaded Mrs. Blaine to share.
“Been thinking, though,” said Miss Nuttel, as Mrs. Blaine gave her hair one final, ill-tempered pat, then came to sit by her friend away from the window. “Going to be hard work, mincing so many. Said all along it was the one thing bothering me—”
“Yes, but not much,” retorted Mrs. Blaine. “Because we both know who would have ended up doing most of the mincing, don’t we? I know you said we’d share it, but—”
“But there’s no need,” broke in Miss Nuttel, “if we buy a proper mill. Not easy to find, mind you. Might have to adapt something, instead. A kitchen blender—”
“No!” cried Mrs. Blaine at once. “Not my blender, Eric—think how too ruinous for the blades! Not to mention,” she added, raising a plaintive hand to her brow, “the frightful noise it would make. You know how I suffer with my head.” And her expression contrived to make Miss Nuttel feel guilty that she had ever made so selfish a suggestion.
“Well,” said Miss Nuttel, when Mrs. Blaine had permitted some colour to return at last to her plump cheeks. “Adapt something else, if we can’t buy a proper mill—continental, you see. Not too many around these parts—worth looking in junk shops, though. Not that far from the Channel, are we?”
“Oh, Eric, how clever of you!” Mrs. Blaine was now all smiles. “There are any number of strange things I know you could adapt—cream separators, and those old-fashioned bookbinding presses—I think I remember noticing one in a window in . . . Ashford, I believe, last time we were there. Do let’s go and see! And the day out will do us both so much good, won’t it? A change of scene . . .”
And, an olive branch having been thus offered and accepted, the Nuts began to plan their trip to Ashford.
There is no direct public transport link from Plummergen to Ashford. To reach the area’s largest shopping centre, one changes buses in Brettenden; and, unless it is market day, or one’s requirements are so nice that Brettenden cannot fulfil them, it is a journey not frequently undertaken—and seldom on a mere whim.
For which reason, when those Plummergenites who were on Monday morning’s bus realised the Nuts were among their number, it caused no little interest that on arrival in Brettenden, rather than heading out of the bus station with the rest, Miss Nuttel and Mrs. Blaine moved to the next platform but one, and boarded the bus for Ashford.
Speculation as to the purpose of the Nuts in travelling so soon again to Ashford was immediately rife. Still bearing a grudge over the failure of their experiences to make headline news, they had deftly turned the subject when questions were posed about their activity during the past few days, and about their future plans. Barry Panfield, had he taken lessons from Miss Nuttel and Mrs. Blaine, would have been their star pupil in the art of stonewalling. The Nuts had been generally ignored, and were now ignoring in their turn. With little, therefore, on which to base a theory, it took a while before the general opinion was reached that the Nuts must mean to revisit the scene of their earlier crime—with intent (the most vocal insisted) to gloat, since the police seemed to be having no more success than they’d had last year in finding the killer of the Blonde in the Bag.
It was loudly lamented that nobody had been able to think up in time a good excuse to jump on the Ashford bus in pursuit; and when everyone had completed their shopping, and was waiting at the Plummergen platform for the arrival of the return bus, tongues wagged frantically in speculating as to what else the Nuts might have been doing . . .
The Ashford bus at last arrived, decanting its passengers: amongst whom were numbered Miss Nuttel and Mrs. Blaine. And the manner in which, after glancing once at each other in an electric silence, they took their places at the end of the Plummergen queue, made it clear that the Nuts had News to impart—News which, since they had returned in safety to impart it, meant either that the police hadn’t yet found enough evidence to arrest them, or (disappointingly more probable) that they might not, after all, have done anything to warrant being arrested in the first place.
To Mrs. Blaine was given the honour of firing the opening salvo. Her cheeks flushed, her eyes bright, as she settled herself against a pillar, she uttered a little moan. “Standing so long, in all this heat, after such a terrible shock, Eric—I only hope I can hold out until the bus comes.” She passed a hand over her brow, and shuddered. “I feel too, too weak . . .”
“Hardly surprising,” returned Miss Nuttel, as Mrs. Blaine snapped open her handbag and fumbled inside for her pocket handkerchief. “Gave me quite a turn, too.”
“But you know my nerves have never been as strong as yours, Eric.” Mrs. Blaine dabbed daintily at her eyes, then began frantically fanning herself, emitting further little moans as she did so.
Miss Nuttel thumped her encouragingly on the shoulder. “Try not to think about it,” she advised. “Could be some perfectly rational explanation. Perhaps. A mistake . . .”
“A mistake?” Mrs. Blaine’s blackcurrant eyes glittered. “An explanation? I doubt if I could bear being given any explanation for the police arresting him in broad daylight—it’s bound to be something almost too dreadful to repeat, and I’d have nightmares for weeks, I’m sure, if I knew what it was. I mean, you don’t start arresting people like that unless you’re absolutely certain they’ve committed something a good deal more serious than a . . . a motoring offence!”
Mrs. Blaine, fluttering her handkerchief again, appeared oblivious to the press of eavesdropping Plummergen which edged ever closer as the earlier promise of scandal began to be fulfilled. Miss Nuttel, seemingly concerned for nothing but her poor friend’s mental sufferings, patted her again on the shoulder, then applied a tactical, tension-building break in the narration by enquiring whether Bunny would like her to go in search of a glass of water.
Mrs. Blaine, smiling bravely, rejected this offer with a sigh and a quivering lip. “Too much to bear, Eric, if you missed the bus with trying to help me, and I had to travel home utterly alone.” She was still firmly oblivious to the close-crowding queue. “I wouldn’t have a minute’s peace, I know I wouldn’t, until you were safely home!”
“But if they have arrested him, Bunny, nothing to worry about any longer, is there? No matter what he’s done. Not going to give him the chance to do it again, are they?”
Mrs. Blaine gulped. “Oh, Eric, I wish I could believe you. But really, there’s nothing to say they won’t let him go again—on bail, or remand, or whatever it is. Remember, his father’s a magistrate. You know how these people always stick together. The law . . .” And
the spirit of a vast Establishment conspiracy was invoked with one all-encompassing wave of Mrs. Blaine’s versatile handkerchief.
The gasps which greeted this monstrous slander were highly gratifying, though both Nuts still affected to be unaware of their audience. Miss Nuttel shook her head.
“His mother I feel most sorry for, Bunny. A Justice of the Peace—they’re hardened to anything, of course. Training. But Lady Colveden . . .”
The gratifying gasps erupted into a universal thrill, as Plummergen gave delighted tongue at last. Did Miss Nuttel and Mrs. Blaine—could they—mean that Nigel Colveden, of all people, had been arrested? Miss Nuttel and Mrs. Blaine, dismayed at being the bearers of such grim tidings, sorrowfully—and loudly—admitted that they did. Eric (went on Mrs. Blaine) might try to make excuses for what they’d seen with their own eyes—too charitable of her—but charity was sometimes only another word for being soft-hearted.
“Which is only a way of saying afraid to do one’s duty—to speak the truth,” said Mrs. Blaine bravely, “and shame the devil. And it must be a too devilish crime for them to send a uniformed policeman right up to him in full view of everyone to drag him off to the police station like that!”
“In handcuffs?” came the eager query.
Dearly as they would have loved to be able to confirm this additional ignominy, the Nuts had to confess that the squire of Plummergen’s son had been allowed to walk without restraint in the company of the police constable who apprehended him: although—as Mrs. Blaine pointed out—the man had doubtless warned his prisoner that should he try to make a break for it, he would be pursued without fear or favour through the Ashford streets, with all the subsequent . . . awkwardness this would entail.
“Poor Lady Colveden,” chorused Plummergen, echoing and enlarging on Miss Nuttel’s lament. “Never live it down, the shame—ought to know better, the likes of him!”
“But what,” someone wanted to know, “d’you reckon they arrested him for? Must’ve thought he’d got away with it, whatever it is, to go wandering through Ashford so bold.”
“That’s the aristocracy for you,” said someone else; and everyone agreed it was. One or two strangers, drawn to the crowd by all the commotion, opined (there is a flourishing Socialist element in Brettenden) that the sooner such class distinctions were done away with, the better.
Mrs. Blaine shuddered. “Droit de seigneur,” she moaned, with quite as much glee as ever Emmy Putts had uttered those words. “It’s too obvious what they think he’s done. That poor girl from Murreystone, of course—oh, dear!” And Mrs. Blaine trembled at the memory of last week’s woodland excursion. Once more Miss Nuttel, herself much moved by the recollection, patted her friend on the shoulder. A sympathetic murmur surrounded the Nuts as they struggled to contain themselves.
“Too, too dreadful,” sighed Mrs. Blaine, blinking back horrified tears and licking lips that should, she felt, have been even more pale. “And the other poor creature last September as well, I shouldn’t wonder. They develop a taste for that sort of thing, don’t they? Serial killers.”
“Had a fair number of girlfriends over the years, young Nigel Colveden,” someone remarked. “Funny how none of ’em ever lasts, as you might say. And now we know why.”
“Find out what he’s really like,” theorised someone else happily, “and get away in time—the lucky ones, that is.”
“Depraved tastes.” Mrs. Blaine, the centre of attention, was starting to feel that the gallons of shampoo and setting lotion she had applied over the past few days hadn’t, after all, been wasted. “The worst of it is, of course, they’ll try to hush everything up. And I shall be very surprised if they fail, with Sir George having the police in his pocket—and the excessive influence you can’t deny certain local elements exercise over the press. Just look at all the peculiar things Miss Seeton has done since she’s lived in Plummergen, for example. But do the papers ever say so?”
Everyone roundly agreed that Miss Seeton’s name appeared suspiciously seldom in the national—or even the local—press, and that Mrs. Blaine had the right of it. Influence, clearly, was being brought to bear on Miss Seeton’s behalf—Scotland Yard was mentioned by several people—and would doubtless be used for the benefit of Nigel Colveden, too.
“Shouldn’t wonder,” said Miss Nuttel, “if she hadn’t come down on purpose. Odd she’s turned up just when she’ll be most useful, isn’t it? That reporter woman,” she enlarged, as not everyone realised at once who this useful female might be.
“Oh, Eric, you’re so right!” Mrs. Blaine made a face of disapproval. “Corruption, that’s what it is, nothing less! It’s only too convenient for them to have her staying right on the spot, ready to suppress any stories that might leak out of whatever dreadful things he does next—Miss Seeton as well, I’ve no doubt. They’ll work out a cover-up between them, and he’ll be free to carry out more unspeakable crimes—oh, Eric! Thank goodness you’re coming back with me on the bus. The worry of it all—if I’d had to wait at home alone because you missed it—”
“No need to worry, Bunny,” said Miss Nuttel, squaring her shoulders. “Shan’t miss it now . . .”
And Bunny heaved a deep sigh of relief as the Plummergen bus appeared at the far end of the bay, rattling cheerfully along the platform. Its noise and blue-grey smoke dispersed the listening crowd: those who had their own buses to catch moved reluctantly away; and, striving nobly to conquer her fears, Norah Blaine allowed herself to be escorted up the rubber-covered steps by Erica Nuttel, elbows on overtime. As the other Plummergenites perforce fell back to let them pass, the Nuts staked their claim on the front seat as compensation for the dreadful experience they had both undergone; and, throughout the six-mile journey home, they loudly reminded each other, over and over again, that if they had not witnessed it with their own eyes, they would never have believed it.
chapter
~ 19 ~
WHEN HIS THIRD witness had so firmly identified Nigel as the young man thought to have been one of the last people to see Myrtle Felsted alive, Superintendent Brinton knew he could do nothing else but question this unlikely suspect with as much resolution as he would have applied to anyone else—with, indeed, more, lest charges of favouritism should at any time in the future be levelled against him. Brinton did not have definite knowledge of what was already being said; but, had he been asked to predict the general attitude of Miss Nuttel, Mrs. Blaine, and others of their kind, he could have done so almost word for word.
In the end, the superintendent allowed Nigel to leave the station without pressing charges, although he took care to leave his options open. Brinton was not a happy man as the door of the interview room closed behind his suspect’s back; the lengthy talk with young Mr. Colveden had not been as straightforward as he would have wished.
Foxon had been taking notes. He looked at his chief in some dismay. “I just can’t—won’t believe it, sir. Not Nigel Colveden! There’s got to be some explanation—he’s a decent sort, is Nigel. You know he is! Not one of your average Chopper thugs with no brains and a broken home—his father’s a magistrate, for Pete’s sake. Sir.”
“You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know, laddie. Think I didn’t go through it all myself a hundred times or more, while we were talking? But you shouldn’t need me to remind you what can happen, in cases like this.” Brinton sighed. “Nearly everyone who’s done somebody in has a host of friends and relations pop out of the woodwork bleating that he’s a nice boy, and they can’t believe it of him, and there must be some mistake . . . It’s human nature, Foxon. People don’t like to think their nearest and dearest are capable of killing—and especially when it’s something as cold-blooded as this joker. The heat of the moment I can just about—well, not excuse, but I might stretch a point and admit I understand how it can happen. A pub fights gets out of hand, a lad throws a punch without realising his own strength, a bloke bumps his napper on the way down and dies from a cracked skull—that’s your normal
murder, Foxon. It doesn’t surprise me sometimes when a jury goes sympathetic and lets ’em plead manslaughter, instead—not that it helps the poor devil who’s dead, or his family, but if there’s any consolation they know it wasn’t some lunatic lying in wait, and the bloke who’s gone down for it probably feels as sorry as they do . . .
“But this Blonde Bagman’s a different kettle of fish altogether, Foxon—and I don’t care who he is, I want to feel his collar and get him out of circulation before he does it again. He might not wait another year—he could be getting a taste for it, and crazy killers on my patch is something I won’t put up with. If he turns out to be young Colveden, we just have to say it’s tough on the family he’s turned out bad, but that everyone else’ll be glad we managed to grab him in time—including us. Trouble is,” and Brinton rubbed a massive hand wearily across his face, “I like the lad, as well. If he’d been able to come up with a decent alibi, I’d have been as pleased as anyone . . .”
Foxon, who in normal circumstances would not have hesitated to remind Brinton that alibis can be faked, found himself unable to make even the most feeble joke to cheer his gloomy superior. The office was filled with a brooding, exhausted silence. They had questioned Nigel for what seemed an eternity, though common sense and the clock told them it wasn’t; but the questioning had been rigorous, and the two detectives knew there would be more to come.
“Because,” said Brinton, with a sigh, “we’d be falling down on the job if we didn’t start checking up very closely on what young Colveden’s been getting up to over the past week or so, and exactly where. Odds are that Chummie is the lad seen chatting to Myrtle at the bus stop. Everyone who saw ’em thinks it looked as if they already knew each other, so if we can find out he had a chance to meet her . . . I hate to say it, but Nigel’s the most promising lead we’ve got so far—the lad may look the picture of innocence, but—”
Miss Seeton Plants Suspicion (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 15) Page 16
