Hubert was so busy pouring scorn on his wife’s opinions, and she was so busy upholding them, that neither of his parents paid much attention to Clive’s unnatural calm. If they had, they would have attributed it either to shock at such revelations about his Young Farmer friend, or to his having not yet shaken off the habit of being strong and silent, as the South Island farmers were known to be. But they would have been wrong. Clive said nothing because he was thinking too hard—thinking how this news could be turned to his advantage . . .
When footsteps sounded on the path round the side of her cottage, Miss Seeton turned with a smile to greet the unexpected visitor. She had been wondering whether it would show too much self-indulgence if one went indoors for another cup of tea now, instead of waiting half an hour or so and having one with supper, for which one did not, perhaps, feel quite ready just yet, although dear Martha’s raised pork pie and salad would be most welcome a little later. But Martha’s pork pie recipe used a wide variety of spices, and Miss Seeton, having spent so much of the day indoors at school, had worked up a greater thirst than appetite since she’d come home and been making up for lost hours in the garden. This timely guest would serve as the perfect excuse, if any were needed, for indulging one’s inclinations, and eating one’s meals at a slightly unorthodox hour.
“Miss Seeton?” The young man with the thick, wavy brown hair and athletic build strode towards her across the lawn. “I hope you don’t mind my dropping in on you like this, when we haven’t met before. You don’t know me, but—”
“Oh, but I do,” said Miss Seeton, with a nod and another smile. “Know who you are, I mean. You’re Clive—I do beg your pardon, but I don’t know your other name—but you are a friend of dear Nigel Colveden, are you not?”
Clive was horribly taken aback by such instant recognition. He, like his father, had been inclined to dismiss the rumours which reached Murreystone about Miss Seeton’s peculiar powers; now, he wasn’t so sure. But the old woman certainly seemed to be—sure, that she knew who he was—which meant he had to change his plans. All he’d ever meant to do (he told himself) had been find out what, if anything, she knew about . . . the Episodes, as he was accustomed to call the killings when thinking about them. He thought about them surprisingly seldom. Once the tension had been released, it took a long time for it to build up again.
But the old woman was sure she knew him—could therefore identify him when she told the police, as she was bound to do, that someone had been round asking questions about . . . about . . .
“Clive Chelmer,” he said, shaking hands as he reached her, blotting out the rest of that uncomfortable sentence. “How do you do, Miss Seeton? Please forgive me for making so free with your name, but as a . . . a friend of Nigel’s . . .”
He watched her closely, but saw no response other than pleasure at his mention of Mr. Colveden’s name. Did she have no idea, then, of what had happened to her young acquaintance? Or had she indeed heard, but dismissed, the story, as daft an old woman as he’d supposed all along she must be, reports of her prowess as a detective no more than Plummergen nonsense? Except, of course, that there were the newspapers—it was no easier to fool them than it was to fool the police. Yet he’d succeeded at both, hadn’t he? Flying off to New Zealand a week after the first . . . Episode . . . without anyone stopping him as he boarded the plane—
“Are you feeling a little unwell?” came Miss Seeton’s kind enquiry, as she observed the strange expression on her visitor’s face. “A touch of the sun, perhaps—you have, if I may say so, a rather flushed appearance. I was just about to make myself a cup of tea. Would you care to join me?”
Or—was she every bit as clever as people said? Making out she knew nothing—guessing his secret—hoping to trick him indoors and force a confession out of him. He was going to find her more difficult to pump than he’d expected. She was too much the twittering old woman to be real: everything they said about her was true—and pumping her wasn’t going to be enough. Now that he’d met her, he knew. And he also knew she had to be . . . stopped, before she could tell anyone just what she knew . . .
He refused the invitation to accompany her into the cottage, making some excuse about fresh air being better for his headache. Miss Seeton was all clucking concern—overdone, he thought cynically—and he was pleased that in this, at least, he told no more than the truth. As soon as she’d said she knew who he was, he’d felt something like a dagger stab into the back of his skull, stab and twist and stab again, stab and cut and slash and tear, just like . . . just like . . .
“If you won’t come in out of the sun,” said Miss Seeton, in her firmest tones, “then I must insist you sit down under the apple tree—this garden faces west, you see, and keeps it until the very end of the afternoon—the sun, that is. I could fetch it out here, if you would prefer to be in the shade—the tea. It won’t take me long to—”
“No! No, thank you,” as Miss Seeton stared, then smiled as she realised how the poor boy’s head must be troubling him, if his grimaces and jerky movements were a true indication of his feelings. One hesitated, of course, to interfere, but would it be an excessive impertinence to suggest that he saw a doctor? A migraine—Miss Seeton had never suffered such a thing in her life, but had in her student days known one or two victims whose paintings made their illness all too vivid—a migraine, she knew, could be very unpleasant. Dear Anne’s father had been one of London’s top neurologists before retiring to Plummergen—and was not migraine something to do with the structure of the brain?
“It might, you know,” ventured Miss Seeton, as Clive, his face working, clenched his hands into fists, “be of considerable help to you if you spoke to him—Dr. Knight, that is. In the nursing home at the other end of the village,” as he turned a puzzled face towards her.
She was trying to tell him she thought he was crazy, was she? That he ought to be locked away? She was wrong—they were all wrong. How could they even think it, when they had no proof? Hadn’t he stopped the blood dripping on his car floor by wrapping . . . them . . . in plastic? Hadn’t he left those sheep out in the open air where birds of prey could rend flesh from bones so that nobody could tell how they had died? If you couldn’t prove it, it wasn’t true . . . though there was always the risk they might fail to prove Nigel had done it, and then they’d say it wasn’t true when it was—it was true that Nigel Colveden deserved whatever punishment came his way, for taking Clive’s rightful place—for stealing the friends he ought to have had—for stealing away his girl . . .
“Heather,” he said, with a groan. Miss Seeton frowned.
“Heather honey, certainly, but as to heather tea . . . you will forgive me for contradicting you, I hope, but I hardly think it likely. Tea, after all, is made from dried leaves, which heather does not have—of a sort suitable for drying, I mean. Leaves. And in the shade, if only you will come and sit down, the air is so much fresher—”
“Fresh air!” Clive clenched his fists even tighter, and took a deep breath. “Fresh air . . . Miss Seeton! How would you like to come for a little drive with me?”
chapter
~ 23 ~
THE PLAN OF campaign was finalised in the road outside Miss Seeton’s cottage, with Brinton uttering stern reminders that if news of so unorthodox a procedure ever leaked out, he would be in deep trouble. Mel and Thrudd assured him that, as free citizens in a democracy, it was their inarguable right to drive where they pleased on the Queen’s highway; but rights, once won, to be maintained must be earned. To ignore a chance-met officer of police who asked for their assistance could be described as nothing less than dereliction of civic duty.
“Talking of highways,” said Thrudd, “hadn’t we better get going? If MissEss has been missing all night—”
“Miss S.,” Mel informed him in a clear voice—she’d seen Martha, dismayed at being left behind, at Miss Seeton’s open door—“is one redoubtable lady, Banner. What’s all night to the likes of her? Why, with her yoga she could last
a whole week, easily!”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” said Brinton, with a growl. “Everyone know what they’re doing?”
Everyone did. There had been a slight change of plan, in that detailed knowledge of the Murreystone byways was essential to a successful assault on Crown House Farm. PC Potter, on whose beat Plummergen’s rival village lay, went with Thrudd and Mel to give directions: time was too much of the essence—Mel’s brave words notwithstanding—to waste it in repetition of instructions that might still be misunderstood or forgotten. Brinton and Foxon, local reinforcements, were in the other car. They were not the only ones to sigh for their customary colleague in adventure, big Bob Ranger of Scotland Yard. He and the Oracle—whose contribution to the Miss Seeton cases consisted more of an ability to interpret her sketches than to indulge in fisticuffs—were many miles away, however. Nobody said out loud that by the time Miss Seeton’s oldest friends on the force were able to respond, it might be too late: but they did not need to. They all knew it, only too well.
The little cavalcade headed south from Sweetbriars, down the narrowed Street where it ran between high brick walls, over the Royal Military Canal to a sharp left-angled bend, on to Snargate, to Brenzett, to the crossroads. Both cars made for Ivychurch—where, with a quick flourish on the horn and a wave of her hand, Mel took the road towards Hamstreet, while Foxon drove on to the junction for Murreystone and waited there, just around the corner, for three anxious minutes. He then started the engine again, and drove on.
Brinton was grumbling to himself. “If Potter’s missed the turning and gone straight on—”
“No earthly reason why he should, sir. He knows these roads better than anyone alive except the tramps and the poachers, I imagine—and he wouldn’t want anything to happen to Miss Seeton any more than the rest of us do. I mean, she’s from his own village, for a start.”
“You’re babbling, Foxon.” Unusually, Brinton did not bark an order for his subordinate to shut up: the lad was nervous, understandably so. When Miss Seeton was involved, nobody knew what the outcome might be. No need to make him even more nervous, when he was driving . . .
“Sorry, sir. We’re, er, almost there, I think—that’s the sign for Pondicherry Lodge—the Chelmer place, Potter said, next door to Crown House.” Even at so tense a moment, Foxon’s sense of the ridiculous did not desert him. “Highfalutin names farmers in these parts choose, don’t they?”
Brinton grunted. “Delhi Durbar,” he muttered. “I only hope that Forby girl’s got it right. And where the hell is she? I should never have let them talk me into it—I’d’ve done better to radio for another car from Ash—And about ruddy time, too!”
Mel’s car appeared slowly around a distant bend in the road: the vehicular siege of Crown House Farm was about to begin. Brinton nodded to Foxon, who flashed his headlights at Mel. She flashed hers in reply, and slowed right down as he drove the remaining few yards to the farm entrance, where he turned into the drive and began to make his cautious way up the short track to the house. Mel, following as far as the gateway, pulled her car round, reversed, and switched off the engine with her front bumper touching the left-hand post, her rear bumper touching the right. Only a mobile scrapyard car crusher, or a maniac colossus with a razor-edged hatchet, could now go in or out of Crown House Farm by that route.
“Quiet, you fools!” Brinton motioned fiercely as Mel, Thrudd, and Potter caught up with the early arrivals, who now lurked behind a piece of rusting machinery whose purpose not even Mel—who’d researched several articles on Implements Old and New: The Changing Face of Farming—could guess at. The only thing that mattered now, though, was that it was sufficiently bulky to screen the sight of all five persons from anyone looking from the windows of Crown House Farm.
“Old Barnston’s been dead a month or more,” Potter had explained to the rescue party before it set out. “There’s nobody living in the house, on account of how he left the whole caboodle in equal shares to his sister’s kids, and they can’t agree what to do with it. Mr. Chelmer next door’s looking after the sheep while they make up their minds, but once the solicitor’d locked up and took the keys, they told me it’d be staying empty for a while, and would I keep an eye on it when I was doing my rounds. Only I don’t do ’em regular, see, so as not to be . . . predictable if anyone fancies a spot of mischief.”
Brinton glanced at Mel, a frown creasing his forehead. “And the locals’d know your routine for checking up on the place, Potter? That you haven’t really got one, I mean?”
“That’s right, sir, so they wouldn’t be surprised if I turned up in broad daylight, like now.”
“They’d be surprised to see you in a car that’s not your own,” said Brinton, still brooding. “And then, anyone local ought to realise you could turn up any time of the day or night to look the place over. Would they really risk keeping her where chances are she’ll be found before long?”
“How often,” Mel enquired promptly of PC Potter, “do you head into the sticks on the Hacienda Patrol?”
He blinked, but answered almost at once. “Two, three times a week, maybe—to the farmhouse, I mean. I’m in Murreystone near enough every day, of course.”
Mel turned to Brinton. “They’d risk it, for a couple of days—and she’s only been missing overnight, for Pete’s sake. If we don’t hurry, he could take her some place else, and we’ll lose the trail completely . . .”
And so they had followed the trail, and now crouched, all five of them, in a tense huddle behind the rusting cogs and gears and perished rubber belts of the unidentified farm machine, peering about them for any signs of life. There were birds overhead—rooks? crows?—and sparrows hopping for worms on the ground; a gentle breeze rustled the plastic sheet tacked loosely to the dilapidated roof of a long, low barn; leaves danced on a solitary tree beside the front door of the house. Nothing else moved . . . until Brinton did.
“Foxon and I will go round the back.” He waved a quick, surreptitious arm towards the house. “Potter, you take the front. Banner, Miss Forby—that barn door catch looks as if it could be slipped easily—but for heaven’s sake take care! I don’t want your blood on my hands . . .”
“And we sure as hell don’t want Miss S.’s blood on ours,” retorted Mel, as she prepared to charge into action. Except that she knew she couldn’t charge—stealth and cunning must be the order of the day, and she wondered whether she’d have the patience. Mel was fond of Miss Seeton, and more worried about the elderly spinster than she liked to admit.
Thrudd, who knew her every mood, gave her a quick hug. “She’ll be fine, Forby. MissEss always bounces back—how many times have you said so yourself? And in print, what’s more, so it must be true.”
She flashed him a grateful grin, then began to creep as carefully as she could, head low, eyes alert, across to the barn. Thrudd followed, as quick and careful as his lady.
“Catch?” He jerked contemptuously at the ragged length of string which fastened the door through a rusty hasp. “If he put her in here, never mind hairpins, she could have used her umbrella to pick this excuse for a lock!”
Mel sniffed. “Chris Brinton doing the chivalry bit, of course. He must’ve guessed she wouldn’t be here, and wanted us out of the way—still, may as well check inside, just in case. There’s such a thing as double bluff, Banner. Don’t let this”—with a tug which parted string from hasp in one movement—“fool you . . .”
And neither of them, as they stepped carefully into the dark coolness of the barn, liked to remind the other that he—whoever he was—might have been happy enough to leave Miss Seeton secured with so feeble a fastening because he knew she was in no fit state to undo it.
As PC Potter examined every inch of the front of the house, Foxon and Brinton were working their way in opposite directions around its sides, intending to meet at the back. No footprints, no bent blades of grass, no broken glass of a damaged window, no scuffs or chips of paint on sill or sash: with two detect
ives searching, nothing such could have stayed undiscovered.
They met at the back door. They exclaimed together.
“That’s been forced!”
On the jamb, beside the lock, were gouges and scraping marks as if a slim, strong, supple instrument had been slipped past the metal flange and into the workings of the lock before the door was jemmied open. Open—then shut again. But shut behind whom?
And was he—were they—still there?
Brinton thought rapidly. “Banner and Forby are out the front—if he makes a break for it, they’ll scare him even if they don’t stop him. It’s Miss Seeton I’ more bothered about. I’ll bring Potter round to join us—we’ll all go in together, but be ready to run like hell if he makes a bolt for it. I haven’t seen a car, unless it’s in the barn, but he can’t get out to the road anyway unless he drives clean through the hedge . . .”
Foxon had his hand on the tarnished brass knob the instant his colleagues appeared around the corner. He turned, winced as the door creaked, turned again. The door creaked more loudly, then stopped as Foxon froze, listening. With a quick gesture, he beckoned.
“I reckon we can risk it, sir!”
He rose from the half-crouch he’d automatically adopted while opening the door, and balanced himself on the balls of his feet, ready to tackle whatever homicidal maniac might hurl himself out of the shadows on the approaching rescuers. Brinton jabbed a finger at Potter, pointed to the left—at Foxon, to the right—to his own chest, pointed upwards, and placed it finally against his lips, cautioning silence.
Miss Seeton Plants Suspicion (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 15) Page 20
