A light perspiration bedewed the brow of Daniel Eggleden as he straightened for a moment from his sawing to rub the small of his back. “Not till I’m done, thanks,” he replied in answer to Miss Seeton’s enquiry about a cup of tea. “Hot work this is, and thirsty, too—but I’ll finish it first. This iron’s not so hard as I feared it might be: I’m a good halfway through already, see?”
Once more, a fascinated Miss Seeton saw, and nodded, and murmured a polite response which was drowned out by the renewed screech of metal against metal, higher and still higher in pitch as what remained of the spindle requiring to be severed grew gradually smaller in diameter.
A descant screech—a clang—a clatter. Spindle and knob had at last parted company. The knob bounced up from the floor, then recoiled from the age-old oak to rest, rolling in a gentle arc, on newspaper which shivered with its movement, and scattered iron filings into strange shapes.
Miss Seeton, thrilled, uttered cries of congratulation.
Dan Eggleden wiped his steaming brow with his forearm, and grinned. “Now, didn’t I tell you? We’ll hope the other comes as easy ...”
And, to his relief and great delight, it did.
Breathing hard, he met Miss Seeton’s admiring gaze with a weary twinkle in his eye. “Need ear-plugs for this, too,” he warned, yielding the hacksaw to the canvas embrace of his tool bag, and rummaging within for a mighty hammer and a tapering steel rod about twelve inches in length. “Punch,” he said as he rummaged, and across Miss Seeton’s wayward imagination danced a belligerent hook-nosed hand puppet, in hot pursuit of a ruff-collared dog with a string of stolen sausages in its jaws.
Things were just starting to look bad for poor Toby when Dan, having applied the business end of the punch to the sawn-off spindle where it lay within the curving clutch of the hinge, made a minor adjustment, picked up his hammer, and smote mightily, driving the point of the punch against the spindle ... and the spindle, accordingly, partway out of the hinge.
“Oh,” breathed Miss Seeton as a shower of rust flaked down on the iron filings, creating shapes and patterns yet more strange. Visionary sausages, hound, and hook-nosed vengeance vanished at once. “Oh, Mr. Eggleden, it moved! How very, very clever of you to—”
With a hasty clang, Dan drowned out her words of praise until he should properly deserve them, pounding away at the punch in slow, resonant time. Miss Seeton was so entranced as the spindle edged its rusty way out of the hinge that she almost forgot to put her fingers in her ears. The blacksmith’s hammer thumped merrily on ... and on ...
Until one final blow sent the second spindle shuddering from its hinge to the floor. And the box—as Dan Eggleden informed her with pride—could now be opened.
“Oh,” said Miss Seeton, pink-cheeked with excitement. “Oh, how splendid! And now ...” Then she recollected herself. Excitement was checked by the need to pay tribute. “And so quickly, too, although that is only to be expected, of course, from an expert. Thank you so much, Mr. Eggleden, for all your hard work and kindness, when you could have had no idea how long it would take. To have taken you from your normal work ...”
“Pleasure, Miss Seeton.” Dan grinned at her over his shoulder as he began packing his tools into the canvas bag. “A bit of a change to have a job so out of the normal run as this, once in a while. A challenge, you might say—and a pity I couldn’t have made you new keys instead, but with so much rust and the padlocks jammed, I doubt I could’ve got ’em to work in any event. But now, well, from the front you’d never know it’d been opened, would you? Except,” he added slyly, “as it ain’t exactly been opened yet.”
Miss Seeton, suppressing a sigh, agreed that it hadn’t but her natural curiosity wrought with her innate courtesy, and courtesy prevailed. “You must be thirsty, Mr. Eggleden. It won’t take long to boil the kettle for a cup of tea, if you would care for one.” She turned her back on temptation, and headed for the sitting room door. “Whatever is inside the box—if, indeed, there is anything at all—has been waiting, or so one gathers from the state of the hinges and lock, for many years. Another ten minutes,” said Miss Seeton heroically, “can make no real difference, can it?”
chapter
~ 12 ~
DAN EGGLEDEN’S MID-MORNING summons to Sweetbriars, his lengthy sojourn beneath Miss Seeton’s roof, and his subsequent cheerful return to the forge had not escaped the notice of the village.
It was Mrs. Spice, popping into the bakery for one of Mrs. Wyght’s celebrated chocolate cakes and a bag of buns, who on her way out had paused on the doorstep to tickle one of the tea-room cats beneath his chin. While thus bending to pay her respects, she had observed at her back the brisk passage up The Street of a pair of well-shod, size four feet in sensible grey stockings. The shoes, hose, and nimble tread could have belonged to many an honest citizen: the swinging tip of a defendant umbrella crooked over a tweeded arm could belong to only one—a citizen concerning whose integrity and respectability Plummergen never ceased to argue.
“Miss Seeton? At the smithy?” Mrs. Spice, busy fingers coaxing, had been followed north by all four feline Wyghts as she drifted to a convenient halt outside the residence of Miss Cecelia Wicks. Miss Wicks lived right next door to the forge; her cottage, decorated by a wrought-iron balustrade, was often pointed out to potential clients by Dan Eggleden as the perfect setting for one of the finest examples of his work. Mrs. Spice had been forced to rest against the ornate black curlicues as she stroked as many cats as demanded her attention, such attention being far too dangerous to give while in motion. She must, for safety’s sake, remain where she was ... and this she did, while her ears strained to hear what was being said indoors, and her eyes did their utmost to penetrate the shadowy gloom.
“At the smithy,” said Mrs. Spice, as she at last presented her report to an eager post office, and quite took everyone’s mind off phantom caskets. “You could’ve knocked me down with a feather, you really could—to think Dan Eggleden, of all people, ’d let himself get talked into plotting goodness knows what against the Queen ...”
The gratifying sensation aroused by this intelligence more than made up, in the opinion of Mrs. Spice, for the ache in the small of her back. Absently she smirked as she massaged her restive fingers, then quickly replaced the smirk with an expression as serious as the tone in which she continued her story.
“Yes—plotting, they were, the pair o’ them! And after what happened on Bonfire Night, you’d think Miss Seeton’d be the very last person, wouldn’t you? There’s some folk as have no gratitude for their lives being saved—and a fine way to show gratitude, to pay it back with treason!”
Further sensation. Mrs. Spice nodded sagely. “Treason, yes—and worse, for all I know, though what I do know’s bad enough. For ain’t it treason to go interfering with the Royal Mail? And ain’t it the post office as takes care of the telephones?”
All heads turned as one towards the grille behind which Mr. Stillman, postmaster, performed his official duties. Mrs. Stillman, supervising Emmy Putts on the grocery counter, let a quick cry of warning escape her before emitting a furious remark that turned all the heads back again. Mr. Stillman—one of the cricket team’s star bowlers and, like the less projectile Elsie, a staunch admirer of Miss Seeton—at his wife’s warning reluctantly loosened his grasp on the red-inked stamp embossed with the loyal legend OHMS. He would leave Elsie to fight this particular battle on her own, as he knew her well able to do. Against all official policy, he slammed down the grille with a vicious clang, and sat back to listen as his loving spouse let rip.
“Well, really! If you ask me,” said Elsie Stillman before anyone did, “I think a far worse thing than treason is slander. And if it wasn’t so ridiculous nobody with half the sense they were born with would believe it, if you ask me Dan Eggleden and Miss Seeton should think about ... about suing anybody who goes around repeating such rubbish.”
Feet shuffled with embarrassment. Throats were cleared; eyes met, then darted away. Even Pl
ummergen opinion—swift as it is to build on the slimmest of foundations the firmest of prejudices—can be influenced, if the voice of influence is sufficiently forceful; and, while Mrs. Spice had spoken with no small authority, Mrs. Stillman, with the greater authority vested in her as the wife of the licensed postmaster, on her own territory must necessarily speak with an almost irresistible force.
Mrs. Spice, indignant at the loss of her thunder—not to mention the slur on her mind, morals, and judgement—after a moment’s startled pause opened her mouth to protest: but too late. Mrs. Stillman’s righteous wrath was urging her on to yet higher flights of eloquence.
“And I’m sure I wouldn’t be the only one glad to—to bear witness to their good character, when you think of all the wonderful things Miss Seeton has done over the years, helping the police the way she has. The whole village, too, for that matter. If there’s any talk of gratitude,” concluded Elsie Stillman caustically, “it’s as plain as the nose on my face there are a sight too many people around here who don’t even know the meaning of the word!”
She gave the handle of the bacon slicer a vengeful turn, sending the wicked steel blade screaming through the air. Everyone remotely within range jumped out of it.
“You were asking for cheese, Mrs. Henderson.” Mrs. Stillman prodded young Miss Putts sharply in the ribs and indicated the rich yellow wedge—almost the end of the truckle—that rested on the white marble slab. With an eloquent gesture, she handed her assistant the wood-toggled wire, glared at Mrs. Henderson, and folded her arms in a dignified manner. “Now, Emmeline, I want to see you cut Mrs. Henderson’s cheddar just the way she wants it, d’you hear?”
The matter might have ended there: but Plummergen society, like many another, has its undercurrents against which even Elsie Stillman would find it difficult to swim. The Skinner-Henderson Flower Feud was never far from the minds of the ladies concerned; and Mrs. Skinner was not slow now to seize her chance. She, like Mrs. Henderson, had come to the post office intending to buy a pound and a half of cheese. Her rival had somehow slipped ahead of her in the queue. A distracted Mrs. Skinner had been unable, in all the welter of gossip that had preceded the breathless arrival of Mrs. Spice, to redirect her thoughts to the concoction of an alternative menu for that night’s supper. Eat anything the same as Mrs. Henderson Mrs. Skinner simply would not! And with a little care she might not need to. By encouraging Mrs. Spice to enlarge on her story—which was, in any case, one of the most promising snippets she’d heard all week—she’d be doing no more than her neighbourly duty. If anyone was to take objection—if Mrs. Stillman, supervising Emmy Putts, chose to be so busy interfering that Mrs. Henderson’s order didn’t get served; if anyone else, naming no names, decided to shove her oar in—well, you couldn’t blame a body for that, could you?
“So what manner of treason would you say they were plotting, Mrs. Spice?” Mrs. Skinner managed to suggest, by a sly sideways look at Mrs. Stillman, that she did no more than humor a friend, and was willing to be corrected in any false assumptions into which she might be led. “You aren’t saying as they want to blow up Buckingham Palace, are you, or kidnap the Royal Family again?”
Mrs. Skinner’s expression, if not her tone, hinted once more at a humorous interpretation of the news brought by Mrs. Spice. Mrs. Henderson, queueing for cheese, had her back to Mrs. Skinner. Abruptly she turned round to pour scorn on the import of what she’d overheard.
“I’m not saying Miss Seeton ain’t queer in her ways, as nobody with even half the sense they were born with”—she turned back to hurl a scornful look at the grim-faced Elsie Stillman—“could deny, but”—turning again—“after Guy Fawkes and everything, well, it’d be more than queer to go plotting treason in the open air where any old Tom, Dick, or Harry”—she deliberately looked in quite the opposite direction from Mrs. Spice—“could hear them: it’d be downright crazy. Besides, for all you can say Miss Seeton’s sometimes—sometimes a bit crazy, Dan Eggleden—”
“Sometimes?” broke in Mrs. Spice, her voice shrill. “You just tell me a time she wasn’t! From the very first day—”
“What absolute rubbish!” This from Mrs. Stillman, above a rising babble of concurrence and—from a few rare specimens—contradiction. “Miss Seeton—”
“Dan Eggleden—”
“—never have thought it, but they say it’s always the quiet ones—”
“—can’t deny there’s some funny things happened—”
“—what about that coffin the Nuts saw last night—”
To judge by the clamour that now arose about her, Mrs. Stillman, for all her authority, was clearly outnumbered. The rare specimens—understandably, perhaps—began to fall silent; and their fall was not slow. Within a minute or two at the most, Mrs. Spice had the floor. It was a position she was determined to enjoy to the full.
Neither she nor Mrs. Henderson—on this occasion willing to accept the Spiciest speculation as gospel—nor, indeed, Mrs. Stillman, her supervisory attempts forgotten—observed the serpentine progress of Mrs. Skinner past everyone else to the front of the grocery queue, or the smug way in which she advised Emmy Putts that she wouldn’t trouble her to use the wire, but just give her all that was left on the slab, and not to worry if it was a bit more than usual: if she didn’t finish it for that night’s supper, she was sure it would come in handy for tomorrow’s dinner. Mrs. Skinner did not admit, even to herself, that while Mrs. Stillman was busy defending the reputation of Miss Seeton, she would be unable to oversee her less experienced assistant’s attempts to start the new, fifty-six-pound truckle of cheese that waited in its sacking wrap at the side of the counter. Greater skill than Emmy yet possessed was needed, Mrs. Skinner well knew, to take the first slice from so daunting an example of the dairyman’s art ...
“So if talk of treason and plots is—is ridiculous, and rubbish,” said Mrs. Spice, glaring at those of her visible detractors who hadn’t ducked their heads out of range, “then I should very much like to know what business people think Miss Seeton’s got to be—to be bugging the telephones!”
Sensation. Even the lips of Mrs. Spice’s strongest detractors gave forth little cries of alarm. Mrs. Spice tossed her head and smirked: the attention of her audience, almost to a woman, was now fastened upon her with a most gratifying intensity. “It’s nobbut the one, mind you, to start with, but set between her house and the forge as it is, it’s plain as the nose on your face,” she said, ignoring the evident indignation of Mrs. Stillman, “she’d try that one first. But you can be sure she won’t stop there, if it’s as easy as Dan Eggleden made it sound. Do the job on the spot, he said he could, and be along to sort things out well before dinnertime—this dinnertime, as ever is! Oh, I tell you, there won’t be a secret safe in Plummergen, once that precious pair have set their wicked electricals in the village’s one and only telephone box ...”
The box, with whatever long-lost mysteries it contained, brooded on its newspaper bed as Miss Seeton brought tea and biscuits to the sitting room, did her hostessly duty by Dan Eggleden, then trotted back to the kitchen for a dustpan and brush. Dan quenched his thirst, munched a chocolate digestive, and voiced only a faint protest as Miss Seeton fell to sweeping up the debris produced by his recent endeavours. It had been, for all his boasts, a more difficult job than he had anticipated; and crouching, for a man of his inches, was cramping and wearisome after a while.
Miss Seeton had brewed up in her everyday earthenware pot rather than her best bone china, and had brought a pair of the sturdy mugs she used whenever Stan Bloomer dropped in for his elevenses in preference to popping back home or bringing a flask. It was, of course, only to be expected that the delicate and dainty, while aesthetically pleasing, would be of no use to a working man—not, that is, while he was working. And dear Mr. Eggleden had worked so hard: even if the treasure chest should prove to contain nothing whatever of any interest, it had been most interesting to watch an expert displaying his expertise.
“Some more
tea, Mr. Eggleden?” Miss Seeton hopped up nimbly from the floor and, not for the first time, blessed the years of yoga that enabled her so to hop without her knees emitting those embarrassing cracks common to many persons of her age. The result, as she understood it, of a gradual stiffening of the tendons, although it was not a phenomenon entirely unknown to persons far younger than herself, as well. In the young, of course, it could be accepted as no more than a mildly amusing—if one’s sense of humor was so inclined—physiological trait: she had on several occasions heard Nigel making jokes about rifle-shot and fireworks ...
“Oh, dear.” Miss Seeton paused with the teapot in mid-pour, and blushed. “Oh, dear. I wonder ...”
There was more than a hint of misgiving in the quick look with which Dan Eggleden favoured his hostess. Had he broken some hitherto unknown taboo of the gentry by saying he’d welcome a second draught of tea? Should he not have asked for three heaped spoons, when Miss Seeton didn’t take sugar on her own account? Was the poor little body too polite to tell him to his face and wondering what to do?
But it was no question of tea-table etiquette that now troubled the mind of Miss Emily Dorothea Seeton: anything so simple would have been almost a relief. What worried her far more than second helpings could ever have done was a sudden memory of Nigel, and his mother, and their assistance—unavailing, of course, but none the less welcome—in the matter of the treasure chest. Did not the Colvedens deserve some share in the excitement of the official—as it were—opening of the chest, quite as much as Mr. Eggleden? Admittedly, it was his job, while the part played by Nigel and his mother had been no more than kindness to a friend; but kindness ought surely to merit a more courteous return than being overlooked in—again, she blushed—the merely selfish satisfaction of one’s own curiosity. Except—Miss Seeton stifled a sigh—that Mr. Eggleden, also, had expressed some curiosity as to the contents of the chest. It hardly seemed right to ask him to wait, when he had already been—like the Colvedens—so very kind ...
Sold to Miss Seeton (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 19) Page 10
