Sold to Miss Seeton (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 19)

by Hamilton Crane

  The vision which this last intelligence brought to mind made Miss Seeton pause in her reading.

  Nigel gurgled at her side. “The eggs, or the brilliant performer? Can you imagine what my mother would say if I raided the hen house and started practising? Or what Stan Bloomer would say if you did,” he added.

  “It sounds a shocking waste, unless they were addled, no matter how brilliant he might be. There is always the risk ... and the smell. Quite dreadful. From the style of printing, I would guess this dates from the eighteenth century. Georgian buildings were not, I believe, noted for the fresh quality of their air after dark. Candlelight and overcrowding—but then it was hardly a hygienic era, was it? Powder, and scent, and sadly inadequate plumbing ...”

  “Give me cows and pigs any day,” muttered Nigel as Miss Seeton delved into the chest again.

  There were a great many playbills, celebrating such long forgotten spectacles as The Rival Cavaliers, or, Betrand and Matilda, in which combat was waged with mace d’arme, poignard and sabre as well as with swords of various sizes. Nigel was much struck by the eccentric spelling and florid descriptions of The Devil to Pay, or, The Wives Metamorphos’d, where the part of Sir John Loverule was taken by Mr. Pottipole. “‘The better to entertain the Gentry, Mr. Lee has engag’d a Company of Tumblers, lately arrived, who perform feveral furprizing tricks; particularly, one throws himfelf off a Scaffold twelve Foot high; another throws himfelf over 12 Men’s heads; He likewise leaps over 6 Boys, sitting on 12 Men’s Shoulders; another tumbles over 16 Swords, as high as Men can hold them; and feveral other diverting Things too tedious to mention.’ Don’t we just wish they had!”

  “Mr. Pottipole,” observed Miss Seeton, “appears to have been a versatile actor, to play both heroic and comic parts. Here he is again,” she said, unfolding another bill, “in The Inconstant, or, The Way to Win Him, as Young Mirabel.”

  Nigel was peering rather glumly at a crumbling yellow newspaper. “Gosh, it must be my age. They say the print tends to get smaller as you grow older. I think I need a magnifying glass for this.”

  “May I try?” Miss Seeton, whose eyesight was excellent, studied the tiny letters with some care. After a while, she nodded. “Here he is,” she said, pointing. “‘Several of Mr. Pottipole’s Friends being pre-engaged for Monday 23 March, advertised for his benefit, and Mr. Kemble having kindly given him Saturday the 14th, he humbly hopes (the shortness of the Time not permitting him to wait on his Friends as usual) those Ladies and Gentlemen who desire to favour him with their presence, will be pleased to send for their tickets and places, to his House next Old Slaughter’s Coffee House in St. Martin’s Lane.’”

  “I think we may surmise,” said Nigel with a grin, “that your box used to belong to Mr. Pottipole, Miss Seeton.”

  He was even more inclined to this view when a number of elegant engravings of a handsome gentleman in various theatrical costumes were unearthed. “Mr. Pottipole in the Charecter of the Roman Father—they spelled things differently then, I suppose. Mr. Pottipole as Hippolytus ... as Hodge ... as Sir John Brute—Miss Seeton, are any of these chaps—the ones who engraved these prints, I mean—famous?” He was too much of a gentleman to suggest that they might be worth hard cash.

  Miss Seeton confessed herself sadly ignorant of William Holland, Mr. Sherwin, and the Sylvester brothers. “But there is an excellent library in Brettenden,” she said. “I intend to find out all I can—tomorrow.” She smiled. “There’s more still to find tonight, isn’t there?”

  There was. Following the playbills and assorted likenesses of Augustus Pottipole, there were letters written in ink which were difficult to decipher under electric light. Miss Seeton promised to let Nigel know as soon as she had made some sense of them on the morrow. They then began to uncover items that could only be theatrical props, wrapped in a variety of garments. A Persian dressing gown, a pair of baggy breeches, and a length of patterned cloth Miss Seeton believed must be a turban. A pair of boots, a close-cut tunic, and two gloves, unmatching; a pair of battered shoes, with buckles that might be diamonds (Nigel) but were probably paste (Miss Seeton). A rusty scimitar, a feathered headdress (Nigel made another joke about hens), and a remarkable wig, with traces of powder still clinging to it.

  “From the very little I have read,” said Miss Seeton, “I know that it was only around this time that actors began to wear what we would call costumes on stage. In Shakespeare’s day, I don’t believe they did. The current vogue for Shakespeare in modern dress is, you see, really rather an old-fashioned concept.”

  “Because doublet and hose was modern for him?” Nigel had pulled out another tunic and a pair of puffed breeches of slashed design. “You’d need good legs for these.” He chuckled as he recalled his role as Buttons the pageboy in the recent production of Cinderella. “Wonder how I’d have looked in this?” He made to stand up and let out a yell as he stretched his cramped knees.

  “Nigel, I’m so sorry. I hadn’t realised we’d been working so long. Should we rest for a few minutes?” With one graceful movement, Miss Seeton uncoiled the stockinged legs on which she’d been sitting, and rose to her full height, smiling now instead of blushing.

  No sign of a twinge, no hint of a yell. Nigel, stamping out the prickles in his sleepy feet, regarded his hostess with some respect. If that was what yoga did for you, he’d have to think hard about trying it himself—if he only had the time.

  “Time to put the kettle on, I think,” said Miss Seeton in that uncanny echoing way she sometimes had. “Will tea suit you—that is, tay,” she said with a further faint twinkle for the historical jest. “Or would you prefer coffee?”

  “Well,” said Nigel, “thanks, but I’m in no hurry, unless you are, that is. Wouldn’t you like to get right to the bottom before we stop?”

  Miss Seeton cast a brief and eager look towards the waiting chest, then shook her head. “The rest will do us both good, especially our eyes. And your pins and needles,” she added with a smile. “If you would be so kind as to help me bring the tray, I think you’ll notice a distinct improvement.”

  “Slave driver,” groaned Nigel, grinning despite himself. “Okay, you’re on—but let’s make it coffee, if you’ve got instant. Then we won’t have to wait for it to brew.”

  They didn’t. They topped up the cups with cold water and took biscuits from the tin instead of wasting time with cake knives and crumbs. Within five minutes, they were back in the sitting room.

  “A book!” cried Miss Seeton, spying the leather-bound corner beneath a roll of purple silk which, unrolled, proved to be a cloak.

  Nigel waited hopefully, in case it turned out to be a First Folio; but it wasn’t. It was a small, slim volume in a stiff leather binding, embossed with interlinked initials in flaking gold leaf. “B, A, F, H,” murmured Miss Seeton, her fingers gently tracing the letters as she spoke. “An album, perhaps?” She opened the cover, and with a little straining made out the faded writing on the flyleaf. “No, it’s somebody’s diary. Benedicta Adeline Florence Hedgebote, her journal and commonplace book, 1749.”

  “Oh, well.” He hadn’t really expected ...

  Miss Seeton closed the diary without reading further: it would seem, she felt, almost like prying. Like the letters. Later, perhaps, when she had emptied the chest completely; but not yet.

  “The theatre curtains!” suggested Nigel, as Miss Seeton, exclaiming over its soft smoothness, reached into the shadowy depths of the now half-empty box to stroke the dark red velvet that lay there. “Or Mr. Pottipole’s dressing gown,” he went on. “And maybe the family silver’s wrapped up in there,” he added when the stroking hand met knobbly resistance, and she gave it a tentative prod. “You and Martha could be in for a lot of polishing, Miss Seeton, if I’m right.”

  Miss Seeton smiled. “Dear Martha might have something to say about that, I think, although of course one would hardly expect to keep anything in the nature of a—of an heirloom, which must surely have gone to the auction by acciden
t. Anything so valuable as silver would have to be returned—to the Pottipoles, I assume, if it indeed belonged to them. Or to their descendants, if one knew who they were. After two hundred years ...”

  Nigel was helping to lift out the dusty dark folds. “I can’t say I recognise the name as local, but the auction people’re bound to know where it came from. If it turns out to be—oh, I say.” With a little puff of dust, and a sigh of drifting fabric, the velvet bundle was raised from the historic shadows into the yellow glare of the twentieth century, into a light very different from the mellow candle gleam that must have last illuminated its soft magnificence. “I say, this is rather swish.”

  “The material,” said Miss Seeton thoughtfully, “appears to be of remarkably fine quality. And hardly worn.”

  “You know,” said Nigel, quite as thoughtful, “that fur looks awfully—awfully real. Did they have fake fur in Georgian times? What I mean is, I somehow don’t think it’s your average coney.”

  Miss Seeton bowed to the superior knowledge of a pest-plagued farmer who had, on occasion, to rid his growing crops of assorted vermin.

  “Not vermin exactly,” said Nigel. “When you look at those black tails—try ermine.”

  “The stoat,” said Miss Seeton blankly. “The winter coat—velvet and ermine—Nigel, surely not! There must be some mistake ...”

  “Look out!”

  A slither, a tumult of unfolding fabric, a clatter as something fell to the floor and rolled a little way across it. Something that gleamed bright and untarnished in the electric light.

  Something that was not silver, but ...

  “Gold,” gasped Nigel, “or I’m a Dutchman.”

  “A tiara,” said Miss Seeton, trying desperately for the common-sense solution. “Gold-plated. An unusual design, of course, with that—that cloth centrepiece, and no jewels, but those ornate metal flowers around the edge are—”

  “That’s no tiara,” broke in Nigel, too excited to care about the courtesies. “Technically that’s a circlet, Miss Seeton. And they aren’t flowers, they’re—they’re leaves.” The voice of the future baronet was hoarse as he began to describe in heraldic language the object he held in his incredulous hands. “A gold circlet around a cap of maintenance—a chapeau—decorated with”—and he choked—“with strawberry leaves, Miss Seeton.”

  Nigel stared at his hostess: she, quite as incredulous as he, could only stare back. He drew a deep breath. “A coronet,” he croaked, “with eight strawberry leaves, wrapped in a crimson velvet robe with an ermine cape, as worn—as worn on state occasions ... Miss Seeton, this could have belonged to—to a duke!”

  “Gosh, no. Not really,” said a still-agitated Nigel some time later, once he and his equally agitated companion had calmed down just a little. Miss Seeton, her yoga training once more proving its worth, had been first to recover, and was quick to praise her young friend’s breadth of knowledge on so arcane a topic as heraldry. Mr. Colveden, whose practical skills far outshone his academic qualifications, was just as quick to disclaim such praise. “I mean, I’d hardly call myself an expert—time enough to learn all that when I need it, and Dad’s going to be with us a good few years yet, thank goodness ...” He coughed, embarrassed by this display of emotion, and hurried on:

  “Filial feelings apart, mantlings and achievements and helmets and crests honestly aren’t my idea of fun—but you can’t help picking up a bit here and there without noticing, if you know jolly well one day it’ll happen to you. Coats of arms and things, I mean.” Nigel, in the best traditions of the aristocracy, did not care to seem in any way boastful about his inheritance. “My mother’s more the one to ask—and even she doesn’t bother all that much. No crested soup spoons, I mean, or plaques on the wall, or embroidered table napkins—not that she’s much of a hand at embroidery,” he said with a wicked gurgle as he recalled the tapestry firescreen kit he had once given her ladyship for Christmas. Her ladyship, like a certain other personage of undoubted blue blood, had been decidedly Not Amused.

  “Somewhere,” said Nigel, his imagination running riot, “there could be some owner of a stately home who’ll be jolly glad to have these back for his ancestral museum, I bet.” He shuddered. “Poor blighter, whoever he is. Probably a cadet branch, by now—if he’s real.” He grinned. “Well, whoever he is, it should make good publicity, if he needs it: thank goodness we haven’t been like so many others and had to open up the Hall to trippers. One advantage of being a viable working farm—and I shall make dashed sure it goes on working, believe me.”

  Miss Seeton, who had never known her young friend to be so forthcoming about his ultimate destiny, trusted that he would not consider it indelicate were she to enquire if he, too, would have to wear coronet and robes for ceremonial occasions. Dear Sir George, as she understood it, did not, on the bench: which had always seemed strange, when she knew that judges did. And would he—Nigel, that was to say, and many years from now, she most fervently hoped—have to take his seat in the House of Lords one day?

  “It’d be rather splendid, don’t you think?” Nigel eyed the heavy spillage of crimson, white, and black with some admiration. “Nigel Phillip Raymond, Duke of Plummergen—Miss Seeton, I don’t seriously believe all this, but may I try them on anyway? Just for fun. I promise I’ll take the greatest care.”

  Miss Seeton, who had been secretly longing to know how the robes and coronet, genuine or not, would appear when worn by someone of patrician birth, gave her delighted permission. Together they gently shook out the velvet folds.

  “Hey!” Nigel instinctively dropped his share of the drapery to retrieve two more pieces of paper, which had fallen out of the crimson mass to the ground. “These,” he said, handing his prize to Miss Seeton, “were pretty well hidden inside there.” He grinned, his imagination running riot once again. “One of them will be the map with the spot marked X, you see if it isn’t.”

  Miss Seeton proceeded to do so. More carefully than Mr. Colveden, she set down her half of the fabric burden, and unfolded the first heavy linen document with care. She read it. She was silent.

  Nigel said, “May I?”

  “Oh—I’m so sorry. It was just ...”

  “Marriage lines.” Nigel accepted the paper that had caused Miss Seeton to become lost in thought, and himself studied it closely. “A marriage in the Fleet, performed under licence, between Benedicta Adeline Florence Hedgebote and Augustus Pottipole on February the fourteenth, 1750/51.” He scratched his head. “Married on Valentine’s Day, two years running? And they say I’m a romantic!”

  The teacher in Miss Seeton could not let this pass. She explained that up until a time she could not exactly recall in the eighteenth century, all dates between the first of January and the twenty-fifth of March were written in this duplicate style because the legal, if not the calendar, year began on Lady Day and not in January.

  “First quarter-day,” said Nigel, son of a landowner. “Lady Day, Midsummer, Michaelmas, and Christmas. Yes, of course. But it’s still romantic,” he said with a grin. “Valentine’s Day, I mean—though it’s sad, too, that it’s been bundled away in here for so long. I bet it’s real, even if the rest ... I should think the family will be glad to have it back.”

  Miss Seeton sighed and nodded. She opened the second document, which was large, creamy-grey in colour, and rich to the touch. “Surely this can’t be parchment!” she exclaimed.

  “If it is,” said Nigel, sobering, “I’d say that’s taking authenticity a bit too far, for theatrical props. Isn’t parchment fearfully expensive? But perhaps it wasn’t in seventeen something.”

  Miss Seeton did not reply. She was gazing at the broad expanse of ornate, closely written script, with flourishes and curlicues erupting from the top row of lettering, and in the centre of the lower edge a red ribbon, with a small box attached. Miss Seeton warily opened the box.

  “A seal,” said Nigel. “Real wax, from the feel of it, and rather a splendid design, don’t you think? Chap sitting on
a ...” He gulped. “On a throne ...”

  Dumbly Miss Seeton shook her head. Nigel decided that a heavy dose of metaphorical cold water was by several minutes overdue. “Well, I don’t believe it for a minute,” he said. He tried to sound convincing. “Dukes, indeed, and royal seals—Augustus, or at least his ghost, is playing tricks on us. Pottipole was an ordinary actor, and Benedicta had a tidy fit one day after he’d retired, and made him pop everything in this chest of yours out of the way. We’ll lay the ghost right here and now. Would you help me on with the gear, please, Miss Seeton?”

  Miss Seeton helped to rearrange the white fur cape with its sable decoration before draping it carefully about the future baronet’s broad shoulders.

  “He wasn’t as tall as me.” Nigel contemplated the foaming sea of ermine-bordered crimson on the carpet about his feet, then looked up to set the gold coronet cautiously on his thick, wavy brown hair. “And his head was a bit smaller than mine—but these fit round me, all right.” He flung out his arms in an expansive gesture. “Short and tubby, not a bit like the pictures, but—hey, what’s that?”

  A final, far smaller piece of paper fluttered to the floor. Miss Seeton, this time better placed than Nigel to pick it up, bent and did so. She held it to the light, and after a moment’s study gave a little gasp. She studied the paper again, then read its inscription aloud, in a voice deliberately calm.

  “The ceremonial robe and coronet of my dear and much lamented father, Bennet Adelard Florence Hedgebote, fourth Duke of Estover. Last worn by him at the crowning of our gracious sovereign lord King George the Third, and put aside upon the occasion of his death by his sorrowing and dutiful daughter until such time as circumstance shall require that she wear them ...”