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

by Hamilton Crane

Miss Seeton paused. She cleared her throat. Her voice was husky.

  “And it’s signed Benedicta Adeline Florence Pottipole, in her own right and by God’s grace the second Duchess of Estover.”

  chapter

  ~ 15 ~

  WHATEVER PHRASE IS used to describe them—keeping company, walking out, going steady—the courting habits of the young do not alter greatly from generation to generation. Comfort and privacy, preferably in the dark, are desirable; shelter, when the weather is wet, is essential.

  Some hours after Nigel Colveden, bubbling over with the thrill of recent discoveries, had left Sweetbriars to report to his parents the astonishing contents of Miss Seeton’s old oak chest, it began to rain. In nearby Brettenden a pair of youthful lovers, less far-sighted in the matter of umbrellas than the current owner of the Hedgebote inheritance, had perforce to desist from their starlit spooning, and sprinted hand in hand for the shelter of that narrow alleyway into which opens the rear entrance of the noted auction house, Candell & Inchpin.

  “Ooooh.” Chrissie squealed and wriggled at the water trickling down her neck. “That’s horrible! Can’t we go somewhere where it’s dry?”

  Terry glanced up to the top of the tall fence beside which they had huddled against the wind. “Stop fussing, stupid, it’s only dripping off the overhang. Anyone’d think you was made of cotton wool.”

  “Well, I ain’t, I’m flesh and blood, which if you don’t know by now you never will, Terry Mimms—and never you mind hot stuff,” as Terry interpolated a lascivious compliment, “I’m freezing to death out here, as well as drowning. What you going to do about it? And I don’t mean that.”

  She slapped away his wandering hands and achieved a pitiful sneeze. “Catch my death, I will, if you don’t look sharp—come on, let’s move. I’m sicker this.”

  Accepting that her reluctance was no longer feigned, Terry took command and began leading the way down the darkened alley towards a remembered corner, out of the rising wind. He held Chrissie encircled in one arm, while with the other hand he groped along the fence.

  His groping suddenly stopped: stopped as suddenly as his footsteps. “Here—what’s this?”

  He released his willing prisoner and turned to rattle something on the other side. “This here gate’s open, Chris. It ain’t locked—it moved when I touched the handle—and if I push it, like this ...”

  He pushed. Creaking, the gate swung open. Chrissie let out a muffled squeal, more excited now than complaining. “Terry! We going in there? That’s surely Candell and Inchpin, and they’re dead posh. We don’t want to get into no trouble ... but I could fancy a bitter fun on one o’ them four-poster beds, mind you.” She giggled, and reached out to squeeze his hand. “Pull the curtains tight round, and nobody’d know we was there ...”

  “No harm in looking,” said Terry, but he said it with less enthusiasm than Chrissie thought fitting. She would have pouted, but in the rain-swept darkness it was barely light enough for him to see; she muttered something sulky and hung back when he began to move slowly forward.

  Terry’s wits were rather quicker than those of his girlfriend. His attention had been caught by that unfastened gate. Once inside the shadowy yard of the auction house, he peered about him to get his bearings, then began edging between the parked pantechnicons and the side wall towards the double doors through which Candell & Inchpin took discreet delivery of their High Class Antiques, Household Effects, and Bankrupt Stock.

  As Chrissie squealed in genuine fright at having been left alone in the empty alley, Terry froze abruptly. Nigel Colveden, knight-errant, would—on hearing those squeals—have rushed back to rescue the lady: Terry Mimms did not. Terry hadn’t heard the squeals; and even if he had, he would have hesitated before acting. He knew his Chrissie, always one for creating when things didn’t go just the way she wanted ...

  It looked to him now as if things weren’t going the way Candell & Inchpin’d want, if they’d known. Anyone with a half-decent reason to be in that downstairs room would’ve switched the light on, not go prowling about with a torch in the dark, with the gate unlocked and—Terry drew near the weathered brick building, and stared—a window smashed, as if he didn’t know a smashed window when he saw one.

  What to do? Dial nine-nine-nine for the cops, and not give a name because he’d only spotted whoever-it-was through trespassing?

  Catch the bloke coming out, and risk having ’em moan about trespass if there was a reward? He could certainly do with the money: who couldn’t?

  He frowned as he stood watching the torch flicker in the illicit dark. There was money in antiques, no question. So maybe he should catch the bloke coming out, and get just a bit heavy with him until he agreed to go shares in whatever he’d nicked?

  Or maybe—

  “Terry!” This time Chrissie shrieked aloud. “Terry, where are you?” The torch was extinguished. Terry cursed. “What you playing at, leaving me here?”

  Furious, Terry didn’t answer. His eyes, more accustomed now to the darker night of the high-walled yard, repeatedly darted from the broken window to the double doors, and back. He’d have to come out, one way or another: and when he did, Terry Mimms’d be waiting—

  “Terry!”

  But Terry never heard that final shriek. With a rush of fugitive feet, a body came bursting through the wicket door he hadn’t noticed in the dark, and hurled itself upon him with unexpected force.

  And, after a few seconds’ desperate grappling, smashed his head savagely against the wall.

  And left him lying senseless in the rain ...

  And was gone.

  “Whoever he was,” said Superintendent Brinton, “and whatever he wanted, the blighter wanted it badly enough to kill for it. And don’t even try telling me it could’ve been an accident,” he added, as Foxon stirred at his side. “When I put my hand on chummie’s collar, the charge’ll be murder, not manslaughter—there was no need at all to hit young Mimms as hard as he did, poor little beggar.”

  Foxon, shuddering, nodded his agreement. Although by the time Chrissie’s screams had raised the alarm the rain had been falling more heavily than ever, it had not been heavy enough to wash the horrid traces of blood and brains and splintered bone from the rough bricks of the yard wall, and from between the cobbles of the paving.

  “He was a vicious devil, all right. Young Mimms didn’t stand a chance, did he, sir? And he wasn’t exactly a sevenstone weakling ... but you can see from the traces chummie left that he must’ve been built like a tank, the way he waded into poor old Terry. Young Chrissie’s lucky all he did was knock her down when she came running to see what all the fuss was about. If he hadn’t been in such a rush to get away ...”

  He observed Brinton’s frown and his thoughtful shake of the head. He promptly shut up. He’d done his best to get the super’s brain into gear, the middle of the night as it was, and the whole team still more than half asleep: now it was up to the old man.

  Brinton, after a pause for yawning and to rub a hand over his stubble, finally delivered his verdict.

  “I’ve ... I’ve got a feeling about this one, Foxon.” He dared his subordinate to speak: but Foxon was silent. “Yes, well. The violence, and the hurry, and the shambles he left behind do suggest an amateur ... but I think chummie was a professional. And not just because he wore gloves—every tuppenny-ha’penny hoodlum in the country knows enough for that, thanks to television and the films—I doubt if many of the blighters have the brains to read, so I won’t go blaming the types that give away trade secrets in detective stories—but there’s ... there’s something about all this that smells of somebody being just a bit too clever for their own good. Somebody trying to make us think he was an amateur when he wasn’t ... and I’d like to know why.”

  Foxon wasn’t going to argue, but couldn’t resist slipping into his habitual role as Devil’s Advocate. “The up-and-coming generation of villains is better educated than their dads, sir—think of our old friends the Choppers. Would
you exactly call ’em pros? Could be it was one of them trying to act clever, then panicking when he heard the kids outside, and going out the way he went in instead of making a break for it through the front, where nobody would have seen him.”

  “Could be,” returned Brinton in tones that suggested he thought this unlikely. “If he’d come popping out of a door he’d no business to be using, the local beat bobby would’ve noticed him—he’s a good man. Doesn’t patrol to some blasted timetable the villains know as well as we do. And even if he did, in all the kerfuffle I doubt if chummie would’ve kept his head enough to remember who was supposed to be where, and when ... Don’t wriggle like that, Foxon. If you’ve something to say, lad, spit it out.”

  Foxon stamped his chilly feet again, pushing his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket for added warmth. “It was something you just said, sir—about him having no business to be using the front door—and what you said before. How about if he is being a bit too clever for his own good? How about if he had every business in the world to be using that door, and he’s tried to throw us off the scent by—by not?”

  “An inside job, you mean.” Brinton didn’t make it sound like a question: after so long in the force, very little about the depths to which human nature could sink surprised him. Besides, he prided himself on being a good copper. A good copper always tries to keep track of what’s going on in his manor; recently he’d started to pick up the odd, very faint—almost inaudible—whispers about the financial concerns of Candell & Inchpin ...

  “In which case—in whatever case,” he amended, “there’s no point in hanging around out here any longer, never mind it’s getting colder by the minute and I’m not as young as I was.” Foxon, again, was mute. “We’ll take it the burglary came first, and the murder was a ... an afterthought. So, find our burglar—professional or amateur, hired for the job or off his own bat—and we’ve got our murderer.” He glowered in the direction of the murder site, still frantic with the bustle of preliminary forensic work. “While this lot’s finishing up out here, the others should be almost done in there with their blasted photos and fingerprints and measuring tapes. Time to get on with some honest question-and-answer detection, the way I like it. Wouldn’t hurt to find out just what it was he got away with, for a start—if we can, for all the clutter.”

  “And what he didn’t,” supplied Foxon, hurrying in the wake of his chief past the tarpaulins and floodlights and ominous chalk marks towards the scene of the original crime. “If he didn’t, I mean, because from the mess it’s hard to tell one way or the other. But if he wanted whatever it was badly enough to kill for it, sir, would you care to give me odds he won’t have another try for it, if he didn’t get it, once he thinks things have calmed down?”

  To which Brinton’s only response was a rumble of acknowledgement, followed by a world-weary sigh.

  The steady patter of the pouring rain against her bedroom window murmured its way into Miss Seeton’s subconscious, making her dream of bees, and summer, and apple-tree shade. Elegant theatrical figures in colourful dress floated across her inward eye, and made her smile in her sleep: which was untroubled, deep, and long—unusually long, as suited her unusually late night.

  She had stayed up for some hours after Nigel’s departure, admiring the props and costumes, marvelling at the coronet—could it be real?—and Benedicta’s note; poring over the other papers, whether printed or written by hand: trying, yet again, to decipher the more fanciful script ... until even her trained eye could take no more of such close work at such an hour, with only artificial illumination to help her. It seemed an age until morning and daylight; but she must wait. There was nothing else practical she could do; it would be foolish to allow oneself to become impatient over what common sense told her was inevitable.

  To calm herself, she carried out—despite the hour—her complete yoga programme before climbing into bed. She doubled the length of time she spent in each of those postures intended to assist relaxation: she almost fell asleep on her travelling rug while in the Savasana, or Dead Pose; and she later escaped, by the narrowest margin, an unpleasant experience when she yawned in the middle of cleaning her teeth, and the toothpaste tried to wrap itself around her tonsils.

  She fell asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow; she remained asleep well past the hour at which the alarm should have woken her. In last night’s confusion, she had forgotten to set the clock; nor did the rattle of letters through the box upon the mat, or the diesel roar of postman Bert’s van, the screech of his tyres, or the tootle of the horn, disturb her dreams in that comfortable, eiderdowned cocoon in the upstairs bedroom.

  With Martha’s cold still not completely cured, there was nobody to rouse Miss Seeton from her dreaming. Sunrise—at the start of January no earlier than eight—was in any case darkened by the relentless storm-clouds that had poured forth rain for most of the night, and looked set to continue pouring for most of the day. Oblivious to the sight, lulled by the sound of the weather, Miss Seeton slumbered on ...

  Until the telephone woke her at half past nine.

  “Good gracious!” Miss Seeton, blinking at the visible crack in the curtains, realised that it was rather later than she’d thought. Reaching for the bedside extension—one could hardly call the additional charge an extravagance, when one never knew when she might not, given her age, be ill, and unable to negotiate the stairs to the phone in the hall—she blinked again, smothering a yawn as she greeted whoever it was on the other end of the line.

  “Miss Seeton? I do hope I haven’t rung too early. It’s Meg Colveden,” came the cheery voice of Nigel’s mother. “You’re not in the middle of breakfast, are you?”

  Miss Seeton, still half asleep, had a strange sense of déjà vu, but soon brought her brain into focus and assured her ladyship, with perfect truth, that she was not at that moment breaking her fast.

  “Oh, good, then we can chat. If I don’t have someone sensible to talk to soon, I think I shall scream. George is being an absolute bear today—and Nigel’s not much better, prowling and growling around the place as if it’s all my fault the rain’s come back,” she said with a laugh. “Not that it ever really went away, of course, or at least not for as long as they’d like. You know how farmers always grumble about the weather. Which doesn’t exactly make for a cheerful morning, even if in Nigel’s case it’s tiredness as well as temper—oh, goodness, that sounds terribly rude, Miss Seeton. I’m sorry. I’m not blaming you and your mystery box for an instant, truly I’m not. It’s just that after he left you last night and told us all about it, George and I went to bed and left him looking through half the history books in the library, I should think.” Nigel’s mother laughed again. “And I imagine the last time Nigel opened a non-fiction book from choice, unless you count checking up on diseases of wheat, or car maintenance manuals, was when he was at Wye—and you know how long ago that was.”

  “Indeed I do,” said Miss Seeton as Meg Colveden temporarily ran out of breath. “Dear Nigel—so very practical, but perhaps not precisely what one would call academic. And while history is undoubtedly a fascinating subject, it is not, perhaps, as practical in its application as ... well, as a knowledge of diseases of wheat, or car maintenance.”

  The smile in her voice was echoed by Meg Colveden’s mischievous giggle. “You could say that. I’m amazed at how your Hedgebotes and Estovers and Pottipoles seem to have caught his fancy—or I suppose, if I’m honest, I’m not, because they’ve rather caught mine, too. Which is why I rang, as you might guess.”

  Her ladyship paused politely. Miss Seeton, with another smile—this time of incipient relief—said that she rather believed she might; and, in an expectant silence, waited for the speaker’s next words.

  “You’ll tell me at once, won’t you,” began Meg Colveden, “if you think it horribly inquisitive of me? But after what Nigel told us last night, I would so much like to see your theatrical costumes, and the coronet, and everything—if you didn’t mind a
morning visitation, that is. When I think I was with you when you bought it ... even if we didn’t actually buy the barometer.” She giggled again. “Though if we had,” she added with a sigh, “I expect it would have gone the same way as the first, the mood my menfolk are in. So until it stops raining, it’s probably just as well we didn’t.”

  “One could almost call it providential,” assented Miss Seeton, whose ability to find the bright side through the darkest blanket of cloud was the envy (and sometimes the despair) of her friends. “Except, of course, that it is so very, very different from an umbrella.”

  The telephone clattered in her ladyship’s hands; Miss Seeton, giving vent to her worries, was oblivious to any disturbance. “One might argue, indeed, that providence could have chosen a far more suitable ... instrument, if that is the word I require, than myself. Not, of course, that one would shirk one’s duty,” she hurried to explain, as Lady Colveden could vouchsafe in reply nothing but a nonplussed silence. “Finding them on the bus, or in the tube, one knows at once where to take them, and what should be done. But the peerage—the aristocracy ... Which is why,” she concluded, sighing, “it is such a weight off my mind that you—and your family—have shown this interest in my little problem. I am so pleased that you called, because your advice, believe me, will be most welcome ...”

  And Meg Colveden—although not a member of the peerage, undoubtedly an aristocrat—was only too happy to assure her anxious little friend that she would be with her, to offer what advice she could, within minutes.

  Miss Seeton promised to have the kettle boiling; and, as soon as her ladyship had rung off, hopped out of bed to see to it, realising that for once she would have to forgo her yoga practice for matters far more urgent ...

  And, for once, not minding in the least.

  chapter

  ~ 16 ~

  MISS SEETON’S INNATE courtesy could not allow her visitor the least inkling that an early beaver for one might be a most belated breakfast for another. As Nigel’s mother sighed and shook her head to the offer of a second chocolate biscuit, her hostess nibbled thankfully at the slice of rich fruit-cake—baked by the skilful hands of Martha Bloomer in pre-infectious days—which was far too great a risk to a susceptible waistline. Lady Colveden intimated that she would be only too happy to sit and watch Miss Seeton enjoy cake or biscuits in abundance: for herself, if Miss Seeton didn’t mind, she would forgo both biscuits and cake in favour of another cup of tea—whenever this should be convenient to Miss Seeton, who wasn’t, please, to hurry—because paperwork always gave George a tremendous thirst, and now she rather felt the same way about it, too.