Canvas awnings, snatched from their normal bonds by the storm, slapped repeatedly above shop windows. Passing cars in bottom gear, their headlights on, their wipers brisk, grumbled their way through puddles in the road, splashing unwary cyclists and pedestrians who strayed too close to the kerb. Miss Seeton clicked her tongue, readjusted her umbrella, and trotted on.
At the foot of the sandstone steps, she paused for no more than a moment before mounting. She saw the double doors closed above her, and approved this precaution against the weather: she remembered the weather of the past few weeks, and shook her head for the ridiculous fancy that it might never be fine again. Or—was it so ridiculous? Just now she didn’t only feel out of breath, she felt cold and uncomfortably damp: as was the doorknob, cold and damp and slippery. Miss Seeton had a struggle to turn it, with the umbrella over her arm and her handbag determined to wander. She felt rain trickle under the cuff of her mackintosh, and dribble up her sleeve. She made one last effort, opened the door, and darted thankfully inside.
She drew a relieved breath and looked about her. There was not, of course, a sale that day: yet somehow one had expected more of the routine bustle of a busy establishment to greet one’s ears: doors slamming, telephones ringing, voices of people moving to and fro. If, that was, they would, on days when there was no auction. Perhaps they wouldn’t. But in shops there were always shelves to tidy, stock to check, displays to dust ... although could—should—one compare auctioneers to shop assistants?
So tiring, she had always thought. A rewarding job, one couldn’t deny, finding out first what people wanted—which apparently they often didn’t know—and then helping them to buy it; but so very hard on the feet, having to stand all day, and the uniform not as flattering as it might be. And in those large London stores, with their unpredictable central heating and the air-conditioning, in summer, even more so ... it was, perhaps, no wonder (concluded Miss Seeton, with a faint but charitable sigh) that people might be glad of the chance for a few hours’ peace, when the chance was there ... except that this was Brettenden, in the depths of winter, not Oxford Street at midsummer.
Miss Seeton pulled herself together. Having shaken off the worst of the rain on the mat, she rapped politely with her umbrella for attention, as she’d so often had cause to do in her Hampstead days. For the phantom floors of assorted city emporia she substituted the well-worn wooden boards of a country auction house: boards on which, in time, she heard the patter of approaching footsteps.
Miss Seeton, still slightly breathless, looked towards the sales assistant—she begged silent pardon, the lady auctioneer—now drawing near. She saw a thin, faded woman of medium height and middle age, with sunken eyes around which dark circles had been drawn, perhaps by lack of sleep; perhaps by worry. Her mouse-brown hair was scraped back in a pleat, emphasising the gaunt bones of her face and the furrows between her black-pencilled brows—furrows that deepened as she came to a halt in front of Miss Seeton.
Before she could speak, Miss Seeton begged her pardon—though she had no idea why—and felt herself blushing as the auctioneer then demanded in a hoarse but penetrating voice what on earth she thought she was doing there, and why she had knocked.
“I—that is—oh.” Miss Seeton blushed still more: one must remember that, having come to live in the country, one should expect to adapt to country ways. To have rapped in such a—such an imperious way had been ... rude. It was hardly her place as a newcomer to criticise ... And she begged a second pardon of the startled auctioneer.
“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Candell. I’m afraid I wasn’t thinking—or rather I was, but of something else. And—”
“I’m not Mrs. Candell.” The voice was no longer hoarse, but flat: yet still penetrating.
“Oh!” Miss Seeton’s quick eye fell upon the speaker’s left hand, with its ring on the third finger. “Oh, how very foolish of me. I mean, Mrs. Inchpin—”
“I’m not Mrs. Inchpin!” This denial was less flat than shrieked in a strange, muted fashion. “My name is Stanebury. Nothing to do with the family at all.” The paleness of her face now gave way to a blush rivalling that of Miss Seeton. “I may well have worked in the office since I was a girl, but that’s the nearest I’ve come—and it’s not Mrs.,” she explained as she saw the inevitable mistitle hover upon Miss Seeton’s lips. “It’s Miss Myra Stanebury. And before you ask, my—my mother suggested I should buy this ring”—her fingers knotted themselves together—“at one of our sales—I’m allowed, you know—in case of any Bother.”
The last word was spoken with a wealth of white-knuckled emphasis which darkened the rosy hue of Miss Seeton’s maiden cheek. Bother of the sort to which Myra so clearly referred had never been a particular problem for Emily Dorothea Seeton. While many of her art college acquaintance, resolved to Enrich their Art by a due broadening of their Experience of Life, had joyfully embraced the wildest tenets of Bohemianism, free thought, and free—the rose crimsoned—love, such embraces (whether in theory or in practice) had failed entirely to attract one whose nature, conventional though it was, found some conventions totally without charm. And with hindsight—not hers, but theirs—perhaps a little unwise, unless one had the good fortune to be a genius. In which case the normal rules need not apply ... although she had never been able to see why not. And perhaps somewhat weak-minded, as well; and a little foolish, meekly following the fashion when it might be (indeed, in her generation undoubtedly was) against every principle and precept of one’s upbringing, and when one would, she felt sure, feel embarrassed for one’s weakness, in later life ...
Miss Seeton shook her head for the folly of her contemporaries. “Fashion,” she murmured, “sometimes has much for which to answer, I fear.”
Myra gasped, then glowered. “What I choose to call myself has nothing to do with fashion.” She uttered that strange, muted shriek once more. “It’s a matter of principle!”
Miss Seeton blinked at this unexpected echoing of her thoughts, but rallied swiftly. “And not at all against the law,” she said with a nod. Lady Colveden’s little lecture on the surname habits of the aristocracy had left its mark. “A matter of custom,” said Miss Seeton, all awkwardness now forgotten in her pleasure at the coincidence, “no more. Unless, of course, there should be something to inherit. And even then it is not absolutely necessary.” She smiled. “One may take the estate with the money or without—it is entirely up to you ...” And then she frowned. Perhaps that last statement had been inaccurate. Certainly it sounded rather different from her original recollection. Or so she now thought: perhaps she had, after all, misunderstood what she had been told—which in the unusual circumstances of the telling surely came as no surprise ...
Miss Stanebury seemed surprised, if not startled. The look she turned upon Miss Seeton was at first wide and dark, then narrowed into a fixed, quizzical regard. Miss Seeton’s gaze fell to the far less accusing sight of her umbrella handle, hooked about the strap of her bulky leather bag. She felt herself turn pink again, and she sighed.
“Look,” said Myra after a pause. “What are you doing here?” She unknotted her hands and stabbed in the air with one long forefinger. “And what do you want?”
Miss Seeton responded to the less-than-faint challenge by clutching with one hand at the familiar leather-twined crook. Clearing her throat, she began:
“I—I don’t know whether you remember me?”
“Should I?” That flattened tone again.
Miss Seeton’s glance drifted back down to the umbrella which had begun what she couldn’t help but see as her little adventure. “At last week’s auction. I—I bought an old wooden chest.” She looked up. “It was padlocked, and with iron bands, and—and most delightfully carved.”
“I—we—can’t help you.” Myra seemed to be making an effort to keep her voice level. “I work in the office, not the sale-room, but I can tell you we take nothing back once it’s bought, whenever it was, if that’s what you’re asking.” Miss Seeton, confused by th
e unexpected turn of the conversation, shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. “And if you’re thinking to put it in for this week ... we’ll want ... the usual commission.” She paused. Miss Seeton, hesitating over the best way to explain, said nothing. “Well, do you?”
In her turn, Miss Seeton stared. Did she? “Thank you, I have no need,” she replied, “for any money.” Myra’s ill-disguised gasp made her add hastily, “No more than anyone else, that is. Quite possibly less, since my life is very quiet now that I have retired.”
“Then what,” demanded Myra, “do you want?”
The demand was so indignant that Miss Seeton’s response came almost without thinking. “To find out where things in auctions come from. How one puts them in, that is, and how to find out who owns them—or rather,” she added, recalling Lady Colveden’s words on possession and the law, “used to own them.” Myra uttered one of her queer little shrieks as indignation seemed to give way to exasperation. “The—the provenance,” Miss Seeton concluded hurriedly, yet with a hint of doubt. Was this a correct application of the term? Should she have used another, such as pedigree?
Myra turned white. Her black brows, and the dark rings about her eyes, were the only colour in her face as she drew a deep breath and spoke in a shaking voice through pale lips. “If you’re suggesting that the provenance of anything we sell here is doubtful—if you’re trying to say we—we handle stolen goods—then you’re wrong. We don’t. Candell and Inchpin’s honest as the day, and always has been—and there has never a complaint been raised against the firm in over two hundred years!”
Miss Seeton, still confused, gave a little start at her mention of those critical two centuries that had posed the original problem. Myra observed this reaction, glared any attempt at speech into silence, and rushed hoarsely on:
“If things aren’t bad enough already, having the—the police around asking their horrible questions—messing up my files even more than he did, whoever he was—poking and prying—and that boy—no better than he should be, I don’t doubt, he and his girlfriend—dead as mutton on the back doorstep, and now you—you ...”
And Myra burst into tears, above the noise of which Miss Seeton’s shocked exclamation passed completely unheard.
But not for long. As tears gave way—to Miss Seeton’s horror—to hysterics, there was a movement at the end of the corridor, and a figure appeared around a corner. Quick eyes took in the scene; quick footsteps heralded the arrival of that young Candell who had done door duty on the day of the auction. To the great relief of Miss Seeton, he took Myra firmly by the arm and shook her. When she failed to respond, he administered the sharp but gentle slap Miss Seeton—for all her teaching experience—had herself been hesitant to deliver to this overwrought stranger.
Additional feet, hurrying from different parts of the building, converged upon the now-sobbing Myra, the remorseful Miss Seeton, and the young man with the difficult task of trying to soothe two distracted ladies at one and the same time. Matters were soon cleared up. Still sobbing, Myra was led away for tea and sympathy. Miss Seeton, apologising profusely for whatever it was she had said that had so upset poor Miss Stanebury, learned from the Senior Partner himself that she had, in fact, said nothing—or, if she had, it had been (he must suppose) by accident. She had not (he ventured) heard of the recent tragedy on the premises of Candell and Inchpin? He had thought as much.
Mr. Candell expressed no surprise that the Brettenden grapevine—as notorious for the wide spread of its branches as that of Plummergen—had left his visitor apparently unaware of the events of the night before last. Anyone who rose to the heights of a senior partnership, family firm or not, could keep his post in the current business climate only by knowing when to speak out and when to shut up. He might privately suspect this little old lady of being a sensation-seeking snoop, breaking into a closed building on the chance of some gossipy titbit to score over her neighbours—but he wasn’t going to say so. And when, having heard her ostensible purpose in questioning his employees, he replied, he was courtesy itself—even though courtesy was tinged with a certain malicious glee as he said:
“I’m sorry, Miss Seeton, I don’t think we can help you. The police haven’t quite finished their investigations yet, you see. They haven’t just sealed our back yard—most inconvenient—but,” he added hurriedly, “it’s a shocking business, of course. Perfectly understandable ... only they’ve sealed the office, too. Why, they won’t let Miss Stanebury across the threshold to tidy things up, and that filing system is her pride and joy. You could see she was a bit upset about it all, couldn’t you? Yes, I thought you could. Understandable, as I said—but there it is, and there’s nothing to be done about it. All I remember of the sale in which you say”—he added the very slightest emphasis on his last word—“you’re interested is that we had half a dozen house clearances go through that day—deceased’s effects, they’re called in the trade. And then, of course, we don’t put confidential information like who it was in the catalogue for anyone to know there’s a house empty—encouraging burglars and squatters and so on. I’m sure you can see that, can’t you?”
“Oh, indeed I can,” Miss Seeton said, gathering up her belongings and preparing to retreat. “One may regret, but sadly one cannot deny, that there is bound to be a degree of temptation to—to certain weaker members of the delinquent classes ...”
“Juvenile delinquents? Have a heart, sir.” In an office on the umpteenth floor of New Scotland Yard, Detective Chief Superintendent Delphick stared in disbelief at Sir Hubert Everleigh, Assistant Commissioner (Crime), superior officer to the Oracle’s own superior, and as a person of such rank not normally given to the pulling of people’s legs. “You don’t seriously suggest that this—this internecine strife the capital’s underclass is currently undergoing is due to no more than a rush of over-enthusiastic post-festive-season youthful high spirits?”
“As a matter of fact, I’m not.” Sir Heavily’s tone was dry as he regarded his junior colleague with a steady gaze. “We may be fairly confident, however, that such will be the opinion of the assorted headshrinkers and trick cyclists the defence puts forward once—or, alas, if—the perpetrators are brought to trial.”
Delphick, after a moment’s further pause, accepted his superior’s remarks in the spirit of kindly warning in which they had been intended. Social workers (he opined with some vehemence) had a lamentable—to police eyes—habit of perpetually pleading broken homes and disadvantaged backgrounds when the poor, misguided, misunderstood villains of their professional acquaintance hit harmless bank clerks over the head, or broke into jewellers’ shops and terrorised young females, or mugged old men in back alleyways for sixpence ha’penny and a wristwatch, if they were lucky.
Sir Heavily’s brows rose in pained surprise. “Arthur Chishall, if memory serves, is—that is, was—by several years my junior. Yes,” he said as Delphick nodded, “I thought my—ahem—increasing age had not as yet affected my powers of recollection—and I would advise you, Chief Superintendent, that any plans you may have to succeed me—”
“Perish the thought, sir!”
“—should be set in abeyance for some time to come.” Sir Hubert contrived to disregard the interpolation with rather more than his usual urbanity. “Neither I, Delphick, nor my masters, consider that I am approaching even the foothills, as it were, of my dotage. And I trust that this opinion is one with which you would not disagree?”
“No, sir—I mean, yes.” The Oracle sighed. “I wouldn’t have said that Artie was exactly doting, either; but a clump on the head from something heavy, applied with force, would finish off someone twice his size and—ahem—half his age. And Artie was merely a—a random example. He’s by no means the only one, remember.”
The Everleigh eyebrows arched still higher. “These continuing slurs upon my mnemonic powers are quite unnecessary, Chief Superintendent. I have not forgotten that Chishall is, according to your report—which I must assume to have been both accura
te and thorough—”
“Sir, this slur upon my professional competence—”
“—that Chishall is, or I should say was, the only member of the fraternity whose, ah, presence is, ah, forever lost to us.”
Delphick abandoned his protest and sobered completely. “So far, sir. At least, the only one we know of—but he’s by no means the only one to have suffered some form of attack. Most of which have been pretty unpleasant, to put it mildly. Razors, knives, bicycle chains ...”
“Spare me the repeated details, Delphick. One reading of your report was enough. I am fully aware that there are some particularly unsavoury activities being prosecuted with considerable vigour among the criminal classes—a vigour that has dramatically intensified since Cutler’s departure from Pentonwood Scrubs. I do not forget that Chishall was, at one time, a trusted informant—within the limitations of this phrase—to Cutler. And also,” he added before Delphick could remind him, “to Rickling, at the same time—”
“And before it,” supplied the Oracle. “Likewise, afterwards. The man had the morals of a slug. Plus the tight-rope skills of Monsieur Blondin, who achieved four crossings of Niagara Falls in safety—”
“Delphick, one more impudent insinuation about my fading memory, and—”
“—but who wisely quit while he was ahead,” proclaimed the Oracle, as deaf to the protests of his chief as ever Sir Hubert had been to his own. “A fifth crossing was beyond the bold monsieur. Now, Chishall was not so much bold as foolhardy: and one would rather call him cunning than wise. If it is known even to the police that he turned his coat on four separate occasions ...
“Then I think we should consider the proposition that he made a fifth attempt—and his luck, at last, ran out.”
Sold to Miss Seeton (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 19) Page 15
