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

by Hamilton Crane

  When the telephone alarm was raised by Plummergen’s PC Potter, it was Foxon who took the call. Brinton, buried in files, had barked one swift command to his subordinate, then submerged himself in paperwork again ...

  Until Foxon’s voice brought him, with a jerk, right out of the reported past into the present.

  “The—the body of a woman?” Brinton looked up.

  Foxon gulped. “In—in Sweetbriars?”

  The train left Brettenden station, and so did Miss Seeton. She was the only passenger to alight, emerging into the gloom of the winter afternoon half hoping, half dreading there would be a taxi at the forecourt rank. Everyone for miles knew old and asthmatic Mr. Baxter’s even older and more asthmatic car; with luck—except that this seemed a slightly ungenerous, not to say malicious, wish—Mr. Baxter might have, as he so often did, broken down, which would leave her free to telephone for Jack Crabbe without feeling selfish.

  Miss Seeton’s luck was in, as was Jack. He promised to be with her inside ten minutes, and after he’d said goodbye, Miss Seeton promised herself that, since he’d been so kind about that morning’s trip to Brettenden, she would insist on doubling his fare for the return journey. Or else, she thought, suppressing a yawn, she would make sure she gave him a lavish tip ...

  She yawned again. It had been such a tiring, though at the same time stimulating, day: which was, no doubt, the reason she felt so tired. So many new ideas to absorb, and Dr. Braxted—both of them—so ... so enthusiastic. While one always enjoyed watching an expert at work, somehow one did not expect to be—to be swept up and carried away with the sheer force of such expertise. But it had been, without question, worthwhile. So interesting; so romantic. Miss Seeton smiled for the romance of it all, and settled herself in a happy daydream to await Jack’s arrival.

  Though a small, elderly, tweeded spinster would appear at first sight to be no match for a strapping young man, Miss Seeton—whose principles were firm, to say the least—on this occasion prevailed. At the end of the journey, Jack accepted his gratuity with a good grace, averring that to justify such generosity he would personally escort her up the short paved path to her front door, and would help hold her handbag steady while she hunted for her keys.

  The manoeuvre was smoothly executed. Jack made some joking reference to the way they worked together, and Miss Seeton blushed; but her hand was on the knob, and her weary thoughts were more inclined to slippers and tea than to crossword puzzles.

  She pushed open the door. “Why, how strange. I would have supposed ... coming in from the cold—not,” she added hurriedly, “that I would for one minute wish to imply that the heating in your car was unsatisfactory, Mr. Crabbe. It was, indeed, most comfortable—which must, of course, be why.” Miss Seeton smiled and nodded. “The contrast ... yet even on such a chilly evening one would expect ...”

  “Boiler could’ve gone wrong,” said Jack, his professional association with petrol inspiring the suggestion. “Flow can get pretty sluggish, this cold weather, especially if you’re near the bottom of the tank, stirring up the sludge. Or you might have an airlock somewhere in the pipes. I’ll take a look for you, shall I?”

  Miss Seeton quickly weighed up the relative merits of allowing Jack, who was already on the premises, to supplant Stan, who wasn’t. She would have to rely on the good sense of Martha to soothe her husband’s feelings, should they be hurt if he ever learned that someone else had been carrying out what he saw as his especial and official duties at the home of his employer. To disturb him in—Miss Seeton stole a quick glance at the hall clock, just visible through the open doorway—in the middle of supper ... “That would,” she said, “be most kind of you, Mr. Crabbe, if you can spare the time. And should it prove simply a matter of bleeding them, I have a key by each radiator, and there will be no further need to trouble you. Dear Stan has shown me more than once what to do.”

  “Find out first, shall we?” Jack stepped aside to allow his hostess to precede him, and saw her shiver at a sudden gust of cold air.

  Cold air which—he instantly recognised, if Miss Seeton did not—was coming rather too fast from indoors, for a house whose central heating had broken down.

  Miss Seeton had always considered Jack Crabbe to be as polite as anyone in Plummergen. He must, she supposed, have a good reason for pushing past her in such a way and running down the hall. Puzzled, she hurried after him, and arrived at the kitchen door in time to hear a muffled curse.

  “Burglars,” groaned Jack, gazing at the broken window and its shattered fragments, scattered all over the floor. “No, Miss Seeton, you’d best keep out o’ this. Don’t want you treading splinters into your shoes and all over the house after, do we? You pop back to the phone and call Ned Potter, if you will.”

  “Oh, dear.” Miss Seeton’s dismay was tinged with some degree of guilt: twice in two days, and herself not here to stop the foolish prankster and send him, once and for all, about his proper business. Whatever would Martha say? “I’m sure,” she said bravely, “that this is no more than a—than a mistake, Mr. Crabbe. A practical joke, carried this time beyond what ought really to be acceptable, and when I discover who is responsible you may be confident that I will—I will have something to say to them,” she concluded, in her best schoolmistressy tones. “I hardly like to bother Mr. Potter at this hour, when he and his family ... Oh. Oh!”

  Family. Pedigree. Documents. The robes; the coronet! “Excuse me, please.” And Miss Seeton was pushing in her turn, squeezing back past him into the hall, hurrying to the sitting room, opening the door ...

  On the threshold, she stopped.

  Dead.

  As dead, it seemed, as the figure on the sitting room floor ...

  “The—the body of a woman? In Sweetbriars?” Brinton snatched up his handset and clamped it to his ear. “You’re not—” Foxon gulped again. “You’re not saying it’s—it’s Miss Seeton, are you?”

  “No,” said the well-known—and injured—accents of PC Potter. “If you’d just given me time, instead of jumping down my throat like—”

  “Potter!” roared Brinton.

  Foxon removed the extension receiver from his ear and shook his ringing head. In Plummergen, Potter did likewise. Brinton modified his tone. Slightly.

  “Potter, stop making statements in official jargon, damn you, and give us the facts in honest-to-goodness English. What the hell d’you mean, there are women’s bodies dotted about all over Miss Seeton’s house?”

  “One woman, sir. In the sitting room.” Potter cleared his throat. “Looks as if she was hit over the head with the poker—Miss Seeton’s very fond of toast,” he added in partial explanation. “Hit by person or persons—”

  “Potter! I warned you ...”

  “Sorry, sir.” Potter cleared his throat again. “Anyway, sir, it’s not as if the corpse is unknown. Miss Seeton has made the provisional identification as—”

  Foxon erupted into a bout of spluttered coughing which made Brinton curse him with unaccustomed fluency. Potter said nothing until the pair had fallen silent. If Headquarters chose to take the matter lightly, well, that was their affair. Not, of course, that they did: it was just their way, making daft jokes, of coming to terms with the news of a third murder on their patch when the other two were, so far as he knew, no closer to being solved than they’d been at the start.

  “A provisional identification,” he repeated, after only a few moments, “as Miss Myra Stanebury, who—”

  “Who?” burst simultaneously from Brinton and Foxon.

  “Who,” said the much-provoked PC Potter, “is—I mean was—the senior clerk at Candell and Inchpin, sir.” He paused. From the Ashford end of the telephone came a seething silence. “For which reason,” concluded PC Potter of Plummergen, “I thought you’d want me to let you know even sooner’n usual. Sir. Considering.”

  Miss Seeton, after so many eventful years, was no stranger to police activity, though she generally, and happily, contrived to dismiss all or any sugges
tion that such activity was—could possibly be—anything to do with her.

  Even she, however, was unable to dismiss the connection between the death of Miss Myra Stanebury, in the Sweetbriars sitting room, and herself. She had, indeed, been as shaken by the discovery as anyone had ever seen her.

  Jack Crabbe, hearing her horrified cry, had rushed from the kitchen, taken one quick look over her shoulder, and swept her away back down the hall to the telephone, where he took it upon himself to ring in quick succession PC Potter and the Bloomers. Stan arrived with a spade in one hand and—for some reason he couldn’t explain—the remains of his hot meat pie and two veg on a plate in the other. Martha was at his side with knotted apron strings and the pepper-pot, prepared to join battle with whatever foe might still lurk on the premises of her dear Miss Emily.

  Miss Emily was pale but composed to the eyes of all but those who knew her best, which meant the Bloomers. Stan took one look, plonked the pie-plate on the hall stand, shouldered his spade, and trudged outside on patrol. Martha scolded at ring marks on her polish, scooped up plate and employer together, and bore off both in triumph to the daffodil-bright cottage across The Street. When Brinton and the rest of the Ashford team arrived, they found PC Potter on guard indoors, while Stan and Jack were stationed at each of the two entrances, side door and front gate, to the scene of the latest crime.

  Photographers, fingerprinters, and the rest were left to carry on under the supervision—to his proud delight—of Police Constable Potter; Brinton, with Foxon for note-taking and moral support, went to talk to Miss Seeton.

  “I’m so sorry, Superintendent, I really couldn’t say.” Miss Seeton, bravely swallowing the strong, sweet tea that had been forcibly prescribed by Martha for shock—one could not hurt her feelings, although surely, after so long, one’s preference for weak, unsugared tea was recognised—was doing her best to be helpful, and feeling very guilty because she wasn’t. Or couldn’t. And when one was, albeit in a very minor capacity, by way of being a colleague, employed by the police as an IdentiKit artist on account of one’s—admittedly small—talent for sketching, which necessarily involved using one’s eyes—and one hadn’t ...

  “What she can have been doing at my house, I mean. One would hardly imagine why a complete stranger ... except, of course, that she wasn’t. Not complete.” Miss Seeton blushed for her forgetfulness, and felt more guilty than ever. “Because of having met her yesterday, at the auction house. Mr. Foxon may remember—but apart from that, definitely a stranger. Just long enough to recognise her face ...”

  “Yes,” said Brinton quickly as her voice quavered. He glared at Foxon. “He does. Don’t you, laddie?”

  “Certainly do, Miss Seeton. Not that I actually saw the pair of you chatting”—Brinton glared at him again—“but I remember very well seeing you. Coming down the steps with your umbrella and showing me the catalogue from last week’s sale.” It was about the only certain memory he had of their encounter. The rest, as he’d already reported to Brinton, had been much too confused to register with any hope of usefully retrieving it.

  Miss Seeton smiled. “Yes, indeed. My chest—that is,” she said as despite himself Brinton’s eyes darted to her meagre bosom and then, in apologetic embarrassment, to her face, “I suppose I should rather say the Estovers’. Or the Pottipoles’—it’s always so confusing when one deals with the British aristocracy—as you yourself no doubt find, Superintendent. Chief Constables,” said Miss Seeton, with vague memories of knights and earls in official dress at school speech days, “and so on. And even when it is the same, the spelling need not be. Carrington and Carington—one sometimes wonders how they know which they mean, except that if one is born to it, of course, there is probably no problem.”

  “Very probably,” said Brinton as she seemed to expect some reply, and nobody else was willing to oblige. “Er—not,” he added, in case the negative made more sense. “But please go on,” he prompted before he could be asked to enlarge on this. “You were at Candells yesterday, and ...”

  “And I asked her about the provenance. And she said she didn’t know. And she couldn’t find out, because her files were in something of a muddle ...” Miss Seeton would have blushed, fearing it tactless to recall how the blame for this muddle had been apportioned by Myra to Brinton’s men, when recollection became sudden realisation. Turning pale, she sat up. “Oh. Oh, dear. She must have managed to sort them out and found my name and address, and was kind enough to call in person to let me know, and—and ...”

  “Yes, very kind,” interposed Brinton before she could become still more distressed. Both he and Foxon privately wondered why whatever information Miss Stanebury had wished to impart could not—knowing Miss Seeton’s name and address—have been passed on by telephone. It wasn’t as if MissEss was ex-directory, much though they and their colleagues might wish, on occasion, that she was.

  “Very kind,” Brinton said again absently: his mind was working furiously. Granted, it was only six miles from Brettenden, but the bus wasn’t running. She must have made a bit of an effort to get here. Why come all this way on a cold, wet January day just to speak to Miss Seeton? Was the provenance (for whatever—though, taking into account yesterday’s unsuccessful burglary at Sweetbriars, he’d hazard a fair guess) so earth-shattering it could only be revealed in a face-to-face meeting? If that’s what she’d meant to tell her, of course. Whispered, no doubt, for greater secrecy.

  Guessing was all very well: knowing was better. “The provenance of what, Miss Seeton?”

  Miss Seeton blinked; but a gentlewoman tries never to express surprise. The superintendent, naturally, had a lot on his mind and couldn’t be expected—any more than could Mr. Foxon—to remember every conversational detail, no matter how recent that conversation might be. “My chest, Mr. Brinton. The carved wooden box I—I bought last week. At the auction.” She paused. Would it be tactless to ...?

  Tact was unnecessary—at least on Miss Seeton’s part. “Oh, God, I knew it.” Brinton rolled his eyes expressively in the direction of Mrs. Bloomer. “We’ll be wanting a good long talk with you later, Martha, but for now—Miss Seeton, this box. Locked, wasn’t it? And none of ’em knew what was inside. I remember they made a big mystery of it to push up the bids, but nobody was biting ...” And he’d bet someone had realised, too late, that they should have bitten harder ... “Then you go asking questions about where it came from, but you couldn’t learn anything, because of the files being in a mess after the burglary.”

  Miss Seeton opened her mouth to explain that it had all been a mistake: a practical joke. Martha, a loyal audience at the interview—she’d like to see anyone, police or not, try turning her out of her own front parlour when Miss Emily needed her—stirred on her chair, but had no time to speak before Brinton was pressing on with his train of thought. Two burglaries in as many days: that box in both places, and Miss Seeton, of all people, another link. No need to upset her more by telling her of Terry Mimms’s murder—a murder he was becoming more and more certain (for all young Chrissie’s insistence they’d gone to Candells by sheer chance) could have been a case of thieves falling out ...

  Falling out ... over what? “What happened, Miss Seeton, to make you go asking these questions? You seemed quite happy with the thing at the time you bought it.”

  “I ...” Miss Seeton faltered. “I should say we managed to unlock the box.” Her continued pleasure at this achievement should not, she reminded herself with a blush, moderate in any way the accuracy of her statement. “Undo it, I mean, between us. That is, dear Nigel and his mother tried first with knitting needles, though without much success. It was Mr. Eggleden who so cleverly knocked out—the spindle—which is nothing to do with wool,” she added in the further interests of accuracy. “But in the hinges, at the back. So that one could tip it back, to the front.”

  It needed neither Brinton’s muffled groan nor Foxon’s wince to persuade Miss Seeton that her desire for accuracy had resulted in something closer
to confusion: which was, one couldn’t help but feel, embarrassing. “And—and so he opened it,” she concluded with another blush ...

  And she thought it safer, in the interests of accuracy, to say no more.

  Brinton’s imagination had long since begun to run riot. Thieves, as he knew, could fall out over the most trivial things: but a locked chest—a treasure chest?—was hardly trivial. Jewels and gold, rare porcelain and glass, works of art—trust MissEss and her brolly to find ’em if anyone could ... If she had. She’d buttoned her lip pretty damn quickly once she’d said her final piece. “So then what was inside, Miss Seeton, once you’d got it open?”

  Accuracy. One must remember in what order the things had been taken out: it might be important. “Papers,” said Miss Seeton, frowning. “Handbills and engravings—a few letters—a journal—props and costumes ... a robe, and a tiara—no, a coronet ... and—”

  Brinton passed the reference to clothes. Silk, satin, and lace couldn’t compare with—his eyes gleamed—the richness of ornaments and precious stones. “A coronet?” Miss Seeton, thrown off balance by the interruption, nodded. He waited for her to go on. She didn’t. “That’s all?” It couldn’t be. The fuss the damned things had caused, he’d have expected the Crown Jewels, at least. “Nothing of ... particular value, I suppose?”

  Miss Seeton hesitated: accuracy. “Oh, dear. That is, I understand they are of little financial value in themselves, although the content ... They date back to Georgian times, you see.”