Miss Seeton Rocks the Cradle (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 13)

by Hamilton Crane

  Miss Seeton Rocks the Cradle

  A Miss Seeton Mystery

  Hamilton Crane

  Series creator Heron Carvic

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Note from the Publisher

  Preview

  Also Available

  About the Miss Seeton series

  About Heron Carvic and Hamilton Crane

  Copyright

  chapter

  ~1~

  MISS SEETON GAZED at herself in the looking glass and shook her head for the umpteenth time. For the umpteenth time she removed from her head the old, wide-brimmed straw hat, and set in its place the slightly frivolous (she blushed for her self-indulgence) headpiece she had bought only that morning in Brettenden, and which was exactly the shade of yellow she had wanted. She’d recognised it the moment she spotted it in the window of “Monica Mary: Milliner”—the eye of an art teacher, even if she has been retired seven years or more, does not err. It is, however, as susceptible as any ordinary eye to glare, and dazzle, and brilliant sunshine, which, on this glorious summer afternoon, she was bound to encounter during the course of her half-mile walk along Marsh Road, from her cottage to Rytham Hall.

  “My dear old straw would be so much more practical—so very shady,” agonised Miss Seeton, as she glanced out of her bedroom window at the cloudless sky and the crisp black shadows cast by the blazing sun. “But the colour is not quite . . . and then, what a dreadful waste it would be, not to wear this, when it matches everything so very well—and why else did I buy it, if not to match? Because it does . . .”

  All Miss Seeton’s earlier decisions had been made a good deal more easily. The frock: her discreet floral print with the pale primrose pattern. The jacket: her cream poplin with the neatly piped collar and the buttons—so unusual, but such a very kind thought—which Martha Bloomer (that inveterate popper into side-street shops) had found in an Ashford haberdashery and presented to her employer next day with such triumph that Miss Seeton hadn’t the heart to tell her she’d managed to find the one she’d lost, after all.

  “Dear Martha. Perhaps not quite the style I would have chosen,” murmured Miss Seeton, her gaze drifting downwards from her hat to her buttons. “But one could hardly hurt her feelings when she offered to sew them all on—and it would have been so ungrateful to refuse the gift. One may surely be forgiven any slight suggestion of the idiosyncratic when it results from so charitable an impulse on the part of such a very dear friend . . .”

  Her eyes prickled briefly with grateful tears as she remembered her first days as a resident of Plummergen, the Kentish village she was now proud and happy to call home. What a generous welcome she had received then, from everyone who wished to pay dear, kind Cousin Flora one final compliment! Cousin Flora (Old Mrs. Bannet, as the village had generally known her) had bequeathed to her young cousin Emily her delightful cottage, Sweetbriars, its entire contents, and its loyal retainers, in the persons of Martha Bloomer (goddess of domesticity) and her husband Stan, a farm worker famed for the fruit, flowers, vegetables, and fowl house he tended on Mrs. Bannet’s behalf, to their mutual benefit. The arrangement had worked so well that it, too, had been included in Miss Seeton’s bequest.

  “A very dear friend,” repeated Miss Seeton, and patted her topmost button with a fond fingertip. “But always so quick to keep one on one’s toes. Dear Martha would expect me to have made up my mind long before this, I fear . . .”

  Resolutely, she settled the new hat, its brim so much narrower than she was accustomed to, firmly upon her head, skewering it with one of her remarkable hatpins. Her choice this afternoon boasted an amber bead of curious shape as its decorative feature and safety device: no danger now of piercing one’s fingers and spotting blood on the crisp, bright straw of Monica Mary’s latest creation.

  “And this hat is, of course, almost the same colour as my necklace,” Miss Seeton told the looking glass in apologetic tones, with one last lingering glance before forcing herself to collect her handbag from the bed and head for the door without further ado. If she dallied any longer, she ran the grave risk of arriving at Rytham Hall late, which would not only be discourteous, she reminded herself as she trotted down the stairs, but stewed tea had such an unpleasant taste, as well . . .

  There was, however, absolutely no hesitation when Miss Seeton came to select an umbrella. The sky might not have seen a rain cloud for weeks, the forecast could be promising drought and heat and hosepipe bans, but Miss Emily Dorothea Seeton would as soon omit to settle her bills on time as to leave home without her umbrella. She had a fair selection of these in the rack beside the hall stand, but for special occasions, such as today’s tea with the Colvedens, there was never a doubt in her mind. She hurried past the mirror and straight to the rack without pause, to draw out lovingly . . . “My gold umbrella,” said Miss Seeton, with pride.

  Not solid gold, she was always quick to add, when people admired this prize possession. But not plated, either—one could see the hallmark, could one not? “Hollow,” she would explain, “because of the weight, naturally. And the cost as well, no doubt, for I cannot believe they are paid so much as that, although of course there are greater rewards than the monetary. For doing one’s duty as they so splendidly do—policemen, that is. Job satisfaction, I believe it is called, and then, of course, promotion, when it comes, must be a reward, as well. For he was only a detective superintendent when we first met . . .”

  Indeed he had been: Superintendent Alan Delphick, CID, New Scotland Yard—otherwise, the Oracle. Now one of the most highly regarded chief superintendents in the Metropolitan Police, he was generous enough to attribute to Miss Seeton her due share in his success. Her first case—when she had laid it on the line for the Force and they’d followed meekly along behind, mopping up this and that as they went, while she didn’t even seem to realise what she’d done for them—had left an indelible impression on Delphick’s mind. One gold-handled, black silk umbrella had been a small price to pay for the privilege of having worked with her: part gratitude, part apology for not fully appreciating at first Miss Seeton’s unique qualities as a catalyst for solving crimes. She never knew how she did it—indeed, he suspected that most of the time she never even knew that she was doing it—but once Miss Seeton, now retained (at his instigation) as a consultant to the Yard, had connected with a case, no matter how peripherally, then solved—by methods unorthodox and by methods unforgettable—that case would undoubtedly be.

  “My gold umbrella,” said Miss Seeton again with a smile, hooking it over her arm and giving it a loving pat. She picked up her keys from the hall table, shot one guilty glance in the direction of the corner clock, and made haste to fulfil her eagerly awaited engagement for afternoon tea at Rytham Hall with Sir George and Lady Colveden.

  “And dear Nigel, too, if he can be spared from the
farm, of course,” she murmured, as she hurried from the front door down the short paved path, pausing only for a moment to savour the rich summer perfumes of the flowers which lined it in their neatly weeded beds. Thanks to Stan Bloomer, and to the chapters she studied in that invaluable reference book Greenfinger Points the Way, Miss Seeton was at least sure now which were weeds, and which weren’t, when she settled to rooting them out. She hoped. Greenfinger had been pointing the way for her since her first days as owner of Sweetbriars—and Stan had been interpreting the sage’s printed words, when she couldn’t make sufficient sense of them—once, that was to say, she had finally managed to make sense of Stan himself. An interesting accent, but on occasions, well, not entirely lucid . . .

  “A true Man of Kent,” mused Miss Seeton, making her way along Marsh Road at a steady pace. “Or do I mean a Kentishman? Oh dear, he would be so offended at my ignorance—the Medway comes into it, I know. East or west—where one was born—and he must surely have been born to the east of the river, which I think makes him a Kentishman, although . . .”

  She carried on towards Rytham Hall, still pondering the puzzle of Stan’s birthplace, then found her thoughts drifting to Kentishman’s Tails, those mythical congenital appendages having in mediaeval times, she recalled from school history lessons, been the supposed punishment for the murder of Thomas à Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury. “Canterbury Bells,” murmured Miss Seeton, remembering her garden, and Greenfinger’s month-by-month recommendations to the novice in that most useful of books. “Bell, book, and candle,” Miss Seeton announced to the gatepost of Rytham Hall as she began to turn into the drive, and was extremely surprised when the gatepost answered back.

  “Good heavens, Miss Seeton, are you planning to exorcise something?”

  Miss Seeton forgot all about candle auctions, stopped in her tracks, and dropped her umbrella. She blinked and shook her head, peering about her. She blinked again, but then the bewildered crease between her brows vanished as, from the shadows behind the gatepost, a young man, smiling and mopping his brow, emerged.

  “Gosh, I’m sorry, Miss Seeton. I didn’t mean to startle you, only—Here, no, let me pick that up for you—”

  But Miss Seeton, with a quick smile of recognition for dear Nigel and a blush for her own absentmindedness, bent with easy briskness to grasp the crook handle of her fallen brolly—how she silently blessed the yoga which had made such a difference to her knees—and rose, neither breathless nor creaking, to return her young friend’s greeting.

  “How kind of you to come to meet me,” she told him, as he fell in at her side and began to escort her up the drive. “I do hope I’m not late—that you haven’t been waiting too long, I mean—but I was wondering, you see, where he might have been born—east or west—and ended up puzzling over the pins—for the auction, that is, when they drop out as it burns. Stan, that is to say—and candles, of course. If one were to ask him where, no doubt he would say that it was Plummergen, which is true, but not particularly helpful in indicating which side of the river is which—and it made me rather distracted, I’m afraid.” With one of her loving pats on the umbrella handle, she blushed again.

  Nigel had been acquainted with Miss Seeton for several years now, so that her thought processes were not always the complete mystery to him that they were to people meeting her for the first time. He missed only a very few beats before managing to frame what he regarded as the correct reply to her inarticulate question.

  “Stan Bloomer? He’s a Man of Kent, the same as me, born east of the Medway—though the Bloomers must go right back to the days of Hengist and Horsa, I should think. They were those Saxon thugs who turned up here, er . . . oh, way back in history, ready to bash hell out of the marauding Picts. Oh, I do beg your pardon, Miss Seeton.”

  But Miss Seeton had not noticed Nigel’s language: she’d been too busy thinking. “Vortigern, was it not?” she asked, to Nigel’s dismay: he’d already amazed himself by being able to recall even so much of his school days. Fortunately for him, she continued before he had time to confess his ignorance. “The White Horse of Kent, I suppose,” she said, referring to the traditional badge of her dear adopted county. Nigel, with a loud clearing of his throat, said that his mother was sure to know, and delivered Miss Seeton thankfully to the front door of Rytham Hall, which stood open and welcoming in the hazy summer heat.

  “Miss Seeton, how delightfully fresh and cool you look,” said Lady Colveden, emerging from the kitchen at the sound of their arrival. She had a teapot in her hand, which she waved under Nigel’s nose with a circular, jiggling motion. “Your father should be on his way by now, or he certainly ought to be, the number of times I reminded him this morning—so I’ll take Miss Seeton through to the sitting room while you make the tea. The pot’s already warmed,” she added, and handed it to her startled son before whisking their guest away, pausing only to relieve her of the golden brolly and place it with due reverence (for she knew its history well) on top of the carved old mahogany chest which stood beside the row of coat hooks in the hall.

  “It’s really too hot to sit in the garden, isn’t it? If I’d only thought,” said Lady Colveden, as she and Miss Seeton settled themselves beside the low tea table pulled across in front of the unlit fire, “I’d have sent Nigel down to fetch you in the car, if your nerves could stand the strain, rather than have you walk when the sun’s positively blazing. Though your lovely new hat must have spared you the worst of it,” she added, with an admiring look. “That must be one of Monica Mary’s specialities, I imagine.”

  “I’m afraid it is.” Miss Seeton blushed for her extravagance, her hand drifting unconsciously to the yellow necklace whose unusual tones were mirrored almost exactly by the straw of her latest purchase. “When it caught my notice in the window as I happened to pass by, I . . .”

  “I know exactly what you mean.” Lady Colveden’s lovely eyes twinkled with fellow feeling. “George refuses to let me walk that way by myself, and whenever we pass the shop together he always manages to end up between me and the window, though normally he’s such a stickler for walking on the outside. And, talking of outside,” she added, as Nigel entered with a tea tray in his hands, “would you rather sit in the garden? Only we do seem to have a great many wasps this year—I’ve been asking and asking George to spray them with poison or whatever you’re supposed to do, but he keeps telling me he’s far too busy—”

  “And he doesn’t trust me with poison, of course,” Nigel said, depositing the tray on the table with a discreet clatter and dropping into his chair with a chuckle. “I’m but a mere stripling about the place, an untried youth who doesn’t know his, er, arsenic from his ergot, as one might say. You must remember, Miss Seeton, that I’ve only been working full-time on the farm since I graduated. What do I know about anything? What did they teach me at agricultural college?”

  “Precious little,” came a growl from the open French windows. Major-General Sir George Colveden, Bart, KCB, DSO, JP, long-suffering father of an irrepressible son, stood on the threshold with a battered straw hat in one hand and a large spotted handkerchief, with which he mopped his balding head, in the other. “Afternoon, Miss Seeton. Regular scorcher today—blasted bale fell on my hat, what’s more.” And he regarded the battered boater with some dismay. “Worn the thing for years,” he lamented. “Nothing to be done with it now, I suppose,’’ he added, gesturing with his behatted hand hopefully in his wife’s direction. He sighed, loudly.

  “Nothing at all,” replied Lady Colveden, sounding far too cheerful for her husband’s liking. “I’ve been trying to tell you for ages that you wanted a new one—”

  “Wanted, be damned,” muttered Sir George. Then, looking uncomfortable: “Sorry, Miss Seeton. Forgot myself.”

  As his guest smiled her sympathy for the baronet’s predicament, his wife continued as if she’d heard nothing:

  “And you needn’t roll your eyes at me like that, George, because now you’ll have to admit that I was ab
solutely right—so you may as well come in, sit down, and let me pour you a cup of tea while Miss Seeton tells you how splendidly simple it is to buy a new hat nowadays . . .”

  As he obeyed his wife’s instructions, Sir George cast a doubtful look at Miss Seeton’s exclusive headgear. She made haste to reassure him. Too much haste, perhaps. “This, of course, is hardly the hat for you, Sir George. But when the weather is so hot, and one works long hours in the sun, it seems to me only prudent to protect oneself when one is, er, perhaps in more need of protection than . . . er, than . . .”

  Nigel, choking over his tea, took pity on her anguished expression. The junior Colveden had inherited thick, wavy brown hair from his mother, and only wore a hat to shade his aristocratic young nose from the sun’s glare; it could not be denied, however—even by those most blinded by affection—that a far larger expanse of his father’s person was at permanent risk of peeling. Nigel suppressed his chortles, and grinned encouragingly at Miss Seeton, whose heightened colour resulted from a cause far different to that which had troubled Sir George.

  “Miss Seeton’s perfectly right, Dad. Protection, that’s what you need, or you’ll be down to the bare bones before the week’s out. I mean”—he gestured wildly with his teacup in the direction of the French windows—“you only have to look at what’s happened to all the paint work over the last month or so.”

  Sir George grunted, and blew into his moustache. His cup rattled crossly in its saucer. Lady Colveden, knowing how he had treasured the old straw boater, thought it time to change the conversation.

  “Yes, the whole house needs a thorough overhaul, George, but I’ve been thinking about that. Or rather, it was something Alicia Eykyn said which gave me the idea—you know how many windows there are at Mungo Hall.”

  Nigel pricked up his ears on hearing the name of one he had admired devotedly, though from a distance, since his first sight of her at a Hunt Ball. The young countess was generally known to be as practical as Nigel knew himself to be a hopeless romantic, and her ideas were always worthy of attention. He reached for a scone, buttering it with a lavish hand, and inspiration struck. “Paint twice as thick, to last twice as long? I refuse to believe that she’s decided to go for metal frames . . .”