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

by Hamilton Crane

  “This,” pointed out Sir Heavily, “is a photocopy, not an original, Delphick.”

  “It is indeed, sir. Or, to be strictly accurate, it’s a photocopy of a photocopy—the original staying in my own files. For, er, safety.” Delphick fixed his chief with an oracular stare, and watched the gleam appear in his eyes.

  “You have the original?” The Assistant Commissioner was leaning forward over the blotter, the despised photocopy-of-a-photocopy ignored beneath his elbows. “Where, exactly?”

  Delphick cleared his throat with energy. “My apologies, sir. I appear to have, er, unwittingly misled you. What I meant was that the original photocopy, if I may be permitted the oxymoron, remains in my safekeeping. The drawing from which it was taken is not, after all, official property, and we have no possible claim on it; but Miss Forby—to whom it was entrusted, as you have no doubt forgotten in the stress of the moment—will, you may rest assured, take admirable care of it. You need have no worries on that score.”

  Sir Hubert narrowed his eyes in a scowl, and the hiss of his breath was audible above the slow grinding of his teeth. “Don’t try me too far, Delphick. There are limits beyond which even you should not attempt to pass.”

  “Sorry, sir.” The Oracle neither sounded it, nor meant it. He’d been waging this war with Sir Heavily for years, ever since the assistant commissioner had come to realise that the lightning sketches of Miss Emily Dorothea Seeton, the Yard’s unique MissEss, possessed their own rare and indefinable quality which any speculator in art investments should not ignore. Sir Heavily had always been successfully deflected, so far, when he’d made his roundabout requests for a Seeton original; the Oracle saw no reason why the game shouldn’t continue indefinitely, provided that he kept his wits about him.

  “I think Mel Forby’s put us on the right track now, with Miss Seeton’s help, of course. I can’t think why I didn’t think of it myself, except that it hasn’t been my case. But once MissEss was shown Mel’s photographs—well, if the Forby byline doesn’t head a scoop of the first water within a very few days, I’ll be extremely surprised.” And a brief smile of sympathy for the future astonishment of one Thrudd Banner flickered in his eyes. “I think somebody should have a word with this Mrs. Ongar at the earliest possible moment, sir, in the circumstances.”

  Together they inspected the two photocopied sketches on the assistant commissioner’s blotter. One, the still life with blackbird, they had already agreed—Delphick passing on the suggestion as received from Mel—gave Miss Seeton’s general opinion of the MacSporran kidnap, being of little use except as background. As for the second drawing . . .

  This showed another blackbird, but far less proud in its plumage, for it had no tail. It did not perch, but rather lurked in the neighbourhood of a young couple—the man with a sullen face, the woman’s eyes wary and anxious—who stood huddled together in the shade of a tall tree: a tree with a domed crown and large, spreading branches, on the topmost of which a few leaves were clearly drawn—five-pointed leaves.

  “A plane tree,” Mel had insisted, when she’d appeared in the Oracle’s office earlier the same night, hotfoot from Plummergen. “A London plane, that’s what that tree is—and they grow in every park in Town!”

  “It might be a sycamore, or a maple. Their leaves—”

  “Come off it, Oracle. I know you’re meant to exercise a bit of caution when a clue ups and clumps you on the head, but this is ridiculous. Why start Devil’s Advocating now? This is a five-star, twenty-four-carat, guaranteed Seeton certainty I’m showing you here—at great professional risk, I might add. If Thrudd finds out before my story goes in—well, he’d better not, that’s all I can say.”

  “Mel, have I ever let you down in past cases? If Thrudd should happen to learn of your inspired guesswork—”

  “Utter brilliance,” interposed Mel, with a grin.

  “—then it won’t be from me, I promise you. Apart from anything else, I’ll be far too busy organising somebody to follow this up,” and he tapped the drawings with the tip of his ballpoint pen, “to have time to chat to any reporters I may happen to meet.”

  “Except me, of course. You’d better let me in on the ground floor with this one, Oracle, or I’ll never— Hey, I’m going crazy here! It’s me who’s let you in on the ground floor, this time!”

  “It is, and we’re more than grateful to you, Mel. Just to be on the safe side, though, you’d better not print anything until we’ve arrested the kidnappers—and before we can arrest them, of course, we have to find them—always assuming you’re right about what this drawing means—”

  “Oh, I am, Oracle, I am.” Mel winked, taking her notebook from her handbag. “The story’s all written and ready to roll, right here. Remember, it’s not me you’re betting on, is it? It’s Miss Seeton to the rescue again . . .”

  chapter

  ~6~

  ONCE MEL HAD left for London, taking the two sketches with her, it was hard for Miss Seeton to settle back into her usual routine. She tried her best, clearing away the tea things and busying herself in the kitchen, but her thoughts kept turning in sympathy to Lord and Lady Glenclachan, the parents of the missing Lady Marguerite MacSporran. Such a romantic story surrounding her birth, reflected Miss Seeton, whisking bubbles in the washing-up bowl with the long-handled mop. Dear Mel had held her quite spellbound as she explained how the original grant of title and arms had come from Mary, Queen of Scots, that misguided and headstrong monarch. Whatever service the first Lord Glenclachan had rendered to Mary Stuart (Miss Seeton silently blushed, and scrubbed a stubborn stain with vigour) had made it appropriate for the grant, failing any direct male heir, to descend through the female line: in almost four hundred years, this had happened only twice before. Until now.

  “Of course,” Mel had said, “it was a gift to the likes of me—the Silly Season’s in full swing, and editors are always on the lookout for something they can work up into a regular splash. Only this time—well, I can’t help wishing they hadn’t. I sort of feel it was partly our fault they snatched the poor kid, putting the idea in their heads in the first place . . .”

  But when Mel returned to Town, she had seemed happier about everything, Miss Seeton reminded herself as she rinsed the mop and dishcloth under a running tap and hung them to dry on their hooks beside the sink. The tea things drained silently in the rack; it was too early for even a light supper; she did not feel in the mood for gardening, though her fingers felt restless. She must do something to quiet them.

  It was inevitable that she should find herself once more taking out her sketch pad and pencils. That still life she had drawn earlier—the composition had been rather striking—she might be able to re-create it from memory, as long as she did not leave it too long before trying. Memory, as she knew only too well, was a fickle, fleeting thing, though one was thankful that the yoga exercises seemed to have done as much good to her mental powers as they had to her physical. It could not be denied that one was growing older—one had, indeed, been retired some seven years now, but there was no hint, she was thankful to observe, of the approach of dotage and debility. Her knees and her mind, Miss Seeton told herself with some pride, might well be said to flourish.

  Indeed, her mind might be considered as being, tonight at least, too flourishing and restless. Images of birds and babies and leafy trees kept crowding before her eyes, clamouring to be set down on paper. Miss Seeton shook her head, trying to make them go away. She wanted only that one bird which had perched so proudly on the rock, with the pearl necklace beneath its claw—

  “Now, why do I think it was a pearl necklace?” wondered Miss Seeton. “I would have supposed . . . dear Mel’s talk of seeing Nigel—my recollecting the visit to Rytham Hall and his teasing of poor Sir George about the windows . . . I had my gold umbrella, of course, and wore Cousin Flora’s yellow beads to match my hat, or was it the hat to match the beads—yet I feel sure in the picture they were pearls . . .” She frowned, and shook her head. Perhaps he
r memory wasn’t all she’d prided herself that it was . . . and she doodled on the sheet of paper beneath her pencil, allowing her eyes to go blank as she tried to recapture the still life . . .

  And she was surprised to find, when she focussed her eyes again, that she had drawn a large and blubbery creature with a huge moustache, and next to it a man in overalls, a pencil stuck behind his ear, a ruler poking out of his top pocket, and an air of capability about him. “A walrus and a carpenter,” said Miss Seeton, after only a moment’s thought. “And, good gracious, these must be the poor oysters by their feet—but not yet being eaten, I am pleased to say.” She reflected on Lewis Carroll’s poem, which she had learned at school in the days when learning by rote was something for which one could win prizes. There had been one girl, she recalled, who had recited all of Casablanca and astounded even the teachers.

  She shook her head. Oysters. So it had been a pearl necklace and not her dear beads—but why? Mel had simply said “Um,” and later “Oh, yes,” which was hardly . . .

  “Lady Marguerite,” exclaimed Miss Seeton, delighted to have solved the mystery with the help of her school-day memories: for there had been a fashion for such things as the language of flowers and the meanings of names. Emily, her friends had told her, meant industrious, and was related, she thought, to Amelia, which was dear Mel’s real name, she having added the “t” to make it more noticeable. “For the newspapers,” murmured Miss Seeton, smiling. Emily, Amelia—variations on the same name for two such different people—just as Marguerite was a variant of Margaret, and Margaret, Miss Seeton reminded herself in relief, meant pearl. “And the coronet, of course, would have been because she is the daughter of a peer,” said Miss Seeton, “while the blackbird, poor thing, is obvious . . .”

  And, to her satisfaction, before she trotted back into the kitchen to prepare her supper, she managed to achieve a second version of the still life which seemed exactly like the one Mel had taken away to London in such a hurry.

  The events of the day had obviously had a more lasting effect upon her than she’d realised, she thought as she prepared for bed. First, of course, she must practise her yoga routine. For some reason, tonight she added several of her newer poses, such as the Peacock, or Mayurasana, and the Cockerel or Kukkutasana; and, though she calmed her mind at the end, as she always did, in the Shavasana, or Dead Posture, as she fell asleep, her closing eyes beheld images of flying birds, one after the other.

  In the middle of the night, she awoke. How unusual: she was normally an excellent sleeper. Something had probably disturbed her—a passing car, perhaps, or the cry of a nocturnal animal or bird after its prey . . .

  The cry of a bird, certainly, mused Miss Seeton, as she cuddled back down beneath her bedclothes. She could hear a sea gull faintly mewing somewhere: it must have alighted on her roof before flying onwards, its cry waking her from—

  “How strange,” murmured Miss Seeton, her eyes drifting to the luminous figures of the bedside clock. Hardly time yet for the dawn chorus, and seagulls were not, so far as she knew—though she had to admit that her knowledge was by no means extensive—birds of the night. But there it was, wherever it was, mewing and crying and . . .

  “In pain, poor creature,” said Miss Seeton, unable to shut out the sound once she realised what it must mean. One quick movement, and she had seized her torch from its place beside her bed—one never knew, living in the country, when the electricity supply might fail—and was trotting to the window. Plummergen’s absence of street lamps meant that she might not be able to find the bird easily, in the dark, but seagulls, she knew, were generally white-feathered, except the young, of course. She would hope that the wounded bird was older rather than younger . . .

  Miss Seeton shone her flashlight out of the window and peered hopefully for any glimpse of white within easy reach. There was no moon. The circle of light showed nothing untoward, and, with a sigh she could not entirely stifle, she pushed her feet into her slippers, pulled on her dressing gown, and headed down the stairs, pausing only to pick up her umbrella en route, and out of her cottage in pursuit of those pathetic cries.

  Which grew louder as she came out of her front gate and stood listening in the road, trying to work out from which direction—

  The telephone box, directly opposite, on the corner. It sounded as if the cries were coming from there, but she saw no sign of—

  Miss Seeton hurried across the road, shining her torch up to the gently domed roof, sure that there she must see an open beak and a bright and hopeful eye—even though from her bedroom window she hadn’t. And still, to her surprise, she noticed nothing . . .

  Nothing on the roof, that was to say. But surely there was something white, faintly moving, emitting little mews of distress . . . inside the telephone box? How on earth had a wounded sea gull managed to get in there?

  “It must be a cat,” said Miss Seeton, struggling to pull open the heavy, many-panelled glass door with her umbrella hooked over her arm and her torch tucked under it. “Tibs has no doubt been fighting again, and this poor creature—” The door was finally open. “Oh. Oh, good gracious me . . .”

  For the light from her torch had fallen, not upon one of young Amelia Potter’s infamous feline’s victims, but upon a wrapped white bundle which wriggled, and whimpered, and, with the torch beam playing on its face, blinked, and smiled . . .

  “A baby,” breathed Miss Seeton.

  There was a note safety-pinned to the baby’s wrappings, but Miss Seeton was too startled to read it just now. What did one do in the middle of the night with an unexpected baby? She gazed round wildly. Not a single house within reach showed a light, which was hardly surprising. Plummergen is not noted for riotously late hours. Miss Seeton and the baby would have to fend for themselves, for some time, at least . . .

  Miss Seeton was reminded of Aesop’s fable of the fox, the goose, and the bag of corn as she contemplated the baby, and the baby, quiet now that someone was taking an interest in it, contemplated Miss Seeton. The torch, without which one would be unable to make one’s way safely home; the baby, which was, after all, the object of the entire exercise; the umbrella, her very best, which she had seized without thinking as she passed the rack, and which she would hate either to damage or to lose. Dear Mr. Delphick . . .

  Thoughts of the police made her wonder about telephoning PC Potter for assistance, but to do so from the box would require money, which naturally she hadn’t brought with her. Did the discovery of a baby constitute an emergency—could she, perhaps, dial 999? She felt herself turn pale at the very idea. Evidently she couldn’t. And her cottage, after all, was a matter of yards away . . .

  “It is clearly my duty,” Miss Seeton informed the infant with a gulp, “to take you home with me until—until other, more suitable care may be found for you. Unfortunately, my acquaintance with babies is limited. If you had been older . . . however, one cannot shirk one’s duty.” She gulped once more, then braced herself. One remembered from one’s anatomy classes that the human frame was more strongly built than it seemed; one knew from one’s own experience of yoga that bones and joints need not be fragile; one hoped, therefore, that the simple act of picking up a baby with inexpert hands would do it no lasting harm. Miss Seeton gazed about her once more in the forlorn hope that one of Plummergen’s young mothers might manifest herself out of the dark. Lily Hosigg, perhaps: so shy, but with such a quiet, contented child. The Hosiggs lived only the other side of the canal, in the old Dunnihoe place . . . past Martha Bloomer’s cottage. Could she—Miss Seeton brightened—disturb dear Martha to ask for help?

  An owl hooted overhead, reminding her that it was still the middle of the night. She couldn’t. Oh, dear . . .

  The note, written in thick black capitals, said, “CHANGED OUR MINDS SO HOPE FOR THE BEST.” Miss Seeton did not find this altogether enlightening, though her immediate guess was that the baby’s parents had for some reason (money or ill health, probably) come to regret having had a child, and h
ad left it in a telephone box as being the most likely place for somebody to find it before it suffered undue neglect. She had to suppose this was a reasonable method of ensuring that an abandoned baby did not go undiscovered: in the olden days, unfortunate (as they were known) mothers deposited unwanted infants on the steps of a suitable church. Perhaps these parents felt that the absentminded bachelor Reverend Arthur Treeves and his sister Molly would lack sufficient knowledge to care for a small baby . . .

  “Although goodness knows,” Miss Seeton informed the wide blue eyes blinking up at her from the depths of the big armchair in her sitting room, “they could hardly know less than I. Miss Treeves, moreover, is such a splendidly practical person, I feel sure she would be so much better able to . . .”

  She cast one wistful look through the sitting-room window in the direction of the Victorian vicarage next to the church, across The Street, beside the George and Dragon, but of Molly Treeves there was, of course, no sign. Miss Seeton had hoped, as she struggled with the baby (scooped up under one arm), umbrella (tucked under the other), and torch (held in one nervous hand to light her way back to her front gate), that someone—anyone—might wake from slumber and help her in her nightmare. Which was perhaps being rather impolite to the baby, but was, for the moment, how Miss Seeton felt.

  But nobody had come; she had coped by herself; and now, though she was breathless and bewildered, she knew there was nothing and no one to help her but her own good sense. One could hardly communicate with a baby which was, apparently, only a few weeks, maybe months, old . . .

  The baby, however, could communicate with Miss Seeton—and suddenly proceeded to do so, going red in the face and clenching all its tiny muscles before wriggling once and, from an open mouth, emitting a piercing wail. And emitting—Miss Seeton’s nose twitched—something else, as well.