“Over,” repeated Miss Seeton dutifully. Nigel gazed in the direction of his father and signalled for help. Trying to explain a fact of life with which one had grown up was a great deal more difficult that he’d expected it to be.
Sir George beamed. “Doing a grand job, Nigel—couldn’t have put it better m’self. Ah—over to you, old chap!”
Nigel grinned wry appreciation of his father’s little joke, and then frowned again. “Oh. Yes, well . . . The ball is bowled from each end of the pitch in turn—to be fair, you see. Sun in the batsman’s eyes, that sort of thing. So, to make sure the advantages and disadvantages of either end balance out, the bowling is in groups of six balls—and, well, each group is called an over, because they, er, change over at the end of it. So do the fielders, if they want to. Change, I mean—their positions, which is what they don’t tend to do in the middle of an over, because of being another distraction, you see. But when the umpire says it’s all, er, over, everyone can move, if they like—and the wicket-keeper positively must, with having to change ends.”
“Behind the stumps,” announced Miss Seeton, to the surprise of all who heard her: they did not know of yesterday’s sketch, and the Chinese cricketers—whose appearance disturbed her less now she had read the article about the proposed new gallery—and the umpire, standing at the wicket, watching. “Three stumps,” she said proudly. Perhaps one’s ignorance might be less great as one had at first supposed. “The wicket . . .”
“What did I tell you, Miss Seeton? You’ve got the hang of it—I knew you would. I should think it’ll be a pretty good painting, once it’s done.” And Nigel mopped his forehead, helped himself to another cup of tea, and, having buttered a scone, spread it with a double thickness of jam as his justly earned reward.
It had been, reflected Miss Seeton as she stood unpinning her hat in the hall of her cottage, a most enjoyable afternoon—educational, as well. One felt far more confident of one’s ability to achieve an intelligent portrayal of the game of cricket now that dear Nigel had explained so much in such a very lucid way. And what a pleasure to meet Miss Leigh! So young, and yet so talented—Nigel was fortunate to have won her interest. It was obvious, from the way in which she had looked at him, that won her interest he had. Just as, of course, she had won his, which was, surely, her good fortune. Dear Nigel. Such a romantic nature. How one hoped he was not to be disappointed by the loss of his own Annabel Lee—though one had to admit that, in August, even in England, the prospect of any wind chilling and killing one so evidently in the full bloom of beauty and health must be thought unlikely. She and Nigel made such a very handsome couple . . .
Miss Seeton sighed with pleasure as she slipped her gold umbrella into the rack, emptied her handbag of the most important items, and carried her hat upstairs. Not a click or a creak from one’s knees—really, the modest expenditure on Yoga and Younger Every Day all those years ago had been recovered more than a hundredfold in one’s general level of fitness and well-being—though one was, of course, glad not to have been required to bat, or to bowl, or to field on the day of the big match. No, all that was required was that one should produce a painting of the pavilion, with a match in progress in the foreground, and, naturally, as many of the players being recogniseable as one’s skill allowed, so that they would be far more likely to bid for it—because, of course, it was hardly credible that anyone would venture the large sums anticipated at the auction in order to own an Emily Seeton original. Which sounded—Miss Seeton, even in the privacy of her own home, blushed—altogether too conceited, given one’s limitations as an artist. Unlike Miss Leigh. Annabelle. Whose work—one hoped she had not been offended at the interest one had automatically shown in her entire portfolio—was so very, very good . . .
Miss Seeton, for all Nigel’s assurances that she seemed to have grasped the principles of the game, decided that it would be as well if she essayed a rough sketch of the cricket painting before everything he had so carefully explained to her had become muddled. She collected pencils, eraser, and sketching block, then headed for the sitting room, where she hesitated for a moment, gazing out through the French windows. It was a glorious evening, and the sun was still bright, the air still warm: an evening for sitting on her little terrace rather than staying inside.
Miss Seeton opened the double doors and stepped out, the afternoon’s accumulated warmth radiating from the flagstones of the patio, though not unpleasantly. A table and chairs—all of heavy-duty, weatherproof plastic—stood waiting for her, and she arranged her drawing gear neatly in a spot where she could see the canal at the bottom of her garden, beyond the chicken house and the wall. She sat down, pulling her sketchbook across to rest one end on her knees, the other against the table edge; and she sat, and looked, and thought: about cricket, and other matters.
She found herself turning back the pages of her book in much the same way as she’d leafed through Annabelle Leigh’s, and remembered again how surprised the young woman had been at her interest. Neither Sir George nor Lady Colveden had been so, well, so presumptuous, after Miss Leigh had made it very plain she had not wished anyone to look at her work. Modest as well as talented, reflected Miss Seeton, blushing for her own inadequacies as well as her discourtesy, for so it must have seemed to Annabelle, despite one’s attempts to explain that it had been the younger woman’s remarkable talent which had caused one’s apparent breach of etiquette. And Miss Seeton blushed again, and sighed . . .
Good gracious. But this was dreadful! She had supposed herself to be nothing but kindly disposed towards the young artist: to admire her talent, and to feel curious as to her suitability for dear Nigel—in much the same way as (or so she supposed) his parents would feel, until they had come to know her better. Which was, Miss Seeton thought, perfectly natural, in an old family friend. But that beneath these outward and natural feelings should be such—such unsuspected jealousy, such spite, was—was almost wicked, and certainly worrying. Miss Seeton gazed in dismay at the sketch in front of her, the sketch which she had intended should be a preliminary draft for the cricket painting—had she not turned back through the pages on purpose to look at that earlier sketch?—but for the drawing of which she did not, she realised, remember picking up her pencil.
It was clear, however, that she had. Here was the proof before her very eyes, in black and white—and mostly black. How dreadful! That glorious golden girl, with her blonde hair and those lovely eyes—seldom had Miss Seeton encountered a pair more lovely—and her honey-coloured skin, the picture of youth and health—why, oh why, was she shown here as a dark, sinister, crooked creature, her eyes slits, her mouth twisted, her hands, those hands which had produced the pictures Miss Seeton had so admired, like grasping talons?
Miss Seeton felt faint, and dizzy. Her eyes blurred as they filled with tears. That she, who had always encouraged the development of even the most feeble talent, who had been proud if her pupils excelled their teacher, visiting exhibitions and rejoicing to find red “sold” stickers on canvases signed with names she knew well . . . that she should, unknown to herself, be so eaten up inside with envy that she could produce a drawing like this! It was horrible—frightening. To find that her innermost thoughts were not as calm and quiet as she’d believed them, that a dark side of her character which she’d never before suspected was revealing itself in all its cruel clarity . . .
She would destroy the drawing—tear it to shreds, burn it to ashes. But she knew she could never erase it from her memory—that her happiness would never again be complete, be safe. She had lost her peace of mind, most precious of possessions—and she foresaw no easy way in which it could be restored. She would try—it would be foolish, as well as self-indulgent, not to try—but she very much feared . . .
“Oh, dear—that one could be so malicious,” said Miss Seeton, with a sigh. “I can hardly believe it . . .”
“I can hardly believe it, Eric.” Mrs. Blaine was on duty at one window, Miss Nuttel at another. They took turn and g
rudging turn about, each afraid the other would spot something of great interest that her friend, if she’d stayed ten seconds longer, would have spotted first. “That Man is out in the garden again! Though it isn’t bricks this time.”
Miss Nuttel came galloping down the stairs and into the kitchen, which overlooked the rear of the admiral’s property. She had been listening to sounds of hammering emanating from inside Ararat Cottage, and craning her long neck, and holding mirrors in either hand, in order to see into the Buzzard’s downstairs windows. He was not a man for net curtains—Mrs. Blaine thought it too careless of him, lowering the tone of The Street this way; Miss Nuttel was inclined to believe it just showed how brazen he was prepared to be—but then, without net curtains it should have been possible to maintain a closer watch on the man than was in fact the case. It was evening; the sun was setting; and, as it sank through the heavens, it cast a fiery light over all below—including the walls and windows of buildings in The Street. Walls and windows which gave off reflective gleams that dazzled the eyes, and shone on Ararat Cottage, and rendered its interior invisible to an exterior observer.
And so Miss Nuttel galloped down the stairs to take her place at Bunny’s side, peering out into the admiral’s garden and seeing him walk over, carrying a strange timber contraption, to a place beneath an apple tree where, earlier, he had been observed setting out bricks and paving stones in a series of rectangular areas. Mrs. Blaine, convinced he must have been digging there without her knowledge, opined that these paved areas were covered graves; Miss Nuttel, whose ears—she maintained—were sharper than Bunny’s, insisted he hadn’t, and they weren’t. What they were, however, she had no idea.
And she still had no idea, even as she watched the admiral set on each of his prepared paved areas one of the timber frames on which, she realised, he had been working as he hammered. Having placed the first frame fair and square in the centre of the rectangle, he went back indoors to fetch another—then another. In all, there were four.
“Oh, Eric,” bleated Mrs. Blaine. “More signals—it must be! But who is he signalling to, from the back of the house like this, where nobody can see? It’s positively too sinister! Do you suppose”—with a fearful look at the darkling sky—“he’s signalling to, well, to people . . . flying?”
Her horrified shudder was followed by one equally horrified from Miss Nuttel, who cast an anxious look over her shoulder in the direction of Sweetbriars, and turned pale. “Broomsticks, you mean,” she gasped; and Mrs. Blaine moaned. Miss Nuttel gulped. What other explanation could there be? Miss Seeton, they knew, was a witch: the admiral was most likely a warlock; both were too cunning to reveal their association—that party, about which Sir George had been (rumour had it) so cheerful, had been a blind; what better way of announcing their plans to the other members of the coven than by leaving the strange geometric shapes out all night, for easy visibility in the moonlight? “Move them every day or so, I expect,” said Miss Nuttel, equine teeth chattering. “Mean something different each time.”
Mrs. Blaine was on the point of moaning again, but stopped. A sound from the front of the house had caught her attention. “Voices!” hissed Miss Nuttel, who’d heard them first. “Must have come in the lorry! Heard it drive up not two minutes ago—didn’t realise it was coming here.”
Bunny looked at Eric, eyes wide with fright. “The other warlocks—oh, it’s too terrible! How many of them can you see? The admiral must have been expecting them—look!”
For Buzzard Leighton was walking away from his mysterious brick-and-timber signals towards the approaching voices, with a smile on as much of his face as could be seen behind the ginger beard, and his hand outstretched in welcome to the newcomers.
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THE WINDOWS OF Lilikot, though open, were still too far from the admiral and his guests for either of the Nuts to be able to hear what was being said; and the dusk was coming on too swiftly for them to be able to see exactly what was being done. There are no streetlights in Plummergen; the moon had not yet risen; the sun had disappeared behind a bank of low, looming cloud. The mysterious and heavy shapes carried by the admiral and his fellow warlocks from the lorry parked outside, down the front path, round the side of Ararat Cottage, and across to the sinister brick-and-paving rectangles, were shrouded in shadows. The Nuts, desperate to discover the mystery and what was proposed for these, its manifestations, were beside themselves. Miss Nuttel insisted that the shapes gave off a low, regular humming, as if four small generators were being installed in the admiral’s garden: Mrs. Blaine said she heard no humming, but, if she had, it would obviously mean yet another manifestation of Occult Powers, since neither she nor Miss Nuttel had observed any wires or electric cables running from those squat, square shapes, had they?
Miss Nuttel was forced to agree that they had not; and the watch was resumed. But, after delivery of the fourth humming—or possibly not—heavy shape, the warlocks from the lorry vanished, at the breezily audible invitation of the admiral, indoors: there, no doubt—as Mrs. Blaine reminded Miss Nuttel—to drink their dread potions and conjure up who knew what horrors from the Other Side.
But Miss Nuttel was more interested in the Other Side of the fence. In the Lilikot menage, she played the more practical part: Bunny attended to the house, Eric to the garden and the various odd jobs about the establishment Mrs. Blaine found too difficult—changing fuses, climbing ladders, putting up shelves. That hammering, and now the low humming, bothered Miss Nuttel. Her curiosity, always acute, had been all the more pricked in that she was starting to suspect—though she had no idea what had made her change her mind—that, on this occasion, there might be a rational explanation for everything. If, for example, the admiral should turn out to be a Brilliant Inventor, who had secretly perfected a method for cheap, do-it-yourself electricity . . .
“Oh, Eric,” begged Mrs. Blaine, “don’t you see, that’s just how they work! Trying to corrupt you—too despicable, pandering to one’s baser instincts—money, I mean,” as Miss Nuttel turned an astonished look upon her. “And money,” Mrs. Blaine misquoted in ominous tones, “is the root of all evil. Besides, if the admiral really has done anything like that, doesn’t it only go to prove he’s a Mad Scientist? And we all know—” in even more ominous tones—“about them.” The Nuts seldom went to the cinema, regarding the silver screen and its artificialities as seductions from the simple life: but, on one occasion when they’d been caught in torrential rain while shopping in Brettenden, and Mrs. Blaine had complained of burgeoning bronchitis, they had abandoned their principles for the shelter of the Picture Palace, which was then showing a rerun of Dr. Strangelove. They had not stopped to read the poster in detail, and thus missed the film’s subtitle or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. They emerged from the cinema emotionally exhausted, and brewed their herbal teas at double strength for a fortnight afterwards.
“Hadn’t thought of that,” acknowledged Miss Nuttel, with a frown. “All the same—while he’s busy indoors . . .”
“You’re not to go alone, Eric,” Mrs. Blaine said bravely. “Just let me fetch my bundle of herbs from the kitchen, and that copy of Ghosts and Go-Betweens we bought when Brettenden Library had a clear-out . . .”
Five minutes later, well to the rear, Mrs. Blaine stood watching as Miss Nuttel, balanced on the small stepladder, leaned over the admiral’s fence and shone a torch in the direction of those four humming generators beneath the apple tree. Under her breath, Bunny mumbled prayers, clutching the witch-herbs to her ample bosom and ready to run for her life if the door of Ararat cottage opened and the admiral—chief warlock? crazed inventor?—appeared. Under the moonless sky, stars casting pale and glittering light, the world had a truly unearthly look, and almost anything was believable. Panic clutched Mrs. Blaine’s heart as an owl swooped, hooting, overhead. Her terrified eyes followed the beam of Miss Nuttel’s torch as it stabbed, a sword of righteousness, into the blackness of the sinful nig
ht, over the other side of the admiral’s fence.
And then Miss Nuttel, with a sudden exclamation, leaned forward—the torch wobbled in her hand—the owl, a ghostly gliding form in the night, swooped again. The warlock’s familiar! Mrs. Blaine let out a squeak as the torch waved wildly and Miss Nuttel staggered backwards—flung up her arms—dropped the torch on her toes—tumbled off the ladder to the flower bed below.
All thoughts of a Mad Scientist vanished entirely from the mind of Mrs. Blaine. “Oh, Eric,” she moaned, as the form in the flower bed uttered a curse, groping for the torch—the light had gone out. Sinister powers? “Oh, Eric!”
“Bulb smashed,” announced Miss Nuttel, scrambling to her feet. “Never mind—saw all I needed.” And she began to head back towards the house, dusting herself down as she did so. Mrs. Blaine, after a few stunned moments, collected her scattered wits and scuttled after her.
“You could see? Before it all went dark—you saw what it was?” Miss Nuttel grunted an affirmative as she flung open the kitchen door and stalked inside.
“Then—oh, Eric, it’s too cruel of you to keep me in suspense!” Mrs. Blaine reached the kitchen, panting, and slammed the door shut behind her. “Eric, tell me—what did you see in the admiral’s garden?”
In Ashford police station, three mornings later, Detective Constable Foxon was at work bright and early, sticking coloured pins into the wall map which loomed over the desk of Superintendent Brinton. Foxon whistled to himself as he worked, enjoying the patterns produced by the arrangement of rainbow shades. He might, he reflected, try to find, or to coax his mother to make him, a tie with markings like these. It would give his appearance a touch of—
Miss Seeton Goes to Bat (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 14) Page 10
