“And what was happening was Miss Seeton brandishing that damned brolly of hers and having ’em all think she’d just hopped over the wall from Colney Hatch. Poached eggs,” said Borden, a quiver in his voice. “Why that woman doesn’t end up in the loony bin, I’ll never know . . .”
“But if she hadn’t been brandishing it, remember, the crowd wouldn’t have been concentrated near her—they’d have been all over the place along the road, and when the crane fell some of them could have been seriously hurt. Top marks to MissEss for foresight, I think.” Delphick fixed Borden with so stem a gaze that the inspector failed to notice the logical flaw in this chain of reasoning, and nodded meekly. Delphick hid a smile. “And bonus points, of course, for her having uncovered the coiners’ den for you . . .”
“And none of them was badly hurt, either.” Borden shook a marvelling head.“Miracle is about the size of it, Oracle—which I reckon’s about par for the course, where MissEss is concerned. Rabbits out of hats every blessed time—it’s just a pity she leaves everybody’s nerves in shreds afterwards—”
“Miss Seeton,” Delphick reminded him sharply, “has suffered as much as anyone in all this, remember. That falling crane missed her as narrowly as it missed the other people in the road, and brick dust is no respecter of persons. Her hat and coat, she informed me, will never be the same again. I have told her,” he added hastily, before Borden could make the obvious retort, “to indent for any cleaning costs and repairs as necessary, and that Fraud will be only too happy to pay. She must, I’m sure you will agree, be considered as having been on duty at the time of the, er, occurrence—albeit unofficially.” Borden, once more transfixed by the Oracle’s menacing eye, nodded again. “Though I believe,” said Delphick, in an attempt to lighten the mood, “she would prefer payment to be by cheque rather than in coin of the realm—just in case.”
Borden managed another grin. “There won’t be any more snide from that particular source, true—and I’ll admit we have Miss Seeton to thank for it—but there’s still what’s already gone into circulation to worry about, though now the whole boiling lot’s ready to sing like canaries—and I love the way they’re all blaming one another for bumping off that poor devil who made the dies—it shouldn’t be long before we know their distribution route. And once we know it, we can block it.” He balanced another lump of sugar on the end of his spoon, dipping it into his by now cooling tea, watching it change from crystalline white to mushy brown. The sight soothed him. He looked at Delphick, and grinned.
“Did I say a medal? If the Black Museum boys collar the coiner equipment after the trial, I’ll have ’em run off a Seeton Star, with a gold-plated citation for having unearthed a gang so incompetent, apart from coining, they never had the sense to lose the murder weapon after wasting that die-caster chummie. For services rendered, with grateful thanks—and one for yourself as well, for having coped with her when I couldn’t.” Borden regarded his colleague with an odd expression. “I’d hate to worry you, Oracle, but it’s just struck me. If MissEss is as off-beam as everyone knows she is—which she is—then anyone who’s even slightly on the same wavelength as her’s got to be off-beam as well, haven’t they? And as you and Bob Ranger are the only ones—”
He broke off, and blinked. “Yes—Ranger. Where’s your gigantic sidekick this evening, Oracle? In hiding?”
“In Plummergen.” Delphick smiled at the dawning look of horror on the inspector’s face. “No, he’s not psychic, he’s on holiday. A long weekend with his in-laws, starting last night—he and Anne drove down after work. Fortunately, I was able to get hold of him at the nursing home and explain what had happened—some of it, anyway.” He smiled again. “I’d be surprised if any one individual will ever make sense of everything that went on today—but Bob understood enough to know he’d better meet MissEss from the train and escort her home via the Knights’ so the doctor could take a look at her, just in case. Anne’s father, you may recall, was one of London’s leading neurologists before retiring through ill health. Miss Seeton, remember, did have rather a nasty shock this afternoon, and I’d value Dr. Knight’s opinion of her mental and emotional state more highly than any of the Casualty doctors in Town—not that they aren’t a fine body of medicos (if that isn’t”—and Delphick smirked—“too grim a collective term for doctors), but they don’t know our MissEss of old, and Dr. Knight does. He’ll check that everything’s as it should be . . .”
Delphick drifted into a brooding silence, watched by a brighteyed Borden who said, after a pause: “But everything isn’t as it should be, is it? What’ve you heard that’s got you hot and bothered, Oracle?”
“It may be nothing. I hope it is.”
“I bet it’s not, if Miss Seeton’s anything to do with it—and you said Plummergen, so she must be.” The inspector chuckled. “Fair exchange, Oracle—I’ve been bending your ear for the last I-don’t-know-how-many hours, and you’ve put up with it like a regular Trojan. Fancy a swap?”
Delphick emitted a faint sigh. “I think not, thanks—there’s such a thing as tempting Fate. Which is probably why Bob mentioned it in the first place, of course,” he added, half to himself. “As an insurance policy—making sure it doesn’t happen after all”—he frowned—“whatever it might be—though, goodness knows, I don’t see how she can get up to anything too outrageous at a cricket match, even if the team’s star bowler has been . . .” A thoughtful pause; then a smile suddenly brightened his face. “However, nil desperandum, Borden—things may not be as bad as at first they appear. Bob suggests I should pop down to Plummergen for the weekend to watch, and I believe I shall. If Miss Seeton’s on top form, I would really hate to miss all the excitement . . .”
Superintendent Brinton barged in through the double swing doors of Ashford police station and nodded a greeting to the officer on the desk. He was about to continue his breezy way down the corridor to his office when something made him halt in his tracks and stare hard at Sergeant Mutford. What was different about the man, for heaven’s sake?
“Mutford, you’re smiling!”
“Am I, sir? Sorry.”
Brinton’s eyes narrowed. “Mutford, you’re not. Neither sorry, nor—on reflection—smiling. Smirking would be a better word for it, Mutford—and I don’t like it. It makes me nervous to have you grin at me the moment I walk into the place. The last time I saw you look so cheerful . . .”
There was a furious pause. Mutford cleared his throat deferentially. “Yes, sir?”
Brinton goggled at him. “I’ve never seen you look this cheerful before, Mutford—never, in all the years you’ve been stationed here!” He glanced at the clock on the wall above the desk. “The pubs shut hours ago, so that can’t be the reason—”
“Sir!” Desk Sergeant Mutford drew himself to his full height and frowned in a way that, in anyone less obviously determined to remain deferential, might have been better described as an insubordinate glare. “I’m a member of the Holdfast Brethren, sir. Strictly teetotal, we are, as you ought to know, and the demon drink is anathema to us, sir.” Mutford raised his eyes in pious invocation. “Drunkenness, sir, as Jeremy Taylor says in Holy Living, is an immoderate affection and use of drink; and Proverbs, Chapter Twenty—”
“I didn’t ask for a temperance lecture, Mutford, I asked why you were grinning in that ridiculous way!”
The sergeant primmed his mouth. “Strictly speaking, sir—holding fast to the literal truth, as you might say—you didn’t in fact ask me—”
“Shuttup, Mutford!”
The desk sergeant lowered his eyes and fell silent; but a keen observer would have observed the corners of his mouth twitch.
Brinton was a superintendent. Superintendents do not achieve such rank if they are unobservant. “You’ve got ten seconds, Mutford, before I put you on a charge—or on market day traffic duty for the next six months, if you’d rather. The choice is yours, and you’d better make it quickly. Stop playing silly bees with me, or—”
B
ut he didn’t need to start timing ten seconds by the wall clock, as Mutford—who’d been longing to tell him anyway—cleared his throat, raised his eyes again, and drew the Occurrence Book towards him, turning to the section in which Official Business was recorded. The smirk hovered very close as he read, in his best pulpit tones:
“Report from Police Constable . . . Potter, sir”—and the pause was infinitesimal—“received this afternoon at—”
“No!” Brinton leaped for the book, snatched it from the sergeant’s hands, and slammed it shut, breathing hard. Mutford gave vent to a sigh that embodied sympathy, tolerance, and understanding—so much of it that his tormented superior uttered a heartfelt groan, swore once at him, and stamped away in the direction of his office without another word.
He flung open the door with such force that his nameplate fell off, but he ignored its clatter—and the crack, when he trod on it—as he stood on the threshold glaring at the long-haired young man who sat with his arms folded, his eyes closed, and his shoulders gently shaking, behind a desk piled high with paperwork. One item of which was clearly, to the superintendent’s wrathful gaze, the report from Plummergen’s own PC Potter which—Brinton greatly feared—contained something he would far rather not know.
He took a deep breath, gritted his teeth, breathed out, and walked across to his desk without a word. Detective Constable Foxon, meanwhile, had opened his eyes and clambered to his feet. “Sir?”
Brinton ignored him, pulling out his chair and sitting down at his desk as wordlessly as he’d entered his office. He looked at Foxon, and waved a hand towards the visitors’ chair. Foxon, startled, hurried to sit down. Still Brinton did not speak. “Sir?” ventured Foxon, who hadn’t seen his chief like this before. “Sir?”
“Foxon?” said Brinton at last, mimicking the young detective’s tones. Foxon looked at him, then leaned forward as if by accident and breathed in carefully. Brinton’s fist slammed down on the desk, missing his nose by an inch.
“I’m not drunk, laddie—I’m desperate! I’d been crazy enough to hope it was just Mutford winding me up, but I knew the moment I saw you he wasn’t—and now I’ve got to know, even if it drives me completely round the bend. Tell me the worst, Foxon. What has Miss Seeton been doing?”
chapter
∼ 17 ∼
“I’VE NO IDEA, sir.” Foxon gazed at his chief with a wide-eyed innocence that could—just—have been genuine. “Were you expecting her to have, er, done something? If you’re interested, we could always tele—”
“Shuttup, Foxon!” Foxon shut up. “And let me see that report, laddie—now!”
Foxon pushed back his chair and went to retrieve the report over which he’d been chuckling; and returned, head hung low, discreetly tiptoeing, to the superintendent’s desk. “Excuse me, sir, but is it in order,” he enquired in hushed tones, “for me to say here you are, sir—or, er, isn’t it safe just yet?” And he ducked nimbly as Brinton grabbed a paperweight and hurled it at him. It missed.
Grinning, Foxon bounced back to his seat, sat down, and waited while his seething superior perused the report from Plummergen’s PC Potter. Brinton’s breathing was loud and irregular; his chest heaved with strong emotion. He uttered not one word as he read through to the end, then turned to Foxon with a dangerous light in his eye.
“What has she done that nobody’s told me about? There’s not one mention of Miss Seeton in this entire report!”
Foxon contrived to look wounded. “Well, sir, I’m sorry if you’re disappointed, but I never said there was, did I? Sir. What I did say, if you remember, was that we could always telephone . . .”
He caught Brinton’s expression, and again shut up. Some moments passed while the superintendent struggled with himself, and Foxon tried to look as if he weren’t there. In the end, Brinton said, very mildly:
“A remarkable place, Plummergen, wouldn’t you say?”
“Er—yes, sir. I suppose I would.”
“Like going there, do you, Foxon?”
“Er—it has its moments of interest, sir.”
“Such as Saturday’s cricket match?” demanded Brinton, in accents that were still very mild. Foxon blinked.
“I enjoy a good game of cricket, sir, yes.”
“Good game? Are you out of your tiny mind, laddie? Is it you and not me that’s gone crazy? That won’t be any ordinary game of cricket on Saturday, Foxon—as you and Potter and probably everyone else but me has suspected right from the start. This, laddie, will be a massacre!”
“Oh, Murreystone aren’t such a bad team, sir—I think it’ll be a reasonably even match, if—”
“Not now they’ve nobbled your star bowler—what am I saying? Your star bowler? I am going crazy!” Brinton was too despondent even to clutch at his hair as he usually did when life became too much for him. Foxon regarded him with some concern. “Have a peppermint, sir,” he suggested.
After emitting a hollow groan, Brinton picked up the report he’d flung down in the heat of the moment, and began to read selected passages aloud. “Wilful damage to a blacksmith’s portable forge . . . set of wrought-iron gates, property of Mr. and Mrs. Farmint of Glenvale House, in for repair . . . one bicycle, property of Major Matilda Howett . . .” At this, he gazed at Foxon from tormented eyes. “If it had been her bicycle, I could’ve understood it all, but . . .”
“I must plead not guilty on Miss Seeton’s behalf, sir, in her absence.”
He was ignored. The mournful litany continued. “Flood damage sustained by house next door, belonging to Miss Wicks . . . fire damage to roof of same . . . cost of supplying tow truck to Brettenden Fire Brigade . . .”
“Crabbe’s Garage,” supplied Foxon, helpfully. “Jack did it cut-price for ’em, seeing as—” He shut up again.
“Injuries sustained: one broken arm, two cases of shock, assorted cracked ribs, one broken toe—and the fire-engine side panels where the horse kicked them in!”
“Jack says they can do those cut-price too, sir,” Foxon informed him brightly. Brinton had often wondered whether the young man had any rubber planters in his ancestry. But the superintendent felt too weak to glare, or to groan, or to throw anything: he had passed through the fire and come out the other side. He said at last:
“I never knew horses could get drunk.”
“No, sir, I don’t think many people do. It’s hardly the sort of thing you’d expect, is it? I mean, take your average horse. Hangs about in fields all day chomping grass, and every now and then you bung a saddle on its back and jump over fences with it—or you shove a harness round its neck and ask it to pull a cart . . . Pretty big, those Shires, sir. Can weigh over a ton, so I’m told.”
Brinton said nothing. Foxon gazed at the ceiling. “You have to hand it to ’em, sir—Murreystone, I mean. Think of how much planning must’ve gone into the idea—the hundreds of apples they had to collect to have enough ferment for the horse to eat and get tiddly on . . .”
Still Brinton said nothing, though his look was eloquent—as was Foxon’s tongue, as he warmed to his theme. “It was clever, sir, you must admit. Dan Eggleden’s a big, tough bloke—there’s an awful lot of power behind those balls he pitches down—and if they’d tried to nobble him in what you might call an ordinary way, sir, he’d have smashed ’em to a pulp. Whereas . . .” Foxon chortled. “Whereas the only pulp around was from the fermented apples, sir, and all of them were inside the horse . . .”
“No wonder Mutford was reading me the riot act about the demon drink,” muttered Brinton. “And goodness only knows why the fool thought it was amusing—those Brethren have a damned peculiar sense of humour, if you ask me.”
“They’d be shocked to hear such strong language, sir—”
“Hard bloody cheese!” Brinton thumped his fist on the desk, scattering papers. “It’s a miracle I don’t say something a good deal stronger, in the circumstances. You’ve asked for the day off on Saturday, haven’t you? To go to this horrible cricket match where Lord knows what
is likely to happen, after this little effort . . . but I suppose,” he added thoughtfully, “they may well rope you into the team, now they’re a man short. Which means the Murreystone bowler might use your fat head for target practice—which would save me a lot of future heartache, Foxon. I think,” Brinton announced to his startled subordinate, “I’m taking Saturday off as well, laddie—the afternoon, anyway. If there’s any excitement due, I don’t want to miss it.”
Foxon shot him a wary look. “As a matter of fact, sir, Plummergen already have a twelfth man—two, if it comes to that. They sort of take it in turns at the tail, sir—a bloke called Scillicough, and another called Newport. So Potter tells me. Their wives are sisters, and they’ve got seven kids between the pair of ’em, Potter says. I’m surprised either of them’s got enough energy left for crick—”
“Foxon!”
“Sorry, sir.” Foxon shot him another wary look. “You, er, serious about Saturday, sir?”
The superintendent sighed. “Ever heard about the sheep and the lamb, laddie? If things really are going to go over the top—which my instincts tell me they are—then I may as well be on the spot when they do. Otherwise, it’d be just my luck to break my neck crashing the car haring over to Plummergen when the balloon goes up . . .” Inspector Borden’s ex-Marine sergeant was not the only policeman to whose mind the images of battle seemed eminently suitable.
Foxon nodded. “Of course, sir, I understand. Er—any chance of a lift?”
“Don’t push your luck, laddie. Neither of us is going anywhere if there’s an emergency—or if the paperwork’s not up-to-date,” he added, surveying the chaos on his desk with some dismay. “I suppose we’d better get on with the rest of it—I’m sure Potter’s report wasn’t the only one that came in while I was out, was it?”
“No, sir.” Foxon was all seriousness at once. “There’s been another burglary outbreak, sir . . .”
Miss Seeton Goes to Bat (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 14) Page 14
