Miss Seeton Goes to Bat (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 14)

by Hamilton Crane

  “A force for evil?” Delphick regarded her closely. “It does appear that such was your view of her, from this.” And he showed Brinton the sketch of Miss Annabelle Leigh, dark and sinister and crooked, her eyes slits, her hands grasping talons. “Recogniseable, and revealing,” Delphick said, as his friend first goggled, then stared at the portrait while the artist blushed, knotting her fingers in distress.

  “I feared . . . so unworthy—so unkind,” murmured Miss Seeton, all the old misery returning. “To be so envious of a greater talent—of youth, and beauty . . . when one had always supposed that a teacher’s greatest wish would be to see one’s pupils excel . . .”

  Delphick recalled being introduced by Miss Seeton to Miss Leigh—who had seemed, he now realized, rather more uneasy at the constabulary status of the little spinster’s companions that anyone with a clear conscience ought to have been . . . Miss Seeton, in her introduction, had mentioned the younger woman’s artistic abilities: and here, on the page of the older woman’s sketchbook, Miss Leigh had been portrayed with the full paraphernalia: easel, paints, sketching block. Yes, he could understand how Miss Seeton might suppose this drawing to suggest her own jealously: in a lesser character, such could indeed have been the case . . .

  But in this case, no. There was nothing petty or mean about Miss Emily Dorothea Seeton: he was shocked to realise how miserable she’d been making herself since she’d drawn this portrait. He addressed her kindly, but firmly.

  “Please, Miss Seeton, don’t torment yourself any longer. Miss Leigh is no doubt a skilled artist—but she really should apply her skills to a more honourable cause. After all, someone has been telling the burglars where to go, and the best times to burgle, and the easiest routes in and out of the houses . . . and what better method than for an artist to sketch these houses, and make detailed notes? Nigel Colveden was telling me at tea all about his latest young lady and her self-styled journeyman artistry . . .”

  There was a long pause, during which Brinton exclaimed again that he’d be blowed; and during which Miss Seeton’s fingers slowly unravelled themselves, and her eyes lost their look of distress. She said at last:

  “If Miss Leigh has indeed been advising these . . . these criminals where they might most easily commit their crimes, then that is truly shocking. She must be stopped at once, Mr. Delphick—but oh, dear. Poor Nigel. He seemed so very taken with her, you know, although one might venture to hope that Lady Colveden . . .” She blushed again, though with far less anguish than before, and murmured of respecting confidences, particularly when they were no more than the merest impressions.

  “A mother’s instinct, no doubt,” said Delphick gravely. “And an artist’s,” with a bow for Miss Seeton. “Feminine intuition comes in many guises—though I must wave the flag for my own sex, and say that I doubt if Miss Leigh would have fooled anyone for long, if she’d remained in the village. Even Nigel, who’s so prone to fall in love . . . but this is no time for speculation. As far as we know, Miss Leigh won’t have let on, when her confederates were being pursued, that they were anything to do with herself. She’ll be anxious to maintain her innocent persona until she can make her escape from the area undetected, and with so many cars blocking the road . . .” He cleared his throat and continued:

  “And with so many people wandering about, I don’t imagine she’d be able to do a bunk just yet—if, indeed, she even knows what’s happened. Sir George was adamant, I could hardly help noticing, about letting none of the fair sex on the bus—and might I guess that Anne and the others were trying to tell us that as you, Miss Seeton, were already on board, they didn’t see why they should not be permitted to join in the fun?”

  Miss Seeton, thinking things over, agreed that this was doubtless the case, although it had been a great surprise to her when so many of her friends had crowded so quickly into the bus, and dear Jack Crabbe’s father had driven it out of the cricket field before she could explain that she didn’t really want to go anywhere, because everyone had shouted so loudly she couldn’t make her voice heard above the noise, and in any case one had always understood that it was inadvisable to address the man at the wheel. Especially when the man wasn’t Jack Crabbe. Because his father, she feared, did not, perhaps, possess the same grasp of the rudiments of driving as his son . . .

  Without forcing the matter at all, while Miss Seeton was speaking, Delphick drained his cup of tea, nodded to his colleague to do the same, and set his plate and saucer back on the tray. A good hostess, Miss Seeton automatically followed the gentlemen’s lead. Delphick smiled at her and rose to his feet.

  “You’ve been, as ever, most kind and helpful, Miss Seeton—but now I think it’s time to put your theories to the test. Or rather”—as she began to demur—“the theories I’ve evolved, with the help of your sketches. I’d like to take the book with me, if I may.” He glanced towards Brinton. “By the sound of things, Potter and the others must be well on the way to clearing up outside—the tow truck’s gone up and down The Street at least three times while we’ve been talking. I think we’ll, er, risk it now.”

  Brinton shrugged. “May as well see the thing through to the bitter end.” He cast a wary look at Miss Seeton, who was picking up the tea tray while Delphick’s attention was diverted. She smiled before either man could speak.

  “I believe that, just this once, one may be excused poor housekeeping, although I am not altogether sure she would agree—but I appreciate that it must be a matter of some urgency. Going back, I mean, to apprehend her. She takes excellent care of me, and is so particular—but if she has no idea I intend leaving them to soak while I accompany you, there can be no cause for concern. The young woman, I mean. Dear Martha—and then, there is her chair, and my sketchbook.” She sighed. “He will be sadly disappointed, I fear, though there can be no question that it is the right thing to do—as he will realise, of course, and more so because of his father. Poor Nigel. A Justice of the Peace . . .”

  Her words, as they so often did, had left Brinton floundering, but Delphick was better able to work out what she was saying, and assured her that they understood perfectly, and would wait while she carried the tray into the kitchen so that they might escort her back up The Street to the cricket ground, where she could collect both her sketchbook, and Lady Colveden’s chair.

  “You might even get to sit in it again.” He checked his watch. “They must have lost a good hour’s play with all the commotion, and if half the players are still off the field taking statements and towing wrecks, the match can hardly have started without them, even though it’s not very likely they’d be needed. Once Bob gets going, it shouldn’t take him long to knock up three runs . . .

  “Well, they may have started, but I don’t believe they can have finished yet,” he went on as, Miss Seeton having duly carried her tray and locked her front door, the three were hurrying down her front path. “It’s too quiet in the pub—I’m sure most of Plummergen would be in there celebrating by now, if it was all over.”

  There were indeed no signs—or sounds—of life in the George and Dragon just across The Street. There were also no signs of life along The Street, apart from Jack Crabbe, busy attaching yet another of the wrecked cars to his tow-truck. As Delphick and his party passed the wicket-keeper, he gave them a cheerful wave.

  “Don’t reckon they’ll need me to bat, do you? Three to make, and young Bob doing well—shouldn’t take long. Be a fine old night in the George once we’ve won.”

  “And night, indeed, draws on,” murmured Delphick, as the three made their way towards the cricket ground. “It’s well past six—Potter and however many of the others went should by now be back from the police station with a selection of crooks safely kicking their heels in the cells. Statements, where appropriate, will have been taken, and solicitors notified—I wonder if any of them has mentioned Miss Annabelle Leigh.” He quickened his pace. “A pseudonym, one imagines. For a while, I wondered whether the similarity of the admiral’s surname might not su
ggest . . . but I have every faith in your judgment, Miss Seeton.”

  Miss Seeton uttered a little squeak of protest, but he ignored it, and smiled at her. “Every faith,” he repeated firmly. “I feel sure that, when we compare your impression of Miss Leigh, which I have here, to that of the admiral in the sketchbook we must retrieve before anything else, we’ll find no reason to dispute my conclusions. She will be questioned thoroughly, of course, and given every chance to explain, but I fancy that our journeyman artist has journeyed her last, and drawn her final picture for some considerable time.”

  “Oh, dear,” said Miss Seeton, as they neared the cricket ground; and then, as they heard the murmur of male voices, “Oh, good. Surely they cannot have resumed play, if they are all talking? So distracting. Which means I will be able to do some more sketches, particularly if dear Sergeant Ranger is about to score the winning goal—I mean, wicket. I mean, runs,” with a blush for her confusion, which was understandable, if not excusable. One hadn’t cared to think of that glorious young creature being sent to prison, losing the freedom of body and spirit so necessary for the development of the artist: but there was no doubt, or so it seemed, that she had behaved badly, to say the very least. Dear Mr. Delphick was so knowledgeable—so seldom wrong about such matters . . . And Miss Seeton sighed.

  Brinton, too, sighed; the thought of spending the rest of his nominal day off interviewing burglars and arranging bail, instead of enjoying a jar or two with his friends in the pub, had depressed him. Then, suddenly, he perked up.

  “Anyway, it’s bound to have put a stop to all that daft village feuding, and a good thing too. No more dirty tricks—you can’t be on the same side as a bloke when you’re chasing burglars together and then not have a nice friendly chat with him the next time you see him, can you?” He added yet another tick to Miss Seeton’s credit on his mental scoreboard: three hundred years of hostilities, ended with just a couple of waves from her umbrella. Amazing.

  Delphick, who’d been listening to the cricket-ground murmurs, said, “I wonder. They don’t sound quite as friendly as I would have expected, in the circumstances. Anyone would think they were about to start fighting one another, rather than play a game of cricket.” And he lengthened his stride, oblivious to the pattering feet of Miss Seeton as she hurried to keep up with him, oblivious to Brinton’s laboured breathing. The aural evidence of escalating strife obliterated all else . . .

  They turned in through the gateway and saw a crowd of angry, white-flannelled men gesticulating and arguing in the immediate neighbourhood of the pavilion. A crowd of interested spectators—among whom, Delphick was relieved to note, Annabelle Leigh was numbered—stood watching, listening, and from time to time moving to join in. There were raised voices; and shouts; and gestures, varying in intensity and meaning. Tempers, it seemed, were growing short.

  “Plummergen against Murreystone,” deduced Delphick, with a quick look at the faces of the combatants. “But what in heaven’s name can they be squabbling about now? I’d have thought you were right, Chris—that they’d finally made it up—but this looks more like civil war than the original!”

  “Sounds like it, too,” growled Brinton, glaring about him for Foxon, Potter, or anyone else who could be trusted to explain. “Sir George doesn’t look too happy, either. You’d expect the umpires to stay neutral.”

  “I think,” ventured Miss Seeton, “that it is the Murreystone umpire with whom Sir George appears to be vexed. He has, you know, a most expressive face—Sir George, that is, and not just because it is rather flushed, at present. And a vocabulary,” she added, with a twinkle, “to match, in moments of stress, which I believe we must consider this to—”

  Her last words were drowned out in one final explosion of wrath from Sir George, followed by a roar of approval from Plummergen. Murreystone yelled back, and tried to move away—possibly in order to end the argument. Plummergen hands caught at Murreystone sleeves. Loud voices grew even louder.

  Very Young Crabbe erupted from the throng and made his scuttling escape, unnoticed by Murreystone. He glanced back at the pavilion, hesitated, and continued to run in the opposite direction:

  Directly into the paths of Delphick, Brinton, and an astonished Miss Seeton.

  “Hold hard, Crabbe!” Delphick put out a hand. “What’s the big hurry?”

  “They Murreystone buggers,” explained Very Young Crabbe, panting. “Want me to drive ’em back on the coach, they do—soon as they saw me, that was it. Stumps to be drawn at six sharp as previously agreed, and never mind streakers having punch-ups in the pavilion, or burglars being chased by bus, or cars getting smashed up and down The Street. I might’ve known as Jack’d be the canny one, taking all they wrecks to the garage and leaving me—hell’s bells, they’ve seen I’ve gone! Well, now I’m going!”

  And, brandishing a set of keys in his hand, he fled.

  “Well!” Brinton glared at the onrush of Murreystone as it came running towards him, and folded his arms. “Of all the dirty tricks—stop! All of you—not one step nearer!”

  Murreystone stopped, recognising Wrath in the personage of a superintendent of police. Bob Ranger, though a mere sergeant, came thundering to stand at Brinton’s side; Delphick, familiar to some as a Scotland Yard man, stood grimly by his colleague surveying the insurgents as Sir George and Admiral Leighton hurried to support the forces of law and order.

  “Stand right where you are!” bellowed Brinton, rejoicing in the chance to release some of the blood pressure he’d had to hold in check for most of the afternoon. “That bus goes nowhere until the innings is over—stumps or no stumps! So get back to your places, you horrible shower, or I’ll have the lot of you nicked for obstruction!”

  Bob scored the necessary three runs off the second ball of the over, which he smote mightily, for six.

  Very Young Crabbe was coaxed out of hiding to drive the losing team back to Murreystone, with Bob assisting Potter and Foxon—who’d come back from Ashford just in time to see the end of the match—to ride shotgun. The bus returned to Plummergen in safety, and they trooped off to join their friends in the George and Dragon.

  Miss Seeton, whose tender heart was troubled for Nigel, had accepted Lady Colveden’s kind invitation to supper and was trying to take the young man’s mind off his woes by asking him exactly what all the fuss had been about. Nigel, who’d been depressed to learn what a poor judge of character he was, decided he must cultivate discrimination, and wisdom, and fair-mindedness from now on: and this would be as good a time as any to begin.

  “Murreystone,” he said grimly, “are a load of double-crossing, narrow-minded, two-faced cheats!”

  “Nigel,” warned his mother, spooning vegetables. Nigel shrugged, and sighed.

  “Oh, well. You can’t blame them, I suppose, though I’d be sorry if I thought I’d play the same sort of trick in a similar situation. Not the way you and Dad brought me up.” He glanced towards the top of the table, and the empty seat where his father usually sat. But Sir George, with his new friend Admiral Leighton, hero of the match, was, like most of Plummergen’s menfolk, in the pub. Young Mr. Colveden somehow hadn’t felt like joining them.

  “Murreystone just weren’t playing the game, Miss Seeton. Downright sneaky of the beggars, when you remember it was because of Plummergen all their things weren’t pinched from the pavilion—well, mostly it was.” For the first time since the truth about Annabelle Leigh had been made known, Nigel managed a faint grin. “I suppose you could argue that if their idiot streaker hadn’t been so slow to get dressed that the burglars bumped into him, they might just have got away with it—but he was, and they did. And they didn’t, thanks to Bob raising the alarm”—he grinned again, rather more cheerfully—“and leading Plummergen to the rescue—but catch Murreystone admitting it! They insisted on sticking to the original agreement, you see—stumps to be drawn at six o’clock, and no argument. Which would have meant Bob wouldn’t have had his chance to score the winning runs . . .”
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br />   But, thanks to Superintendent Brinton and the others, they had; and he had. Which is why everyone was drinking his health just half a mile down the Road, in the George and Dragon. Nigel didn’t bear a grudge for having been run out: these things happened. Good for Bob—he was a decent chap.

  A lucky one, too, with a wife like Anne . . .

  And maybe other people could be lucky, in the end. One woman might have pulled the wool over his eyes—the utter cheek of leaving that Anyone’s article in her bicycle pannier for him to find—her strange response when she found out his father was a magistrate (he could kick himself for not having wondered why) . . . but that didn’t mean they were all like the same, did it? Everyone was different . . .

  Nigel glanced at his mother, then at Miss Seeton, and found himself smiling. Women didn’t come much more different than those two. He spooned more potatoes and began to chuckle.

  “If you wanted to, Miss Seeton, I suppose you could say the way they tried to behave simply wasn’t cricket . . .”

  And, as his audience chuckled with him, he began to wonder whether it would seem terribly rude if, once supper was over, he nipped off down to the George, and his friends, and a few pints, instead of staying at home for coffee.

  Note from the Publisher

  While he was alive, series creator Heron Carvic had tremendous fun imagining Emily Seeton and the supporting cast of characters.

  In an enjoyable 1977 essay Carvic recalled how, after having first used her in a short story, “Miss Seeton upped and demanded a book”—and that if “she wanted to satirize detective novels in general and elderly lady detectives in particular, he would let her have her head . . .”