“You can arrest this woman,” the “nephew” said, breaking into the sergeant’s thoughts with startling clarity. The sergeant’s jaw dropped. “And don’t call her ’madam’—she’s no more a lady than I am! This woman is a common thief!”
And while the station sergeant continued to gape, poor Miss Seeton could only stand, dumbstruck, shaking her head in attempted denial over and over again.
chapter
~4~
AT HIS DESK in the office of Chief Superintendent Delphick, in New Scotland Yard, sat Detective Sergeant Bob Ranger. Every few minutes he raised his head from his work to look across at the wall clock above the filing cabinet, evidently increasingly surprised at the passage of time. Not like his chief to be late when there was a big case going on—though possibly, Bob reflected with a grin, it had dawned on the Oracle that if he made sure to arrive after his sergeant, it would mean Bob would be lumbered with breaking the back of the paperwork. You didn’t reach chief super’s rank without picking up a few tips on the way.
It was a beautiful day, too, though that didn’t mean the Oracle would be skiving off anywhere. Conscientious as they came, that was Chief Superintendent Delphick—but he might, Bob supposed, just this once have got a touch of late spring fever—very late, seeing this was the beginning of July. And what a July! Through the half-open window the sound of cooing, from the pigeons that roosted on the sill, drifted in on the gentle breeze which blew fleecy white clouds across the sun-sparkling sky. He couldn’t remember the last time it had rained. Far below, the mighty roar of London’s traffic was a muted background to birdsong and the occasional rustle as Bob turned over another sheet of paper.
He came to the end of his selection of reports, slammed the last folder shut, and looked at the clock again. He’d come in earlier than usual, of course, but even so it was on the late side for the Oracle to arrive. Should he ring him at home, in case there was trouble? Or maybe the clock was wrong. Bob checked his watch. It wasn’t.
Pushing back his chair, Bob rose from his desk, took up the pile of reports on which he’d been working, and was just carrying them across to set them squarely in the middle of Delphick’s blotter when he heard the sound of footsteps—fast, ill-tempered footsteps with a familiar ring to them—approaching down the corridor. He barely had time to select one report in particular, removing it from its folder to lay it, unmissably, on top of the pile on Delphick’s desk, when the door was flung open with a shuddering crash, and the clock came leaping from the wall, bounced off the filing cabinet, and exploded in several directions at once.
“Good morning, sir,” said Bob as the mainspring whizzed past his ear and fell tinkling into the visitors’ ashtray.
“Thus far, I am unable to agree with you,” retorted his superior, trampling through the shards of broken glass towards the window. “And we’ll have this shut, if you don’t mind.” With the Oracle in this mood, Bob would never dare to say he minded, and he watched in silence as the chief superintendent slammed down the sash with such force that the glass shivered in the panes. A braver man than Sergeant Ranger might have warned of seven years’ bad luck, but that, mused Bob as he twiddled the mainspring round a thoughtful finger, wasn’t windows but mirrors, anyway.
“I don’t want to hear another damned pigeon billing and cooing for the next month, Bob, understand? Or,” Delphick threatened, throwing himself down at his desk and twirling crossly round on the chair, “budgerigars, or canaries, or any of our feathered friends—not one mention, if you value my sanity.” Bob blinked, and nodded, and ventured on a grin which Delphick acknowledged with a scowl. “Birds,” muttered the chief superintendent, bringing his teetotum movement to a sudden end with a vicious stamp of his foot. “Right now I loathe every blessed one of the things.”
“Oh,” said Bob, dropping two cogs and a small flywheel thoughtfully into his metal wastepaper basket, which echoed with little piercing clangs. With the minute hand he made tracings on his blotting pad. Delphick caught his eye.
“Yes, I do. And I loathe even more being humoured with such obvious tact as you are displaying, Sergeant Ranger.”
“As you wish, sir.” Bob sent the minute hand clanging after its fellow disjecta membra and started a pointed hunt on the floor for the second hand. Delphick watched him in a thoughtful silence for a moment, then:
“I’m in a rotten mood this morning, Bob. Sorry. Aren’t you going to ask me what’s wrong?”
“I wouldn’t dare, sir.” Bob accepted the olive branch cheerfully. “I’m far too scared of experiencing even more, er, devastating results of your emotion.” He produced the second hand from beneath a chair and waved it with a grin under Delphick’s nose. The Oracle, after a moment, grinned right back at him, and they both began to laugh.
“Sorry again, Bob, but I really have been having a time of it. No excuse for losing my temper with you, I know, and I do apologise—though I cannot believe that anybody your size would ever be remotely worried by any little displays of emotion, as you so kindly put it, in which I may choose to indulge. I’m sure” —and he viewed his subordinate with a calculating eye— “that it’s more than seventeen stone now, Sergeant Ranger. Anne’s cooking has given you rather a tummy—four or five pounds heavier at least, I’d say.”
Bob sucked in his stomach and looked pained. “I don’t think so, sir. Well”—as Delphick looked at him quizzically—“perhaps a couple of pounds, but no more, surely.”
“As you please,” Delphick said, grinning wickedly as Bob eased an anxious finger round the waistband of his trousers and frowned. “And if you’ve been eating pigeon pie, then I forgive you—actively encourage you, indeed.” He cast a darkling look in the direction of the closed window, whose panes of glass had only just finished vibrating.
“It was a pigeon that delayed you, sir,” deduced Ranger, the detective. “What happened?”
“Flew into one of our upstairs windows and knocked itself out on the glass, the damfool thing—dazzled by the reflection of the sun, I suppose. Lucky not to break its neck, the way it came walloping along. And I was not at all pleased, let me tell you, when my softhearted spouse said that it ought to be taken to the vet—and even hunted out a cardboard box to put the wretched fowl in, dammit.”
There was a pause, during which Delphick ground his teeth, and Bob pondered the little he knew of his superior’s lady. Sergeants and chief superintendents not sharing the same social circle, they had met on few occasions, the last having been Bob’s wedding to Anne Knight. The day when Superintendent Brinton and his wife had collected her from Ashford railway station, because . . .
“Mrs. Delphick doesn’t drive, does she, sir?”
“She does not, as you seem to find very comical, from the way you’re grinning. I am prepared to forgive you for this lèse-majesté on one condition: find me,” begged the Oracle, “if there’s one to be had in this place, a decent cup of coffee. I need it, believe me.”
“Sounds as if you do,” agreed Bob, adding, “I’d started to wonder where you were, sir, and what had happened—not that I imagined anything like that, of course—and then the clock might have gone wrong, as well, so—”
“It has now,” his superior interrupted him with a shake of the head and a rueful smile. “The power of a righteous wrath, I suppose. Can we indent for another without having to explain exactly how this one met its, ah, untimely end?”
Bob grinned his appreciation of the little joke, pleased that the Oracle was his usual self once more. “I’ll think of something, sir. You know paperwork is what I enjoy more than anything.” The look on his face gave the lie to his solemn assurance, however, and Delphick started laughing again, his tantrum forgotten. “Oh, yes,” said Bob as he headed for the door: “Talking of paperwork, sir, on your desk—the first report—another drug incident, and no idea where the stuff’s coming from, same as usual.”
“Back to work,” Delphick said, becoming serious at once. “I’d give a lot to know how they manage it . . .”
But Bob had already vanished coffeewards. The morning could now continue as normal; which it duly did, until the sudden storm which chased Miss Seeton into the Van Meegeren Gallery threw heavy spears of rain against the windows of Delphick’s office high up on the umpteenth floor of New Scotland Yard. Whereupon he and Sergeant Ranger learned that it is inadvisable for anyone, no matter how sorely provoked, to slam windows out of temper. In came the rain through cracks which, in the sunlight’s dazzle, had not been visible before; and, as the wind howled, the thunder rumbled, and the room began to fill with a fine mist, Delphick cursed again the habits of pigeons with no directional sense, and the tenderheartedness of his wife.
At Bottle Street police station Arthur Havelock Thundridge had given his statement and was now demanding action.
“My jacket,” he insisted, “has been ruined—no amount of dry cleaning will take that stain out. I look exactly as if I’ve been stabbed in the back—just as that woman and her accomplice kept pretending while they robbed me. My wallet, stolen! All my money, my credit cards, even the keys to my briefcase—I suppose I should be thankful for the small mercy that I wasn’t carrying it with me—but now they’ll have my name and address. There will be nothing to stop them keeping watch and snatching the case when I’m not expecting them.”
“That hasn’t exactly been their style, so far, sir,” he was told, in a soothing voice. “Their regular trick is—”
“Regular?” repeated Arthur Havelock Thundridge, shocked. “Do you mean to tell me this is not the first time that this—this daylight robbery has occurred?”
“Well, sir, no, it isn’t.” The uniformed officer who’d been detailed to take Mr. Thundridge’s statement looked glum. “As a matter of fact, you’re the seventeenth this month, not to mention—”
“Seventeenth? But that’s outrageous! Has nobody done anything to put a stop to this—this racket?”
The policeman looked uncomfortable. “Well, sir, we’ve been doing our best, but it isn’t easy. They have, as you might say, been working almost to professional standards, whoever they are—”
“You know who they are. At least, you know who one of them is—that woman I brought in. When you question her, which I hope someone is doing this very minute, she’ll tell you everything you want about the others, I’m sure. Probably take you right to their hideout, if you aren’t too soft with her—don’t be fooled by that fluffy, helpless manner. Nobody can really be like that—it’s an act, and a damned good one. She fooled me, after all,” said Mr. Thundridge, frowning. “Why, the woman’s quite clever enough to be the brains behind the whole enterprise—and if that’s the case, I trust there will be due recognition, when the time comes, of the part I played in bringing her and, through her, the rest of the criminal gang to justice.”
“As to that, sir, we are indeed grateful for the help you’ve given us—”
“No more than my duty as a citizen,” replied Mr. Thundridge, preening himself. “Quite apart from the fact that I have been a victim of this—this extortion, I hope that my actions would have been the same had I witnessed another in similar circumstances.”
“Exactly so, sir. And, bearing in mind the duties of good citizenship”—he began to speak faster now, trying to get the rest of the sentence out before Mr. Thundridge interrupted him again—“it would be very much appreciated if you could spare the time to come across to Scotland Yard and have a word with the officer who’s coordinating enquiries. Look at a few photographs, that sort of thing.” He regarded Arthur Havelock with an experienced eye. Mr. Thundridge, as expected, had nothing more to say for himself; he seemed to be highly gratified by the suggestion. Once more the name of Scotland Yard had worked its familiar magic.
chapter
~5~
IN ANOTHER ROOM of Bottle Street police station, struggling politely to drink a cup of constabulary tea, Miss Seeton sat and puzzled over the events of the morning.
She had been enjoying everything so much—apart from the storm in which she had become so damp, though the unexpected visit to the Van Meegeren Gallery soon made her comfortable again—until the poor man in front of her had been . . . Miss Seeton frowned as she took another sip of tea. Who was it who had once spoken of “burnt molasses” and “stewed treacle” in this context? She very much feared that her recent series of adventures had affected her memory . . .
“No,” she murmured at last. The young woman officer who had accompanied Miss Seeton to the interview room leaned forward across the table to catch her words. “He was not stabbed—he said so.”
Official instructions had been not to press the old duck for a statement until she was ready to give one—obviously never expected to get caught, so it was bound to be a shock at her age. She was to be treated with care—and, thought Woman Police Constable Ware, you couldn’t help feeling a bit sorry for her, looking so upset, though of course it was all part of the act: whoever would have thought of this little old lady being a crook in disguise? But then, that was what made a successful crook, wasn’t it, and here was one of the best, a real pro. She’d hardly spoken a word since she’d been brought in, mostly stared and gulped a lot as if she couldn’t believe what was going on, pretending not to want any tea and taking her time over drinking it, trying to put off the moment when, like it or not, she’d start to spill the beans. And once she could be persuaded to talk, they’d soon have the rest of her pals in the bag. The Yard would be very interested to see her, no mistake about that; if she thought she’d be able to get away with saying nothing over there, she’d got another think coming. Odd, though, that she hadn’t even asked for a solicitor—it was usually the first thing they said, once they knew the game was up.
“He wasn’t stabbed,” prompted WPc Ware. Miss Seeton gave her an apologetic smile (such a foolish, if understandable, error to have made—that vivid scarlet splash), which WPc Ware interpreted as the first glimmerings of repentance, the first hint of a confession to come. “Yes?” prompted WPc Ware, then held her breath. Had she pushed the old duck too far, too fast?
Miss Seeton was grateful to this young woman—so well meant, the offer of tea, even if it was far too strong for her taste—for allowing her the release of talking through the shocking experience of the morning. Catharsis, wasn’t that the term? If she could only remember clearly what had happened, she was sure it would be of great benefit to her agitated mental state, rather in the way that, if she had been at home, some of her yoga breathing exercises would have helped to settle her thoughts. But she was still too shaken even to contemplate any of the exercises. Every time she tried closing her eyes, she had seen again that—horrid—sight . . .
“It really did look like blood, you know—so startling, and everyone passing by in ignorance of the poor man’s suffering—not that he was, of course, and indeed, that was what he said, but then the other man”—and she frowned—“said it was the shock, and he sounded so sure of himself—anybody might have believed him, you see.”
Which was what they’d relied on, thought WPc Ware, trying not to let her excitement show. If she could come up with a signed confession, it wouldn’t do her promotion chances any harm at all—they’d been after this Tomato Ketchup Gang for two or three months now, and until they were caught, the tourists were at risk every minute.
“Anybody might have believed him,” repeated WPc Ware, in an attempt to coax something further from the old dear—she corrected herself, from the suspect—before the case was taken from her and handed over to the Yard. Though anything less like a suspect in the well organised and widespread ketchup racket it was difficult to imagine. She looked more like someone’s favourite maiden aunt than a criminal mastermind, and it was just as difficult to see that umbrella of hers as the lethal weapon the man who’d brought her along to Bottle Street had insisted it was.
“Confiscate it” had been the advice of Arthur Havelock Thundridge before the taking of statements began. “If I’d really been stabbed, that damned brolly would have
to be the first choice for the murder weapon, believe me. Why, she was here, there, and everywhere with the thing—winded me, tripped us all up, and even pretended to nobble her partner in the unmentionables, to give him the chance to make his escape. You’ve got to hand it to her, the woman’s an artist—but I don’t appreciate her practising her artistry on me, or on anyone else, for that matter. Don’t let her take the thing into the interview room with her, or she’ll use it to brain someone and chisel her way out through the walls, or pick the lock on the door of her cell, mark my words.”
“We won’t be putting anyone in the cells just yet, sir,” he was told as Miss Seeton was being led away. She had not long remained dumbstruck after the startling accusations of Arthur Havelock had been levelled against her but, still breathless after her whirlwind journey through the byways of Piccadilly, found that her attempts at denial came out even more confused than she might, in the circumstances, have expected. She realized that she must collect her thoughts before trying to say anything else, for it was no surprise that the poor man was too distressed and angry to be able to listen to her, while she knew herself to be more than a little shaken by what had happened. A cooling-off period, wasn’t that the phrase?
“Cooling off,” murmured Miss Seeton. “So very apt,” and made a face as she tried another sip of rich tannin. WPc Ware looked at her. Was the old duck trying to take over the interview by asking for a second cup, when it had been her own choice not to drink the first? She was a skilled operator, all right. But WPc Ware wasn’t falling for that ploy: suspects weren’t supposed to take control of official proceedings, and certainly not this one. She was far too confident, anyone could see that, as calm as they came: the way she was smiling now, thinking she’d scored a point . . .
Hands Up, Miss Seeton (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 11) Page 3
