Hands Up, Miss Seeton (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 11)

by Hamilton Crane

  “Bow Street,” said Miss Seeton, rejoicing that her memory wasn’t at fault, as she’d been afraid it might be. For she had remembered, as she struggled with the tea, just where it was she’d had her first encounter with such a dark, unpalatable brew: in Bow Street police station, where she had gone to give her statement after witnessing the murder of that poor prostitute, Marie Prevost . . .

  “Bow Street?” WPc Ware regarded her sternly. “Scotland Yard it’ll have to be this time.”

  Miss Seeton nodded, still smiling. “Chief Superintendent Delphick,” she said happily, “although, of course, he was only a superintendent when I first met him . . . so many years ago now, but it seems almost like yesterday,” and she sipped once more at the tea, sighed, and set the cup firmly back on its saucer. She recalled every detail of that first meeting with dear Mr. Delphick: how he’d recognised her dislike of the sweetened tar that nice young policeman had offered her, and how he’d persuaded him to water it down to an acceptable strength—but it would, reflected Miss Seeton, be too much of an imposition now, although she really could not—even for the sake of politeness—manage to swallow any more.

  “Chief Superintendent Delphick? You mean the Oracle?” WPc Ware was, despite herself, impressed: she’d landed one of the big-time ones here, and no mistake. Delphick didn’t have much to do with the small fry: and if this little duck had known him when he was just a superintendent, she must be one of the longest-serving, biggest big-timers around. WPc Ware looked in amazement at her prisoner—she begged her mental pardon, suspect—and found herself saying: “Would you like another cup of tea, dear?”

  Miss Seeton sighed, recollected herself, and politely shook her head. “So very kind,” she murmured, “but I think not.” She glanced at her wristwatch. She felt a great deal better now, and once she had commiserated with the man who had lost his wallet, and apologised for not having been able to help him more usefully, she really ought to be on her way if she was going to catch Harrods before the rush hour began and travel on the Tube became impossible. “The station,” enquired Miss Seeton. “Is it very far away?” She had lost her bearings during that breathless dash through the side streets, but one could always rely upon the police for helpful and accurate directions.

  WPc Ware noted the professional’s avoidance of the words Scotland Yard and was even more impressed, though she tried not to let it show. “Don’t you worry about that,” she said, sorry now that her part in the affair was almost over. The old dear had dropped the hint she’d confess in full once she was at the Yard: probably thought it beneath her to talk to a uniformed constable, if she was used to hobnobbing with the likes of Chief Superintendent Delphick. The underworld, as well as the legitimate citizens, took pride in keeping to certain standards of behaviour.

  “You’ll get to, er, the station all right, don’t worry,” said WPc Ware. “We’ll see to that.”

  “How very kind,” said Miss Seeton, “but I would not wish to cause anyone any more trouble, and the traffic, you know, so heavy, as well as wasting petrol. I am perfectly able to walk—it cannot, surely, be far, and I believe the chief superintendent would say the same. He knows all,” explained Miss Seeton earnestly, “about my knees,” and, thinking with pride of her yoga-inspired fitness, smiled at WPc Ware in a way that made the young woman suddenly very nervous. What strange password was being used, what coded message was she supposed to be understanding and acting upon? Delphick, the Oracle, knew about this old lady’s knees, for heaven’s sake?

  Rhyming slang? She thought frantically. Knees and toes—hose, nose, rose? Elbows, bungalows, overflows? Nothing seemed to make any sense. Knees and boomps-a-daisy? Lazy? Hazy? “Crazy,” said WPc Ware with conviction. Miss Seeton blinked and looked startled. Her smile faltered.

  WPc Ware, frowning at her lapse, said firmly: “Crazy for you to worry about getting to—the station.” She couldn’t help stuttering a little: she felt an absolute beginner when she compared this old lady’s calm manner to her own fluster, faced with such an unusual situation. “We’ll take you right the way there, make no mistake—after all, it’s our job.”

  And Miss Seeton, smiling again, was reassured by the certainty of her tone, thanked her, and bothered her with no more questions beyond wishing to know when they would be leaving, because she had rather a busy day ahead of her . . .

  Whereupon WPc Ware murmured, just too low for the suspect to be able to hear: “You have indeed, my dear. You have indeed.”

  Miss Seeton seemed so willing to come quietly that they were all thrown into a panic when she asked, very politely, for her umbrella to be given back to her before she left the police station. After all, she explained, it was unlikely that she would be returning to Bottle Street, and, while it had been most thoughtful of them to take care of it for her while she collected her thoughts, she now felt fighting fit again. She beamed a grateful smile round at the watching group of officers and wondered fleetingly why they were all giving one another such pointed looks. She could not know that her casual use of the phrase fighting fit reminded them of the warnings uttered by Arthur Havelock Thundridge . . .

  On the other hand, she hadn’t yet been charged: she was still, technically, only a suspect, helping with enquiries. And if they refused to hand over her rightful property while she was legally as innocent as any genuine sweet little old lady, never mind that it was hardly routine to allow a suspect to travel in an official vehicle armed to the teeth: a good lawyer would make mincemeat of the case when it came to court. And if she really was the brains behind the Tomato Ketchup Gang, she’d brief the best lawyer in Town . . .

  “My umbrella, please?” prompted Miss Seeton as the desk sergeant stared in perplexity at the driver, and the driver stared at the detective who had taken Mr. Thundridge’s statement, and who was to accompany the party of Arthur Havelock, Miss Seeton, and WPc Ware to Scotland Yard. And it was Detective Sergeant Wadesmill who found the solution.

  “I’ll be sitting in the back, with you and Policewoman Ware,” he said, “so it will be a bit of a tight squeeze, but Mr. Thundridge’ll be in the front, and he can look after it for you.” He glanced enquiringly at Arthur Havelock, who replied at once that he would be only too glad to take care of the umbrella. It could not, he assured his listeners grimly, be entrusted to safer hands. Miss Seeton smiled her thanks, adding:

  “Does this mean you will be coming all the way to the station as well? That will be very pleasant, as well as a sensible plan, because of course, with so many of us, it is wise, would you not agree, for us all to share the same car rather than to walk, being so much less wasteful of petrol—and then there is always the risk of losing one another in the crowds, as well.”

  “There certainly is,” remarked Wadesmill, slipping his hand protectively about her upper arm. “Let’s be getting along, shall we?” And WPc Ware fell in as escort on Miss Seeton’s other side. Anyone who was cheeky enough to drop a hint that she’d try to make a bolt for it needed watching every inch of the way.

  Miss Seeton headed automatically for the front of the car, then recollected herself, murmured apologetically to Mr. Thundridge that she generally rode beside the driver, and settled herself in the backseat between Wadesmill and WPc Ware. These two officers regarded each other with knowing looks. She was a cool customer, all right—tried to slip from their grasp (hadn’t they felt her tensing for flight between them just now, outside the car?) and, when she knew she couldn’t make it, turning it off with a casual remark. One for the records, she was, one to remember.

  WPc Ware had something else to remember, as well: something she wished she’d thought to consult her colleagues over, except that she’d felt uncomfortable at even thinking of someone like Chief Superintendent Delphick and, and—her mind could hardly put the idea into words—and . . . whatever the old lady had been hinting at. Hinting at Delphick’s full knowledge of her activities—hinting, more than hinting, at his compliance. Coded messages, knowing smiles, that air of utter innocence�
�WPc Ware felt all the horror of a police officer who stumbles upon evidence of . . . of . . .

  Of corruption. As she forced herself to think that dreadful word, WPc Ware felt herself go cold, her face flush, and her hands shake. She knew little of Delphick beyond his nickname of the Oracle, but he was her superior, someone she was supposed to look up to, supposed to take as her example. And yet, beside her in the police car, sat evidence that the example might be flawed . . .

  And the only thing to do, she reasoned to herself, was for her to insist, on one pretext or another, upon Delphick and the suspect coming face to face as soon as possible, at the Yard, in front of witnesses. Because the element of surprise must surely reveal the truth—and, if there still remained any doubt, the Yard’s more skilful interrogators would soon learn every one of the old lady’s secrets. So far she’d been treated with kid gloves, hardly questioned at all, keeping her own counsel about everything to do with the case. But the time for kid gloves was passing, and the truth about Delphick must be made known.

  chapter

  ~6~

  DELPHICK AND BOB were making plans to snatch, at last, their well-earned lunch. The Oracle had insisted on working right through the morning, as compensation for the time he’d lost over his troublesome pigeon; he told Bob to pop along to the canteen without him, but the sergeant, brooding over certain of his superior’s remarks concerning his incipient tummy, in lofty tones of self-denial said that he was happy to wait as long as the chief superintendent wished.

  But now the time had come. The Oracle closed the file, thrust it into his desk drawer, and pushed back his chair, stretching. “I don’t know about you, Bob, but I could do with a bite to eat. Reading too much paperwork always has a stimulating effect on my appetite, I find. Don’t you?”

  “I’d say it was rather depressing, really, sir. There’s a heap of reports over a foot high still to go—we’ve read dozens of them already—no doubt there’ll be more tomorrow. And we’re no nearer knowing how the drugs are brought into the country, or how the distribution system works, than we were when we started. For all the good it’s done,” grumbled Bob, in whom hunger striving with vanity had produced acute pessimism, “we might just as well not have bothered coming in today. Oh, I know that’s an exaggeration”—as his chief quirked an eyebrow at him—“but that’s how it feels to me, sir. It’ll take a slice of incredible luck to break this case, if you ask me.”

  “Come to the canteen and have a slice of incredible meat pie, instead. Build up your strength and cheer up your view of life at one and the same time. You’re not normally so gloomy, Bob—think positive. And we’ll start,” Delphick said firmly as the telephone rang, “by not answering that until it’s rung at least seven times. Willpower, Sergeant Ranger, plus deduction. If it’s important, they’ll keep on; if it isn’t, they’ll hang up or try someone else . . .”

  On the eighth ring, with a rueful look, Delphick picked up the receiver. “And this had better be important,” he muttered before announcing: “Delphick here . . . I can’t say that I’m glad you caught me. My sergeant and I were just leaving for a spot of lunch . . . A word with both of us? What seems to be the problem?” And Delphick motioned to Bob to listen on the extension. “Carry on, Sergeant,” he instructed, and the telephone continued its apologetic explanation.

  “It’s like this, you see, sir. There’s been another of those tomato ketchup robberies. Chap had his wallet pinched in the Haymarket, a really professional job, as good as any of the others, but this time was a bit different. It wasn’t just chummie on his own, you see, sir, and the accomplice was a bit on the slow side getting away, so the punter was able to collar her and take her along to Bottle Street station on suspicion.”

  As the desk sergeant drew breath, Delphick said: “That’s all very interesting, and I’m glad they’ve turned up a lead on the ketchup crowd after so long, but I’m not handling the case, Sergeant. You want Inspector Youngsbury.”

  “Well, I’m not sure that I do, sir, not just yet.” The telephone sounded even more apologetic. “The suspect, sir—I told you it was a woman, didn’t I?”

  “You did. It’s not so unusual, nowadays—women’s lib and so on. Are you expecting me to lecture her on the error of her ways, and my sergeant to find her a mailbag to sew?”

  Embarrassed throat-clearing sounds came from the telephone. Delphick looked across at Bob, shrugged, and briskly instructed the desk sergeant to come right out with whatever he was trying to say, because he had two detectives dying of slow starvation while they listened to him splutter.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” said the desk sergeant, speaking now in low tones. “But Bottle Street says she’s been behaving very strangely, sir—claims she knows you and you know her, and you’d insist on them giving her her umbrella back—”

  “Her umbrella!” burst in unison from Delphick and Ranger at such a volume that the handset clutched to the listening ears of the desk sergeant positively hummed. With the cries of his colleagues still echoing in his head, he was unable to make any sense of their subsequent remarks and could only keep repeating his pleas for them to speak one at a time, if they wouldn’t mind, because he didn’t think he could cope with it all otherwise.

  Delphick pulled himself together first and told Bob to shut up and hang up, then to go down to the Back Hall (as Scotland Yard’s entrance lobby is known) and extricate Miss Seeton from whatever predicament she seemed to have got herself into this time. “It has to be MissEss,” he said, and Bob agreed, with a grin. “Whenever I hear the word umbrella, I reach, not for my revolver, but for my worry beads, or the aspirin, or a stiff whisky. Away with you, Sergeant, while I rustle up a decent cup of tea for your dear old Aunt Em. And something stronger,” he added reflectively, “for the two of us—never mind drinking on duty, for once. I have the feeling we’re likely to need it.”

  The canteen cook, learning that the Battling Brolly was paying a call on the Oracle, excelled himself. A tray was sent up to Delphick’s office bearing the only unchipped teapot in the place, three well-polished cups on sparkling saucers, and a plate containing not only a selection of biscuits, but several iced buns as well. Delphick assured the tray-bringer that MissEss would be duly appreciative of his efforts, but that it was unlikely she would have time, today, to visit the canteen. Yes, he would ask her if she would agree to autograph one of the paper napkins—and yes, she might be persuaded to doodle a little cartoon, perhaps of a constabulary cook in a chef’s hat.

  And why not? mused Delphick on being left alone again. If Assistant Commissioner Sir Hubert Everleigh could yearn to build a collection of Miss Seeton’s sketches (in which he was regularly thwarted by the Oracular insistence that said sketches, being evidence, must instead be stored in a safe place), what harm could there be—Delphick felt a smirk flicker across his face—in humouring the whims of Scotland Yard’s canteen cook? Sir Heavily might be no greater, or lesser, judge of artistic merit than the man who sent the forces of the Metropolitan Police well fed into the fray.

  At which point in his musings, the Oracle noticed that steam had ceased to rise from the teapot spout, and cream was thickening on the surface of the milk in its jug. Where on earth had Bob got to with Miss Seeton? Even in her wildest moments—and, heaven knew, these were wild enough—she surely couldn’t have so disrupted the hallowed regions of Scotland Yard that his sergeant was unable to find his way back to this office? Surely?

  “Oh, yes, she could,” Delphick said, grimly resigned to any fate which awaited him. “Yet I’d have expected them to ring me, if there were problems—unless she’s managed to fuse the entire internal telephone system. Which I can’t believe even she has had time to do—still, I’d better go and see . . .” And he left, failing to observe that, in all the original excitement, Bob had neglected to replace his handset properly on its cradle, so that incoming calls were completely blocked.

  By the time Delphick arrived in the Back Hall, however, everyone had given up trying to telephone him
, and Arthur Havelock Thundridge was apologising profusely to Miss Seeton while WPc Ware, blushing hotly, looked close to tears at the enormity of her mistake. Bob was in an explanatory huddle with Detective Sergeant Wadesmill, and Inspector Youngsbury, coordinator of the Ketchup investigations, was hovering by the desk, waiting for the commotion to die down so that he could take Arthur Havelock away to study mug shots and talk to the PhotoFit people.

  “Of course, sir,” he informed Delphick as the Oracle arrived at the desk to learn from the sergeant what had been going on, “Miss Seeton’s your pigeon, isn’t she? I wouldn’t want to go poaching your star witness—retainer fee and all that on account of her drawings, sir, I understand perfectly—but I’d be grateful if you’d ask her if she wouldn’t mind giving a description of the bloke who did the ketchup job, sir, and then, if you’d be kind enough to pass the information on to me . . .”

  Delphick smothered a grin. Youngsbury was too clever a copper to come right out and admit his apprehensions about dealing with MissEss—and who wouldn’t be a bit nervous, with her reputation for chaos preceding her wherever she went? The Misguided Missile, Sir Heavily had once called her, and this was every bit as fitting a soubriquet as the Battling Brolly, which was Fleet Street’s headline-catching name for her.

  She came trotting up to him now, all smiles, dragging a pink-cheeked young woman constable with her. “Why, this is indeed a pleasure, Chief Superintendent, and such a thoughtful surprise on your part, for your kind driver to bring me here to see you, and the dear sergeant.” She nodded in the direction of Bob, her adopted nephew, still busily explaining things to Wadesmill, then turned back to Delphick, saying: “May I introduce Miss Ware? She has been so very kind and insisted on accompanying me in the car, when I assured her I could easily have walked to Green Park Tube station, and she was so clever, not telling me until we had arrived here that we were coming to see you, and when I learned that she had never met you, I felt it was the least I could do, to thank her for taking such good care of me.”