“Been lots of strangers, haven’t there, after us coming second in the Competition,” pointed out Mrs. Spice as everyone else mentally weighed the merits of more royalty or more reporters and couldn’t choose between them. There had been more than one interview given and photos in the papers: on the other hand, blue blood was blue blood . . .
“Oh, these aren’t common tourists,” Bunny hastened to assure her. “Far from it.” A resentful look came into her little black eyes. “Mind you, I have to admit that if they are royalty”—with another scowl in Miss Nuttel’s direction—“I really can’t see why they were talking just now to Miss Seeton, of all people . . .”
Erica Nuttel tossed her head. ‘Tried to pretend,” she said above the gasps of glee which greeted this revelation, “they hadn’t expected to meet. Clumsy, though. Wouldn’t fool anyone. Didn’t fool us—plain as a pikestaff it had all been arranged earlier. Cover story.”
“Cover, for why?” somebody demanded peevishly. “What’s her reason for not wanting it known as she’s acquainted with royalty?”
This struck a chord with almost everyone in the shop, and The Nuts began to fear they had lost their audience. It was Mrs. Blaine who, after a moment’s frantic thought, rushed to the rescue. “Maybe they aren’t royalty, after all,” she conceded in thrilling tones. “Everyone knows the princess, or whatever she is, at The Meadows isn’t very rich—how can she be, when she never gives balls or soirees or, well, entertains, does she?”
A general murmur agreed that she did not. Bunny looked smug. “Perhaps we ought to wonder why such sociable, smart people come to visit her when she so obviously won’t want anything to do with them . . .” And she paused to let them all murmur again, and looked smugger than ever.
“They can’t be reporters, because nothing’s happened. Or,” she added hastily as Eric caught her eye, “even if it has, they’re much too well dressed for reporters. So it has to be clear,” she concluded in triumph, “that they must be criminals of some sort—who else has so much money they can afford clothes like that?”
“Might be models, or film stars—on holiday,” suggested Miss Nuttel halfheartedly while the rest of the shop began to thrill with speculation. Bunny shook her head.
“Mrs. Spice gave us the answer, Eric. It’s obvious! Why did Miss Seeton buy a box of birdseed when she hasn’t got a bird? What do you do with seeds, Eric?”
“Plant them in my—I mean our—garden,” came the prompt reply. Bunny nodded vigorously.
“And what’s in a packet of birdseed? Millet, and sunflower seeds, and—”
“Nothing much wrong with sunflower seeds. Eat them ourselves. Very healthy.”
“—and,” continued Mrs. Blaine triumphantly, ignoring Eric’s interjection, “hemp—drugs—and Miss Seeton, talking to those people not twenty minutes ago . . .”
chapter
~8~
“THOSE PEOPLE” WERE staying at the George and Dragon, which, since Plummergen’s near-success in the Best Kept Village Competition, had been doing excellent business: so excellent that landlord Charley Mountfitchet was busily having the place redecorated, room by room, in celebration of Plummergen’s status as one of the county’s acknowledged jewels. As each room fell vacant, it was swathed in dust-sheets for the duration. A whole gang of Charley’s relatives and friends would descend upon the unsuspecting chamber in a whirlwind of paint, paper, and carpet: and once the tumult had died, duster, air-freshener, and vacuum cleaner were wielded to superlative effect by the multi-talented Doris, headwaitress, receptionist, and general factotum.
Charley’s greatest coup had been the creation, in honour of recent events, of the Blue Riband Suite, which sounded splendid. The “suite” had been formed by the cutting of a door between the bathroom on one floor and its neighbouring bedroom. Access to the bathroom via the corridor was blocked off, and people in the other rooms had to trot up (or, if they preferred, down) a flight of stairs to use the hotel’s facilities: but Charley was proud of the Blue Riband Suite and charged twice as much as for other rooms despite the late arrival of the expensive carpet he had ordered.
“Those people” had no hesitation in booking the suite for a week and cheerfully paid the deposit which bitter experience had taught Charley Mountfitchet to ask from any guests he had never seen before. The gentleman in the natty brocade waistcoat which had so disturbed Mrs. Blaine signed the register with a flourish, then could not quite prevent a faint blush from rising in his damask cheek as Doris drew in her breath upon reading what he had written.
Mr. Richard Nash, Miss Juliana Popjoy proclaimed the register in an elegant script. Mr. Nash nodded politely to Doris, collected the key, passed it to Miss Popjoy with a smile, and picked up their suitcases. “No lift, I see,” he said cheerfully. “Ah, well, no doubt the exercise will do me good.”
Just as the brazen pair (as Doris intended to call them, once they were safely out of earshot) reached the foot of the stairs, the front door of the George burst open, and in flew two small boys, grubby, breathless, and excited. They shouted “Hello!” to Doris as they thundered past her desk and then began a bout of what looked like all-in wrestling for a few moments before the younger, an urchin of around eight years old, cried: “Race you!” His brother stopped trying to wrench off his head and nodded. “Ready, steady, go!”
The pair of them ignored Mr. Nash and his suitcases, and the startled form of the personable Miss Popjoy, to charge together, shrieking, up the stairs. It was hard to believe that there was a new Axminster carpet beneath the clattering shoes; as far as the boys were concerned, it could have been bare wood.
Doris winced. “Little horrors,” she muttered, all idea of censuring Mr. Nash and Miss Popjoy forgotten. Plummergen will sometimes sympathise with the morals of consenting adults, so long as whatever they do is done in private and doesn’t frighten the horses; but badly behaved children are altogether another matter. Doris glared after the disappearing chaos of the two small boys and decided to favour the stately upward retreat of Mr. Nash and his paramour with an indulgent smile.
She did not reinstate the smile, which had faded as she turned back to her work, when the front door opened again to admit an elderly man, arthritic on sticks, sporting an enormous, drooping, white moustache and escorted by a couple who were clearly the parents of the two small boys. It must be supposed that the door had been opened more quietly than before; it was, however, impossible to tell, above the continuing juvenile racket from upstairs. Doris pitched her voice pointedly low as she passed their keys to the newcomers with a greeting.
“Speak up, my dear,” requested the elderly man, putting a blue-veined hand behind his ear. His moustache quivered as he smiled at Doris. “Old age, you know, old age—I’m not the man I was.”
“Come on, Grampus, enough of such talk,” the younger man scolded him at once. “Annabel, tell your papa not to try enlisting our sympathy for his declining years—he could give each of us a run for our money any day of the week, as he knows perfectly well. He grows younger all the time, doesn’t he?”
“Indeed he does,” Annabel said, smiling fondly upon her parent, who began to preen himself at the flattery. “And it upsets us to hear you talking that way, Papa, as if you were almost in your grave. I wish you wouldn’t.”
Grampus winked at Doris. “They don’t like to admit I won’t see seventy again, and I take that as a great compliment. Dragged me out for a walk along the canal and refused to take no for an answer—”
“And had a real effort to keep up with him,” the younger man said with a chuckle. “My father-in-law can certainly set a good pace, arthritis or not, and as for all this talk of a dicky heart . . . He’s worn us out, hasn’t he, Annabel? He’ll outlive the lot of us, I’m sure.”
Annabel’s father looked pleased and chuckled as his son-in-law clapped him on the shoulder. “Besides,” added the younger man, “what would the boys do without their Grampus? Which reminds me”—he turned to Doris again—“have they gone
up to their room yet?”
Doris scowled towards the foot of the stairs. “Well, as for going up, yes, they have—as I’d have thought anyone could’ve known without asking—but as regards to the room, I couldn’t rightly say, not unless it was already open, on account of me not having given them the key. Which is only part of my job, keys, and if you’ll excuse me, I must be getting about my business.”
With a toss of her head Doris emerged from behind the reception desk and made for the kitchen without once looking back. Thus she missed the knowing looks of the Standon family, and Annabel’s murmurs of boyish high spirits, and her father’s of the dear little rascals’ excitement at their splendid holiday, and her husband’s remark that perhaps they really ought to pop upstairs and see what was happening, not that he thought anything was likely to be wrong, but . . .
In the Blue Riband Suite four desperate ears had been resolutely blocked against the rumpus of schoolboys racing up and down the corridor. Mr. Nash, elegant in his brocade waistcoat, had been ordered to keep out of the way while his lady unpacked the luggage; the order was, perforce, given in stentorian tones, far removed from Miss Popjoy’s normally melodious voice. Mr. Nash, having settled himself well out of her way by the window, gritted his teeth and made no complaint, though the din from outside was horrendous. As he watched Miss Popjoy assigning various items of clothing to drawers and wardrobes, he wondered (but not aloud) if Plummergen had really been the right choice for a holiday; yet he knew better than to say anything to that effect until his lady showed signs of similar weakness. It had been her idea in the first place, after all.
Juliana closed the last drawer and felt her duty done. She was now willing to permit a slight showing of weakness. “Dickie,” she said thoughtfully, “shouldn’t we go and see if they’re slaughtering each other? Such a noise . . .”
Dickie, with the true-born Englishman’s dislike of making a scene, shook his head. “With a bit of luck they are. Slaughtering each other, I mean. But if by any sad chance they aren’t, their parents are unlikely to thank us for putting a stop to the little darlings’ fun. They surely can’t carry on like that for much longer—the manager or somebody’s bound to put a stop to it.”
“Oh, Dickie.” Juliana, despite her irritation, had to laugh. “Why not own up and admit that you just don’t want a kick on the shins? From the sound of it those brats are wearing very sturdy boots—hobnailed, probably.”
“I’d take a bet on it—I mean, I wouldn’t,” Dickie said hastily as the laugh in Juliana’s eyes changed at once to a frown both worried and warning. “Sorry. What I meant to say was, they’re more than likely hobnailed—that is”—and in his turn he frowned—“if anyone wears hobnails nowadays?” Warily he looked at Juliana. He brightened. “Perhaps the boots are football boots, and the noise comes from the studs—although the thought of football in July does rather disturb one’s finer feelings, don’t you think?”
His nonsense made her laugh again, and then they smiled together in sympathy as the commotion in the corridor came suddenly to a blessed end. Dickie held his breath while Juliana began to count aloud. At sixty they both relaxed.
“After all that I need a drink,” Dickie said. “Suppose there’s room service in this place?”
“Dickie Nash! When we’ve barely arrived! Besides,” she reminded him, “we’re going to need all our wits about us for finding the way—you certainly are, because you’re driving. Your bump of location is much more efficient than mine.”
Dickie blinked at her. “Good gracious, why should bumps of location come into it? You must know where we’re going, surely. He’s your friend, after all.”
Juliana looked uneasy. She opened her handbag and drew out an envelope: an envelope of a curious purple shade, with the address printed in emerald-green ink. The letter she took from the envelope was written by a flamboyant hand in purple ink, on emerald-green paper. She held the letter out to Dickie, who pulled a face. Juliana laughed. “Oh, yes, I know, but at least he’s printed his address so we know what it is. It’s just a pity he didn’t explain where it is, if you understand me—not that I suppose he thought he needed to. This letter’s a year old if it’s a day. There was no suggestion then that I might want to visit him.”
“And no telephone number, I suppose. That would be too much to hope for, after what you’ve told me about him.”
“No telephone number,” agreed Juliana. “The postman’s probably the only person in the county who knows exactly where we’re supposed to be going—and didn’t we pass a sub-post office as we drove in? We could go and ask there or try to find somewhere that would sell us a large-scale map. I meant to do it before we left, so it’s my fault . . .”
“I’ll forgive you, if you’ll only let me have a little spot of something before we head off into the wide blue yonder in search of the elusive Mentley Collier.” Dickie sighed. “Juliana, my love, it’s delightful to be impetuous occasionally, but my instincts tell me that on this particular occasion it might have been as well to be a little less impetuous. I still say you ought to have dropped Collier a line or two—even a postcard would have done—to warn him we were on the way.”
“Warn him? Goodness, you make it sound as if I’m one of his creditors. He always used to have dozens, poor Mentley, in the old days. That’s why he got into the habit of being, well, inaccessible. I’m flattered he trusted me enough to give me his address, although after all these years he ought to know I’m not likely to sneak on him to the Inland Revenue—though of course,” she reflected, “they might have caught up with him after all, and he’ll have done another bunk.”
Dickie merely looked at her for a moment before saying: “A drink. A stiff one, Juliana Popjoy—and you’re paying.”
“On condition that we go out and hunt for a map first, I suppose I’ll have to agree. I shouldn’t have been so quick to come here without checking first, I do admit—but, well, he’s not the only reason for our trip, is he? What could be nicer than holidaying in the Garden of England? Especially when it gets us away from the builders and decorators.”
Dickie gave her a gentle hug. “It’ll be worth it in the long run, you know it will. After all, we’d talked for ages about having the shop refurbished to increase business, and, well, I know it was my fault we never could afford a proper job. I still can’t tell you how sorry I am about everything—and it isn’t as if I’d exactly expected my uncle to leave me a legacy, was it? So it was almost like the final win to end all wins—and I felt it was the least I could do, to compensate you for all the worries about money you’ve had on my account over the years. But I really have made an effort to give up gambling now, haven’t I?”
“You have, and I’m proud of you, Dickie.” Juliana gave him a fond peck on the cheek. “And it was one of the nicest compliments anyone’s ever paid me, trusting me with all your inheritance and not keeping anything for yourself. So—so unselfish.” There was a quaver in her voice and a hint of tears in her lovely eyes. Dickie, an Englishman to the depths of his innermost soul, hastily thwarted any display of emotion.
“Unselfish? Not a bit, as I keep telling you. I’m just taking a leaf out of Uncle Brummel’s book and consolidating my investments—with every expectation of goodness-knows-how-much per cent return on the expenditure. After all, an antique shop in Bath is a nice little gold mine—I’d never have gone into partnership with you in the first place if I didn’t expect to make pots of lovely lolly to support me in my decrepit old age. But now”—and Dickie struck a dashing pose—“I’ll be able to look forward to a delightfully decadent old age, instead.”
“Which is many years away,” Juliana reminded him firmly, “and the shop has to make the money first. So stop dreaming about gorgeous young girls, or an unlimited supply of gin, or whatever form your decadence plans to take, and let’s go and explore Plummergen—I wish I could remember why that name sounds familiar—to find a decent map.”
And it was at the start of this excursion, just outside
the George and Dragon, that Juliana Popjoy and Dickie Nash, closely observed by The Nuts, bumped into Miss Emily Dorothea Seeton.
chapter
~9~
IT HAD BEEN Dickie who spotted her first, hurrying down The Street with her bundle of purchases held in one hand and her umbrella hooked over the other arm. She blinked vaguely in the direction of the George, sighting strangers on the steps—but, since the Competition, strangers were not so uncommon in Plummergen, and Miss Seeton was never one to snoop. She half registered the pleasant thought that Mr. Mountfitchet, landlord of the George and Dragon, must be delighted with so many new customers, or did one call them clients? Whatever their correct name might be, she was sure he must be glad of them . . . and she would have trotted on to cross The Street in the direction of her own dear cottage, when, to her great surprise, one of the strangers uttered her name.
“Juliana, look—surely that’s Miss Seeton! Recognise the umbrella? Miss Seeton—Miss Seeton, hello there!” And Dickie took his lady by the arm, leading her the few steps across the car park in front of the George to stand face to face with someone they had never thought to meet again.
Miss Seeton blinked once more, smiled in response to Dickie’s smile, and before he could say anything else said: “Mr. Nash, what a lovely surprise! And Miss Popjoy, too, of course. How could I forget?” The artist’s trained eye is a boon to anyone, such as Miss Seeton, with a large number of acquaintances. “Such an enjoyable time . . .”
But then Miss Seeton, an utterly truthful person, found herself unable to complete the sentence she had so thoughtlessly begun. There was no doubt that she had enjoyed the first part of the cruise she had taken last year around the Greek islands on the liner Eurydice; several of her friends had travelled on the same ship, and congenial company had only added to her delight in the Aegean and its glories of nature, architecture, and history. She had made new friends, Dickie and Juliana among them; but, before long, one of the party had been murdered, another found hanging in his cabin, and a third arrested. Those stalwarts who had remained on board the Eurydice until the final resolution of the case had completed their holiday on dry land.
Hands Up, Miss Seeton (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 11) Page 6
