Not for worlds could Juliana and Dickie have met each other’s eyes as Miss Seeton said this. “Oh, really?” was all that Juliana could manage, while Dickie cleared his throat with some force and gazed at his shoes. But Miss Seeton noticed nothing strange in their manner as she left her chair and made for the door.
“I will repeat the instructions he gives me, clearly,” she told her still-baffled guests, “but perhaps it would be a good idea for Miss Popjoy to write down what I say, so that there will be no confusion. And if it should happen to be Miss Treeves who answers, instead of her brother, then so much the better. She is almost as deeply involved in parish affairs as the dear vicar, and her knowledge of Murreystone is sure to be reliable, although I believe she does not attend services there. The problems of the rural clergy,” lamented Miss Seeton as she vanished through the half-open door into the hall, shaking her head. “Overwork and scattered parishes—so very vexing to a conscientious parson, which Mr. Treeves undoubtedly is.”
Her final words were accompanied by the flutter of pages as she leafed through the telephone directory and by sighs of thankful comprehension from Dickie and Juliana. It had taken a long time, and covered several topics connected only in Miss Seeton’s mind, but they’d sorted it out at last. Having lost the chance to pick the brains of Bert, the redheaded cockney postman shared by Plummergen and Murreystone, Miss Seeton had wisely decided that the next best authority to consult must be the clergyman, who also counted both villages among his responsibilities. Just where James Bond and Stan the gardener came into it all, let alone the mysterious Greenfinger of whose views Miss Seeton seemed to think so highly, they thought it better not to ask. Suffice it to say that they looked like finding out, after all, the whereabouts of Filkins, farmhouse studio home to the artist Mentley Collier; and Juliana, pulling a face at Dickie, took the purple envelope out of her handbag and prepared to write down on the back whatever instructions Miss Seeton, from the telephone in the hall, passed on to her.
The instructions were clear and surprisingly concise: Juliana’s elegant script had not completely covered the envelope by the time Miss Seeton, with repeated thanks, hung up. It had been Molly, not the Reverend Arthur, Treeves who had answered her call, which was (Miss Seeton had to admit) most fortunate for everyone concerned.
“And we’re really grateful to you for going to all this trouble for us, Miss Seeton,” Juliana told her hostess with a smile as, having studied it carefully, she put the envelope away in her bag again. “Aren’t we, Dickie?”
“Indeed we are,” responded Mr. Nash. “I tell you what, Miss Seeton. How about taking a spot of lunch with us, by way of a thank-you for your noble efforts on our behalf, and then running out to this Filkins place with us in the afternoon? Collier’s an artist, remember, so you’ll have quite a bit in common. I’m sure you’d be interested to meet each other.”
Juliana nodded. “He’d love it, Miss Seeton. Do say you can spare the time—you’re not too busy today, are you?”
“How very kind of you both,” began Miss Seeton but went no further. She suddenly remembered, and frowned, and shook her head sadly. “Birdseed,” she murmured. “I bought it specially—though Stan did say . . . but no doubt it would not be too urgent if I left it . . .” As so often seemed to happen, she was torn between the Scylla of duty and the Charybdis of pleasure. An excursion to a real artist’s studio would be such a treat, and yet . . . “I’m sure it will be safe enough in the box,” Miss Seeton said with a hopeful nod. “Stan said so, and he is nearly always right about such matters . . .”
Juliana caught her eye, eloquent with an unspoken plea for reassurance. “From what you’ve told us about Stan, I’d agree with you,” she said firmly. “If he says everything’s going to be all right if you, er, leave it in the box, then I’m sure everything will be all right.” Dickie mouthed a silent what? at her, but she scowled quickly at him and went on: “So that’s settled, is it? You’re coming to lunch with us over at the hotel, and then we’ll head off on our excursion to wildest Murreystone, and Filkins Farm. Only, in the interests of village harmony, we’ll be very careful not to let a soul know that’s where we’re going,” she said, smiling to encourage Miss Seeton to smile. Which, after a few more moments of conscience-stricken thought, Miss Seeton duly managed to do.
And then she decided she was looking forward to her lunch. While cuisine at the George and Dragon was not particularly haute, it was certainly more than just good plain fare; and, when served by Doris in her cheerful headwaitress persona, made for an enjoyable meal, especially when the company was as pleasant as Miss Seeton recalled that Dickie and Juliana could be. After she had collected her umbrella from its clip beside the hall table—on this occasion, she decided, nothing but her best gold-handled brolly would do—Miss Seeton hummed a gay little tune to herself and patted her hair straight in the looking glass with a smile as she adjusted her hat.
Once across the road, however, smiles soon turned to frowns, and for anyone to be able to hear it a little tune would have needed to be bellowed, rather than hummed. The party from Sweetbriars were just studying their menus and discussing whether to share a bottle of wine or to buy by the glass so that everyone wouldn’t be forced to eat the same colour meat, when the Standon family made its presence most disturbingly apparent.
It was the clatter of the boys’ boots down the stairs which first alerted Juliana and Dickie to the notion that their choice of eating place might not have been a happy one. They gazed at each other in horror when the first shrieks sounded in the reception area, and Dickie groaned aloud as the boys, with their father not too far behind, came rushing into the dining room with a clamour of which table would be best for Grampus to look out of the window, and bags them sit either side of him so’s they could try the froth on his beer, because he’d promised.
“You should wait for Grampus to decide where he wants to sit,” their father reminded them. “He might prefer not to have you two rascals fidgeting next to him,” and he looked round at the other diners with a rueful smile. Doris, who was waiting to show the party to the table she had selected, almost audibly ground her teeth.
“He promised,” said the younger boy.
“He won’t mind,” said the older. “Not if we leave him a seat—he’ll know it’s for him, and you can order the beer for him before he comes, can’t you, Dad?”
“And we can taste it for him,” said the younger boy in a loud voice. “In case it’s poisoned or anything.”
“For heaven’s sake, Gary!” His father gave him a brisk clip round the ear, and Gary let out a yell. His brother grinned and pulled his hair. Gary stopped yelling to kick him on the shins. His brother yelled in his turn, then pulled Gary’s hair again, whereupon a scuffle ensued with the pair swaying dangerously near the table where Dickie Nash sat wincing and Juliana Popjoy struggled to maintain her poise instead of delivering the forceful speech on Consideration For Others which was boiling up inside her.
Dickie closed his eyes rather than meet Juliana’s accusing stare: he hardly felt it was up to him to attempt to control these unruly youngsters when the presence of their own father didn’t, even if the code of a gentleman should be to protect the ladies. Juliana could be trusted not to make too much of a scene, he knew, but he felt it was rotten, all the same—and just as rotten for poor Miss Seeton, who was his guest . . .
Then he heard the scuffle die away, without another word being uttered. Had Grampus brought the authority of his enormous white moustache to bear on his grand-brats, limping into the dining room escorted by the daughter who was trying so hard to remain in his good books? Warily Dickie opened one eye and looked for the source of the miracle of silence which had so suddenly been wrought.
Miss Seeton, sitting quietly at the table, had turned on her chair to face the Standon family and fix the rampaging boys with a stare that penetrated even their self-absorbed squabble: a stare perfected through many years of teaching at a girls’ school—a stare no child bent o
n mischief could long resist. Gary and his brother, a look of unease appearing gradually on their faces, acknowledged by their silence the will of another more determined than themselves and stopped the fight without another word. With no prompting from anyone, they fell to rearranging their garments and tidying their hair; whereupon, with bemused and admiring glances in Miss Seeton’s direction, Annabel and her husband hustled their children before them towards the table indicated to the party by a highly thankful Doris.
chapter
~11~
BETWEEN PLUMMERGEN AND Murreystone there is no single direct route, although the distance between them as the crow flies is only five miles. Dickie Nash, a careful driver, followed every twist and turning described by Miss Molly Treeves and counted nearly eight miles on the clock before arriving, with a sigh of relief, at Filkins Farm.
“I was beginning to think we’d never get here,” he told Juliana apologetically. She had been dictating to him from the back of the purple envelope, and he had annoyed her by saying, every now and then, that it certainly was a long way from anywhere, wasn’t it; or that he hoped they’d reach the place before winter set in, because he didn’t feel confident that even the most skilful St. Bernard dog would find them until it was far too late.
Juliana put the envelope back in her handbag. “Well, we did get here, despite all your moans,” she said, wrinkling her elegant nose as she viewed the rustic scene before them. The gate to the farm had originally boasted the traditional five bars, anyone could tell; but rusted hinges had made it sag and buckle, so that the topmost bar, from which depended by one nail a wooden nameplate announcing the entrance to Filkins Farm, itself depended crookedly by one end, and the middle bar had utterly vanished. Nobody, it seemed, could have moved the gate in years without having the entire structure collapse at his or her feet.
Miss Seeton was gazing about her with bright-eyed interest. “Such a lonely place,” she remarked, “but a setting conducive to art, I would suppose, in that Mr. Collier must encounter very few distractions here, and the ability to concentrate is so important, don’t you agree?”
Dickie shuddered. “Looks a proper hole, in my opinion, and that’s with the sun shining. It’ll be a hundred times worse in winter, I bet—that is,” he amended, “any hope of concentration must fly straight out of the window, I should think. But I have to hand it to your boyfriend, Juliana. The Inland Revenue would need to be pretty desperate for the fourpenceha’penny he owed them to come all the way out here to collect it.”
Juliana ignored the more contentious of these remarks but was forced to admit that, though she bowed to Miss Seeton’s superior understanding of the artistic temperament—Miss Seeton uttered sounds of self-depreciation to which Juliana paid no heed—she had to agree that Filkins Farm was not what she called inspirational, and how poor Mentley could expect to produce decent work living here she really couldn’t imagine.
“If,” pointed out Dickie, “he’s still here. I can’t see any signs of life at all, apart from the odd bird flapping about over behind those trees—no doubt they’re vultures, picking over Collier’s bones. Which wouldn’t surprise me at all. The atmosphere around this place is enough to make anyone feel like bumping themselves off.”
Miss Seeton was shocked. “Hardly vultures, Mr. Nash, if you will excuse me.” She coughed delicately. “The vulture, although indeed a bird of prey, is confined to the southern regions, unlike other feeders on carrion such as members of the family Corvidae, to which the birds you see there doubtless belong. Crows,” she translated, “or rooks—it is not always easy to be sure. One hears it said that if you see a lot of crows together, they are rooks, whereas one rook by itself is probably a crow. Corvus frugilegus or Corvus corone, anyway, I think we may be fairly certain.”
“Oh,” said Mr. Nash and cleared his throat.
“Well,” said Juliana with only the slightest tremor in her voice, “I refuse to believe they’re the only signs of life around the place. Dickie—the gate, what there is of it, is open. If you’re prepared to risk your precious suspension on the potholes we can see in the drive, then let’s carry on—to whatever fate may have in store for us.”
“Excelsior,” muttered Mr. Nash, who had been prepared to grumble about his car’s suspension until his lady mentioned it, and now felt morally obliged not to. Juliana, reflected Dickie, understood him extremely well. He shrugged, sighed, and pressed his foot upon the accelerator. “As you wish, we’re on our way,” he said. “I only hope it’s worth it.”
The rutted drive curved gently away from the gate in the direction of a group of buildings, glimpsed through overhanging trees and not properly visible until the car was past the trees and out in the open. Stones spattered up against the shining paintwork of Dickie’s car, and he tried not to wince when, avoiding a pothole with his front wheels, he thudded into it with those at the back. Juliana and Miss Seeton bounced on their seats as he dropped the engine into the lowest gear, and the car crawled uncomfortably along.
“Now, isn’t this exciting, Dickie? Every bit as much fun as the dodgems,” Juliana said very brightly, “and it’s not costing us a penny.”
Dickie muttered something which Juliana, with consummate tact, did not ask him to repeat. Miss Seeton said:
“I was right—they are crows. Or possibly rooks. With all due respect to Mr. Nash, I hardly felt that vultures . . . but of course, your special subject is Byzantine Art, is it not, Mr. Nash?”
“And rally-driving,” chipped in Juliana as Dickie gave Miss Seeton the courtesy of a brief acknowledgement, then returned his attention to the potholes. “Poor Dickie! Will it really do the car any lasting damage?”
“Let’s hope not, but it’s too late to bother about that now. We’re past the point of no return, and I shall need a rest before tackling those potholes again. If Collier’s not at home after the effort we’ve made . . .”
The car, with a final judder, came to rest near a large building of weather-darkened oak, into which windows had been cut with a not-too-expert hand. The other three buildings, now that they could be clearly seen, were as dark as the first—but their darkness came rather from stains of smoke, and ash, and all the other scars of combustion.
“Looks as if the chap might not have been making it all up,” acknowledged Dickie. “Those blackened rafters look perfectly horrible, and there’s no proper roof . . .”
“Mentley said the locals don’t want to live here because of, well, ghosts,” Juliana said, trying not to sound uneasy. The sun was shining, the (admittedly few) birds were flying: yet it was harder than it had been back in Bath to laugh at what she had, with Dickie, dismissed as the exaggerated stories of someone with a suggestible temperament.
“I hardly think,” volunteered Miss Seeton as Dickie and Juliana regarded each other warily, “that the gentleman over by that wall can be a ghost.” Her audience exclaimed and began to look about them. The man ducked down behind the wall, and they caught a glimpse of purple shagginess as he vanished. “One could not,” continued Miss Seeton as Miss Popjoy uttered a little cry of amazement, “describe him as in the least transparent—such a very vivid colour—and a certain degree of transparency, as I understand it, has always been a requirement of supernatural manifestations. Moreover”—as Juliana fumbled with the catch on her seat belt—“he appears to be attempting to conceal himself, which one would not suppose that a ghost needed to do, being by nature in the habit of inspiring fear in the hearts of others rather than in its own—if indeed a ghost could be regarded as possessing one. A heart, I mean.”
Juliana lost the remainder of Miss Seeton’s reflections on the properties of psychic phenomena as she opened the car door and stepped gracefully out into the yard of Filkins Farm. The purple figure cowered lower behind the wall, a wall so dilapidated that it offered little concealment. As Juliana began to pick her way towards it, the purple figure seemed to recognise this fact, and a pair of suspicious eyes peered through a suitable hole. Juliana waved.
“Mentley, is that you? Remember me? Juliana Popjoy—and I’ve brought a couple of friends with me. How are you?”
He raised his head slowly, stared, and as she drew close, stood up. Juliana stifled a gasp as she observed his shaggy shoulder-length hair and Rasputin beard, his purple caftan and sandalled feet. “Popjoy?” said the hirsute one at last, doubtfully. “Juliana Popjoy? Why, I know you, man—of course I do. At least . . .” He edged a little nearer, then stiffened. “But who’re those cats in the car behind you?”
“Relax, Mentley, it isn’t the tax man. It’s two friends of mine, Dickie Nash from Cambridge, and Miss Emily Seeton, who’s a neighbour of yours, from Plummergen. Oh!” Juliana laughed and gestured pleadingly. “Don’t tell anyone about her, will you? I should hate the heavy mob to do either of you a mischief!”
Mentley Collier took two steps back and goggled. “What do you mean with this heavy mob? Why should anyone want to do me a mischief? Like, I mind my own business, I do my own thing, I don’t want no hassle any more than I give hassle to anyone else, man. Dig?”
Juliana blinked at the vehemence of his reply, as well as the remarkable mode of speech. Dickie had been right, she reflected: poor Mentley had passed from beatnik to hippie with no indication that he’d even thought about growing up. He really was a bit crazy—decidedly jumpy, too. “A joke, Mentley, that’s all it was, an ordinary joke. You’re obviously so cut off here you haven’t heard about the deadly village feud between Murreystone and Plummergen.”
Hands Up, Miss Seeton (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 11) Page 8
