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

by Hamilton Crane

  “Oh, yes, sir, I couldn’t agree with you more. But I thought you’d be glad to have your mind taken off everything else, just for a moment or two, sir—along the lines of, er—banging your head against a brick wall, sir.”

  Brinton groaned and clutched his hair. “Lovely when it stops, laddie? You’re mad—stark, staring mad. You know as well as I do there’s absolutely nothing that could make me forget for an instant that Miss Seeton’s found herself in another case—even if it isn’t,” he added, frowning, “quite up to her usual standards.”

  “Yet, sir,” supplied Foxon; then, as the superintendent glared at him, “Sorry, sir. Seriously, I know what you mean—swindling hotels just isn’t in the same league as some of her other cases—or even this knifing, sir, that you were going to tell me all about.” And he sat waiting for Brinton to enlarge on the murder which had spared him the first manifestations of Miss Seeton’s latest effort.

  “Ugh.” Brinton made a face, then shook his head briskly and snatched up the telephone. “Switchboard? Plummergen police house, and make it sharp.” He caught Foxon’s look of astonishment. “Yes, I know murder’s supposed to be priority number one, and normally I’d agree, but not this time. Our corpse is no great loss to the world, believe me, and with Miss Seeton involved in the other, I think— Hello? Is that you, Mrs. Potter? Brinton here. Your husband back, is he? . . . Oh, I see. Well, when he comes in, could you ask him to bring Miss Seeton over to Ashford as soon as possible?. . . No, nothing serious, but if she wouldn’t mind . . . Thank you, yes, please pass the message on.”

  He banged down the receiver, uttered a sigh of relief, and wiped his perspiring forehead with a large white handkerchief. “Well, I’ve done what I can to defuse her for the time being,” he growled. “And until she shows up, there’s nothing else to do—so we can turn our full attention, if we must, to the knifing that seems to have taken your fancy. Goodness knows why—I told you, we’re well rid of him. You might almost say I’d be glad to shake the hand of the bloke who did away with him—almost,” he repeated, with a sigh.

  “Why, sir? Who was he?”

  “Gerald Sacombe. Yes”—as Foxon exclaimed—“the drug dealer—and, it turns out, a thoroughly horrible piece of work, quite apart from the dealing. Pornographic photos on the side, going by what we found when we searched the place. And from the way he was carved up, it seems that whoever did it really enjoyed their work. He looked just like a piece of raw steak wearing pale pink ribbons.”

  Foxon made a face. “A crazed junkie, sir?”

  “Could be—but, as I said, who really cares? The world is a better place without our Gerald, in my opinion, though if you tell anyone I said so, I’ll have you back on the beat right through the summer, when all the tourists ask daft questions and drive the wrong way round the town centre.”

  Foxon paled. “Your secret’s safe with me, sir, and in any case I reckon I’d agree with you about Sacombe. We’ve been after him for ages, haven’t we?”

  “And somebody else got to him first.” Brinton shrugged. “Pity—I’d dearly have loved to feel his collar, but the blighter was always too clever for us. I’d give a lot to know how he worked his supply route, but I don’t suppose we stand much chance of finding out anything now. Which is one of the two reasons I regret his passing, Foxon. The other, before you ask, is that whoever it was really did make quite a revolting mess of him. Even the photographer looked pale, and you know they always make out they’ve seen it all before—so I can’t say I care much for the idea of a weirdo like that running loose around these parts. We could be in for a nasty time of it.”

  Foxon pulled an expressive face and shuddered. “As you said before, sir, ugh. Let’s hope you’re wrong . . .”

  PC Potter, having delivered his witnesses to the George and Dragon and told Charley to pop along to Ashford when he felt like it, decided that his Panda car could do with a checkup. Which gave him an excellent excuse for loitering on the forecourt of Crabbe’s Garage (outside which the bus stop was situated) while Jack Crabbe polished the windscreen, peered under the bonnet, and tested the depth of the tyre treads. Jack, who could take an official hint, was glad to go along with the fantasy that the Kent police took poor care of their patrol vehicles; and enjoyed himself greatly by uttering loud remarks about the appalling state of Potter’s big end and similar insults.

  The Brettenden bus arrived, decanting a parcel-laden crowd of passengers. Among them was Miss Seeton, with her small wicker shopping basket: not heavy or awkward enough, thought Potter, to need an offer of help. But she was back home in safety, which was the main thing. He thanked Jack for all his hard work, threatened him under his breath with a speeding ticket next time he took the family bus to town, and drove cheerfully away to the police house.

  Where his wife greeted him with the message from Superintendent Brinton, instead of the cup of tea he’d been looking forward to. “The sooner the better, he said,” she told her husband as he looked disappointed. “You’d best be off to Sweetbriars to fetch her—it might be something really urgent. Suppose they want her at Scotland Yard again?”

  “They’d send a car for her, like they’ve done before.”

  “Not if it was one of them secret cases she does for ’em sometimes, not wanting anyone to know that’s where she’s gone. Mr. Brinton sounded a bit, well, distracted—didn’t want to go into details over the phone, I reckon.” Mabel Potter nodded sagely. “Mark my words, it’ll be Scotland Yard for Miss Seeton, and the Battling Brolly in the papers again before much longer, you see if I’m not right . . .”

  Which sounded so plausible to her husband that he forgot all about his thirst, and the hot weather, and without even stopping to polish his buttons, jumped straight back into the car and drove down The Street to Miss Seeton’s cottage.

  Miss Seeton had enjoyed her trip to Brettenden and had bought a fresh set of pencils, varying in hardness, as well as a new sketching block. Now, perhaps, she would be able to draw the face of that man who had startled her with his wicked, bloody (she blushed) trick . . . perhaps she would no longer feel that she had let everyone down by her failure to remember what he looked like. Dear Mr. Delphick had seemed so, well, one could not exactly say reproachful, for he was too understanding not to know that there were times when, try as one might, the inspiration simply would not come, but he had every right to expect—

  “Oh, dear.” Miss Seeton, bustling about her sitting room, had glanced out of the window and seen the Panda car pull up outside. The police! Mr. Delphick was obviously more upset by her failure than she had supposed. PC Potter—her colleague—had been sent to take her to task . . .

  Miss Seeton’s eyes were anxious as she opened her front door to Potter’s cheerful knock. “Oh, dear, Mr. Potter, has Mr. Delphick asked you to call?” she greeted her visitor, sounding as anxious as she looked. “I’m so sorry, but—”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Potter cut in quickly. He knew only too well how her speech could wander if people didn’t hurry to divert her. “No,” he said more slowly as he recalled what his wife had been hinting at. “No, it was Mr. Brinton said he’d like to see you, if you wouldn’t mind, and as soon as possible, please. I’m to take you there by car—had it serviced specially,” he added, thinking of Jack Crabbe and his comments about big ends.

  Miss Seeton saw his grin and misinterpreted it as a knowing smirk: which reason told her was so unlike dear Mr. Potter, but which guilt insisted she deserved. “Oh, dear, yes, I noticed you at the garage, but I had no idea . . . and yet”—with a sigh—“it is useless to procrastinate. I will put on my hat and collect my umbrella, of course, so that we may be on our way immediately.”

  And her guilty conscience troubled her so much that she quite forgot to take her sketching gear with her.

  chapter

  ~19~

  IN FACT, MISS Seeton seemed so glum and thoughtful on the journey that Potter was prompted to tell her one of his more recent, and repeatable, adventures in an a
ttempt to cheer her up. Poor old girl, looked like she’d lost a shilling and found sixpence: but this oughter make her laugh . . .

  “It was on the motorway, see, chap driving to Dover with a load of racing pigeons, new stock he was starting to train for some big race or other up in Yorkshire. Well, he breaks down halfway between two emergency phones, and what should happen as he’s running on to the hard shoulder with knocking under the bonnet and blue smoke coming out of the back, but a patrol car—couple of my mates—pulling in behind him, and say they’ll radio for the RAC or the AA right on the spot, save him having to walk to the telephone.”

  “How very kind of your colleagues,” said Miss Seeton, “although only to be expected, of course.”

  “Well, that’s what anyone’d think, wouldn’t they? But this chap, he says thank you for the offer, he’s got a better way of calling for help, seeing as it’s just that he’s been burning oil and a couple of gallons should set him to rights again. He’ll fly off the pigeons to his old dad, lives at home and helps to train ’em, you see, and there’ll be messages tied to their legs for the old chap to bring a can of oil along, save paying the RAC, because of course they have to charge, call-out fees and everything.”

  “I suppose they would,” Miss Seeton acknowledged, though she really had little idea of what he was talking about.

  Potter began to laugh. “They say time’s money, don’t they? Must’ve cost this pigeon chap a fortune, I reckon. He told my mates they’d be home in about ten minutes: still learning, they were, so not too far from home. Well! Two hours later he was on the telephone, asking for help, never mind having to pay for it, and not very happy either, thinking his birds’d got lost on the way home, and must be dud stock and no good for racing, when he’d paid upwards of two hundred quid each, if you can believe it.”

  Miss Seeton could. Since her move from London to the country she had developed her study of birds, and in any case had, at the moment, a particular interest in racing pigeons. “Oh, dear, I do hope he didn’t lose them all—and that he didn’t, that is to say, that they all survived their ordeal . . .” Visions of pigeon pie, an Elizabethan delicacy, floated horribly in front of her eyes.

  Potter chuckled. “Bless your life, they survived—done just what was asked of ’em, they had. Prime stock, he said they were, and I believe it. Started arriving home within ten minutes of letting ’em fly, with their little notes tied to their legs—and did you know, Miss Seeton, a pigeon can carry a fair weight, what with the canister and all, never mind a screwed-up bit of paper fixed with an elastic band, which is what he’d done with the lot of ’em. Only his dad, see, he never thought to look for messages, so the bloke’s trouble was wasted. The old man knew his son had gone off on this training flight, so that’s what he thought they were all doing when they came back one after the other. And he still”—Potter chuckled—“had to pay the RAC to bring him the oil for the engine, after all that!”

  Miss Seeton smiled politely, though she saw nothing very amusing in the poor man’s predicament. He must have been so worried, thinking the birds were lost—not that they were, as he had found out later, but she knew from what Mrs. Ongar of Wounded Wings had told her that racing pigeons could be very valuable. Carrier pigeons, too—not that it made much difference, if you were stranded on a motorway and running out of oil. Which she imagined must be necessary for a car to run properly, and certainly Mr. Potter thought so—or why else would he have told her this little story?

  She supposed it must be her turn to tell him something in exchange, and (thoughts of Wounded Wings still very much in the forefront of her mind) described to PC Potter her discovery and rescue of the stranded, storm-weary carrier pigeon which had been fed on Chirrup and stayed with her overnight, while it regained its strength.

  “Just as well it’s gone,” Potter said. “Tibs is in one of her moods recently, and there’s no accounting for what she might do.” Tibs was the Potters’ cat. The only person in Plummergen who had any control over the creature, a large vindictive feline thought by many villagers to be possessed of evil spirits, was Miss Amelia Potter, age five. There had been occasions when Miss Seeton had worsted the beast, but they were not, on the whole, occasions she was in any hurry to repeat.

  “Cats,” said Miss Seeton, “have strange moods, indeed. They are mysterious creatures, and unaccountable . . .”

  “And so are some people,” Potter said. “Why, they were telling me only this morning, Sergeant Mutford it was, some bloke the other day went right off his head, blamed it on the storm—rushed round with a shotgun and peppered one of the neighbour’s cats, yelling and screaming at the poor beast, he was.”

  “Oh, dear,” said Miss Seeton faintly. PC Potter felt very cross with himself. Far from cheering her up, poor old lady, he seemed to be making things worse . . .

  He was a thankful man when, a few silent minutes later, he delivered his passenger safely to Ashford police station and headed back to Plummergen for a strong cup of tea.

  Superintendent Brinton greeted Miss Seeton politely, but absently, for his mind was, despite himself, preoccupied with the late (albeit unlamented) Gerald Sacombe. His face briefly wore a frown as he observed the absence of her sketching gear; then he told himself that of course she’d be able to make do with what they could find for her around the station: the English were very good at making do. He smiled at Miss Seeton in what he supposed was a reassuring manner.

  “If you’re sure you wouldn’t like a cup of tea or anything, I’ll just take you along to the interview room and leave you to it, if you don’t mind. Rather a nasty case has come up, and it’s all hands to the pump, I’m afraid. You’ll be all right by yourself for a while, won’t you? You see, we need my office to investigate the murder.”

  “Murder? Oh, no—I mean, surely not.” Miss Seeton’s hands fiddled with the clasp of her handbag. “I mean, the poor man wasn’t really stabbed, was he?”

  Brinton gazed at her in astonishment. “If he wasn’t, then he must’ve put on razor-blade underwear and rolled down a very steep hill, instead. I’ve never seen such a sight.”

  “But—but wasn’t it only tomato ketchup? I’m sure poor Mr. Thundridge said—oh.” Brinton’s astonishment had registered at last. Miss Seeton blushed. “Oh, dear, how foolish I must have sounded. I’m so sorry. You see, I thought you—that is, Mr. Delphick had asked you to ask me—after what happened the other day, you see—when I was arrested . . .” Miss Seeton blushed again.

  Brinton’s reaction was even more extreme. His jaw fell open and his eyes popped. His voice, when he finally found it, emerged as a faint gasp. “Arrested? Miss Seeton, you surely don’t mean . . .” And he stood shaking his head while she blushed even more.

  “Oh dear, yes, such a silly mistake—on my part, that is to say, for one must excuse poor Mr. Thundridge. His suit was ruined, but it did look so like blood, and he sounded so very convincing—the man with the tomato ketchup, that is. And poor Mr. Delphick, although of course he is far too kind to say so, was very disappointed at my failure to produce a good likeness—or, indeed, any likeness—of the man, so I naturally thought that when Mr. Potter came to fetch me here, he must have telephoned from Scotland Yard to make me try again—Mr. Delphick, I mean, not Mr. Potter, although he, too, should be considered a colleague, should he not?”

  Miss Seeton drew a deep breath, which gave Brinton time to jump in before she could say anything else. He raised an arresting hand and said:

  “Please don’t trouble to explain further, Miss Seeton—I’d much prefer it if you’d let me explain to you.” Which he proceeded to do, slowly and carefully, as he escorted her down the corridor to the interview room with the largest window, where he had ordered a comfortable chair to be installed. He sent out for pencils and paper, not daring to ask why, if Miss Seeton had supposed herself to be required to draw pictures for Scotland Yard, she had omitted to bring her requirements with her: he knew of old how easily she was flustered by the unexpected, and from w
hat he’d understood of her remarks, she’d been more than flustered by the arrival at her cottage of PC Potter in his Panda car.

  “So we’d like you to draw these people for us, if you can,” he concluded as Miss Seeton listened to him with a slight smile of relief on her face and a faintly shocked look in her eyes. “Do you think you’ll be able to do it?”

  “Certainly I will try my utmost, Mr. Brinton, in such a . . . a very deceitful matter—one does not like to think that the Standons—and they seemed such a normal happy family—but to cheat Mr. Mountfitchet in such a way . . .” Her eyes were bright, and her cheeks were pink. “It is clearly no more than my duty to do what I can to be of assistance, even if I only saw them on that one occasion—though it was not, of course, in quite as, er, fraught an atmosphere as that of my little . . . misadventure the other day . . .”

  So Brinton left her to it, while he hurried back to his office and busied himself with the case of the murdered drug dealer, Gerald Sacombe.

  He became so deeply involved that he lost all track of time: it was only when Miss Seeton (who had waited for someone to come for her sketches, not liking to worry people she knew were all so very busy) ventured at last out of her room and wandered to the main hall of the police station, there to discover its presiding genius, that the superintendent was reminded of his other case. The telephone on his desk rang desperately as Desk Sergeant Mutford (who had heard of Miss Seeton but never encountered her before, and now found the experience too exhausting for a man of his years) handed the entire imbroglio over to his chief with a heartfelt sigh of relief.

  Brinton left Foxon and the rest of the team to carry on with what they were doing while he hurried to the rescue—although he wondered, as he strode down the corridor, which of the two it was, Mutford or Miss Seeton, who needed rescuing. He had a shrewd idea, though . . .