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

by Hamilton Crane

  “There you are at last, sir!” Mutford’s greeting told Brinton that his guess had been correct. The man looked as if he’d been tied upside-down in a sack and put on a roundabout running at full speed. “Here’s Miss Seeton, sir—and here’s Mr. Brinton, miss.” Having said which, Mutford beat a hasty retreat into his little sanctum behind the reception desk, before his superior could say anything. Miss Seeton looked after him with a sympathetic smile.

  “Poor Sergeant Mutford,” she said, at which Brinton had to struggle with himself to show no reaction. “He has such a lot on his mind, it seems—as, of course, do you, Superintendent, and I apologise for disturbing you in this fashion, when you are so busy, but Mr. Mutford thought it best—”

  “I’m sure he did,” Brinton told her. “And I’m not in the least surprised. Still, never mind,” he said as she turned an enquiring face towards him. “You’ve done the sketches, have you? I’m sorry not to have come back to you sooner, but . . . Anyway, we’ll have a look at them now,” and he led her over to one of the plastic-covered easy chairs which stood along one wall.

  Having made her as comfortable as possible, Brinton sat beside Miss Seeton and accepted the drawings she held out to him. “I do hope that’s what you wanted, Superintendent,” she said earnestly as he began to study her handiwork.

  The first picture showed a hotel dining room, hastily outlined, with two small boys having a skirmish in front of one of the tables, and three adults—two men, one woman—gazing down on them with fond expressions. One man was white-haired, clearly older than the other, and on crutches, with distinguished features and a military moustache: the woman’s similarity of feature seemed to bear out the Standons’ claim that these two were father and daughter.

  “Which goes along with what the witnesses said,” Brinton muttered to himself as he peered at the younger man, whose appearance was less well defined. His head was turned more to the side, looking farther away from his squabbling sons than his wife or father-in-law. “Almost as if,” Brinton mused aloud, “he wasn’t quite so keen on the tricks they’re getting up to as the other two. Interesting . . .”

  Miss Seeton’s second sketch seemed to bear this theory out. The boys, upright now, had obviously just been stopped in the middle of another of their fights, for their clothes were dishevelled and their expressions either belligerent (the elder) or thankful (the younger). Their features were clearer than in the other sketch: and those of the man who had parted them, and who now kept them apart by the collar, were clearer, too. He looked far less doting and rather more annoyed than before, though the blood tie was evident here, as well. “A family affair,” muttered Brinton, turning back to the first drawing to study it more closely.

  “Yes,” he said, “a combination of these sketches and the PhotoFits everyone else came up with after looking at the mug shots, and at least we know what the blighters look like. And may I say, Miss Seeton, that I get a better idea of what they look like from your drawings than from the other stuff? Mind you, whether we’ll catch ’em in the end’s quite another matter. All we can do is circulate the likenesses round local hotels and issue a warning about what’s happened. Ten to one, as the trick’s worked once they’ll try it again.”

  He had half expected Miss Seeton to chip in at this point with some remark about the regrettable effect of the parents’ moral values upon the minds of innocent children and was surprised when she did not. He turned enquiringly to face her: to his continued surprise, she was looking uncomfortable. Surely she wasn’t getting cold feet about having helped to make sure everyone knew what these characters looked like?

  Or was it . . .

  He remembered how his old friend, Chief Superintendent Delphick, usually dealt with Miss Seeton when she’d sketched something for him and looked guilty afterwards. He held out a coaxing hand and tried to sound encouraging as he said: “Miss Seeton, what about the other one? I’m sure you did more than two drawings, didn’t you? You had time enough for ten, goodness knows.”

  “Oh dear,” said Miss Seeton and sighed. “I’m afraid—that is, I feel rather foolish, because—I’m sure you don’t wish to see this one, Superintendent. It has nothing to do with those deceitful Standons, I assure you—merely a reference to the conversation which Mr. Potter and I had in his car on the way over here. I imagine that, as it was the first picture I drew, it must have been still, well, lodged in my subconscious—the conversation, I mean—the others which I drew, the ones you wanted, bear absolutely no resemblance . . .”

  She faltered to a halt as Brinton, still taking a leaf from his colleague’s book, kept waiting and looking at her. She sighed and opened her handbag. From deep inside she withdrew a folded sheet of paper, which she passed to him as she murmured unhappily that she’d looked for a wastepaper basket, and not found one, and didn’t care to leave it lying on the table for everyone to see how silly she’d been—and now she hoped that he wouldn’t be cross with her for trying to remove official property from police premises . . .

  And Brinton, who was used to her by now, said: “You’ve no need to worry about that at all. It’s quite all right, Miss Seeton.”

  chapter

  ~20~

  SUPERINTENDENT BRINTON WAS on the telephone to his Scotland Yard colleague, Chief Superintendent Delphick.

  “I couldn’t make head or tail of it,” he said, having first demanded the full story of Miss Seeton’s arrest, then capping this with his own tale of woe. “She’s drawn a load of heads—well, three of them, anyway, two men and a woman—mixed up with birds flying about—and the really daft thing is that it’s all happening indoors, and old-fashioned-looking indoors, what’s more. Sort of foreign, too,” he added after a pause during which Delphick failed to find a suitable reply. “Well, she said I didn’t really want to see it, and now that I have I agree with her.”

  “Don’t be too hasty, Chris. When Miss Seeton starts to produce, well, drawings that don’t seem quite right, we both know what it can mean: that her psychic ability, or whatever we want to call it, has gone into overdrive again.” And the Oracle knew that Miss Seeton’s possible status as a psychic—he’d never been able to make his mind up for certain—was what unnerved his old friend Brinton so badly. “Could you be a little more specific in your description?” he prompted, trying to take the superintendent’s mind off his woes.

  But Brinton was unable to do more than say that anybody who was happy to sit around indoors with a load of turtledoves flapping about their heads must be as crazy as he was starting to think he’d gone himself, trying to interpret one of Miss Seeton’s sketches.

  “It needs someone who understands her,” he said, “and we all know what that means—it means you, Oracle. And didn’t you say you’d be here soon, anyway? You can interpret this sketch for me before we get stuck into the drugs murder.”

  “Yes, it’s rather a pity someone’s done for Sacombe—we had him earmarked as a likely lead to our end of the investigation. The evidence is pretty conclusive that he would have been worth keeping tabs on—”

  “We’d been keeping tabs on him,” Brinton reminded him in a gloomy tone, “and it got us absolutely nowhere.”

  “He was clever,” acknowledged Delphick, “and that’s what made him so dangerous—yet potentially so useful. If we’d only found out how the distribution system worked, we’d have made a definite connection with the London end, where the big money is—just that one vital link missing—we could have put a stop to at least part of this filthy trade. But, however it works, the system has so far proved too efficient for our liking. Which means,” he added thoughtfully, “that it should be very easy for somebody else to take over . . . How I wish they’d tried it while he was still alive.”

  “What? You really fancy gun battles all over Kent, and heaven-knows-how-many corpses after the chummies’ve sent each other to kingdom come?”

  Delphick cleared his throat. “Heretical it may sound, Chris, but if the chummies did clear one another out of the way, it
would save the likes of us a great deal of work. So long as no innocent bystanders became involved—and, let’s face it, how often . . .”

  “Exactly,” remarked Brinton dryly as Delphick drifted to an uneasy halt. “Miss Seeton again, you see. Now do you understand why I want you here to deal with her?” For they both remembered well Miss Seeton’s first involvement with the police, after she prodded the notorious drug-runner and hoodlum, Cesar Lebel, in the back with her umbrella because she disapproved of the language he was using, and his attitude, to the young woman he was (unknown to Miss Seeton) in the process of knifing.

  “Innocent bystander,” muttered Brinton grimly. “Oracle, get down to Kent just as soon as you can. If she’s getting herself mixed up in another drug murder . . .”

  He paused, hoping that Delphick would reassure him that she wasn’t. But the Oracle knew Miss Seeton of old. There was little reassurance he could give.

  He altered tack, returning to an earlier thought. “Now, if only the takeover bid—if that’s what it is—had come while Sacombe was still alive, we could have followed all the infighting from a safe distance and discovered, once somebody had come out on top, what I suppose we might call the new chain of command. Which would have been helpful. But as things stand, we’re short one dealer at the distribution end, and overall not much farther forward . . .”

  There was another thoughtful silence. Brinton broke it. “I suppose,” he said grudgingly, “though I don’t much care for the idea—but she has started drawing again . . .”

  “I agree. Her gifts, such as they are—whatever they are—don’t usually waste themselves on such a relatively minor matter as a bunch of people who scarper from a hotel without paying their—wait! Chris, just think about the timetable for a moment. They’ve scarpered on the same day Sacombe’s body was discovered.”

  And Brinton, after doing some quick calculations, found his voice shaking with excitement as he replied.

  “Dickie,” said Miss Popjoy in a thoughtful voice, “wouldn’t you suppose Mentley must have had enough time to think it over by now?”

  Mr. Nash favoured his lady with a mildly sardonic look over the top of his glass, which he almost drained before answering. “Well, with anyone reasonable, I’d have said yes, but he did strike me as an erratic sort of chap—hard for me to tell how his mind works, not knowing him that well—and to be honest, Juliana, just now I’m not particularly bothered. We came to these parts for a holiday, yet today’s been less like a holiday than anything I’ve experienced since that ghastly cruise.” He shuddered at the memory and helped himself to another drink.

  Juliana frowned. “We may have been questioned by the police again, but on this occasion we’ve definitely got nothing to hide—and, in any case, we survived last time, so I really don’t see the problem now.”

  “I suppose it’s just that I feel a bit, well, haunted.” He waved his hands in an expansive gesture which told her absolutely nothing. “I mean—the very next holiday we take, bingo! Questioned by the police again—it’s enough to give anyone a persecution complex.”

  “Dickie, don’t exaggerate. And don’t have any more, if you’re driving later on—”

  “Am I?” Mr. Nash blinked at her. “Where to? Why? And who said so?”

  “Yes,” Juliana told him. “To see Mentley again, to find out about the pictures. And I did.”

  “Oh,” said Dickie, subsiding. “I suppose, if you say so . . . We’d better order coffee straight away, then.”

  “But at least,” Juliana pointed out, “this time we know where we’re meant to be going, don’t we?”

  And fortunately (Miss Popjoy having mislaid the vicar’s sister’s instructions) both of them remembered how to get to Filkins Farm in Murreystone. Since their previous visit, an even greater air of dilapidation seemed to have settled over the whole place: another bar was missing from the gate, and the nameplate had fallen right off, to be propped up against a stone half buried by uncut grass. Anyone passing by in a hurry would have missed it altogether.

  Taking his springs into account, Dickie did not rush up the rutted drive. He snorted when the car rounded the final bend, and remarked: “The vultures are still at it, I see. What a hole!”

  “Miss Seeton said they were crows,” Juliana reminded him rather sharply. She felt annoyed on Mentley’s behalf. “Or I think she did, anyway. I can’t imagine why you have to make such weak jokes sometimes. Oh, look, there he is now.”

  “And rather more lively than before,” Dickie remarked, as this time the figure of Mentley Collier erupted round the corner of the farmhouse, waving its arms and apparently shouting. “He really doesn’t like visitors, does he?”

  “He’s . . . touchy,” Juliana said, sighing with relief as Mentley appeared to recognise the car, lowered his arms, and fell quiet, then began to walk towards them in a less agitated manner. “The artistic temperament,” she explained as she opened the car door. “Hello, Mentley! You’ve probably been wondering where we’d got to.”

  Mentley Collier shrugged, thrusting his hands deep into the folds of his purple caftan. “Hello, Juliana.” He nodded to Dickie as the latter climbed out of the driver’s seat. “Hi, man.” He turned back to Juliana again. “Did you want anything in particular?”

  Juliana was a little nettled at this ungracious reception. “Suppose I told you we just happened to be passing and thought we’d drop in for a friendly chat?”

  Collier scowled. “I wouldn’t believe you. Nobody ever just happens to be passing—or, if they do, they pass right on down the road. Like, that suits me fine—this place is far out of the way, man. I told you that before.”

  “I remember.” Juliana was trying not to let the ice in her tone become too apparent. “And do you remember that we had business to discuss, last time we called, and that’s why we said we’d be back?”

  “Oh,” Mentley said. “The Old Masters—right on. Like, I didn’t think you’d bother coming back . . .”

  “Why ever not, for goodness’ sake? I don’t waste time when business is involved, Mentley. We’d have been here before, only we left a couple of days for sight-seeing while you thought it over, and then we got stuck with the police all this morning, and—”

  “The police?” Mentley took two steps backwards, and his eyes darted to and fro. “You mean the fuzz, man? What have a straight pair like you got to say to the fuzz? You’re all set to shop me, are you?”

  As his hands, balled into fists, emerged from the purple folds, and his eyes flashed, Juliana uttered a little cry and took her own steps backwards. Dickie, ranging himself at his lady’s side, became assertive.

  “Don’t be a fool, Collier. Why should Juliana or I—or for that matter, anyone—want to shop you to the police, as you put it? If you’re referring to Juliana’s earlier business proposition, then since you haven’t even agreed to it, I fail to see how it can worry you—and in any case, as she explained to you at the time, it’s perfectly legal.” Dickie glared at the startled Mentley Collier, and Juliana, no less startled by this show of force, squeezed his arm, then herself hurried into speech before either of the men could say anything in temper which they might later regret.

  “Mentley, I don’t know what you’re so bothered about. Even the tax man has never heard anything about you from us, though goodness knows I’ve always had my doubts, but I kept quiet—and as for the police, honestly, you’ve no need to be worried. Provided you make it plain that they’re only copies—”

  “No,” he said, interrupting her with a violent gesture. Then, as she looked taken aback, he added: “Thanks all the same, but no. I want to do my own thing, Juliana, not anyone else’s, not any more—I need space, man, and copying isn’t my scene now. You’d better find someone else.” And he turned his back on his would-be associates and walked jerkily away without once looking back.

  “Mentley,” Juliana called after him, but he walked on. She turned to gaze at Dickie. “My goodness,” she said and shook her head in amazement.
“My goodness . . .”

  “Come on, old girl,” said Dickie, taking her arm. “The man’s mad, didn’t I say so all along? And, since he clearly wants nothing more to do with us . . .” He frowned, trying to recall the correct phrase to indicate departure. “We, er, we’ll split,” he announced, aping the undergraduates to make her smile.

  So split, very much puzzled and disappointed, they did.

  Miss Seeton was in her garden, diligently weeding the flower beds edging her short front path. The hot weather, coupled with the recent rain, had encouraged every lurking weed-seed to sprout at exactly the same time. The difference after a matter of only a few days was remarkable: strange, she mused as she stirred earth with her hand fork, that weeds always seemed so much more hardy than real plants—not, of course, that weeds weren’t plants as well—but one always had to wonder why, if those that were to grow from Stan Bloomer’s seedlings really were as hardy as those that grew from weed seedlings (if that was the correct term), why Stan always took such great pains to protect his plants before putting them in the garden. Why not leave them to grow unaided, as the weeds did, planting and seeding themselves every year with apparent success . . .

  “The survival of the fittest, I suppose,” Miss Seeton said, rising from her knees. How gratifying that they were so fit and had responded so well to the regime recommended in that most excellent handbook, Yoga and Younger Every Day! With a respectful sigh for the mysteries of nature, she dusted herself off and collected her tools.

  “Ah,” said an unexpected voice from the other side of Miss Seeton’s new wrought-iron fence, “the weeds are shallow-rooted, Miss Seeton, are they not? Suffer them now,” the voice continued as she turned to see who owned it, “and they’ll o’ergrow the garden and choke the herbs for want of husbandry. Would you not agree? Not, of course,” the vicar added hastily, “that I suppose either yourself or Stan to be wanting in husbandry, not wanting at all. Dear me, no. That would be an impertinence on my part, and indeed quite unjustified. Moreover,” he went on, frowning, “I am not sure that the practice of growing herbs in one’s front garden is something that Stan would approve.”