Delphick had to make a quick decision. MissEss’s abductor was getting away—unlikely they’d try anything else now the police were there, but in any case she seemed less upset about it all than either himself or Bob, who was still—
“Sergeant Ranger!” Delphick pushed back the sliding glass partition. “Blue-faced cabbies are hardly required at this stage in the proceedings, I think. You’d better let him go and return to the car so that you can escort us in this taxi. Oh, yes”—as Miss Seeton exclaimed and the driver spluttered—“I’m staying right here—we’ll have all the explanations later. But, for now, cabbie . . .”
Delphick looked at the traffic lights, and the crawling progress of cars and buses, and listened to the angry hoots of vehicles trying to persuade him to move on. He looked ahead into Pall Mall, and wondered how far along the Number 19 had gone, and whether it would have met Inspector Borden and his team just yet . . . He took a deep breath.
“Follow that bus,” said Chief Superintendent Delphick.
chapter
~28~
“COME OFF IT, Oracle,” said Superintendent Brinton. “I told you when you rang from Town that I didn’t believe it—and I still don’t. What’s more, I think you ought to show some consideration for a man with blood pressure like mine . . .”
Delphick had returned, at long last, to Ashford police station, and now sat regarding his old friend with a smile. “I’m hurt that you should doubt my word, Chris. I assure you that I’m speaking the absolute truth. Ring the Yard—anyone you like: Inspector Borden of Fraud, Youngsbury, even those lunatics who pretend to run Traffic Division—every one of them will tell you the same.”
Brinton scratched his head and sighed. “Miss Seeton—Miss Emily Dorothea Seeton—your perishing MissEss, that is who we’re talking about?”
Delphick shrugged. “Naturally.”
“And you’re seriously expecting me to believe that she hopped into a London taxi and went chasing after a chummie on a bus—and you and your young giant roared after her in an unmarked car—and Borden had to go the wrong way round the one-way system and didn’t meet up with the whole kit and caboodle until you were halfway round Trafalgar Square—and—and . . .”
He spluttered and clutched at his hair and closed his eyes. “I still can’t believe it,” he moaned. “But you keep telling me it’s true—that MissEss was let loose on the streets of London and nothing happened. It’s—it’s . . .”
“Incredible?” supplied Delphick with a smile. “I know. I find it hard to credit, myself, and I was there. But let me repeat, Chris, there wasn’t a dented bumper, or smashed headlight, or damaged wing to be found from Piccadilly Circus to St.-Martin-in-the-Fields—not due to Miss Seeton, anyway. A thorough-going triumph, in my opinion.”
“You stopped the bus without hitting it,” Brinton said in a hollow tone.
“Between us, we did—Borden’s crowd, Bob, and myself in Miss Seeton’s cab. Bob radioed ahead and told Borden what we were really supposed to be doing.”
“Chummie was still on board the perishing bus, and he didn’t make a run for it.”
“He was, and he didn’t: he had sense enough to know when the game was up. Besides which, Miss Seeton’s verbal identification was positive. It hardly needed the confirmation by PhotoFit, or her sketch—”
“No!” cried Brinton, slapping his hand on the top of his desk. “Don’t tell me any more! Giving us all forty fits, making you gallop up to Town to rescue her, and all she was doing was delivering some damned drawing everybody’d forgotten you’d asked her for . . .”
“Everybody except Miss Seeton.” Delphick grinned. “And you should know by now how strong her sense of duty is. She thought it was obvious that, in my absence, she should take it to Inspector Youngsbury at the Yard—”
“And I suppose he was thrilled,” Brinton broke in with a glower for the smiling face opposite. “You’re going to tell me he thanked her for making it all clear to him, and handed her a medal, and never thought to mention she’d been there when we all started looking for her.”
“That’s true, more or less. Youngsbury was grateful for the sketch, although it wasn’t one of her inspired efforts, more the routine stuff almost anyone could turn out—but be fair, Chris, he didn’t know we were looking for her. Nobody thought to tell him. Why should they? He certainly doesn’t blame Miss Seeton for anything—thinks she’s the best thing since sliced bread, in fact. You should have seen his face when we bowled into the Yard with the tomato ketchup chummie in tow—his name’s Mickey Newsell, incidentally. And he’s by no means the strong, silent type. Once he realised we’d got him bang to rights, he started singing like a whole symphony of canaries.”
Delphick chuckled. “It didn’t help his defence, feeble as it was to start with, that he hadn’t yet had the sense to lose the day’s collection of wallets. Anyone carrying five of the things, all with different names and addresses, needs a pretty good cover story—which, when faced with Miss Seeton’s insistence that she recognised him, he simply couldn’t produce.”
Brinton grunted. “So the tomato ketchup crowd is sewn up nicely—but what about the Van Meegerens? They’ll have done a bunk when they realised the game was up, won’t they? Owen Barkway’s brief took an eternity to get here—time enough to warn the lot, I’m sure.”
Delphick shook his head. “I was sure, too. I honestly thought there’d be little evidence left when we eventually reached the gallery, but I was wrong. There had been time, only Proctor didn’t make sensible use of it. I imagine his reputation as one of the brightest stars in the criminal fraternity’s sky will suffer badly as a result of his tardy response to Barkway’s telephone call.”
“A day at the Oval,” marvelled Brinton. “Who’d ever dream of a crook like him enjoying cricket?”
“Patriotism,” pointed out Delphick, “is not enough. Our friend Proctor may well have been worrying about the Ashes, but I hardly think that particular argument will wash with his clients—and you’d better be careful about calling him a crook. He’s just the type to sue for slander, especially now. The Van Meegerens look set to be the first of a long line of client losses, and he’ll miss the income.”
Brinton grunted. “Collier seems to be sticking to him, for some crazy reason, though I suppose most artists are a bit crazy. And I’d be grateful if you didn’t mention Miss Seeton, thanks. Not that I’d call her crazy, but . . .”
Delphick refused to rise to the bait. “Collier was certainly a very small fish in an ocean of sharks—sharks who are happy to abandon him to his fate, it seems. While they agree he faked pictures for them—only they insist that it was legitimate copying, nothing more—they claim not to be aware that it was to support his drug habit—nor are they aware of the existence of the pigeon post from Amsterdam, or the recently terminated existence of Gerald Sacombe—”
“What d’you reckon,” Brinton broke in, “that it wasn’t a frenzied junkie missing his fix who did for Sacombe, after all. Owen Barkway’s quite slimy enough to have bumped the blighter off so’s he could run both supply areas together. Maybe on instructions from the Van Meegeren lot—they’re letting him go shares in this new character they’ve produced to defend ’em, remember. Barkway must know something they don’t want known, or they’d have let him go, the way they’ve done with Collier.”
“He knows the supply route from the Netherlands, for a start. Somebody had to train those homing pigeons to come back with two or three grammes of pure cocaine in their leg canisters, ready for adultera—”
“Grammes be damned!” snorted Brinton, who still resented the introduction of decimal currency. “Tell me in good old ounces, and I might start to understand you.”
“A gramme,” said Delphick, who had boned up on the mysteries of division by ten, “is one-twenty-eighth of an ounce. A dozen pigeons, therefore, can carry around one ounce of cocaine—over a thousand pounds’ worth. And I haven’t just taken Babs Ongar’s word for it,” he added as Brinton opened hi
s mouth. “I asked the real experts to check the figures for me . . .” He chuckled. “It took a little time, though. I was given a decided brush-off from the Royal Pigeon Racing Association when I rang to ask them to confirm the Wounded Wings idea of how much weight one bird can carry—canister included, of course. An agitated young woman stuttered that she really didn’t know, then handed me over to a chap who virtually hung up on me. I think they feared I wanted to run, or should I say fly, the drugs on my own behalf.”
“Can’t blame ’em for being suspicious,” Brinton growled, “the number of crooks there are on the loose. A handful fewer than yesterday, of course, but still too many.”
“We’ll try to reduce the numbers even further. We’re making full enquiries about shipments of birds to Holland, and with luck we’ll be able to follow the trail through. If Barkway turned Queen’s Evidence, though, it would be very helpful.”
“He won’t,” Brinton said. “If it wasn’t a junkie who did for Sacombe, then it was Barkway, as I said, without even the excuse of withdrawal symptoms. He’s the sort of creep who’d be only too glad to do the dirty on a pal—well, business associate”—he pulled an expressive face—“for the money, instructions from above or not. Suppose Sacombe came up with a good swindle and refused to bring Barkway in on it—or suppose Barkway just invented some tale of a swindle as an excuse to get rid of him . . .” He yawned hugely. “If you ask me, the whole boiling lot are as bad as each other, and the more we get rid of, the better. I can’t say I really care who does the getting rid. Every time even one link in the chain’s busted, it makes our job just that little bit easier . . .”
His yawn was infectious: Delphick found himself stretching and rubbing his eyes. “It’s been an exciting day,” he said. “Satisfying, too. Miss Seeton has helped to sort out the Tomato Ketchup Gang, which has made Inspector Youngsbury very happy; she and her drawings have been responsible for the partial breaking of an international drug ring, and if all goes well, we’ll be able to finish the job she began; we can’t yet be sure who killed Gerald Sacombe, but everything suggests he was tied in with the Van Meegeren operation—as they seem to have controlled a sizable chunk of this area, I can’t believe they would have allowed an outsider to share even a small part of their territory. Collier will give us the answers before long, I fancy. If, indeed, as you said yourself, it really matters who removed a blot like Sacombe from the landscape. He was only a small blot, and we aim to mop up the big ones—which, with the help of Miss Seeton, I rather think we’ve done.”
“And all,” marvelled Brinton, “without anything happening. Just a car chase—uneventful, at that. Which must be a record for one of MissEss’s cases. Nobody hurt, nothing smashed. A red-letter day, this is, Oracle, a red-letter day and no mistake. The only time that woman has pulled it off without some sort of chaos ensuing.” He rubbed the tip of a thoughtful nose. “What have you done with her, by the way? You surely never left her to make her way back from Town by herself. Things were bad enough on the railways this morning without the risk of her making it worse in the afternoon.”
“She was slightly bothered at first about wasting the unused half of her cheap day return ticket, but we persuaded her to come back with us by car after she’d given her statement to Inspector Youngsbury. We, er, thought it safer not to risk it.” Delphick hid a smile. “Of course, she had to wait at the Yard while we began enquiries into the Van Meegeren case, but she saw it as her duty, so she didn’t mind. Our canteen cook did her proud with tea and buns, poor chap, but she said she wasn’t really hungry after all the excitement and turned out rather a jolly sketch of him by way of apology for not eating anything. He’s thrilled. And talking of tea, that’s where she’s gone. I spotted her looking a little wistful as we drove down the main street with all the tea shops shut, and knowing what the Ashford police canteen is like, I told Bob Ranger to take her to—”
The telephone shrilled on Brinton’s desk just as there came a tap on his office door. He called out: “Come in!” and picked up the receiver; then dropped it again, his mouth agape, as the door opened and four battered figures appeared—three large men, one far larger than the others, and . . .
“Miss Seeton!” gasped Delphick while all Brinton could do was stare. “Foxon! Ranger! What on earth . . .”
The men merely gazed at him. Bob risked a quick grimace in Miss Seeton’s direction. Foxon, his kipper tie hanging by a thread from his neck, looked resigned; the third, unknown man looked stunned. Miss Seeton trotted forward.
“Oh, dear, Chief Superintendent, I am so sorry—and of course I must also direct my apologies to you, Mr. Brinton, as it was one of your police cars involved. Yours, too, Mr. Delphick, naturally—”
“Naturally,” echoed Delphick as Brinton groaned.
“Because dear B—er, Sergeant Ranger was driving it, you see, and when I recognised them as we were leaving the hotel—such a delicious tea, most generous—they took one look at us and jumped into the car. And drove away. Rather too fast,” she said, “if one is going down a one-way street, I fancy, and then there was the red light as well . . .”
“Red light,” moaned Brinton. “One-way street—didn’t you put your sirens on, you idiots? And in any case, just why were you in such a hurry to get away after you saw . . .” His eye turned to Miss Seeton standing innocent and bedraggled before him. He choked and fell silent.
“Beg pardon, sir,” said Foxon as his unknown companion struggled for words, and Bob Ranger cleared his throat with unusual thoroughness. “It wasn’t us, sir, that jumped the light—we were coming the other way, minding our own business, and they went slap into us—”
“Don’t tell me any more,” Brinton begged, his face going purple. “Please, just keep quiet while I—and you can shut up, as well!” to the telephone, which was swinging from its cord emitting urgent little squawks. He banged it down on the cradle, then took it off again. “Let’s get one thing at a time sorted out,” he said. “As if I couldn’t guess.”
“Well, sir, we got them,” Foxon pointed out cheerfully. He was a better judge than the rest of Brinton’s ability to survive apoplexy. “The Standons—the hotel fraudsters. They were coming in to register as Miss Seeton and Sergeant Ranger were on their way out: grandfather, parents, two kids all nice and tidy. They recognised Miss Seeton just as she recognised them . . .”
“He was walking without his sticks and had dyed his hair,” said Miss Seeton, “but the bones were unmistakable—the older man, that is, even though he had shaved off his moustache. For disguise in perpetrating another fraud, I suppose, but the children have inherited the same structure, from his daughter, that is. Such a pity. That they have not been taught right from wrong, which is what fraud is, is it not? For which, I fear, one must blame their elders. So foolish, that they tried to deny knowing me—the parents, I mean, because I spoke to them for some time only yesterday, and they are not usually as good at concealing their feelings, are they? As adults. And I do have some experience of them, after all. Children, I mean. And perhaps I am flattering myself,” said Miss Seeton modestly, “but I was rather of the opinion that they were pleased to see me again, even if their parents and grandfather were not, for had they been they would hardly have turned round and run back to their car and driven away in such a hurry.”
“The wrong way down a one-way street,” supplied Foxon in a tone he struggled to keep calm, “because they didn’t know Ashford at all—but of course, Sergeant Ranger does, after the number of times he’s been here. He knew where to go to head them off at the pass, as you might say, sir, only . . .”
He gave up the struggle and began to snort with glee as he motioned to Bob to take over the story. With shaking shoulders Bob did so. “Only I’m afraid, sir”—carefully looking directly between Brinton and Delphick, dividing the wrath to come— “that we weren’t the only ones at the pass, or rather the traffic lights. Which were, well, which were red when the Standons went through them—with me and Miss Seeton right behin
d—and . . . and . . .”
“And me and Buckland,” Foxon took over as Bob succumbed, “coming in from the side. A lovely mess we made of their car, sir—the Standons’, I mean. Took Traffic half an hour to sort it all out and get things moving again, and I think Highways is going to hit us for the cost of a new bollard—plus the 1-lamp standard that sort of got m-mixed up in . . .”
As Foxon once more gave way to his mirth, Delphick, who had been listening with growing amusement while he observed Miss Seeton’s reaction to her friends’ hysteria, struggled to keep his voice calm. He regarded Brinton’s purple face with pity.
“Just a car chase,” he reminded the superintendent in a shaking voice. “Un-uneventful, at that . . .”
“Hardly uneventful, sir,” said Bob without thinking and indicated the dishevelment of his companions. “I wouldn’t exactly call it that.”
Delphick looked at Brinton. “I don’t think the superintendent would call it that, either. I somehow think he’d prefer the term red-letter day . . .”
And gave himself up to laughter.
Note from the Publisher
While he was alive, series creator Heron Carvic had tremendous fun imagining Emily Seeton and the supporting cast of characters.
In an enjoyable 1977 essay Carvic recalled how, after having first used her in a short story, “Miss Seeton upped and demanded a book”—and that if “she wanted to satirize detective novels in general and elderly lady detectives in particular, he would let her have her lead . . .”
You can now read Heron Carvic’s essay about the genesis of Miss Seeton, in full, as well as receive updates on further releases in the series, by signing up at http://eepurl.com/b2GCqr
Preview
COMING SOON
Hands Up, Miss Seeton (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 11) Page 22
