Miss Seeton Flies High (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 23)

by Hamilton Crane

  “Oooh, the benefits of a college education.” Val chuckled richly. “If you mean I’m every bit as colourful as you, there’s no need to bamboozle me with posh words. The boys can wear collar and tie if they want, it’s their working uniform—but I’m a walking advertisement for my work just as you are for your shop.”

  “Pipe down, you two,” snapped Bill.

  “Girls, girls,” said Crispin. “And what’s all this about Brenda?”

  “Susan,” began Valentine, as the other two stared. “Jan told me the other day,” she went on, with a faint pinkening of her plump cheeks. “She’s apparently talked about swearing a deed, or something, to make it official.”

  Octavia, the best-educated and best-read of the siblings, frowned. “Deed poll, I think you mean, but there’s no need for all that fuss if she’s not planning to commit any crime or defraud anybody—unless anyone who buys her book accuses her of selling them a lot of nonsense. Which in Glastonbury seems unlikely.”

  “As you know, to your considerable profit,” pointed out Crispin, with a chuckle in which the other three joined.

  “Modest profit,” she corrected him, “but every little helps.” She shrugged. “I still have a few of her pamphlets left, poor thing. Of course I’ll peddle any amount of nonsense if it sells, but I do prefer it to be well-written nonsense and Susan—beg her pardon, Brenda—Brenda!—isn’t what you could call either literate or fluent, when it comes to putting words down on paper.” She drew a deep breath. “Just because people read books and write letters, they think it’s an easy matter to write books. It isn’t. The ability to string words together in a coherent argument—”

  “Pipe down, Tavy,” commanded her elder brother. “We’re talking about Janner’s rent of the family field, not the literary ambitions of his offspring.” Bill’s mouth twisted in a reluctant grimace. “But I’ve got to ask—why Brenda?”

  “It means sword,” Valentine told him. “According to Jan she hunted through a book of names and their meanings, and—well, with all this research she’s been doing on the Three Swords of Arthur, she thought it would be more appropriate.”

  “According to Jan,” said Crispin with a grin, in which even Bill shared. Octavia hurried to the relief of her sister.

  “She’s been researching King Arthur’s three swords for what seems like years. She buys books from me occasionally—I let her know if anything likely comes along—and she borrows heaps from the library. If that book of hers is ever finished—and published—I’ll stock it—I did promise—but she keeps finding more things to include, and her notes are a real mess. She showed me once, and dropped a few hints about helping her to sort them, but I told her I’d had quite enough of that sort of thing in my college days, besides having no free time with the bookshop.” Her eyes glittered. “I dug out an entire quarter’s invoices and general paperwork from the files and told her it was a week’s worth. She got the message, though she’s been a bit standoffish since then.”

  “Clever,” said Crispin with reluctant admiration.

  “You should have refused straight out. I’d have said No and left it,” said Bill.

  Val shook her head. “It was kind as well as clever of Tavy to let her down gently, even if it meant telling a few white lies. It’s so much better not to stir up any more trouble than—well, than we’ve already got.”

  “And plenty more where that came from,” said Bill. “From what you say, Young Jan seems happy enough to think about an independent rent tribunal, but Janner’s not happy at all and the agreement’s in his name. He says the terms were good enough for him and his brother, and we shouldn’t be taking advantage of Dad’s death until a decent interval’s gone by. Not respectful to his memory, Janner says—or to the squire and old Ebenezer.”

  “Never mind the past,” interposed Crispin. “Does he know about this Act of Parliament next year, d’you reckon?”

  “We didn’t talk long enough. You know he hates the phone at the best of times—which talking with me wasn’t.”

  “You lost your temper,” deduced his brother. Bill glared, then grinned.

  “Well, maybe I did, the stubborn old idiot. Kept on about family feeling—when he and Dad hadn’t spoken for almost twenty years, on account of Granddad’s tombstone! I told him he was a ...” He recalled the presence of his sisters. “A something something hypocrite,” he temporised. Octavia chuckled, Valentine sighed. Both they and Crispin knew the volatile nature of their older brother’s moods.

  “It was the final straw when he talked about poor Dad being barely cold in his grave,” continued Bill after a pause. “I told him there was no need to remind me what had happened and, brother or not, it wasn’t for him to make jokes about it, and as for showing respect ...” Again he glanced at his sisters. “And that was when he hung up on me.”

  “And bang went our chances of a rent tribunal, or a 364-day tenancy,” said Octavia. “Oh, Bill, couldn’t you have tried—just once—to play things cool? Or couldn’t you have asked Cris to talk to him instead?”

  “Bill’s the head of the family,” said Crispin. “Janner wouldn’t dream of negotiating any sort of terms with me, partner in the business or not. Bill’s the eldest, and Janner has a—a patriarchal streak in him a mile wide.”

  “And a stubborn streak even wider,” muttered Bill.

  “Takes one to know one,” said Valentine, trying to make peace before a minor disagreement should turn into a full-blown row. Octavia, whose face had begun to assume an exasperated expression, suddenly laughed.

  “At least he’s not wearing a caftan,” she said. The other three smiled at this neat echo of their sister’s earlier remark. “But it does look as if we may have to propose any further negotiations through the legal types, after all. No matter how willing Jan might be to talk about the field, he’s our cousin, not our uncle. His father’s the one whose signature is on the paperwork—at least, I assume there’s something signed? It wasn’t all done on a handshake, and trusting to goodwill?”

  Crispin shook his head. “You forget that at first, before Dad and Janner were of age, it was the trustees of old Ebenezer’s will who saw to the business side of things.” He sounded regretful. “It was all properly signed, sealed and delivered the same week Janner left school at fifteen in 1927 to start keeping geese. The lease doesn’t specify anything beyond grazing rights and restriction to agricultural use, so when he expanded into sheep and took on the County Council farm tenancy next door, all it took was a few legal twiddles and the field was as much his as ever.”

  “Except that it was really Dad’s,” said Bill.

  “If only he hadn’t died,” said Val, with a sigh. “So young ...”

  “And in such a ghastly way,” said Crispin, whose imagination was a lively one.

  “Perhaps Janner will have an accident, too,” suggested Bill. “He can be as stubborn as he wants for as long as he likes, but if ... anything ... happens to him before the end of this year, it would solve our difficulties nicely—and,” with a quick look at Valentine, “no need to upset Young Jan, either.”

  Val looked reproachful, Octavia startled; Crispin, thoughtful. “Three score and ten,” he murmured as he roughed out a family tree on his notepad. “Old Ebenezer was seventy when he died, Granddad Peter seventy-four, Dad a mere sixty-five because of the accident. And Janner is ... no more than sixty-three.”

  “And could live another ten years,” said Octavia.

  “A decade after the new legislation comes in,” said Bill.

  “Unless,” said Crispin, contemplating the family tree, “he meets with an accident, too.”

  On a desk in an office on the umpteenth floor of New Scotland Yard, the telephone rang. Delphick sighed, and kept his head resolutely bent over his paperwork. “Bob.”

  Detective Sergeant Ranger abandoned his own studies—since the recent arrival of a new broom in a newly created department these had involved, with the Oracle’s reluctant permission, the summarising of summaries of r
eports they’d both believed long since dealt with, stamped as unsolvable, and archived—and reached for the shrilling handset. “Chief Superintendent Delphick’s office,” he told the handset. It quacked at him. “Yes, sir, but a bit tied up at the moment. Could I get him to call you back?”

  The handset squawked electronically, forcefully, and at some length. Bob sighed. “Just one moment, sir.” He put his hand over the mouthpiece and spoke quietly. “Narcotics, sir, Superintendent Snowe. He says Superintendent Kebby put him on to you.”

  “Kebby?” The Oracle abandoned all pretence at paperwork, and sat up. “News of the kidnap—Garth’s been found? Is that how Snowe became involved—the drugs connection?”

  “You’d better speak to him yourself, sir. Mr. Kebby was most insistent, Mr. Snowe says.”

  Delphick, about to reach for his telephone, hesitated. “I wonder why Kebby hasn’t called me himself. We really must indent for another telephone, Bob. You could be stalling persistent callers on one line while I tried to find out on the other what was going on—”

  There was a brisk bang outside. The office door crashed open, propelled by the small tornado that was Superintendent Kebby. “Has he told you yet?” he demanded as he strode into the room. “What do you think? Is it worth—? Oh.” He had just noticed the telephone in Bob’s hand. “Sorry.” He dropped, moustache a-quiver, on a visitor’s chair and waved to the others to carry on.

  “Er—yes, sir,” Bob informed the handset, which had resumed its electronic squawking. “Yes, he has. Just this minute. And here’s Mr. Delphick for you now, sir.”

  “Snowe?” The Oracle smiled into the mouthpiece. “Yes, it was. How did you guess?” He looked at the moustache sitting opposite. “Your intuition is not at fault. The superintendent is with me as we speak.” Kebby met his eye, and with a rueful grin mouthed a silent apology as Delphick began listening to the torrent of squawks and electronic chirrups the telephone insisted he should hear. At one point in the outpouring the chief superintendent sat bolt upright, but the telephone rushed on with its story before he had time to express verbally the emotion it was plain he felt.

  “I see,” he said at last, his voice controlled. “Your concern, I would say, is entirely understandable.” He glanced at his visitor, who was once more quivering with suppressed excitement. “Kebby and I will consult together, after which consultation he will doubtless be in touch with you again.”

  After brief valedictions he dropped the receiver back on its cradle, and allowed himself the faintest of grins. Bob, who in the presence of Superintendent Kebby had refrained from listening on the extension, looked a query. Kebby shook his head.

  “I know what he’s told you, and I’ve heard it myself, but I still don’t believe it—and I can’t believe your lady-friend could possibly have known before it happened—but she did, didn’t she? If I ever wore a hat I’d have to take it off to her, because she was spot on about the craziness even if we’re no farther forrard over the kidnapping. No doubt it’s our fault for not—not translating her crazy doodles into the right crazy language.”

  Bob stifled a guffaw. So Miss Seeton had come up with the goods, or at least some of them, yet again. He looked at Delphick. He’d like to know what had set the Oracle all of a fizz like that mid-conversation, if conversation it could be called when he’d hardly had the chance to squeeze in a word until the end. He looked again at Delphick, who recognised the look, and nodded.

  “Your inference, Sergeant Ranger, is correct. Miss Seeton has shown herself to be once again on top form. Superintendent Snowe would be one of her most fervent admirers if only what she’s drawn didn’t seem guaranteed to involve his department in a great deal of unexpected work—and worry,” he added in a more serious tone.

  “If he’s right and there’s worse to come,” said Kebby, “then worry is an understatement—but that’s for Narcotics. I’m here on my own behalf as well as Nick Snowe’s. I need another dekko at those sketches you brought back from Kent. Snowe may be looking at a drugs breakthrough, but the kidnap’s no closer to being solved, and it’s a priority case. We need further inspiration. A second look.”

  Bob was almost bursting to ask what had happened. Delphick took pity on him.

  “You may be interested to know, Sergeant, that the strait-jacketed sheep recently drawn by Miss Seeton manifested themselves in person—that is, in reality—down in Somerset a day or so ago. Incidentally, Kebby, why was I not told of this before?”

  “Only heard about it myself when Narcotics called to put me—huh!—in the picture. Crossed wires, messages not getting through—you know the sort of thing.” Delphick knew only too well that policemen of every rank were always overworked and couldn’t be expected to think of everything, and murmured a soothing reply to that effect.

  “These blasted sheep,” Kebby snatched up the narrative thread, “went on some kind of psychotic rampage out in the middle of nowhere—ran riot through a cluster of half-a-dozen cottages playing merry hell with the place—barged through hedges, broke down gates, even jumped walls when they weren’t too high—huh!” He turned to Bob, who had emitted another guffaw and been unable to suppress it.

  “It’s no laughing matter, young man. High is the operative word. Those sheep were stuffed to the gizzard with cannabis, if sheep have gizzards—I don’t need a natural history lesson, thanks—and one of them nearly caused an accident by finishing its garden snack and leaping back out into the road to work off the calories by prancing about right in front of a car. Fortunately it was a local driver, not a tourist. He’d already slowed down for some bend or other, and was able to stop in time rather than end up overturned in the ditch or skidding into a wall. Or even,” he added, “hitting the sheep, which apparently just trumpeted a bit at him and carried on with the dance.”

  A resolute silence filled the office as even Kebby struggled not to laugh at the picture conjured up by his words.

  “It—it sounds a bit way out, sir,” said Bob at last, the first to sober though his shoulders still shook.

  “Quite so,” said Delphick after a moment or two for deep breathing. “A masterly précis, Sergeant Ranger.”

  Kebby allowed himself a grin. “Far out I think you mean, Ranger, though check the proper lingo with Superintendent Snowe. The point is that your Miss Seeton apparently predicted, several days ago, that somebody, somewhere in the West Country, was about to dump a sizeable accumulation of cannabis plants for a flock of sheep to gobble up, with predictable results—and they did. The locals caught ’em, penned ’em and got ’em sober, but word reached the cops in Glastonbury—” Delphick and Bob exchanged looks—“and they thought they’d better nose around. Tracked the most likely route from damage done on the way, found what was left of the plants half-hidden a short distance from an unused barn. Which turned out, when they got inside, to have been in use not long before. Seems someone’d been growing cannabis there in considerable quantity, and scarpered with most of it but couldn’t take it all. It’s rained a lot in that part of the world these past few days, and half of Somerset’s no more than an inch above sea level anyway. Area they call The Levels, three guesses why. Too damp to burn the stuff they didn’t take with ’em, evidently no time to dig a hole and bury it and wait for it to rot.”

  He paused for breath. “The imagination boggles,” said Delphick, “at what could result should the plants eventually become usable compost. We may yet see triffids stalk the countryside. And cannabis, we should remember, derives from hemp, which was of course once used to make hangmen’s and other ropes. One would therefore expect some degree of, forgive me, stringiness to the product—irrelevant no doubt if one smokes it, or stews it in soup or makes a tisane, but, given that it probably takes longer than most plants to compost, does on this particular occasion seem to hint at a degree of haste in the dumping of it. This would further suggest something in the nature of panic—prompted, may I venture to guess, by the search, clearly less discreet than you would have liked, of the area f
or a place where Christy Garth may or may not be being held prisoner?”

  “Spot on,” agreed Kebby. “You should hear Nick Snowe—and I’m none too pleased myself, having drawn a total blank in the kidnap, which was the whole object of the exercise—but he’s seriously worried that if the chummies can afford to dump stuff as potent as this, the stuff they took with ’em is likely to be far stronger and’ll cause far more trouble, once it’s out there among the users.” He rushed on before Delphick could respond. “Yes, I know he should be grateful for having the alarm raised so early, but it’s alarmed the chummies, too. They’ll hide their new factory even better than they hid this one, and the minute the Somerset cops decide on another search they’ll move again. The lads did their best to keep it all under wraps, but it’s just not the same way of life, out in the sticks. Sneeze by yourself in your bedroom at midnight, first thing next morning you’re offered friar’s balsam and aspirin. You can’t keep anything quiet.”

  “Or secret,” said Delphick. “Yes, I see how it happened—and incidentally, moving on from cannabis and hemp, did you know that Somerset is famous for its willows, from which aspirin is derived? An idle thought, merely,” he added as Kebby began to bristle. “Somerset was, I take it, the only western sheep-farming area searched where any—” he dared not meet Kebby’s eye—“any untoward event occurred?”

  “Far as I know, yes, but my team are busy double-checking in case any other bits of paper with notes on ’em have been accidentally swept under the blotter or shoved straight in the files before reading.” There was a note in Kebby’s voice that combined impatience with apology. The superintendent preferred action to inaction, and all he could do at the moment was look at drawings he’d already seen once, and ask the Oracle to make a second guess at what Miss Seeton had really meant.

  Delphick was willing to assist, but gave due warning that his colleague would this time be looking at photocopies, rather than Miss Seeton’s originals. “You can’t keep anything quiet,” he said with a wry smile, “in Scotland Yard any more than you can in the depths of the countryside. The ACC found out about my trip to Kent, and was after me within five minutes of my return.” Sir Hubert Everleigh, Assistant Commissioner (Crime), was a connoisseur who had very early seen the investment potential of Miss Seeton’s lightning sketches, and also admired them for their own sake. No amount of insistence on the part of Chief Superintendent Delphick that, paid for by the Yard, the sketches were the property of the Metropolitan Police and might at any time be required as evidence, could deter Sir Heavily from dropping broad hints, and asking what had been done with the little woman’s latest creation. He had met Miss Seeton—liked her—wouldn’t wish to disappoint her by letting her think her work was not appreciated. Retainer fees and cheques were, after all, only money. A creative person wanted rather more acknowledgement of her talent than that.