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

by Hamilton Crane

  “What prompted this?” he enquired of a stately cleric in mitre, cape, and gumboots. Around his head shone a nimbus of multiple figure sevens; in one hand he held an umbrella in place of a crozier, in the other a bottle. “Did you meet a bishop boozing in the rain?”

  “Good gracious, no. I went to Wells and visited the cathedral, and the Bishop’s Palace with the swans on the moat, but I returned to my hotel in a very damp condition because it was so wet—the weather, that is, for of course a moat is already full of water—and Miss McConchie was most kind.” The landlady had brewed a stiff concoction of hot chocolate, rum, and Worcester sauce and stood over Miss Seeton while she drank it. Miss Seeton’s very toes had tingled, and she slept unusually well that night.

  “And the sevens?”

  Miss Seeton told him of Octavia Callender’s remarks concerning the approach of the seventh of July, 1977 “to which some significance is attached, I believe, by many persons in the town” and the sevenfold earthwork maze around Glastonbury Tor. Delphick kept his thoughts to himself.

  “A handsome specimen,” he observed, having flipped past several worthy sketches of Arthurian scenery to the next inspiration, a likeness of a sturdy bull that filled almost the whole page, majestic in frame, its head huge on strong shoulders, its body supported by powerful legs. “It looks very like a Hereford, with its white face and chest, but surely their horns are somewhat less prominent?”

  “Just outside Glastonbury,” said Miss Seeton, “a herd of Highland cattle grazes on Wearyall Hill, where Joseph of Arimathea is said to have planted the holy thorn. A most distinctive sight—such enormous horns, and their coats so shaggy one has to wonder how they manage in prolonged spells of hot weather when they do not, as far as I know, moult in the summer. The stomach, I believe, is larger than that of any other breed.”

  Delphick tried to ignore Bob, who was discreetly reaching for his third, or was it his fourth, slice of gingerbread. “A bishop and a Hereford bull,” said the chief superintendent to himself. “Hereford ...”

  The next swift holiday sketch had Miss Seeton exclaiming at the coincidence. “Our talk of swords, and dear Daniel Eggleden—it was in her bookshop—a most unusual mix of the normal with what one might call the esoteric—that I learned of Caliburn and the rest, and was persuaded to buy her cousin’s little pamphlet. She is a clever actress and a remarkable businesswoman, with considerable understanding of human nature.” She smiled. “It was hard to resist her ... sales pitch, I believe is the term. While King Arthur may no longer be the main focus of our theatrical endeavours they are still of interest—the books, that is—and once I have read them I will give them to Mr. Jessyp. He has more space, and a growing library on a variety of fascinating historical subjects.”

  A tall woman in flowing robes, her long hair bound back from a face covered by a mask, stood rubbing her hands together while an indistinct feline shape watched from the shadows cast by a guttering candle.

  “Lady Macbeth,” said Delphick.

  Miss Seeton nodded. “Although Miss Callender named her cat Graymalkin, somehow I could not envisage her as one of the witches.”

  “You mean that she acts the part of a hippy shopkeeper but in reality is something more?” Miss Seeton nodded again. Delphick thought of Superintendent Snowe, and his drugs enquiry. Strange costumes and esoteric books could make excellent stage props for attracting the right—or rather, the wrong—people.

  “I would imagine,” he said slowly, “Miss Callender is far from the only person in town to adopt an unorthodox fashion in dress. I take it hers is not the only ... unusual shop?”

  “There are a great many. With some remarkable window decorations,” she added. “Candles in the form of skulls, the Dead Man’s Hand in wax, and similar black magic foolishness, as well as crystal balls and witches’ hats, or possibly wizards’, for there were carved staffs and other such—such pantomime trickery, although if one does not take it seriously I suppose it may do less harm than, let us say, the taking of drugs.” Delphick looked at her. “There were, you see, such very peculiar smells coming from some of the shops, and from the windows above them.”

  Superintendent Snowe had been forceful on the matter of his undercover agent’s cover having been blown by the unexpected presence of Miss Seeton. “From any of the houses?” Delphick enquired. “Did you notice anything ... peculiar where you were staying?”

  “Oh, no. Miss McConchie is most charming. Her little bed-and-breakfast, while small, is a model of efficiency and a delightful place to stay. She wishes to expand, she tells me, and I am sure she deserves to succeed. It was a sad disappointment for her when the house next door was sold, or possibly rented, before she knew about it because she could have knocked it through, or at least built a walkway between the gardens.”

  Yes, thought Delphick, it fits. She’s noticed what’s important without really noticing. Nick Snowe’s chap was on the right track. I’ll ask her what she thinks, and the Glastonbury cops can investigate—though by now the birds, at a guess, will have flown ...

  But in Glastonbury the police already had important matters to concern them.

  The body had been moved. “Marked post mortem discolouration.” The police doctor knelt on damp ground beside the thick-set man of late middle age who lay crumpled beneath a hedge. “Indicating to the meanest intelligence that the man must be dead, or it couldn’t be post mortem.” He creaked from his knees to a standing position, and sighed as he dusted his trousers down. “Killed yesterday. I’ll have a better idea of time once he’s on the slab. Brought here in a vehicle of some sort—not a car, the boot would be too cramped for the way he’s been lying. A small van or a farm trailer, at an educated guess.”

  “You can’t beat the benefits of a good education,” agreed the chief inspector, who with his small team of professionals had worked all this out within minutes of their arrival at the scene. Since childhood Tom Faggus had heard jokes about highwaymen and Lorna Doone, and accepted that all he could do was laugh with his tormentors. He was now able to find the humour in almost any situation. “Thanks, doc, we can take it from here now you’ve done your bit. Shame about your trousers, though. But they’ll wash.”

  “Dry cleaning,” emphasised the doctor, “costs money. I’ll bring my own tarpaulin next time, and to hell with protecting the scene of the crime.” He squelched back to his car. The official photographer took several shots of what, should they come out as he hoped, he would submit to the Art Society’s annual exhibition as a study in dejection.

  Chief Inspector Faggus addressed the newest member of his team. “You said you thought you knew who he was, Hannaford, and then the doc arrived to confirm the death officially. Now he’s pushed off you can tell us what you know.”

  Detective Constable Hannaford hesitated. “I can’t be sure I know who he is, sir, but I’ve seen him around and I think I know where he’s been staying. Our Mum was chattin’ with Mrs. Beck the other day and she said about some new boarder who’d come here just to see the landscape Zodiac, and how she had to chivvy him out of the kitchen when he wanted the table for his maps and charts, then he tried the dining room and it upset the other guests when the meals started being late because he wouldn’t pack up.”

  “If he was looking for the Zodiac, he’s way off target here.” Faggus glance at his two companions in detection; the photographer had packed his equipment and was making for his car. “Why he was moved, d’you reckon? To put us off the scent?”

  “It’s thirty miles round,” said Sergeant Bloxham. “I’m told,” he added quickly. “Could’ve bin brought from almost anywhere, if such was indeed his purpose for wanderin’ the moors in all that rain.”

  “If I had a corpse in the back of my car I’d not want to drive too far with it,” said the chief inspector. “Especially in the rain. Mud and field run-off on the roads, gurt big puddles all over—I might skid into a ditch, and then where’d I be?”

  “Discovered,” supplied his sergeant promptly. �
�Caught red-handed by whoever come along to pull you out.”

  DC Hannaford ventured that a corpse covered by, say, old sacks, or the doctor’s tarp, might go unnoticed when all that was supposed to happen would be a tow on the chief inspector’s vehicle and then being waved on his way by his unsuspecting rescuer.

  “Suppose I knocked meself out on the dashboard and they found me slumped over the wheel with concussion?” objected Faggus.

  Hannaford, pondering, said that the chief inspector had been coerced into transporting the corpse. When the ditch entered into the equation, the murderer had coshed him to make good his escape, thus leaving him with the blame.

  Tom Faggus had thought from the start the lad showed promise: Jem Hannaford was a welcome addition to the team. Bloxham was getting no younger, while he himself was too close to fifty for comfort. “Buying time,” he nodded with approval. “They’d see in the end I didn’t do it, but by then our guilty party could be miles away.”

  “Acting on impulse,” said Sergeant Bloxham. “And that’s what I reckon he really did. The weather we’ve had of late, you’d not choose to be left with a corpse on account of the difficulty in getting rid of it. Like that cannabis, right? Too damp to burn, too long a time to bury. This poor chap, he’ll have stumbled across summat way out on the moors, and was silenced in a panic and then brought here when, you’d be right in your thinking, sir, our lad’ll not want to carry him far, just far enough to be away from where he was killed because of what he must have seen.”

  All three considered this. The chief inspector nodded slowly. “Reckon you could be right. It’s a lot o’ trouble to go to, else. But what he could have seen, and where ...”

  “His maps,” said Hannaford. “They’d show us. Dozens of ’em he had, so Mrs. Beck told Mum—notebooks, too. Into his knapsack each morning with a flask and some sandwiches, then off researching and ... Oh.”

  The three detectives stared together at the body under the hedge. Fully clothed, it wore a weatherproof jacket and trousers, and sturdy boots. Of notebooks, maps, or a knapsack to hold them they saw no sign.

  “Check his pockets, young Jem.” Theatrically, Tom Faggus rubbed the base of his spine. “The sergeant and I are getting too old for this caper.”

  DC Hannaford diligently rummaged. “A pocket compass and that’s about it, sir, apart from a wodge of paper hankies where the waterproofing must’ve leaked.” He straightened, soggy tissues in one hand, compass in the other. Idly, he glanced down. He stared. “Well now.” Without thinking he let the tissues fall, to tap gently on the glass of the compass as he looked towards the unmistakeable landmark of St Michael’s tower on the summit of the Tor. “A shame, the glass cracked that way. And fancy puttin’ it on a metal key-ring!”

  “Let’s see.” Chief Inspector Faggus in his turn made the alignment, and tapped. “Ah. The needle’s readin’ wrong. That crack looks as if he dropped it—could be the reason for the key-ring. Daft, though, to go looking for Zodiacs and suchlike with a compass fitted to a hunk of metal. You’d think he’d of noticed when he checked against his maps.”

  “Pouring with rain it was, all yesterday,” Sergeant Bloxham reminded him. “Unfold a map in such weather and you’ll end up with as much of a mess as young Hannaford’s made wi’ them paper hanks now contaminating the scene of the crime.”

  Blushing furiously, Hannaford scooped up the soggy tissues and, after hesitating, tidied them into his own jacket pocket. Chief Inspector Faggus saw no need for further rebuke, and with an approving nod passed the faulty compass to his sergeant.

  “Looks as if we guessed right, between us,” he said as Bloxham began the tapping routine. “Couldn’t check his map, so he’ll have done what most folk would do and trusted to his memory for where he was heading, but he didn’t realise his compass was on the blink and ended up miles from where he meant to be. And then ...”

  “And then, wallop,” supplied Bloxham.

  “Wallop,” Faggus agreed. “And then—well, it’s up to us to find out why. And who.”

  Mrs. Beck had been loud in her sorrow for the death of her boarder, though sorrow was tinged with relief that she would no longer need to keep nagging him to take his paperwork from the table and be herself nagged by full-board guests who wanted their meals on time.

  “And it weren’t just us here the poor man upset,” said Mrs. Beck, shaking her head.

  Unable to name names, because she hoped she had more sense than to credit such twaddle, the landlady could only suggest that Faggus and his men should talk to those who really believed in the Glastonbury Zodiac, or who might know the likely believers.

  “There’s some chap who takes folk on guided walks, sir,” volunteered DC Hannaford. “But I dunno who he is, nor how to find him.”

  “There’ll be a poster or two about,” said Sergeant Bloxham, “if they’ve not been washed away by the rain.”

  “Or you could ask in the most likely shops,” suggested the chief inspector, preparing to head back to the police station to set the investigation on a proper footing.

  Bedivere Books, an obvious port of call, was closed until half-past three.

  “Funny time to have dinner,” said Hannaford. “Not like Tavy, to be shut when there’s a chance to do a spot of business.” He remembered Octavia from school.

  “Three o’clock, end of hospital visiting,” said Bloxham. “That’s when she’ll be back.”

  Hannaford looked surprised. “She ill? That’s not like her, either.”

  The sergeant shook his head. “You got to keep your ears open as well as your eyes in this job, my son. You not heard about Janner Callender’s accident? Octavia’s visitin’ her uncle, no doubt, blood being thicker’n water when all’s said and done, even if the families don’t get on so well day to day. But the ambulance was up to the farm a bit back, when his tractor overturned. Could’ve been very nasty, they say.”

  “Tavy Callender won’t have shed a tear in sympathy,” said Jem. “She’d rather he’d been killed outright, wouldn’t she?” Among locals born and bred, the rental dispute was widely known; there was sympathy for both sides.

  “That family’s just started a run of bad luck,” prophesied Sergeant Bloxham. “First her father dead, then her uncle hurt. Dangerous place, a farm can be for accidents. Let’s hope the third, when it comes, ain’t so serious.”

  “Hawley Bowyer’s dead,” soothed DC Hannaford, less superstitious than the older man. “If we count him, doesn’t that break the run and bring better luck?”

  “You aren’t hit on the head and dumped under a hedge by accident, my son.”

  In thoughtful silence they reached a shop with window-hangings spangled with stars and a luminous crescent moon. They looked at each other, nodded, and went in.

  “Yes, I act as a guide for those who are inspired to seek out the Zodiac sites.” Torry Salt, when they tracked him down, was a thin, well-spoken young man in the process of growing his hair. He wore a faded paisley shirt, a hand-knitted coat that reached to his knees, and jeans. Earnest spectacles perched on his aristocratic nose. Giving his full name he admitted to Torquil, but said it was his intention, having now found his true path in life, to put his old life behind him. “Only, so many of my belongings are initialled. Property, we know, is theft, but I have to accept that my spiritual journey will be slow as I struggle to lose my sad bourgeois habits.” Sergeant Bloxham privately gave him a year at most before he went home; six months, if winter turned out as wet as the autumn had been. “The rest of my time is spent in furthering my researches.” With a sweep of his hand Torry indicated a shelf of books and a large box crammed with maps and leaflets. Bloxham wondered how many, if any, of these had been acquired at second hand. Not many, was his guess.

  “Plenty of people inspired, are they?” The sergeant was genuinely curious, even as he kept a sideways eye on DC Hannaford, taking discreet shorthand notes.

  Torry smiled. “Enough. The Zodiac signs and their original purpose are deep mysterie
s for which not all are prepared, and which not all can see or understand ... but enough people have sufficient curiosity and openness of mind to make the tours I have planned—on which I have spent much time and effort—worth running.”

  “You mean they pay you to take them round and about.” Bloxham stated this, rather than putting it as a question.

  “One must live.” Torry smiled. “Katherine Maltwood herself was an artist and sculptor, as well as a visionary writer—and, to quote Dr. Johnson, no man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money. There’s the upkeep of the van, for instance.”

  Two pairs of constabulary ears pricked up. “A van?” Sergeant Bloxham was casual. “I’d have thought you’d be protecting the environment and walking everywhere.”

  “The Temple of the Stars is set in a circle ten miles across and thirty miles in circumference. Few people have the time, or the physical stamina, to walk the entire Zodiac. We drive to the nearest convenient point, park, and then travel the lanes and pathways of our chosen sign on foot. We walk in single file, both to reduce the impact of our steps on the sacred ground, and to reinforce our one-ness with the whole. When we arrive at the very heart of the Zodiac figure we light candles and undertake a ceremony of silent communing with the spirits of the star-gods—silent, because the Zodiac means many different things to different people, and in essence all are equally true. The clamour of voices would distort the serenity of the shared experience.”

  The clamour of Sergeant Bloxham broke into Torry’s intended rapturising on the tying of ribbons, the scattering of seeds, the communing of spirits. “And you walk back to your van.”

  Torry emerged from his rhapsody, and blinked. “Well ... eventually, yes, although there will be detours from the main delineations should anyone be inspired to take them.”

  “Inspired. Suppose some of these walkers of yours aren’t so much inspired to believe in the Zodiac as to make fun of it? What d’you do then? Give ’em a refund?”