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

by Hamilton Crane

  Miss Seeton was grave. “Let us hope that he remains alive, Chief Superintendent. You said, after all, that the case had taken a sinister turn. You didn’t mean—”

  “Nothing like that,” he broke in to reassure her. “So far as we know, he is alive. But I regret to tell you that he wears those bandages not because he has been in a fight—though I imagine he would have made some form of protest at the time—but because one of his fingers has been amputated.”

  Miss Seeton uttered one little gasp of dismay, then was silent.

  “I’m sorry,” said Delphick, passing her the photograph of the shoebox and its contents.

  “At least your suspicions must now be allayed,” she said at last. “It was not entirely certain that the kidnap was genuine, I believe, but after such wicked cruelty there can be no doubt, can there?”

  “There can be little doubt,” he amended. The early sketches had given the impression that the kidnap was not straightforward, and Delphick had faith in her impressions. Possibly it had started out the fake she’d hinted it was and then become, for some reason, the real thing. Maybe the reason was the Traffic Jam pick-up that had failed so dramatically near Evesham. In the west of England.

  “Miss Seeton, there’s a lot of countryside out there.” He recalled that resolute urbanite, Jasper Kebby, on whose behalf he was here. “We simply must try to narrow down the area. The family can tell us nothing—the paper is one of the dailies on sale everywhere—the room, the furniture, the background are all anonymous. If you can suggest anything else ...” By this time, discretion might do more harm than good. “It may be of interest to you that the young man’s name is Christy Garth.”

  “Garth?” Miss Seeton frowned, then slowly shook her head.

  Delphick was disappointed, but hid his disappointment. Her newspaper was unlikely to chronicle Christy’s wild exploits, he supposed; and, even if it had, she was unlikely to bother reading about them.

  “Garth—a courtyard or garden, I believe,” she said. “And '‘Christy’ has something to do with ski-ing, does it not? Which of course would be impossible at this time of year in the West Country, and even Wales in the middle of winter is unlikely.”

  Wales, to the west of England; Wales, famed for its sheep. Wales—not Worcestershire or Gloucestershire or Herefordshire in England. Not even Somerset. Had he misunderstood Miss Seeton’s sketches from the very first? Wasted police time over ... “Red herrings,” he said grimly, wondering what Chief Inspector Kebby would make of it all.

  “Agatha Christie,” said Miss Seeton promptly. “So very clever. An expert displaying his or her expertise is always a pleasure.”

  Delphick needed to think; had to interrupt. “Please, Miss Seeton, just take a look at the photos, would you? Consider what impression they give, while I clear the tea things away.”

  And think.

  Chapter Twelve

  In his office on the umpteenth floor of New Scotland Yard, Delphick contemplated the two sketchbooks borrowed, with official receipts and solemn promises for a speedy return, from Miss Seeton.

  “Miss Seeton is perhaps not the only person on whose instincts we should rely. Oracles have feelings, too.” Delphick smiled thinly. “From the start I doubted the wisdom of putting upon her the pressure applied to me by Superintendent Snowe when Kebby, or rather young Garth, had a prior claim. As for volunteering her help in the matter of the Somerset murder, that was to pile Pelion upon Ossa.” He indicated the sketchbooks. “I am justly served.”

  Sergeant Ranger knew nothing of the Greek giants’ mountain-moving attempt to storm the Odyssean heavens and destroy the gods, but he guessed the Oracle meant he’d added one problem to another. Which, Bob had to admit, was only the truth.

  “The coincidence of her being already on the spot had its appeal, of course, but had I not allowed my professional sympathies to intrude, Chief Inspector Faggus would have done no more than ask her to call me here to arrange a convenient time for a consultation in the privacy of her own home. That was urgent; the rest was not. Sadly, there will always be drugs; sadly, there will always be murder. But things can move fast—sometimes too fast—in a case of kidnap. Christy Garth should always have been my first consideration. And likewise,” he ended grimly, “that of the Yard’s retained art consultant.”

  “She’s never complained of being overworked! That’s not like Aunt Em, sir. She’s as conscientious as they come, and when she knows it’s her duty she—well, she pulls out all the stops, and she never complains. Er ... does she?”

  “Indeed not. She uttered no more than the exclamations of dismay proper to an English gentlewoman when she saw Garth with his bandaged hand, and then his severed finger. She studied both without a qualm.” He opened the first sketchbook to a page marked by a slip of paper. His journey back from Kent had been a busy one; he was thankful that the travel allowance for an officer of his rank granted him the privacy of a first class compartment in the train.

  Miss Seeton’s response to the latest kidnap photos showed a tall, stooping man in a surgical mask above which eyes of deep blackness gazed down at his prospective victim, whose form was so heavily outlined in short, jagged stabs of the pencil that much of the shape was hidden, and the paper in places was torn. The masked man held in one hand a knife and in the other an instrument with a small, sharp blade. As he stooped from the shadows, he loomed over the shoulder of a waiting arm clamped sideways to a chest of drawers too heavy to overturn. The waiting fingers were outspread; the stabs of the pencil here were the most jagged of all.

  “Phew!” said Bob. “The last time she saw a doctor it can’t have been Dr. Knight—or I hope it wasn’t. Talk about a nightmare. If Gideon’s grandfather really does turn into the Demon Barber like this, then it’s no more babysitting for him!”

  “Certainly not someone to whom I would care to trust my appendix. You, too, don’t doubt that the knifeman is a professional, rather than a skilful amateur?”

  Bob reconsidered. “It just feels like a real doctor, sir,” was all he could say. “Would a kidnapper’s henchman be so careful about wearing a mask?”

  “If the object of the mask is to prevent the spread of infection, he might. After all, there is little monetary value in a victim dead from septicaemia.”

  “A live victim could recognise the face once it was all over,” said Bob. “We can’t be sure one way or the other, then.”

  “The scalpel has a distinctly medical appearance, which again suggests a professional, except that we know Miss Seeton was a studious observer of the dissection of numerous bodies in her art school days. The mask might thus be no more than instinctive memory.” Delphick considered. “The mask does, however, serve another purpose. It renders the knifeman’s expression hard, if not impossible, to fathom.”

  “Apart from his eyes,” Bob pointed out.

  “Yes, they have a distinctly hollow appearance. And the background shadows fill that quarter of the room. I wonder ... but at present nothing worthwhile comes to mind.” He turned to another marker slip. “Glastonbury Tor,” he announced.

  Miss Seeton, understanding the Tor to be King Arthur’s Isle of Avalon, had taken a number of different views of this distinctive landmark. Here was yet another sketch of the terraced hill steep on one side, steeper on the other, dotted with the forms of sheep that seemed to be cavorting on muffled hoofs in the fields that stretched all the way from the moorland base to the summit.

  “But why,” said Delphick, “has she drawn a willow tree in place of the church tower?”

  Bob could give no answer. The Oracle flipped to and fro between the various slips of paper he had used as markers. “This particular sketch seems to have been drawn after her flight in the balloon, but before my arrival at the cottage. It was therefore not drawn in response to anything I may have said. She knew that she would be seeing me the following day. More dancing sheep, and a willow tree ...”

  “Something she saw from the balloon, sir? Or something somebody else has sa
id?” Bob was eager to assist. He never properly understood his adopted aunt’s swift sketches, but it seemed that the Oracle, who generally could, was for once finding interpretation hard. That’s what came of dealing with three cases at the same time. Everyone got muddled, and if Delphick blamed himself for the muddle, you couldn’t argue with that. But you had to help, if you could. The sergeant pulled the sketchbook towards him across the desk, turning the pages one at a time, with or without markers. He laughed. “Here’s someone striking a blow for Women’s Lib, sir!” It was white-robed Susan Callender, with her sword.

  “The Three Swords of Arthur.” Delphick emerged from his thoughts to contemplate again the sketch Miss Seeton had explained resulted from her meeting with Susan, now Brenda, the reincarnated Lady of the Lake with an interest in Arthurian myth and “a perhaps excessively romantic nature, Chief Superintendent.”

  “I never knew he had more than one,” returned Bob. “Excalibur, wasn’t it? Pulled out of a stone so he could claim the throne and build the Round Table.”

  “Something along those lines. This young woman, according to Miss Seeton, discovered a hitherto unknown depiction of Excalibur in the Somerset landscape—” Bob allowed a bemused What? to escape him—“and in the course of their shared balloon flight pointed it out to Miss Seeton, or rather attempted so to do. It would appear that her enthusiasm made more of an impression on her audience than did the landscape sword.”

  Delphick explained, as far as he could understand it from Miss Seeton’s somewhat incoherent explanation, the concept of the Glastonbury Zodiac and the use by its devotees of maps, photographs, and inspiration.

  “Wishful thinking, sounds more like to me.” Bob turned to another sketch. “Someone else waving swords about ... I think.” A knight in armour full a-gleam stood on a bridge, holding above his head a sword, out of focus. It seemed he had the intention of directing this indistinct weapon towards a ripple of water in the middle of a willow-fringed pool.

  “Sir Bedivere, one assumes,” said Delphick, “with the Arm In White Samite about to rise from the waters of the mere.”

  “Bedivere.” Bob tried to recall what he could of the stories he’d read to his sister’s children, making up for what he hadn’t much bothered with when himself a child, being more interested in outdoor rather than indoor pursuits. “Oh, yes, the bloke who took three tries and was yelled at by Arthur before he could bring himself to chuck the sword away.”

  Delphick smiled at his sport-loving sidekick’s throwaway reference to rugby football, and agreed that the sergeant had once again demonstrated a firm grasp of the essentials. As to whether Sir Bedivere, or the Lady of the Lake, or indeed the imminent Arm had any importance beyond reminding Miss Seeton of what she had learned during her two visits to Somerset, he could do no more than guess.

  “There is a considerable body of Arthurian literature,” he went on, “and a number of variations between individual versions of the stories.” The office encyclopaedia, which the Yard’s new broom had attempted to banish, now lurked, volume upon volume, in a tactful corner rather than continuing blatant upon the shelves. Fortunately for Delphick, the “A” volume was on top, and he had refreshed his memory to good effect. The new broom’s efforts to remove from its pride of place on the office wall the display case containing the wreck of Miss Seeton’s long-ago umbrella had been coldly, and firmly, ignored.

  “I am justly served,” said the Oracle again, after prolonged perusal of both sketchbooks yielded no helpful clues, only more confusion. “These must be photocopied in their entirety, and returned to their owner while copies are distributed to Superintendent Kebby and Superintendent Snowe. They may spot something you and I have missed.”

  “U and I.” Bob chuckled. “Aunt Em and her daft riddles, sir. Remember?”

  Delphick sat very still. “I do. The centre of gravity—and there was something else ... Perhaps a third visit to Plummergen is indicated, Bob. Once the photocopying is complete. Jump to it, Sergeant Ranger!”

  In Glastonbury, the Closed sign was being hung on the door of Bedivere Books as a shadow loomed. A thump and a rattle made Octavia pause. Through the half-glass window she saw her elder brother scowling at her.

  She sighed, and let him. “Hello, Bill.” It was not the most hearty of welcomes.

  “You’ve been to see Janner in hospital again.”

  “Yes, I have, but it’s for the last time—”

  “You’ve never done something to him!”

  “—because they’re letting him go home later today, once Jan can spare the time to fetch him. And of course I haven’t. Why do you think I would?”

  “Because he’s a stubborn old cuss and you’re as sick of the whole affair as I am,” said Bill. “This is ending up with you and me against Cris and Val. I don’t like it one bit. The four of us have always got on pretty well, considering, but all because of Janner being so bloody-minded we’re taking sides and wasting time with arguing when we should be concentrating on the business.”

  “I am.” Octavia waved a hand around the crowded bookshelves. “Concentrating on my business, I mean. And so is Val on hers.”

  “And on Jan, seems to me,” grumbled Bill. “Fleeces! That’s not all he’s got in mind to give her, I don’t doubt.”

  “She might be trying to sweet-talk him into seeing reason,” suggested Octavia. “Better yet, she’ll be trying to apologise for the fight you two had the other night. There was no call for you to let it go that far. We should be talking him and his father round before that Act becomes law, not making them so angry they won’t speak to any of us about anything and we miss our chance.”

  “That why you’ve been visiting Janner?”

  Octavia shrugged. “Two visits, four days apart. Someone had to try. But you’re the very last of us four he’d talk to; Cris and Val don’t seem as bothered now as you and me; it seemed too good a chance to miss. A captive audience. With that drip attached, he wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry.”

  “But it didn’t work,” said Bill, “or you’d have let me—us—know.”

  “No, it didn’t. The first time he was still too groggy to stop me being there, which I’m sure he’d have tried if he’d been himself, but I told the nurse I was his niece, and waved a bunch of flowers under her nose to prove my good intentions. He couldn’t argue with that, but he couldn’t really take much in of what I said, either. So I stopped saying it and turned the conversation to the weather, and what a serious accident it had been and how he’d had a lucky escape, and hoped he’d be better soon.”

  “Usual bedside chat,” said Bill. “In your place I’d have been tempted—but then, I’d not have gone hospital visiting the awkward old basket for fear I’d be tempted to shake a bit of sense into him. Or worse.”

  Octavia understood her brother’s hasty temper, and had to smile. “The drip was gone the second time, and he guessed what I might be up to the moment he clapped eyes on me. Or perhaps he remembered the first visit. Talk about language! A whole shopful of flowers wouldn’t have worked. He as good as told the nurses to throw me out.”

  “So you left before you were thrown. Don’t blame you. But for all your fine education, you did no better with him than me losing my temper.” Once more he scowled at her. “Which is what I’ve said all along—none of that side of the family can ever be made to see sense. So what do we do now?”

  “Perhaps,” said Octavia, “there might be another accident. Janner’s not old, but he’s no spring chicken and he’ll be none too sure of himself after being shaken about the way he was. They’ll advise him not to drive—those drips take a while to work their way out of your system—but he’s stubborn, as you said. That tractor ... some of the local hills are steep ...”

  “So they are,” agreed her brother.

  There was a long, thoughtful silence.

  It was one of Martha Bloomer’s days at Sweetbriars. Miss Seeton’s recent break had meant an alteration in the schedule of Plummergen’s domestic go
ddess, and there was much noise in the little kitchen as the breakfast crockery, which her employer had been about to wash for herself, was subjected by Martha to her most thorough bout of cleansing in weeks. Martha was in one of her Grand Slams—and it was mostly the fault of Miss Seeton.

  With her final mouthful of toast it had dawned on Miss Seeton that, now Delphick had returned to London with her sketchbooks, there were no Arthurian records from which to design the scenery for Sir Gawain. Her memory must therefore be her guide. She cleared the table, opened the bureau drawer in which her artist’s materials were kept ... and the rattle disturbed a large spider that had been enjoying the peace of an almost undisturbed slumber since the owner of the bureau had taken herself off to Somerset.

  Miss Seeton rose from her knees, darted into the kitchen and snatched her breakfast cup and saucer from the draining board. Holding the cup, the saucer, and her breath, she hurried back to the sitting room. Good. The spider sat still where she had left it.

  The manoeuvring was delicate. The legs of spiders are all too easily damaged. The huntress wondered if she should have fetched a soft cloth duster instead, but thought that Mrs. Bloomer might not approve, and would besides have meant opening another drawer, taking time she could not spare: Martha could arrive at any minute. Miss Seeton had no fear of spiders, and understood the benefits of their webs in the catching and despatching of unwelcome insect life; but she didn’t want and couldn’t risk webs inside her cottage. If Martha Bloomer, Plummergen’s acknowledged Queen of Cleanliness, suspected even one arachnid of trying to take up permanent retiary residence in her kingdom, she would be much more than affronted: she would be forever shamed.

  Miss Seeton lost track of time as she pursued the spider at last into a corner from which it could not escape, popping over it the upturned cup, sliding the saucer carefully underneath, and preparing to make for the kitchen, the door, and liberty for the spider to spin as many webs under the eaves, or round the gutters and downpipes, as it chose.