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

by Hamilton Crane

  “Good afternoon,” began Delphick, his open wallet in his hand. “We are—”

  “If it’s religion,” her Scottish accent cut him short, “or encyclopaedias—”

  Delphick held his warrant card more clearly under her nose. The brows above the quick dark eyes lifted in surprise, but at first she said nothing, looking past him to the unmarked police car in the drive. Her eyes widened; her shoulders drooped.

  She braced herself. “Is it me or the doctor you’re wanting?” she enquired, without any great conviction that she was the one they wanted.

  “We’d like to see Dr. Muxworthy, please.”

  She sighed. “Come away in, then. I’ll take you through.”

  As Bob wiped his feet, floorboards rattled along the hall. A latch clicked at the end of the passage and a voice called: “Is it for me, Janet?”

  “Aye, Doctor. It’s the police.”

  There was a pause that seemed to everyone too long to be mere natural curiosity. “Oh,” said Dr. Muxworthy.

  He was tall, thin and pale, with a hangdog expression that grew still more depressed as the giant Sergeant Ranger was introduced by Chief Superintendent Delphick and pulled out his notebook. “Oh,” said the doctor again. “You’d better sit down. Thank you, Janet.”

  Janet closed the door firmly as she retreated.

  “Dr. Muxworthy, we are from Scotland Yard and would like to ask you a few questions.” Delphick’s tone indicated that questions would be asked—and answers would be expected. While first impressions could, he knew, mislead, this time he was confident Miss Seeton’s impressions had not. The real-life doctor of her shadowed knife-man sketch was a worried man, and had been under strain for some days, to judge by the lines on his face and the puffiness around his eyes.

  “About what?” brought out Dr. Muxworthy, after another lengthy pause during which the chief superintendent allowed him to think things through.

  “You might care to hazard a guess,” Delphick said. “It would certainly save time.”

  Dr. Muxworthy’s gaze shifted under the oracular stare. “Why the hurry? About what?”

  “Fingers, Dr. Muxworthy.”

  The doctor, already pale, turned almost white, but brought out with a gasp: “Would this be a—a London pickpocket to whom you refer?”

  “I think you know it wouldn’t, sir. Indeed, I’m sure you know it.”

  Suddenly the doctor dropped his head in his hands. “Yes,” he groaned. “I knew just as soon as I heard the car, and your footsteps on the gravel. I knew it must be either the police, or ... or that terrible man, returning to ask me—force me—again ...”

  “To do what, sir?”

  The doctor sat up and licked dry lips, tugging at a collar that seemed suddenly too small. “To—to amputate another finger from the young man being held captive in a place I don’t know, and could never find again—they took very good care of that. If I didn’t do as they asked, they ... They have my daughter, you see. Elizabeth. She—they had apparently employed her to lure him into the trap and then ...”

  “Used your natural affection for her to force you to break your Hippocratic Oath.”

  Dr. Muxworthy shuddered. He looked sick. “They—he pulled her hair. He slapped her. Shook her. She screamed. It wasn’t play-acting. There was a—a ferocity ... He enjoyed ill-treating my daughter, Chief Superintendent, and threatened far worse if ...”

  Delphick nodded. “For the moment we will take the rest as read. A metaphorical gun was held to your head, and under duress you amputated the kidnap victim’s finger.”

  The doctor swallowed, nodded, and whispered a guilty Yes before again burying his face in his hands.

  “You wouldn’t recognise the place where the operation was carried out, yet you weren’t taken there in the dark,” as Our Lad had explained, “so did they hold you somewhere until the evening, or were you blindfolded?”

  “He had a real gun, Chief Superintendent. He made Betty drive the car to a quiet spot, and took off my watch. He smashed it and slipped it in my pocket. He told her to tie my hands—my thumbs—I was helpless—and then my ears were stuffed with cotton wool. A bandage was tied over my eyes. He forced me to lie down on the back seat. I have no idea how long we waited before setting off again, or how long it was before we reached ...”

  There was a considerate pause, broken only by Bob’s shorthand scribbling. Delphick asked at last: “You bandaged the injured hand very neatly, sir, and probably saved the young man’s life by preventing his bleeding to death.”

  The doctor shuddered. “I treated him for shock, and gave an anti-tetanus injection. There was little else I could do apart from leave a course of penicillin, having ascertained that he was not allergic.”

  “He spoke to you? What else did he manage to say?”

  Muxworthy shook his head. “I spoke to him. I had to, though the—though his captors were very much against it, but I had to be sure the antibiotics would be safe for him to take. They warned me to speak on nothing but medical matters, and told him to say nothing at all. He could shake his head or nod in reply to my questions. Only that.”

  Delphick reflected that the Sherlock Holmes analogy had returned: this was becoming a cross between The Greek Interpreter and The Engineer’s Thumb. “You saw nothing of your route,” he mused aloud. “You had no idea of how long, or in which direction, you travelled. You could see nothing of the place beyond, I gather, the one room in which you performed the operation.” Dr. Muxworthy confirmed this supposition with a weary nod.

  “They must have removed the ear-plugs to give you your instructions. What could you hear, when they did? Were you on a farm, in a town, close to a railway or a busy road?”

  “They had a cassette recorder playing rock and roll very loudly, just by the door.”

  “You could make out no other sounds at all?”

  The doctor sighed. “They took very good care I should know nothing. Cotton wool doesn’t make a totally efficient seal, but it muffles and distorts whatever you hear, as well as disturbing the sense of balance. It was difficult to think of much beyond walking without tumbling down.”

  “They couldn’t stop you breathing. What could you smell? Petrol fumes, agricultural deposits, unusual chemicals, rotting fruit—yes?” as Muxworthy frowned.

  “Aftershave,” he said. “They sprayed it on my clothes, my face—they even soaked my surgical mask in the stuff.”

  “Yet something about fruit caught your attention just now.”

  “Did it? Yes, I remember now ... It was wasps. Wasps or bees. As I left the car, before I was taken into the house, there was a great deal of buzzing in the air, uncomfortably close to me—I felt the vibration of their wings as they passed -- and an outbreak of hand-flapping on the part of my guards—I was pulled about, and almost fell—quite the wrong thing to do if you don’t want to be stung, but a natural instinct, of course. If anyone was stung I can’t say. I heard no outcry, but the—the swarming behaviour seems to have taken my ... captors by surprise. They did not realise, perhaps, that the aftershave might attract unwelcome visitors as well as blocking my sense of smell.”

  Delphick thought carefully. “Have you heard anything from your daughter since then?”

  “One photograph.”

  “With a newspaper headline and date clearly visible, and a warning that if you discuss the matter with the authorities she will suffer?”

  “Yes,” said the doctor, too exhausted to ask how he knew.

  “You are discussing the matter now with a senior police officer,” Delphick pointed out.

  “I’ve hardly slept and barely eaten since it happened, Chief Superintendent. I’m too tired to think up convincing lies to cover ... what I did to that poor young man. My daughter is dear to me as all that remains to me of my late wife, but Betty ... made her choices. The young man ... did not choose to be a prisoner. My first duty, as a doctor, is to my patient. If I can, in any way, help you to find him ... then it might compensate in some sm
all manner for my previous regrettable lapse in the matter of the Hippocratic Oath.”

  “You can bring him in for a detailed chat any time you wish,” Delphick told Superintendent Smith. “He won’t put up a fight.”

  “Our lad can keep an eye on him in case he does a bunk,” said Smith. “Or in case he has any more visitors.”

  “Unlikely, I suspect.” Delphick unfolded the Ordnance Survey map showing Munderfield Bishop and surrounding areas. “He’s not a professional crook. They would guess he’d find it hard to keep quiet if we tracked him down, which after the amputation would logically be our next step. We must hope they consider the precautions taken to disorient him will hinder if not prevent our working out where Christy Garth is being held—with, or without, Betty Muxworthy, whose involvement would appear to be of an ambiguous nature.”

  “She seems to have lured the poor bloke into a trap easily enough,” said Smith. “Then she gets bashed about, and her dad thinks the basher really meant it—a trap that backfired, you reckon?”

  “A fake kidnapping turned into reality,” agreed the man from Scotland Yard, hiding a quiet smile. “As was suggested by a reliable source very early in this case.” He heard Bob, adopted nephew to the reliable source, smother a cough. “But her father, sadly for Miss Bettina, has the right of it. Our first duty is to find and rescue Garth: if in the process we can also rescue the young woman, we must consider that a bonus.”

  “Cold-blooded blighter,” said Smith.

  “Practical,” amended the Oracle, studying the map. “We have more clues to Christy’s whereabouts than to hers. How many dog handlers are there in this district?”

  It was an unexpected change of subject. Superintendent Smith had to think. “Two here in Worcester, if you mean police dogs,” he said. “There are guard dogs at various commercial properties—scrap yards, that kind of thing—but you don’t mean them, I think.”

  “I don’t,” Delphick agreed. “Does anyone in these parts sell honey?” The Traffic Jam: that unexpected jar in Miss Seeton’s lively cartoon ...

  Smith was a local man, and this time did not need to think. “Any number of people. This area is noted for its fruit farms and hops. Every other housewife has a hive or two in the garden and a notice on the gate.”

  “Larger scale than that, and for preference within an easy drive of Dr. Muxworthy.”

  The superintendent frowned. “I seem to remember ... Yes, they made local news a bit back—oh, not in our line,” he enlarged as Delphick regarded him with interest. “A family squabble over the family farm. Soft fruit, a few flowers, apples. They tried cider but couldn’t make a go of it. They moved into honey and changed the name of the place to Melissa Products—odd, when the wife’s called Deborah. Second wife, which was why they hit the headlines. Father died unexpectedly, the widow and children argued over the inheritance because she claimed the honey was all her idea. Then it turned out there were tax problems he’d kept quiet about during the divorce. First wife reappeared to spill some financial beans, things got messy and they ended up having to sell. The place is rented out now while the legal bods try to tidy things up.”

  “The land is rented out,” said Delphick. “Does the same apply to the house?”

  “I’d have to check, but so far as I know the place is empty.”

  “Or,” said Delphick, studying the map, “is it?”

  At Delphick’s request, Christy Garth’s finger was briefly removed from cold storage for a sample of blood to be dabbed on a piece of cotton wool taken, using forceps, from a fresh packet, and immediately sealed in plastic to avoid contamination.

  Only one police dog was available that day: Sancho, an enthusiastic cross-breed almost as large as his handler. PC Markham had cheated official height regulations by wearing insoles and standing on tiptoe at the appropriate moment during his recruitment interview. He was obviously keen, and the police doctor on duty had a kind heart. Panza, the senior dog, with his handler and a selection of uniformed officers was waiting outside a bank into which a posse of armed men in stocking masks had stampeded two hours earlier. It was market day; the streets were busy; the operation was likely to take some time.

  “So you pair will have to do,” said Superintendent Smith. Fergus Markham beamed. It would be his first solo outing. Sancho had twice been put back in his training. The dog had qualified at last; the new partnership’s chance had finally come.

  A small party set out from Worcester for Munderfield Bishop and the former premises of Melissa Products. Delphick explained, as they went, that “Melissa” was the Latin word for “bee” just as “Deborah” was the Hebrew equivalent. Superintendent Smith remarked that it was no wonder the deceased farmer’s children had found their stepmother a hard nut to crack. “If she’s clever enough to go in for that sort of wordplay she’s clever enough to find the best lawyers. It could drag on for years.”

  Checks with lawyers on each side of the dispute confirmed that officially the property was empty. No caretaker was employed: the place was too far off the beaten track for any but the most determined burglar to break in. The family thought that a burglar so determined would break in whether or not a caretaker was present. It was the one point on which every litigant seemed to agree.

  “Saving their money to pay the legal bods,” said Smith, leading the way with Delphick and Ranger. PC Markham, Sancho, and three uniformed officers were in the car behind.

  “And perhaps a false economy,” said Delphick absently. He was thinking back through Miss Seeton’s sketches, applying the most relevant to his mental map of the area to which the party was heading, and finding as yet nothing amiss with his deductions.

  He hoped.

  “At the T junction,” the superintendent reminded driver Ranger, “we go left, they go right.” He gesticulated over his shoulder as Bob flicked the indicator. The driver behind waved acknowledgement, indicated in his turn, and the two vehicles set off in what for several hundred yards were two totally opposite directions, before further turns and twists would bring them, by a circular route, to the distant outskirts of Munderfield Bishop.

  A cautious pincer movement had been decided upon. The sealed plastic bag of blood-stained cotton wool was in PC Markham’s pocket as, licking his finger, he made sure of the wind direction and began working his steady way towards the house in which—its curtains closed, its doors shut, its chimneys smokeless—it seemed not a soul was in residence.

  But there were fresh tyre tracks at the entrance to the long, winding drive where a five-barred gate sagged open on its hinges. “Not just someone lost and reversing to turn round,” murmured Superintendent Smith, pulling the walkie-talkie from his pocket.

  “Gone up and not recently come back.” Delphick likewise murmured, though the farmhouse was well out of earshot. He and Bob studied the ground. Two vehicles, both saloon or estate cars rather than anything larger.

  “I don’t think they’d see us from the house if we shut the gate, sir,” offered Bob.

  Delphick looked at Superintendent Smith. “If they’re there,” said Smith, “then probably they couldn’t. But they might hear the noise. Those hinges look dodgy.”

  Bob flexed willing muscles. He knew he could lift the battered gate easily without letting it scrape along the ground, but Delphick held up a warning hand.

  “Count the tyre marks again, Sergeant Ranger.” The Oracle was as ever scrupulous about addressing Bob in public. “Can we be absolutely sure one of them hasn’t gone out to buy groceries? He might return, spot the ambush, and make a bolt for it.” The police car, unmarked as it was, had been left concealed behind a hedge in a nearby field.

  As Superintendent Smith again muttered into his radio, Delphick kept watch while Bob did as instructed. “I’d say they’re both in there,” he said at last. The Oracle nodded.

  “I would agree, but we can’t be too careful. What do you say, Smith?”

  “It wouldn’t do the cars any good to smash through a farm gate, but they might
still get away. If they’re in there, I’d rather try the old potato trick to stop ’em before they start.”

  “Ah,” said Delphick with relish.

  Bob’s eyes gleamed. “Haven’t thought of that in years, sir. Good idea.”

  Smith grinned. “Born and bred in these parts, me. Not one of your city slickers. The tricks we played as kids ...”

  “How perverse of this farm to grow fruit rather than vegetables,” said Delphick.

  Smith was determined to show these Scotland Yarders he was no country bumpkin. “A large apple would do, but they might spot us from the house if we go apple-picking. A stick and some cloth, or a thick wodge of grass, will do just as well.”

  Once more he addressed the walkie-talkie, while Delphick continued to keep watch and Bob scanned the hedgerows for a likely stick and grass of sufficient length to muffle the car exhaust, when the time came.

  “Markham’s in position,” announced Superintendent Smith. “Start moving in,” he told the walkie-talkie, and led the way, listening, reporting what was needful to know. “He says, still no signs of life, but now he’s letting Sancho take the scent ... The dog seems excited ... Nose to ground, tracking ... Heading for the front door—says he’ll wait until—”

  A loud bark. Frantic shushing. The twitch of an upstairs curtain.

  “Damn!” said Superintendent Smith. “Okay, everyone—go, go, GO!”

  They ran: Delphick, Bob and Smith up the drive, the trio of uniformed support closing from the back of the house. The superintendent thumped on the front door as someone else thumped at the back. “Police! Open up!” came simultaneous cries. Delphick checked the windows, wary of curtain-twitchers who might be armed. Bob, gauging the strength of the door, found he still clutched the stick and the wodge of grass. He threw away the stick and looked at Delphick.

  “Window, sir?” he said, and without waiting strode to the nearest casement, thrust the grass against it, and drove an elbow through. Splinters caught in curtains as cries of alarm arose from further inside the house. Bob’s arm swept in a mighty arc to push back the curtains along the rail, then he flung himself over the window sill.