“SO I wouldn’t want you to think there was anything, well, you know, out of order about what I did. Marigold Naseby—that’s not her real name, by the way—”
“Oh, dear. Not Northamptonshire, then?”
“Northamptonshire? Sorry, I’m not with you.”
“I was thinking of the Battle of Naseby, and assumed a family connection.”
“Oh, I see. No, her family comes from Shepherd’s Bush, I think. In London. Anyway, Marigold had a lot of help, sure, but there was nothing in the rules against that, and plenty of the other girls had smart professionals working on their images, too. I got nothing out of it except a lot of fun and the satisfaction of helping a clever photographer and good friend of mine to turn a nice but kind of ordinary kid into the Lalique Lady that Cedric Benbow freely chose. She won the contest fair and square.”
Miss Seeton nodded immediately. “I’m quite sure she did, er, Mel.” The modern fashion for using first names was so difficult to get used to, and though one must of course do as she asked, one would always want to think of her as Miss Forby. Amelita was the name she used professionally, of course, but that sounded even less right than Mel. Especially now that she made the best of those beautiful eyes of hers, and spoke in a more natural way. “And you will naturally be interested to know whether the photographs Mr. Benbow takes will please all concerned.”
“I certainly will. And I wanted to be on hand in case the kid begins to buckle under pressure and needs support. But although as I’ve explained there was nothing whatever wrong about what I did, it still wouldn’t look too good if it got out that I was, well, sort of her coach. That’s why I decided not to stay here in Plummergen where a good many people know me. Canterbury’s just half an hour away by car, so I can come running if need be, and I was wondering . . . well, what I mean is that you and the Colvedens are good friends, and you’d probably hear how things are going and might be kind enough to . . .”
“Of course I will,” Miss Seeton said.
“That’s great! Thanks a million. Anyway, that’s quite enough about that. Now I want to hear more about this invitation from the Queen. What are you planning to wear?”
It had been decided that the most convenient place at Rytham Hall for Marigold Naseby to change in was the morning room on the ground floor, with the gowns and coats being stored on racks in Lady Colveden’s small writing room, which opened off it. These two rooms therefore became almost exclusively the domain of Wendy and the indispensable Liz, who was to function as her dresser as well as taking care of her makeup during the sessions, after the hairdresser had performed his daily magic. It sounded relatively straightforward but soon turned into hard work, because by the end of the first day Cedric Benbow had imposed his idiosyncratic style on everybody.
“Feller’s never heard of time and motion studies,” Sir George commented affably enough to his son as Benbow flitted past the open door of the library yet again, pursued by his retinue of assistants carrying tripods and lighting equipment. After breakfast Lady Colveden had taken one look at the chaos in the hall, shuddered, and decided to drive into Brettenden, look at the shops, and have lunch there. Sir George on the other hand, as Nigel had predicted, was fascinated by everything and had only with some difficulty been dissuaded from offering to lend Benbow a hand.
“You’d think he’d get the gel tricked out in one of those frocks, then park her in one place, and finish one thing at a time, wouldn’t you? Instead of firing off a few, then making her change, then change back into the first one again half an hour later. I must say I think those little silver umbrella things are rather neat. Didn’t realize how many gadgets you need for a job like this. Might take up photography meself again one of these days.” He turned to the large Securicor guard who was sitting to attention beside the locked strongbox in which the jewelry was kept. “You keen on it at all, Smithers? Photography.”
Smithers had been a regular soldier for a good many years before joining Securicor and had, indeed, achieved the rank of corporal, but he had never previously been alone in the company of a major general, even a retired one. Sir George had within minutes winkled the details of his military career out of him and from then on treated the gratified Smithers as an old and valued comrade. All the same Smithers’s muscles had been so conditioned by army life that they refused to relax, and he managed only a sort of gargling sound by way of reply.
“What’s that you say? Expensive hobby? Absolutely. Couldn’t agree more. Worth thinking about, though. Takes me back, you know, all this business today does, Nigel.”
“What, fashion photography? Have you been hiding something from me, Dad?”
“Don’t be a damn fool, boy, of course not. No, no. Manning the old command post, I mean. On the qui vive, eh, Smithers? Pickets mounted, alarm systems checked . . .”—he nodded toward the telephone—“and watches synchron—no, they aren’t, dammit! Forgot about that.” Sir George glanced at his own watch and registered surprise. “Heavens, nearly twenty past six; how time flies. My word, old Benbow keeps at it, don’t he?”
“I think they are finishing for the day, actually, Dad. Er, if it’s all right with you, I believe I’ll just stroll down to the village with, er, Marigold. Um, I might get a bite to eat there, too. Tell Ma, would you?”
“By all means, by all means; all the more for us. Smithers and I will hold the fort. Have a bit of a yarn here till they bring—what is it, bracelet, couple of rings, and that huge brooch affair that looks like a stag beetle, right?”
“YesSAH!”
“Jolly good; at ease, old man. Yes, well, as soon as they bring that little lot back, we’ll sign it off, march everything to the armored vehicle, and then fall out ourselves. Run the gel down to the pub in your car, I would, Nigel. Looks a bit seedy, if you ask me.”
When Wendy and Liz emerged from the house ten minutes later, Nigel was leaning nonchalantly against the hood of his MG.
“Oh, gosh, it’s you, Marigold!” he said in tones of delighted surprise, then, less enthusiastically, “and you, Liz. Went pretty well today, from what I could judge. You must be tired, though. Going back to the pub?”
Liz cheerfully declined the role of gooseberry. “Great! Here’s the U.S. Cavalry. Got a job for you, Nige. I know that old banger of yours is only a two-seater, but Marigold’s had a much ’arder day than me and I’d just as soon stretch me legs. Give her a lift; there’s a duck.”
“Oh, rather! I mean, absolutely, if you’re sure it’s okay by you, Liz.”
Wendy protested, but feebly and not for very long, and was soon installed in the passenger seat. Liz grinned as Nigel started the little open car and gunned the engine impressively. “Take ’er the long way round, Romeo,” she said. “This worryguts can do with a bit of fresh air and a change of company.”
Wendy sat back, snugly held in the leather bucket seat, and let the mild evening breeze ruffle her hair. She was tired, knackered in fact, but it ought to have been happy tired. Everybody said Cedric was pleased with her. Mind you, he hadn’t exactly said so himself. In fact, he was a right old fusspot. “No, darling, not like that, like this”—and then one of those killing two-second demonstrations when you forgot he was an old poof of about ninety with dyed hair and wished you could look half as classy as he did. And all that fiddling about for about half an hour till everything was ready and then: “No, this is going to be simply dire. Go and put the little magenta number on instead, poppet. And the silver pendant with the opals.”
Bit different from the way Harry used to set about the job. Still, he had said she could call him Cedric, and patted her on the shoulder twice, and Liz said that was practically unheard of. So she ought to have been feeling really good now, bowling along in an MG and all. This Nigel bloke was a real upper-class twit in some ways, but all right really. Prob’ly couldn’t help being wet, fancy having that old loony for a dad. The house was a bit of all right, though, and Liz said Nigel would be a Sir one day and that she thought he was definitely quite f
anciable. What was the use of all that, though? Thursday, the phone man had said; oh, cripes, that was the day after tomorrow! Why didn’t she just get this Nigel to drive them both off a cliff somewhere? What was the good of anything anymore?
“I say, Marigold, what about a drink? There’s this rather nice pub I know just outside Brettenden: you can sit outside in the garden. Only about ten minutes from here.”
“Don’t mind.”
“Terrific! Great!” Nigel had heard not a flat, sad little mutter but sheer poetry, accompanied by a glorious crescendo from massed stringed instruments. His own heart sang as he drove this miraculous creature along the least frequented lanes he could think of. Nobody, he vowed to himself, would ever be permitted to occupy that passenger seat again, not after it had been graced by Marigold’s ethereal presence.
“Er, if you haven’t got any other plans, you might like a bit of dinner there. It’s quite good.”
“Don’t mind.”
Nigel drove on, incapable of speech.
“All right, everybody, thank you; I think we can feel well pleased with this evening’s work. What a difference it makes to be in costume, doesn’t it? Final run-through next Tuesday, here at the same time, right?” Dr. Wright, who was himself dressed as a hippopotamus—for with his daughter, Anne, at the piano he sang “Mud, Mud, Glorious Mud” as well as directing the show—treated everybody in the cast to a cheery smile, and directed a specially warm one to his daughter and to her fiancé, Bob Ranger, who was present in a privileged-observer capacity since he might not be able to attend the actual performance. “Good night to you all!”
In the good-humored melee that followed in the George and Dragon’s private dining room while people collected their belongings, the Reverend Arthur Treeves found himself in the company of the headmaster of the Plummergen village school.
“Went quite well, I thought, Vicar. Your ‘Brown Boots’ monologue was particularly good. Stanley Holloway to the life. And Potter was in excellent voice.” Mr. Jessyp knew himself to possess a pleasing light tenor, and he warbled a bar or two of “A Policeman’s Lot Is Not a Happy One,” P. C. Potter’s contribution to Comical Capers. This ambitious revue was to be given in the Brettenden Village Hall on the Saturday evening of the following week, in aid of the Plummergen Church Organ Fund. The vicar had therefore felt in duty bound to take an active part, much against his own inclinations.
“You are too modest, Mr. Jessyp. It is you and Mrs. Stillwell who will undoubtedly—what is the phrase?— ‘stop the show.’” The headmaster, a slight man, was wearing plain dark blue trousers, a horizontally striped blue-and-white T-shirt with a jaunty red neckerchief and a blue beret, and his props consisted of a string of onions.
He had himself written the sketch in which he, as a French onion seller with a hilarious accent, simultaneously confused and misunderstood Mrs. Stillwell as a down-to-earth English housewife. The vicar was privately a little shocked by some of the double entendres in the dialogue and rather suspected it contained others he did not understand. In predicting huge success for the sketch, he was not being wholly sincere, but Mr. Jessyp accepted the tribute with a quiet, satisfied smile.
“We shall see, we shall see. Are you changing, Vicar? I came as I am, myself.”
“I, too. It is no more than two or three minutes’ walk from the vicarage, and fortunately I passed nobody on the way. It is even less likely that anyone will be about so late as a quarter to ten, with dusk upon us.”
Mr. Jessyp concealed a smile, for like most amateur actors he liked nothing better himself than to be seen in costume by his acquaintances. He looked forward keenly to plastering his face the following week with Leichner’s numbers five and nine greasepaint, and mingling with members of the audience during the interval. Besides, the vicar’s costume was hardly outlandish, and his timidity seemed excessive.
For his Stanley Holloway monologue Treeves’s sister, Molly, had decreed that if he were to dispense with his clerical collar and its accompanying black dickey and leave the top of his now collarless shirt open, his old gardening clothes would suffice. A happy afterthought had made her rummage through the attic and find a flat cap their father had been wont to wear when he went to the races. This, though a size too small for him, was now perched foursquare on the vicar’s head.
“Shall we set off together, then? Our paths lie in the same direction.”
Wendy was feeling quite a lot better. She wasn’t much of a drinker, but the first gin and tonic of the evening had given her an appetite, and the second made her inclined to agree with Liz. If Nigel got rid of that crummy tweed sports coat and bought some trendy gear, he wouldn’t be bad-looking at all. She hadn’t expected the pub to have a proper restaurant with tablecloths and a waitress and that, and the look of awed amazement on the waitress’s face when she realized she was serving the famous Marigold Naseby had cheered her up a treat, so much so that she’d eaten all the whitebait Nigel ordered as a first course. It was creepy eating them whole, little eyes and all, but if you didn’t look it wasn’t too bad, and they tasted all right.
The fillet steak with new potatoes and garden peas was even better. Nigel seemed to have money to burn: lashed out three quid for a bottle of red wine just like that! Even offered her a liqueur to go with the chocolate mousse, but she’d been feeling a bit high by then and he hadn’t gone on about it. Considering she’d hardly opened her mouth except to drink gin and tonic in the first half hour, he’d been really nice. Seemed happy enough to rabbit on about some college he went to, not that she’d listened really. Then they’d got on to Cedric Benbow and her winning the competition and that, which had got her going a bit, that and the wine, so she’d hardly noticed him holding her hand after the girl brought the coffee and asked for her autograph.
In the circs it would have been a bit chintzy to have kicked up a fuss on the way back when Nigel stopped the car in that little dead end and then sat there like a lemon, obviously wanting to snog. Quite honestly, she’d been feeling a bit randy herself by that time, pleasant change after spending the past few days scared to death, and it seemed only fair to lean over and give him a big smoochy kiss. Then he gave her one back and they swapped a few more, quite on-turning but awkward in that titchy car. Just as well he hadn’t suggested getting out—she might have got sort of carried away.
Anyway, it was nice just sitting there now, parked about a hundred yards away from the George and Dragon, on the other side of the road. Nigel wasn’t trying anything, just holding her hand and kissing her fingers now and then in a dreamy sort of way, quite romantic really with it beginning to get dark.
Nigel himself wished time could stand still. It didn’t matter that they were in full view of passersby. Nobody could enter their space, the cocoon of bliss in which he was floating with Marigold, whom he now dared to begin to think of as his Marigold. He squeezed her hand gently and was thrilled when she responded, her fingers gripping his. Then, however, her grasp took on an extraordinary, unnatural ferocity, and she began to utter a low, shuddering moan that gradually increased in volume until she herself clapped her free hand over her mouth and suppressed it, making instead a continuous series of muffled yelps, like a puppy shut in a cupboard.
“Marigold! Darling, whatever’s the matter?” Nigel gazed at her in alarm, noticed that her eyes were bulging and that she was staring fixedly in the direction of the George and Dragon, and himself looked toward it. He could see nothing whatever to account for Marigold’s behavior, just the vicar and Mr. Jessyp emerging from the door of the pub in the gathering gloom and crossing the road before turning toward them.
“It’s them! Uncle Geor-or-orge! An’ ArArALFIE! Don’t let them see me; oh, Gawd, don’t let them see me!” Wendy babbled before burying her face in Nigel’s chest and clinging to him, shuddering.
chapter
~11~
“NO, YOU did quite the right thing, Nigel,” Miss Seeton insisted again, firmly ushering him toward the door. “As you can see, Miss
Naseby is already feeling a great deal more composed, and she is enjoying her cocoa. She will be perfectly safe here with me tonight; the spare room is quite comfortable, if I say so myself, and I shall have her bed made up in a jiffy. And Miss Naseby won’t be nervous because nobody but we three have the slightest idea where she is, isn’t that so? And I’m sure she can trust you implicitly.”
“Oh, yes, yes,” Nigel groaned fervently. “You can, Marigold, you can. But if only there were some way I could persuade you . . .” It was clear to Miss Seeton that she had only to say the word and he would willingly keep a vigil all night outside the cottage, but that would never do.
“Telephone me as early as you like in the morning, Nigel, and you will be the first to know whether Miss Naseby feels able to work tomorrow. I’m quite sure she will, you know. Good night!”
After many another wild-eyed, adoring glance at his beloved, who was sitting on Miss Seeton’s sofa with one of her shawls round her shoulders and clutching her mug of cocoa, Nigel was finally persuaded to go.
Miss Seeton closed the door behind him with a sigh of relief and locked it. Nigel was a very fine young man in so many ways, but oh, dear, how he had badgered the poor girl with incomprehensible and surely irrelevant questions about her relatives! It was enough, surely, that something had frightened her very badly and that she adamantly—indeed almost hysterically—insisted that nothing would make her set foot in the George and Dragon, now that they, whoever they might be, had tracked her down.
What the child needed was a good night’s sleep and one, or perhaps even two, of Stan Bloomer’s free-range eggs in the morning. It was of no use at all when she was in such a highly nervous state to try to persuade her that she had been imagining things, much less to ask really quite impertinent things about her family. That was completely out of order. The thing to do was to go and sit quietly beside her, perhaps pat her hand gently—after she had finished her cocoa, of course; otherwise she might spill it—and talk about something quite different until she had calmed down. Then get her tucked up in bed.
Miss Seeton, By Appointment (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 6) Page 9
