“You suppose she might just be echoing her dream in the clear light of day?” Delphick looked at Bob, and shrugged. “It’s a thought, of course, but somehow I feel there’s more to it than that. You know how we’ve never decided whether she’s psychic or not, in the generally understood sense of the word—but I’m convinced that, in her own, er, unique sense of the word she is. So, if she was dreaming about a heap of little bricks—no, that was later, wasn’t it? The two of you were rapturising over history, as I recall. Anyone know anything about brickmaking techniques in times historical? Would they have had rounded corners?”
“The only thing I know is that you can’t make them without straw,” volunteered Bob, as Anne confessed to her ignorance with a baffled silence. Delphick grinned.
“Somebody-or-other is famous for having found Rome brick, and left it marble, but I hardly think that applies in this particular case—and wasn’t there a regiment of the Light Infantry known as the Brickdusts? Sir George Colveden would be the chap to ask about that, I imagine. Which is all very interesting, no doubt, but gets us no nearer understanding what MissEss is trying to tell us, does it?”
There was an expectant pause. “Sir,” said Bob, “now the nightclub lot are in clink, we’re not too busy . . .”
“Anne,” said Delphick, “how full is the hotel? Would we be able to find rooms? Or, rather, one room, for me—Bob’s all right with you, of course. I rather think we ought to come to Belton as soon as we can—expect us tomorrow unless you hear anything to the contrary . . .”
Anne crept back into the television lounge, and caught the last half hour of Dangerous Moonlight. Miss Seeton was so wrapped up in the story that she failed to notice her young friend’s return; she had been transported back in time, and was watching it as she’d watched it first in a London cinema thirty years ago. She had agonised once more while the resistance workers waited for the Polish national anthem to be silenced, heralding the arrival of the Nazi jackboots; while the handsome young pianist met the American girl reporter in bombarded Warsaw, and they fell in love beneath the dangerous moonlight. When he escaped to England and fought in the Battle of Britain, she thrilled; when, injured, he failed to recognise his love, she desponded. His final playing of the piano—The Warsaw Concerto, so expressive—and the gradual return of his memory was almost too much to bear: she knew very well what was going to happen, and could hardly wait for it all to come true.
“Didn’t I say I thought I’d seen that movie someplace before?” said a middle-aged American woman triumphantly to her husband, as the credits rolled up the screen. “It was when he joined the Air Force I remembered—but surely we call it Suicide Squadron back home? I guess now I’ve seen it again, I prefer the English title.”
Her spouse uttered a vague grunt. His eyes were firmly closed, and could well have been closed throughout the film: he certainly gave no clear impression of sharing his wife’s memories. She looked round at the other occupants of the residents’ lounge. “Moonlight’s a sight more romantic than airplanes,” she said, and Miss Seeton, as she put her handkerchief away, nodded.
“It is indeed. There is a quality—shadows, you know—and so very much more effective in black and white. Imagine if it had been made in colour—the film, I mean. Not that there were no coloured films in those days, but of course they were more expensive, and, in this instance, infinitely preferable, I feel, to use black and white, which somehow does not give so much of a grey impression of moonlight as photographing in colour, I believe, would have done . . .”
As she finished speaking, her fingers began to dance on her lap in a way which Anne, still wishing she’d seen all of the film, recognised. Would there be another of her sketches to show Bob and the Oracle when they arrived tomorrow? She wondered whether she should let Aunt Em know that they were to have company, but, during the little chat on old movies and lighting techniques which Miss Seeton and her new friend seemed set to enjoy for a while, had time to think better of it. Once she knew Bob was coming back, Aunt Em would insist on relinquishing her tenancy of the four-poster bed: and what harm would it do to let her indulge her romantic daydreams just for one more night?
“. . . Popular Culture,” the American woman was saying, to Miss Seeton’s evident interest. “They don’t make them like that anymore, more’s the pity. You can’t have too much of the old romance in your life, that’s what I say,” and with a forceful elbow she dug her sleeping spouse in the ribs. He snorted, jumped, and opened his eyes. Anne stifled a giggle at his look of bewilderment, though she had every sympathy with his drowsy state. Perhaps it was all the fresh air today, but she found herself yawning in sympathy.
“Wake up, Howard. You can take me right along to the bar this minute and buy me a drink.” She glanced enquiringly at Miss Seeton. “Would you—and your niece, of course,” and she favoured Anne with a welcoming smile, “care to join us? We couldn’t help noticing the two of you around the hotel these last couple of days, and we’ve been wanting to make your acquaintance. Say you’ll come—we won’t take no for an answer, will we, Howard?”
Howard, his eyes now fully open, looked with interest on his wife’s new friends, and promptly added his welcome to hers in tones every bit as insistent. Miss Seeton, who had at first seemed pleased by the invitation, after a quick glance in Anne’s direction made attempts at refusal so very polite that neither Howard nor his wife appeared to hear them. They were touring England to see the sights and meet the people: what better way could they have of meeting people than in a good old English pub? Surely Miss Seeton and her niece could spare just half an hour for a little visit? Miss Seeton’s niece, noticing a pause as they both drew breath simultaneously, jumped in with:
“Yes, do go, Aunt Em, and enjoy yourself—but if everyone will excuse me, I rather think I’ll have an early night. I shan’t feel so bad about leaving you to your own devices, though, now I know you’ve found some congenial company,” and she favoured drowsy Howard and his wife with a grateful smile. “You’ll be able to swap notes about more old films,” she added, as Miss Seeton hesitated. “All the ones we’ve been watching since we’ve been here, for instance . . .”
The brightening of Miss Seeton’s eye did not go unrecognised by Mrs. Howard, who exclaimed that she’d thought from the start they’d have things in common, and didn’t it just go to show that Aunt Em here—if they’d excuse the liberty, she was Shirley Warren and this was her husband, Howard . . . that Miss Seeton, wasn’t that nice and quaint and English, would have as much fun talking to them as they’d have talking to her? But she (Shirley) knew how young people were inclined to fuss over their elders, and Anne could rely on her not to keep her aunt up all night—only, if she had the slightest doubt, why didn’t she change her mind and come along to the bar with them, if only for one quick drink . . .
In the end, Anne’s sleepiness having apparently been accepted as genuine, Miss Seeton was gathered up in triumph by Shirley Warren and hustled merrily off to the bar, with Howard, rubbing his eyes, in their wake. He winked at Anne as she parted from them at the foot of the stairs, and murmured that he wasn’t so keen on the old movies either, but that sometimes, for the sake of peace and quiet, it was better doing it her way. Anne smiled politely, realising that his mis-diagnosis of her weariness as entirely tactical was her easiest escape route from what otherwise promised to be much tedious explanation.
Nobody followed Anne up the stairs: the night was still very young, and the bar of the Belton Arms was a welcoming place, with a cream-washed ceiling striped by age-darkened beams on which Bob, being so tall, had often risked bumping his head. Horse brasses fixed in rows to leather harness straps hung on the uneven walls, and Miss Seeton’s eye had been caught on the first night by a series of prints which, she felt sure, were genuine. There were enough, but by no means too many, tables—and no piped music. Small surprise that it was a popular local, as well as a comfortable drinking place for hotel residents.
Anne yawned again as she
made her way towards Room 25, and in so doing managed to drop her handbag, out of which she was just fetching her key, on the floor. Her exasperated “Bother!” coincided almost exactly with the thud of the falling bag and the clatter of the key ring. As she stooped to pick everything up, she froze.
From inside Room 25 she thought she heard a noise.
She listened, still frozen, for perhaps half a minute; heard nothing more; and decided it must have been imagination, compounded with tiredness. She finished picking up her belongings, and moved to fit her key in the keyhole.
It would not fit.
She checked the number on the door: perhaps, being so tired, she’d come to the wrong room . . .
She hadn’t. All the doors in the Belton Arms were old-fashioned, solid wood, panelled—but with old-fashioned, solid brass numbers on them. Room 25. No mistake.
And, as she tried again to fit the heavy iron key in the old-fashioned lock, she heard a scuffling sound from within the room—and then silence.
chapter
~22~
OVER A HUNDRED miles away, in the Scotland Yard office, Bob Ranger yawned, stretched, and snapped shut his notebook with a sigh of relief. Delphick, who had also been ploughing the weary furrow of the nightclub protection paperwork, glanced across at his sergeant, and grinned.
“Broken the back of it at last, Bob?”
“Hope so, sir. If we’re heading off to Belton first thing tomorrow, I don’t want my notes hanging over me till we get back. My memory’s not that brilliant.”
Delphick nodded. “I know your position as my sidekick is justified by your many fine qualities and abilities, but it has to be admitted that one-hundred-percent accurate shorthand is not one of them. Excellent training for the memory, though.”
“Yes, sir. Er—the voice of long experience, sir?”
Delphick looked pained. “Hardly as long as your tone would seem to suggest, Sergeant Ranger. The days when I was a humble detective like yourself are not, I trust, so far lost in the mists of antiquity that the skills of an archaeologist would be required to disinter them—and if this is a roundabout way of asking whether I’m now going, or have gone, gaga, I shall ignore it. I wouldn’t say there’s much wrong with my memory—not when I recall very clearly that you owe me that last pint we didn’t have earlier. Just in case you were hoping I’d forgotten.”
“Certainly not, sir.” Bob contrived to look simultaneously scandalised and hurt. He checked his watch against the office clock. “Time for a quick one, sir? And then off home ready for an early start?”
Delphick, too, was checking the time, and did not reply at once. “Bob, are you particularly tired? Desperate for your Bromley bed after the excitements of the day?”
In the act of stretching again, Bob stopped, and stifled a yawn. “No, sir. Could do with a spot of fresh air, mind you—and a change of scene,” he added hopefully. After so many years working with the Oracle, there were times when he could almost read his thoughts. “How about you, sir?”
Delphick nodded. “A change of scene would suit me very well. And driving through the night, when the roads are far less crowded . . .”
“Pop home, pack, pick you up, and head west, sir,” said Bob without hesitation. “It’d probably mean sharing some of the driving, though, especially towards the end, but—”
“But it would be worth the effort,” supplied Delphick, a gleam in his eye. “Not, of course, that I believe for one moment there is any risk to Anne, or to Miss Seeton, in so quiet a place as Belton—but we both know from, er, long experience, that when MissEss is involved it does no harm to make sure . . .”
Anne was wide awake now. She rattled the handle of her bedroom door as she twisted her key in the lock, pushing and probing: but to no avail. She stopped, breathing hard, and listened furiously.
She thought she could make out further scufflings from within: deliberately mocking, muffled sounds which she could not identify. Yet the door was old, and solid wood: perhaps she was imagining things . . .
“You look as if you’re having problems,” said an unexpected voice, as one of the male guests came up the stairs. “Your key playing up, is it? I had just the same problem yesterday. They tell me there’s a knack—would you like me to try if I can remember it?”
“That’s very kind of you,” said Anne, handing over her key with a smile, relieved that should there indeed turn out to be an intruder, there would now be two people to tackle him. This man was large enough to compensate for her own tiny frame, if it came to catching burglars . . .
But they weren’t going to catch any burglars just yet. “Sorry, this one’s beaten me,” said the man, straightening from his third attempt at opening the door. “I’ll slip down to Reception and ask young Beverley for the master key—she must be getting used to this by now. You wait there,” and he was gone.
Anne waited. Whoever was in her room was trapped. Was she ready to make a grab at them as they tried (as would anyone with sense) to make their escape? Suppose Beverley or the Samaritan guest should be injured in the ensuing scuffle? Anne might be expecting a scuffle, but they almost certainly were not. They would simply be expecting to help her get into her room . . .
Her room. But it wasn’t, was it? Not officially. Miss Seeton had been allocated Room 25, while Room 24, with its four-poster bed, had been given to Mr. and Mrs. Ranger—which was how matters still stood, in the hotel register . . .
Anne wondered what Bob, and the Oracle, would say she ought to do. Before she’d had time to work out an answer, back up the stairs came her new friend, with Beverley in tow and a look of I told you so on his face. The receptionist’s look was one of deep apology. In her hand, she carried what was obviously a master key.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, as she reached Anne and began to fit the master key, with an effort, into the lock. “It must be the hot weather—this keeps happening, I’m afraid. The door frames must warp, or something. All it’s supposed to need is a sort of—ah!”
With a click, the door swung slowly open. Beverley said brightly: “Success! It’s all yours, Mrs. Ranger—or rather, I thought this was your aunt’s room?”
“She asked me to, er, fetch her sketchbook,” said Anne absently, while she braced herself for mortal combat with whatever illicit form should now rush out upon them.
But nobody emerged from Room 25. Warily, she stepped inside; followed, for some reason, by the blond receptionist, though the helpful guest continued on his way after a few words of congratulation. “Oh,” said Beverley, “I wondered where he’d gone,” and pointed to Anne’s bed.
Right in the middle of the counterpane, his paws wrapped defiantly over his eyes, Orlando lay curled in a slumbering heap. At the sound of Beverley’s voice, one ear twitched, and the tip of his tail flickered. “Orlando . . .” Beverley advanced on the bed with determination. “He’s pretending,” she told Anne, laughing. “He thinks he can get away with it—everyone spoils him.”
Anne had done a fair amount of spoiling herself, but not to the extent of inviting the enormous marmalade cat to take up residence in her room. “How on earth did he get in?” she wanted to know, as Beverley began trying to wake him before carrying him away. The receptionist nodded towards the sash window, which was partly open.
“He’ll have climbed up the tree and jumped across to one of the balconies, and then gone prowling along the windowsills looking for a way in. Just like Raffles the Ransomeer—our very own cat burglar,” she said, laughing again. “It was one of his tricks when he was a kitten, though I’d have said he’d be too heavy for that now—but obviously I was wrong. Who’s a clever boy, then?” As she stroked him, Orlando opened a wary eye, and began, very softly, to purr. “Who’d give an acrobat a run for his money, the cheeky old thing?” And Orlando, smugly, closed his eyes with pleasure at the obvious admiration in her tone.
Beverley turned to Anne. “I’m awfully sorry about this, Mrs. Ranger. I hope your aunt doesn’t mind cats. He hasn’t left hairs o
n the bedspread or anything, though, so . . .”
Anne said quickly, “No, she doesn’t mind cats. In fact, Aunt Em is about the only person in her village who’s not terrified of the policeman’s little girl’s tabby. Tibs has, well, moods—but my aunt stands no nonsense from her. She won’t worry about Orlando.”
“It was rather naughty of him, though.” Beverley rose to her feet with her arms full of Orlando, who obviously expected his slave to carry him away. Anne, to show there were no hard feelings for her fright, tickled him gently under the chin and called him a trespasser. He opened one eye into a knowing black slit, and his throat vibrated with the strength of his purring.
“Better close the window, in case he tries it again,” said Beverley. “Then he’ll just jump back into the tree and come down again without bothering anyone. I hope.”
Anne went to do as she advised, and stood for a moment studying the strong, thickly leaved branches of the ancient beech which grew so close to the hotel. As a conscientious householder, she wondered vaguely about root damage to the drains, and insurance policies; but decided that the Belton Arms had no doubt taken such factors into account. The tree was a graceful, living thing, and it would be a pity to take away its life simply for the convenience of—
“Don’t forget your aunt’s sketchbook,” Beverley said, as Anne made to follow her from the room. “Isn’t that what you came upstairs to fetch?”
“Oh yes, of course—thanks,” said Anne. For a moment, she wondered if she’d taken caution too far in maintaining the fiction that this was Miss Seeton’s room: then she reminded herself that she was the wife of a detective. Both her husband and his superior always said that where Miss Seeton was concerned, you could never be too careful . . .
“I’ll . . . have to look for it,” she temporised, knowing she was now committed to fetching the book, and to letting Beverley see her with it. The reception desk had too good a view of the stairs. “If you wouldn’t mind lending me the pass key so I can practise, to explain to my aunt . . .”
Miss Seeton by Moonlight (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 12) Page 17
