by Heron Carvic
Miss Seeton Draws the Line
A Miss Seeton Mystery
Heron Carvic
FARRAGO
Contents
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Note from the Publisher
Also Available
Preview
About the Miss Seeton series
About Heron Carvic
Copyright
Dedication
For Viola and Phoebe
chapter
~1~
“STOP!”
The little girl took no notice and stepped into the road. Miss Seeton ran forward, lunged, hooked her umbrella handle round the endangered child’s arm, yanked, and the little girl sat down hard on the cement curb that bordered the grass shoulder as the car halted with a jerk inches from her feet. She shrugged free of the umbrella and raised her eyes to her rescuer.
“Silly ol’ cow,” said the endangered child.
“Effie,” a woman yelled from across the road, “come ’ere at once an’ if I catch you trying to kill yerself again I’ll do yer an’ that’s a promise.”
The squat little figure got to its feet and stamped toward its home.
“An’ mind yer manners,” her mother admonished her. “Say thank yer an’ ye’re sorry.”
The child turned, looked at the car, at Miss Seeton, stuck out her tongue, turned back, and went into the house.
“Thank yer,” called her mother, “and I’m sorry for yer trouble but there y’are I can’t do nothing with her.” She followed her daughter. The front door slammed.
Miss Seeton turned to the driver with a smile, “Children—so thoughtless. Though not all,” she admitted. “Some are very good. They teach them, you know, in school. There are classes, with lollipops—those men with white coats and poles with a disk on top to lead them, like Roman legionaires. Only sometimes they forget. The children, I mean. It was wonderful that you stopped so quickly. There might,” she explained, “have been an accident.”
Two impassive faces stared toward her. The driver, a boy; clean hair clubbed, a rough fringe across his forehead, clear skin, a sullen face with waiting, wary eyes. His passenger, a girl; brushed hair hanging loose, an apathetic countenance, the eyes fearful. Neither spoke. Miss Seeton smiled again and stepped back. The boy engaged gear. The car moved.
Miss Seeton watched it drive away. The young. So shy.
She glanced across at the neat row of council houses before continuing down the Street to her cottage. Effie Goffer. Not, one must admit, an attractive subject. Nor, one feared, very well mannered. But for Mrs. Goffer’s sake she would try again. Yes. After lunch she would get out her drawing things. Just because her first attempt had been a lamentable failure was no reason . . . After all, ugly ducklings. Miss Seeton’s imagination strained to picture Effie as swan material; another lamentable failure. The Frog Prince, perhaps. But then the sex was wrong. Except, of course, in Pantomime. Such a pity that she was no good at the type of portrait where you just drew a cube and stuck eyes in it. Miss Seeton smiled; then felt guilty. A cube, with eyes, was, one had to confess, a very apt description of Effie.
By the time Miss Seeton reached her gate she had solved her problem. Not a straight portrait at all. Something allegorical and rather pretty, with only just a suggestion of Effie. That was the answer.
It was very worrying.
She considered the drawing on her desk.
Not allegorical. And certainly not pretty. In fact it was quite dreadful and—and shocking. Her shoulders contracted to a cold sensation in her spine. She threw down her crayon. Really this was too childish. She would be getting fanciful next. Put the whole thing out of her mind for a moment and think of something else. Something pleasant. She pushed the drawing block to one side, turned her chair, and looked out the French window.
To see the buds breaking; that tender green haze forming like mist on bare branches. Crocus, primrose, daffodil . . . Green and yellow—the flag of youth; the aching cry of innocence. So many writers had grown lyrical over spring. And, one must admit, it was easy to love a lamb: but how soon that engaging frivolity would yield to the placid idiocy of its inheritance; it was not easy to love a sheep. Summer? Yes, but it was overweighted, overcolored. No—for herself she preferred late autumn, when line returned, with wider, subtler blends of color and experience. And faith fulfilled or dead. Probably it was one’s age.
Hers was a gentle view. The garden sloped down to the Royal Military Canal which, in spite of its imposing title, is for much of its length little more than a grandiose ditch. Beyond the trees bordering the canal the fields of Kent stretched flat to the coast, Rye to the west, New Romney to the east.
She returned to her drawing block, removed the top sheet, laid it aside, picked up a soft pencil, arranged her crayons.
She would try again. It was ridiculous to imagine there was anything wrong. It was simply lack of concentration. She must concentrate.
She concentrated.
She studied the result.
Oh dear. Really it was very worrying. This was her third attempt. And it was no better.
She took the two previous drawings and laid all three in a row on the flap of the writing desk. With plain sheets of paper she covered the right-hand half of each sketch: three semiportraits of the same little girl; the same lank hair, the same fat cheek, the same shoebutton eye, the same sly lift to the corner of the mouth, the same olive complexion. She moved the covering sheets to reveal the other half of the face: the same blurred, uncertain outline, the same slit, half-open eye, the same droop to the corner of the mouth, the same greenish-blue coloring. The same death mask. Removing the top sheets, she left the three drawings exposed. Individually each was disturbing: viewed in triplicate they were macabre.
What was she to do? After all, she was, she supposed, in a certain sense committed to making a sketch of Effie for Mrs. Goffer. Not a direct promise, of course—Miss Seeton was beginning to learn that such transactions were never direct in a small village like Plummergen. In fact it had been Martha’s suggestion. In a way, that was. When she had finished cleaning the cottage the other week Martha had mentioned, just before leaving, that she had met Mrs. Goffer while shopping and that Mrs. Goffer had let fall that she wouldn’t mind, not really, if someone did a drawing of little Effie, couldn’t really see no harm in it, and her own opinion, Martha’s opinion, was, well, why not?
Three good reasons why not now lay upon her desk.
She couldn’t possibly allow Mrs. Goffer to see one of these. They were—well, they were horrid. The likeness was there, she had to admit. But, in a way, that was a disadvantage. Because, as again one had to admit, little Effie Goffer was a distressingly plain child. There was no doubt that she did feel under a certain obligation to Mrs. Goffer. It had been kind of her, in these days when it was almost impossible to get daily help, to come in twice a week for the fortnight that Martha had been away. Slapdash, perhaps, but none the less kind. And then, during the three days when one had been suffering from that bad cold, Mrs. Goffer, although so much younger, had been almost embarrassingly maternal; insisting that one should stay in bed, doing all the shopping, and coming round in the evening to cook supper, which one did not want, and to change one’s hot-water bottle, which one did. Such cosseting, although irritating, had been well meant and, in the event, a
wkward because Mrs. Goffer had refused any extra money for these services, saying that it were a bit of a do if neighbors couldn’t help each other out when poorly. And Mrs. Goffer was not even a neighbor since she lived at the other end of the village. All in all one was left with the feeling that one would be grateful for the opportunity to do something in return—that one owed Mrs. Goffer something. Certainly—she contemplated the three sketches—something better than this. Each time she had tried the left-hand side of the face—actually, of course, in Effie herself it would be the right-hand side—had come easily enough with no trouble. But when it came to the right side—that would be Effie’s left—well, the first time, when she had had Effie here for a sitting, for which her mother had crimped, starched, and overdressed the child almost beyond recognition and certainly beyond suitability, she hadn’t noticed anything wrong until afterwards, when Effie had demanded to see her picture. Fortunately one had instinctively sat back to judge it for oneself first, and there had just been time to cover it and explain that it was only a beginning and would have to be worked on before anyone could see it. Effie had been insistent and a little rude and one had had to be firm. And also quite firm that no further sitting would be necessary. Indeed, in view of the result, she had felt that it would be safer, when trying again, to do so from memory. On her second and third attempts she had paid particular attention—her hand seemed to slow down, the fingers growing almost numb, and her arm became leaden and sluggish. And she had found herself compelled—yes, quite literally compelled—to pick up the wrong colors in the crayons. Could it be, she wondered, something in herself? It was so much better, when one was a little distressed, to face the matter and put it into words.
She straightened in her chair; prepared to face the matter; to put it into words.
Could she have had . . .? Should she, perhaps, ask Dr. Knight? He might be able to advise her or suggest some form of treatment if she really had had a . . . This was ridiculous.
She picked up a pencil and wrote in courageous capitals on a sheet of paper STROKE.
There. That was better. Now it was out and one could face it properly. Because if one had had one, she looked at the written word before her and nodded to it, however slight—and at one’s age it would be perfectly understandable—then, surely, it would show in other ways as well. As one wouldn’t be able to do all the things one did. With regard to her hands and arms alone, it was only in the past week or two that she had been able to achieve the Cow-Face Posture, such a very odd description, from that clever book Yoga and Younger Every Day which had helped her so much. Because, if there was any lack of coordination between her brain and her right arm, she didn’t see how she could manage to put one arm behind her back and the other over her head and then grip the hands in the middle of her back and remain there doing deep breathing. No, really, now that she faced it openly, she didn’t see how it could be—what she’d written. But, all the same, she considered the drawings again, there was something wrong. She would ring up Dr. Knight and ask if he would be kind enough to see her.
She gathered the sketches and placed them in a folder. Before closing it she once more examined the top portrait. She shook her head.
Really, it was very worrying indeed.
Detective Superintendent Delphick finished his examination kneeling on the damp grass and rose.
“All right. Take him away.”
He walked from the lighted area, through the misty twilight and the comparative gloom of the street lamps, to the road. The ambulance men bent down under the arc lights. The muttering of the crowd behind the police cordon swelled. A woman at the back cried out:
“Why’n’t you do something? Why’n’t you stop it? How many . . .?”
She broke off as Delphick’s face, eyes unfocused, turned toward her. The crowd became silent. A press photographer lowered his camera; not the moment. The inspector in charge from the Lewisham Division, who had moved forward to speak, halted and left it unsaid. The silence lasted until the superintendent had got into his car.
Sergeant Ranger, following his superior from the corner of the children’s playground, stopped to watch them lift the body of the twelve-year-old boy and lay a blanket over the stretcher, covering the scraped shoes, the knees and shorts grimed with soil, the jersey snagged with dead twigs from the bush under which he had been found, the swollen face.
“The Oracle’s taking it hard, isn’t he?” commented the Lewisham inspector. Sergeant Ranger nodded. “Of course,” continued the inspector, “this is only our first. For him it makes just one more to add to the collection.”
The sergeant nodded again. “Looks like something’s biting him. If you’ll carry on with the routine. Inspector, we’ll be in touch.”
The sergeant reached the police car, jackknifed his huge frame into the driving seat, and slammed the door.
“The Yard,” said Delphick.
Back in their office the sergeant transcribed his notes.
There hadn’t been time to gather much: Lawrence Massyn, aged twelve years three months. Body discovered 4:15 P.M. approx. by children using playground. Body apparently been dragged under a . . . He contemplated his shorthand. Under a hypodermic? Couldn’t be. Hyperic? Hysteric? Could be anything. Perhaps the Oracle . . . He stole a glance toward the superintendent’s desk.
Delphick sat motionless, his gaze fixed on a glass case screwed to the wall. It was such a case as a fisherman might have in which to display his greatest catch. Unobservant visitors over the past few months had been left with the impression that the superintendent devoted his leisure to angling for fish in complement to his daily routine of entangling men. In fact the case contained a broken umbrella. It also held a memory for Delphick: not of a catch, but a reminder of a failure to do so and that, although an arrest had finally been made, it had been through another’s luck, not through his own judgment.
The sergeant reverted to his hieroglyphics. Not the moment to ask the Oracle for nature notes. Under a—bush, he decided. With leaves, he added. Some of the other bushes round the playground had hardly got any leaves yet, so perhaps hyper-whoosit was botanical for leafy. He finished his transcription and made a note: check fog time. Up here it had started to clear soon after two o’clock so the killing had probably been done before then. But it might have been different down Lewisham way. He’d check when they got back there. Back there? They should never have left. He’d never known the Oracle do this—walk out on a case without a word. Ought he to remind him? Well—no. You didn’t remind the Oracle of things. And certainly not in this mood. Quite the opposite actually. He usually reminded you. Lewisham? What the devil was it about Lewisham? Something or other.
The sergeant started as the superintendent suddenly reached for a telephone.
“Chief Superintendent Gosslin, please.” . . . “Chief?” . . . “Delphick here.” . . . “Yes.” . . . Yes—and I should be there but—” . . . “Please.” . . . “Right. Right away.” The superintendent replaced the receiver and left the office.
The sergeant watched him go. The Oracle couldn’t be pulling out? Asking to be taken off? Well, he meant, you didn’t. Even when a case was up the spout and hell on castors like this one, you—you just didn’t. He leaned down, pulled out a bottom drawer of his desk, and withdrew a stack of files.
He selected four. This new one at Lewisham certainly looked like one of the Oracle’s specials. What had got into people? Granted crime went in waves and fashions—always had—but this child murder business was getting overdone altogether. Anyway, where was the point in it? Nothing to gain or anything. What’d they got? Fifteen—and today’s made sixteen—in roughly two years. And only about half of them solved. Of course a lot of them were sex ones—and with small children that really did seem a bit off. The sergeant grimaced. Well, he meant, what could you . . .? Oh well, skip it.
He spread out the four files on cases when a similarity of method had been noted; cases which had become Superintendent Delphick’s particular heada
che. The sergeant took an empty folder and labeled it LEWISHAM. He frowned. Lewisham? Something about Lewisham. He glanced at the labels on the other files. Brentwood, Richmond, Wimbledon, West Malling. Three in or around London and one down in Kent near Maidstone—what had made him pop down there all of a sudden?—and now back up to Lewisham. What was it about Lewisham? Something he’d read or somebody’d said. Oh yes, of course, in the canteen. Somebody’d been talking about a raid on a subpost office in Lewisham. Well, that was the hell of a help. All the teeners were cutting their teeth nowadays on subpost offices before promoting themselves to the man-sized jobs like banks and trains. Three boys, one girl—at least he didn’t play favorites—ages varying between ten and fourteen. And now another boy, at Lewisham. So it was the odds the next might be a girl. All strangled. All for no reason that anybody could see. Just put the mug on ’em and rabbit. Pretty rough. No wonder the press had got the jitters and was screaming. Several of the papers had run articles by psychiatrists telling the police what type to look for. That was the hell of a help, too. It gave the police several types to look for. As if they didn’t know that what they’d got to look for was somebody who’d flipped his wig. What nobody seemed to realize was that wig-flipping didn’t show—not until they’d got to the “I’m an egg looking for a pan to fry in” stage.
The sergeant jostled the files together and slammed them down on the side of the desk.
What could you do when you were up against a madman? How did you get a clue to somebody who was off his tot unless you actually caught him at it? Nothing to get hold of; no sex; no robbery; no reason; nothing. What, repeat what, could you do?
“What could she do?” Sir Hubert Everleigh, Assistant Commissioner, C.I.D., went on before Delphick could answer: “If we are to entertain, or even to evaluate, this suggestion of yours, a suggestion which I may say is unique in my experience, if, to summarize, the police are to admit defeat and hand over the case to the general public.” Delphick opened his mouth to protest. “Or, to be more exact,” Sir Hubert corrected himself, “to one member of the public, I feel constrained to ask, although I agree with Euripides that Providence has many different aspects, what particular aspect are we to look for in an elderly drawing mistress? What, I repeat, to be precise, could she do?”
