Advantage Miss Seeton (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 7)

by Hampton Charles

  So far as that went, so was much of the rest of the building. The few people about looked as if they had no business to be there, so oddly attired were they. Faces belonging to people he knew to be staid, conventionally minded functionaries in normal circumstances now appeared above sporty ensembles. The one person he had found in the press and PR department—a young woman in a sleeveless cotton blouse, abbreviated skirt, and sandals on otherwise bare feet—had chatted with slightly flirtatious informality to him for several minutes before he recognized her as the normally subdued and earnest Miss Moody of Handouts & Cuttings.

  Miss Moody had at least been through the papers by the time Delphick turned up, and confirmed that none of the rival Sundays had been in time to pick up the Negative’s story. It was by no means to be taken for granted that the Plummergen burglars read the Negative: one simply had to hope that they did.

  At all events, a few phone calls had made it pretty clear that it was going to be a miracle if Delphick managed to get anywhere at all that day in his attempt to identify the man depicted in two of the three sketches now lying before him on the top of his desk. Miss Seeton had, as always, been shy about showing them and reluctant to hand them over, even when reminded that it was for her services as an artist that she was paid a retainer by Scotland Yard.

  Delphick pulled a face and scribbled a note on the pad beside him to remind him to have another word with the finance people. It seemed the blasted computer was still making out her checks to MISSESS instead of Emily D. Seeton. Even though the manager of the Brettenden branch of her bank had at last grasped the nature of the problem, he was insisting that Miss Seeton endorsed them to herself with the countersignature which, she protested mildly, made her feel furtive and even slightly dishonest.

  Bless her, she continued to be worth every penny of the modest fees that, added to her small schoolteacher’s pension, enabled Miss Seeton to sustain her unpretentious style of life in Plummergen. Delphick smiled to himself, wondering for the umpteenth time how it came about that this mild, unassertive person managed with such consistency to find herself at the center of startling, indeed violent, events. A human lightning rod, Sir Hubert Everleigh liked to say— liking it so much indeed that he was inclined to make the point several times whenever Miss Seeton’s name came up in discussion—frequently producing not electrical but criminal charges. However dubious the physics implied in Sir Heavily’s analogy, Delphick saw his point.

  Miss Seeton might be in many ways the very model of the gentle spinster living in quiet retirement, but there weren’t many dull moments when she was around. And the things that happened in her vicinity fed what was certainly one hell of an imagination. This drawing on top, for example. If she’d chosen to go in for political cartooning instead of teaching art to schoolgirls, Miss S. could have been another Vicky. With a few dashing strokes of her stick of charcoal she’d evoked an astonishingly vivid likeness of Sir Wilfred Thumper. A Thumper in what might or might not have been judicial robes, but wearing on his head not a conventional judge’s wig, but a sort of tight-fitting nightcap. Whatever it was, it concealed his ears and had the effect of focusing attention on the thin lips, clenched jaw and deeply lined face. The face of a fanatic, Delphick decided as he studied it, capable of inflicting appalling cruelty in the name of some high-sounding principle.

  Or was it? Wasn’t it rather that of a disillusioned, sarcastic schoolmaster, a clever man wondering how on earth the high promise his university teachers had claimed to discern in him had melted away, leaving him despising himself as a hack, poorly paid to try to drum some sensitivity into a pack of spotty, yobbish yahoos?

  It was something about the smallish but dreamy eyes, deep-set in that bony face, that momentarily made Delphick feel sorry for the subject of Miss Seeton’s picture, and remember his own contradictory reactions to the man when he had called on him. The eyes, and the fact that Miss Seeton had depicted him grasping the hand of a little girl, about five or six years of age but clearly recognizable as his daughter Patricia, and equally obviously trying to tug herself free. No prizes for interpreting that one, Delphick thought, and set it on one side to look yet again at the second sketch.

  So this was the mystery man: the chap in the St. John’s Ambulance Brigade uniform who had caught Miss Seeton’s eye at the Hurlingham Club that afternoon. The same man, she insisted, who had taken her by surprise from behind in Plummergen church and on whom she had inflicted if not grievous bodily harm then at least minor injuries with the business end of a long and heavy flashlight. It was probably only the filament of the bulb that had been broken in the struggle, and Miss Seeton would get her torch back in working order again in the fullness of time.

  Good for Thrudd Banner: not everyone would have shown his presence of mind. After he and Mel had come to Miss Seeton’s aid, untied her and got her home, Banner had gone back to the church with two clean plastic food bags. Wearing one over one hand, he had gingerly picked up the torch by one end from the stone floor of the nave and popped it into the other in order to preserve any evidence it might bear. With a bit of luck her assailant had made a grab at it and left a print, or Miss S. might even have broken the perisher’s skin: no blood was visible to the naked eye but you never knew what the forensic boffins might come up with, and a blood group identification was a lot better than nothing.

  Extraordinary-looking chap, this Tintoretto character, in Miss S.’s version, anyhow. One might as well call him that for want of a better name. Talk about Thumper’s eyes: this fellow’s were like nothing so much as shadowed pools of despair. Delphick was rather taken by the felicity of his phrase and repeated it to himself aloud. Or perhaps the eyes of a St. Bernard dog after a long day carting his little barrel of brandy up and down Alpine passes. Heavy lids, great bags underneath, glazed expression, generally a sense of exhaustion, but fundamentally kindly all the same. Hardly the sort of eyes you’d expect to belong to the kind of thug capable of jumping a frail—well, frail-looking—elderly lady in the dark.

  The St. Bernard image wasn’t a bad one, actually, because this Tintoretto character had a big, squishy sort of nose and a droopy mouth. You couldn’t see any dewlaps, on account of all the whiskers, but dewlaps there might very possibly be lurking behind them. Just standing there in some sort of black uniform, like death warmed up. Memo, do they let the inmates grow beards in jug these days? Probably, England’s been a hairy sort of place for the past ten years or so, especially since the Beatles & Co started throwing their money at all those unhygienic-looking Indian gurus.

  Have to find out, all the same. Miss S. might have made Tintoretto’s whiskers a bit more exuberant than they were in real life, but they looked like a long-term project. And they’d been thinking in terms of an ex-con who was only released a matter of months ago, well, less than a year, anyway. Could ring up the Royal Navy, perhaps, ask them how long they reckon it takes a man to grow a full set.

  Another memo, to add to the others. Delphick could see he was going to be spending a fair old time on the phone the next day, one way and another. Secretary of the Hurlingham Club, to find out what they did about first-aid cover at important events attracting a lot of spectators. The idiot who’d answered the phone half an hour earlier had been utterly useless. Probably some relief barman just hired for the day.

  Then he’d have to make a call to St. John’s Ambulance Brigade HQ tomorrow, when their office was manned. One easy question and one hard one for them: which local branch, chapter or whatever they called it would be responsible for fielding volunteers to be in attendance at the Hurlingham Club, and did they perchance maintain a national register of the names of people who’d been members during the past, say, ten years?

  Copies of Criminal Records Office’s mug shots of all the people on Delphick’s list of possibles would, he’d been promised, be on his desk first thing Monday morning. That probably meant around lunch time. He had quite enough faith in Miss Seeton’s skill to be confident that if Chummy was one of those pos
sibles, he’d be able to make a match by then, but surely there was something that could be done to move things along a bit in the meantime.

  The National Gallery was open on a Sunday afternoon. Pop in and have a squint at the paintings Miss S. had mentioned? Wait a minute, though, had she said all three of them were in the National? Bellini’s doge, definitely. Not too sure about Tintoretto. No matter, easy enough to get hold of one of those coffee-table collections of reproductions. No need to trek all the way to Hatchards. They’d probably have one in the book department at the Army & Navy Stores just across the road in Victoria Street, or even the Great Smith Street public library. And the third one, what was that name she’d mentioned?

  Delphick turned to the third drawing, the weirdest of the lot, and searched his memory. Titian, that was it, and something about death. Got it, The Death of Actaeon. In the National Gallery. And there, in Miss Seeton’s version, was Trish Thumper yet again, a definitely adult Trish with her right boob hanging out of her tennis dress, lunging forward waving her tennis racket, egging on a pack of hounds. Two of them had already reached and were leaping up to drag down and savage their quarry, which was—good heavens, it was so subtly suggested and deeply shaded that one hadn’t made it out earlier—surely it was miserable old Tintoretto again? And the faces of those two hounds baying for his blood, could they possibly bear a hint of resemblance to those of Wilfred Thumper and, and himself? He looked more closely, held the drawing up so that the light from the window fell directly on it, and thought about it hard. They did, by crikey, and that was a bit much, even for Miss S.!

  Delphick sat up straight and pulled himself together. When Miss Seeton’s subconscious or unconscious, mystical third eye or prophetic gift or whatever it was directed her hand, it didn’t pay to allow oneself to feel insulted by the message. If one of those dogs did look a bit like him and Tintoretto was the quarry, well, fair enough. He and Thumper were after blood, metaphorically speaking, anyway.

  Not necessarily Tintoretto’s, of course. One had to keep a clear head about that. Miss S. was convinced that Tintoretto was one of the three men who’d made off with the Plummergen church silver. That was a criminal offense of course, but hardly one for the Yard. Chris Brinton was perfectly capable of dealing with it. Miss S. definitely hadn’t said a word to suggest that she thought the fellow had anything to do with the Thumper blackmailing affair.

  On the other hand, and knowing why Trish was staying with the Colvedens, she’d drawn a picture suggesting the clearest possible link. Pointed the finger, or rather the tennis racket, directly at Tintoretto as being someone better out of the way from Trish’s point of view.

  When they did finally manage to put a proper name to this chap and run him and his associates to earth, he was in any case going to have a lot of explaining to do. Even after Brinton had got them bang to rights on the burglary and assault charges. Tintoretto might flatly deny having been at the Hurlingham Club, but Miss Seeton’s word would be worth a lot more than his if it came to that.

  In any case, there were probably plenty of photographs of the Trish Thumper vs Nancy Wiesendonck match knocking about waiting to be turned up if necessary. Assuming the mystery man was there got up as a first-aider, he would have been ideally placed to lace Trish’s drink with something to give her the collywobbles and put her off her game. He would also have had a ringside view of her discomfiture and had time to write that last anonymous letter to her father and drop it in a letter box outside the club, thus accounting for the postmark on the envelope.

  In short, the case of Regina v. Tintoretto might not be completely watertight just yet, but it was coming along nicely; even if it didn’t make much sense for a blackmailer with a lot on his mind to go in for a spot of burglary on the side. Especially when he did it on Miss Emily D. Seeton’s home patch, as Delphick hoped he and his accomplices had discovered by this time.

  He stood up and stretched, took a last look at all three drawings, and then carefully locked them away. They’d have to be photocopied, of course, and copies could be shown to the assistant commissioner the next day. Sir Heavily was a great fan of Miss Seeton’s and perfectly capable of nabbing the originals for his private collection given half the chance.

  chapter

  ~13~

  IN ORDER to make his return visit to Plummergen, Norman Proctor borrowed the ancient and battered van belonging to his landlord and friend Charlie Yung Fat. Charlie lived in the house next door, where he presided over a household consisting, in addition to himself, of a silent wife, a wizened mother, and numerous children, the eldest of whom, Verity, worked in the city, was studying hard for her accountancy exams, and could therefore help out in the Jade Garden only now and again in the evenings. The others had no similar excuse not to rally round.

  Considering all the unpaid pairs of hands he had at his disposal and the popularity of the restaurant, Norman reckoned Charlie could have afforded a really classy set of wheels, a Roller even, but it was the van or nothing. For Charlie was too busy running the business seven days a week to bother his head with thoughts of recreational motoring. He went with one of his sons in the van every weekday morning to pick up his supplies from the wholesale markets and the Loon Fung Chinese supermarket in Chinatown, but was happy enough to lend it to Norman at any other time, provided only that it was always returned with a full tank of petrol.

  Not that Norman often availed himself of the privilege. Its customary cargoes of pork, chickens and ducks, dried fish, mysterious sausages, vegetables, desiccated mushrooms, noodles, spices, and pickles had over the years endowed the van with a memorably penetrating aroma. Not to put too fine a point on it, you could smell it from five yards away, and it took real strength of character to get inside and drive it, even with the windows wide open.

  It was therefore with a sense of relief that Norman parked it that Sunday lunchtime in a lay-by just outside Plummergen, withdrew out of range, and sucked in a few refreshing lungfuls of good Kentish air. From his and Harvey’s previous researches in the bar of the George and Dragon, he had gained a rough idea of the location of Rytham Hall in relation to the village, and having brought with him the map they had studied while preparing to pillage the churches of the neighborhood, he knew that he was now not far away from the house, which lay ahead and to his left.

  What he didn’t know was that Trish Thumper, looking forward to her lunch, was striding through the meadow on the other side of the tall hedge beside which he was standing, with a breathless but blissfully happy Nigel Colveden in her wake.

  It had been a surprisingly successful outing. Nigel had no idea that Trish’s ready acceptance of his timid post-breakfast suggestion that they might go for a stroll had anything to do with his mother’s formidable powers of persuasion. Notwithstanding her father’s strenuous attempts to keep her in the dark, Trish had worked out for herself with remarkable accuracy the real reasons why she had been invited to stay with the Colvedens. She was grateful to Meg Colveden for making her so welcome, and Sir George’s bluff, uncomplicated kindliness and the way he urged second helpings on her at every meal had endeared him to her. She thought Nigel was a bit wet but not bad-looking, and had been quite touched when her hostess explained the presence of the rose, its leaves partially consumed by blackfly, on the tea tray. So why not go for a walk with him if he was so keen on the idea?

  They had therefore set off, Trish magnificent in white cotton trousers and a short-sleeved green sports shirt that more or less matched the short green rubber Wellington boots into which the said trousers were tucked. Nigel had been thinking less in terms of a cross-country hike than a gentle saunter down leafy lanes, possibly after a while, and with a lot of luck, hand in hand. On noticing the green wellies he had hurriedly dug up a comfortable old pair of boots of his own to substitute for the casual loafers he had been wearing.

  For the first half-hour the conversation had been both desultory and banal. Desultory because once they were out of Rytham Hall grounds and into the r
ough woodland that lay behind, Trish set such a cracking pace that it was all Nigel could do to catch her up from time to time, come alongside, and force out a few breathless pleasantries before falling back again. Banal because Trish for her part would on the whole have much preferred to have gone for a brisk walk with somebody really interesting like Virginia Wade, and at first made little conversational effort.

  Eventually however they came out into open farmland through which a signposted footpath ran. Nigel was able to keep up without getting out of breath, and it dawned on Trish that she wasn’t being very kind to the young man who was, after all, cheerfully giving up a great deal of his time to ferrying her back and forth between Rytham Hall and the practice courts, while pretending not to notice they were being followed by a carload of coppers. He was after all really a pretty decent chap, as well as being the son and heir of a well-to-do baronet. Trish wasn’t familiar with the phrase chevalier sans peur et sans reproche, but if she had been, that is very probably how she would at that moment have summed up Nigel Colveden.

  So when they came to a stile and Nigel courteously and quite unnecessarily helped her over it, Trish allowed him briefly to retain possession of her hand, read the mute appeal in his eyes, and then in a businesslike fashion took him into her powerful arms and kissed him lengthily and thoroughly. Crushed against that Amazonian bosom and enveloped by the fragrance of Camay bath soap, Nigel in a blaze of intuition decided that the Prophet had been absolutely on the right lines when he drew up the specifications for the Moslem Paradise.

  “You’re really quite sweet, you know,” Trish then said, to the lush sound of massed violins as supplied by Nigel’s imagination. “But don’t stand there like that. You’ve gone sort of cross-eyed. Come on, we ought to be heading for the house if we’re going to be back in time for lunch.”