Advantage Miss Seeton (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 7)

by Hampton Charles

  No more than two or three minutes later the doors of the auditorium were opened, the audience began to stream out, and Harvey was soon drifting as unobtrusively as his avant garde hairstyle permitted among the dozens of people pottering about, sniffing the air, admiring the herbaceous borders and chatting animatedly about the stage design, costumes, and performance. As always on these occasions, there were those who considered that their opinions ought to be made known to others in addition to their immediate companions, and whose voices were therefore pitched so as to be overheard.

  Sir George Colveden was not one of these exhibitionists. His remarks were aimed solely at Sir Wilfred Thumper, and he fondly imagined himself to be delivering them in a discreet undertone. In this he was mistaken. Like most other members of the upper classes he had been brought up to speak out clearly and confidently; while the habit of command and long years of exercise on military parade grounds had so strengthened his vocal chords that he was invariably audible at a great distance.

  “Quite frankly, can’t imagine what you see in this sort of stuff, Thumper,” he trumpeted. “Decent of you to stand us the tickets, of course, but wasted on me I’m afraid, old boy. Ah well, never mind, we’ve got Meg’s picnic hamper to look forward to. Nice to see the memsahibs togged up in their best. Handsome gel, your Patricia. You’re no oil painting, so she must get it from her mother’s side, eh?”

  Having emerged from a different exit, Miss Seeton and Bob Ranger were still at least thirty feet away as Sir George was holding forth, but still his voice rose effortlessly above the considerable hubbub of conversation all around. “Oh dear, Sir George isn’t enjoying himself,” said Miss Seeton.

  “He sounds in pretty good form to me, the way he’s teasing the judge,” Bob assured her. “Not something that happens to him all that often, I should say.”

  “Well, I’m sure Sir Wilfred knows him well enough not to be offended.” She rummaged in her capacious bag and produced a neatly wrapped package. “Now, these sandwiches that Martha has been so kind as to make for us. We might perhaps take them to the lakeside, do you think? Oh dear, I’ve just thought. How very remiss of me not to have provided a bottle of wine to accompany them. That is, I believe it’s considered the thing to do, and you have been so generous—oh dear!”

  “Not a bit of it, Miss S. I’m driving, remember, and in any case—” Bob just managed to stop himself from adding the ritual phrase about not drinking while on duty.

  “Hark at old Colveden,” Thrudd Banner said to Mel Forby. They were standing on the other side of the garden entirely, but there was scarcely a breath of wind and they, too, were well within earshot. “Marvelous old buffer, as honest as the day is long. I wonder how many other people in these grounds feel that way about opera, too, but wouldn’t dream of admitting it.”

  Mel assumed a haughty expression and looked down her nose at him. “Kindly remember you’re here as the guest of a distinguished music critic. Hey, and don’t hog all that chocolate, by the way. It’s going to have to last a long time. I enjoyed the first act a lot, if you want to know.”

  “So did I, to tell you the truth. Especially Janet Baker. Had to keep reminding myself why we’re here.” He touched her hand briefly. “Must be getting sentimental. Well, I guess we’d better keep Trish Thumper and her doting pa in sight. How many other people have her under surveillance, d’you reckon?”

  “Wow, let me think. Bob Ranger for one. Miss Seeton, although nobody’s actually told her that’s what she’s here for.”

  “No need to.”

  “Right. Plus us two. And it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if it turns out that Delphick’s arranged for some muscle to be lurking in the undergrowth in case of need. Then we mustn’t forget Mister X, the guy who’s out to get Trish or her old man or both.”

  A good many other people registered Sir George Colveden’s remarks. Some smiled in a superior fashion, a few giggled, and others affected to ignore them. Harvey paid close attention, pleased to be confirmed in his provisional identification of the two elderly gentlemen, two middle-aged ladies, one young man, and one young woman in evening dress whom he had spotted coming out of the auditorium together. The young couple were dressed very differently from the way Norman had described them after seeing them passing Plummergen church in the little red MG sports car, but having studied a photograph of Trish Thumper taken from an Illustrated London News feature entitled “Britain’s Wimbledon Hopefuls Face Strong Competition,” Harvey hadn’t been in much doubt. Now, hearing Sir George address his companion as Thumper and refer to the girl as Patricia made it definite. So now all he had to do was—oh, good grief, it didn’t bear thinking about, especially as it now seemed they were mixed up with a lunatic.

  Nigel Colveden, having been sent to the car to fetch the picnic hamper, arrived back at the lakeside to find that the senior Thumpers had been on an errand of their own, and returned with four small collapsible canvas-seated stools and two shooting-sticks. Lady Colveden began to unpack the hamper and lay out plates and cutlery on a cloth spread on the grass with Trish’s help, while Sir Wilfred fussily arranged the stools and installed his silent wife on one of them. It was impossible to tell from Lady Thumper’s expression what, if anything, she was thinking, but she seemed quite malleable and stayed quietly wherever she was put. Sir George had fixed one of the shooting-sticks into the turf, opened up the handles to form a seat, and was perched on it, surveying the scene with apparent satisfaction.

  “Excellent. Here’s the supplies officer arrived with the rations at last. Well done, Nigel. As a reward, you get to crouch on one of those little footstool gadgets, my boy. As you can see, I’ve bagged Thumper’s spare shootin’ stick for meself. Good idea of his to bring ’em along. And I say, some of these opera fanatics are a lot more sensible than they look, you know. See those little tent peg things stuck in the ground here and there by the edge of the lake, with strings tied to them? Bottles! Coolin’ in the water! Been watchin’ chaps fishin’ ’em out. And what’s more—”

  “I have almost reconciled your father to the prospect of more opera to come, Colveden, by informing him that I too placed a number of bottles in the lake immediately on arrival here.” Sir Wilfred didn’t exactly smile, but his habitually acid expression softened as he looked up at his former schoolmate.

  “Well, I’m hanged if I can see anybody who looks particularly suspicious, can you?”

  Banner shook his head. “Nope. A few weirdos, but not as many of those as you get even at Covent Garden, and that’s a snobby place, too.”

  “That’s because even the cheapest tickets here cost too much, and then you have train fare on top of that even if you don’t dress up. The guy with the pink hair pussyfooting about’s sort of cute, Thrudd. Why don’t you get a shot of him, we might make the Negative buy it off you for large sums—no, wait, this’ll be even better. Look, Miss Seeton’s going over to have a word with the Colvedens and you’ll be able to get the weirdo and Miss S. together in a great contrast . . .”

  Having gritted his teeth and taken several deep breaths, Harvey finally summoned up the courage to go through with what he was now convinced was a truly crackpot scheme, and headed toward the party at the lakeside. It seemed a good moment, since the skinny old man—Thumper, he now knew, was bent forward facing the water, pulling gently on a piece of string with one hand and reaching with the other for the neck of the attached wine bottle which had just broken the surface. While the others, with the exception of the beefy-looking girl, had turned round to face the old biddy who was approaching them, beaming and obviously an acquaintance.

  Patricia was giving her full attention to a leg of chicken, and barely glanced up when Harvey leaned over her, coughed deferentially, and spoke. “It is Trish Thumper, isn’t it? I’m desperately sorry to intrude, Miss Thumper, but could you possibly come up to the house for a moment? You’re wanted urgently on the phone. Something about Wimbledon, I believe.”

  Later there were to be conflicting
explanations of what happened next. Sir George stoutly averred to his wife in the privacy of their bedroom that he wasn’t taken in for a moment by the pink-haired apparition in the white dinner jacket, and “went a bit berserk, actually, like those Malayan johnnies used to. Made a lunge for the feller.”

  Miss Seeton, on the other hand, reflecting on the events in question in the company of Chief Superintendent Delphick, said that it was all most unfortunate, that she had intended simply to tuck her umbrella under her left arm in order to shake hands. With Lady Thumper, that is, who seemed rather out of things. And accidentally hooked it round Sir George’s shooting stick. The handle, of course. Of the umbrella. One had often admired the way gentlemen—and ladies too, needless to say—seemed to be able to balance on those funny little seats. But inevitably it was all too easy for a person to be dislodged, as Mr. Delphick would no doubt agree.

  Bob Ranger said that from his viewpoint some yards away it had struck him as a brilliantly conceived and executed maneuver on Miss S.’s part, and that what he would always remember most vividly was the sight of Lady Thumper of all people helpless with laughter.

  Whatever the true explanation, the basic facts were not in doubt. These were that Sir George toppled heavily off his perch and bumped violently into Harvey, who in turn cannoned into Sir Wilfred, who in falling into the lake grabbed desperately at Harvey, taking him with him. That it was Harvey who first realized that the water was only chest-deep, managed to stand upright, and then drag Thumper to his feet, too. And that there they stood for a few seconds, Thumper clinging to the young man while Thrudd Banner took photograph after photograph with Mel Forby urging him on with cries of adoration.

  It was Nigel Colveden who noticed in the midst of all the excitement that Trish was no longer among those present, looked around wildly, and then spotted her back a moment before it disappeared from view. Since everybody seemed to be talking at once he seized Sir Wilfred Thumper’s now unoccupied shooting-stick and set off in pursuit of his beloved.

  Trish was nowhere to be seen, but Nigel had overheard what the man had said to her and made for the house, pausing in an agony of indecision on realizing that it seemed to have a number of entrances, into any one of which Trish might have gone to speak to her anonymous, possibly fictitious telephone caller. It was as well that he did hesitate, for otherwise he might not have noticed anything odd about the ambulance parked nearby; but he did. It was rocking, lurching up and down on its springs.

  Had he not been in an agitated state, this phenomenon might have amused Nigel. Having grappled from time to time with a young woman in the cramped confines of his little car, he had often thought longingly of the advantages of being able to spread oneself, as it were, in such situations. The thought that some lucky, amorous pair might be making use of a vehicle equipped with blacked out windows and what amounted to a proper bed would in different circumstances have excited Nigel’s envious interest.

  The thing was, though, that he was worried, and the lurching was accompanied by a series of thumps and muffled oaths that suggested a fight rather than even the most exuberant bout of lovemaking. So Nigel approached the back of the ambulance, the driver’s door of which was open, and peeped through the gap between the back doors, which were ajar.

  He was just in time to see Trish, majestic in her wrath, poised to hurl a small but presumably weighty cylinder of oxygen at a little man with sly, pinched-looking features. A man he had seen before, by the roadside near the gates of Rytham Hall, and even spoken to, after a fashion. Nigel watched him put up his arms to protect his head, but Trish’s improvised missile nevertheless found its mark and her victim made an odd little noise midway between a squeak and a yelp and collapsed over the body of a second man, already lying in a heap on the floor.

  Nigel wrenched both doors open and gazed at the spectacularly heaving bosom of the panting, wild-eyed woman within. “Gosh, Trish, are you all right?” he inquired. As a remark, it was hardly the stuff of romance, but it seemed to hit the spot. Trish blinked at him, at first in a sort of daze, but then shyly, after she had glanced down at the gaping front of her dress and drawn it together, but not as quickly as all that.

  “You came after me, Nigel!” she then murmured as Bob Ranger pounded up to join them, accompanied by Detective Constable “Sleaze” Arbuthnott and a rather more stalwart-looking colleague of his. “You are sweet, aren’t you?”

  chapter

  ~17~

  “SINGING LIKE canaries,” Brinton said. “At least, my pair of beauties have been, ever since the Sussex boys handed them over. Honor among thieves? Tell that to the marines. Pretty Boy blames it all on his mate. Led astray, he was. Innocent young lad straight out of college, started at the bottom in one of those posh auction houses. Sotheby’s? Doing well, learning the trade, swotted up on hallmarks and so forth, makes himself quite the little expert on silver. So they put him on the ‘in off the street’ counter. You know, Oracle. Little old ladies popping in with their shopping bags, Great Aunt Fanny’s favorite teapot wrapped up in newspaper, wonder if it might be worth a quid or two.”

  “You’re not trying to tell me this Norman Proctor joined the queue one day to price his family heirlooms, are you?”

  “Not on your nelly. No, Pretty Boy has this little personal problem, see? Well, hardly a problem, just something he can’t very well discuss with his Mum, who’s wondering why he never seems to bring any nice girls home for tea. It’s because he’s much happier spending his evenings at this quiet little club he belongs to, where there’s a lot more like him and he’s much in demand.”

  Delphick enjoyed a good story as much as the next man, but he had rather a lot to do and was finding Brinton’s ponderous humor somewhat wearisome. “So Proctor’s gay too, is he? I’m surprised to hear that.”

  “No, no, you’ve got the wrong end of the stick there.”

  “Point out the right end then, Chris. Sorry to rush you, but I’ve got rather a lot on my plate at the moment.”

  “Oh, all right then, if you must rain on my parade. As we both very well know, it wasn’t so long ago that blokes could go to jail for doing what comes naturally to lads like our Harvey. When he got into the gay scene it was illegal, and quite a bit of cash was skimmed off by characters who were bent in more ways than one. Harvey met crooks, and when they found out about his professional talents he got persuaded into doing a bit of freelance appraising work on the side. Word got around, Proctor needed an expert partner, got in touch, and Bob’s your uncle. He’s told us all about the church jobs and where the stuff’s stashed away, but claims he never wanted to go in for any rough stuff or kidnapping. That was all Proctor’s idea, according to him.”

  “Proctor’s?”

  “Yeah. Said that Parsons is a nutter, obsessed with some harebrained scheme to snatch the Thumper bird.”

  “Yes, yes, we all know that.”

  “No need to bite my head off, Oracle. Hear me out, I’m telling you Harvey’s side of it. That he and Proctor had intended to drop Parsons like a hot brick after the church jobs, until they found out that it was Miss Seeton they’d tangled with, and got nervous. Then Proctor found out that the whole boiling of ’em were going to be at Glyndebourne, practically just down the road from where Parsons works. So cooked up the idea that the pair of them would pretend to go along with Parsons and help him snatch the girl, but then shop him. Do a deal, see? Return Thumper’s kid and hand Parsons to us on a plate, provided we agree to forget about the burglaries.”

  “That’s a preposterous yarn if I ever heard one.”

  “I’ve heard weirder ones in my time. Anyway, Pretty Boy seems to believe it. And seems to reckon that if he grasses on his mate, we might go easy on him as a first offender.”

  “Does he indeed? I’m sure you couldn’t possibly have encouraged him in that assumption, could you, Chris? What does Proctor have to say?”

  “His version’s a lot different from Harvey’s, needless to say. He accepts that with a form sheet l
ike his he’s bound to cop another dose of porridge, but he doesn’t fancy being done for bodily harm, assault, and attempted kidnapping any more than Harvey does. So his line is he’s just a small-time burglar who happened to share a cell with this educated, Svengali type Parsons and got drawn into his wicked schemes. That it was Parsons who attacked Miss S., Parsons who masterminded the plan to nab Trish Thumper, and so on and so forth. And that N. Proctor was a helpless pawn in his hands, and is the poor innocent victim of grievous bodily harm committed against his person by the aforementioned T. Thumper. He’s certainly got a whopper of a lump on the side of his napper to prove it.”

  “Well, all I can say is the best of British luck to you, Chris. All very interesting, but it just makes everything look all the more complicated from where I sit.”

  “Can’t see why. Aren’t you going to tell me how you’re doing with your baby?”

  “To tell you the truth, not very well at all. Parsons is admitting nothing. In fact he’s saying nothing. He’ll be remanded for medical examination, of course. Not physical, Trish Thumper did him no great harm when she clobbered him. But his mental state’s bound to be a factor when he comes up for full trial. It’s entirely possible he’ll be judged unfit to plead.”

  “Proctor claims he’s an evil genius, Harvey reckons he’s barmy, like I said. What’s your verdict?”

  “Wouldn’t like to say at this stage. There are more immediate problems to cope with, anyway.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes indeed. As things stand, his employers, namely the Sussex County Ambulance Service, could bring charges against him for unauthorized use of their vehicle, and damaging or permitting others to damage its interior. And I suppose you could rope him in as an accessory to the church burglary jobs. But that’s all.”

  “Am I hearing you right, Oracle? What about the assault on Miss S.? The attempted kidnapping of the girl? The threatening letters to her old man?”