Miss Seeton Undercover (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 17)

by Hamilton Crane

  “Murder,” said Brinton again, rousing himself from his gloomy thoughts. “Poor old chap!” He glanced at his silent subordinate, whose face wore an unusually wooden look. “I’m sorry, lad, I was forgetting—and sorry for your grandmother, as well. She’s taking it hard, I should think, a shock like this at her time of life.”

  Foxon nodded. His voice sounded strained. “They were good friends, all three of ’em. Gran was at school with old Mrs. Easter—Gertie Good, she was then, bright as a button and bound to get on in the world, Gran always used to say. And Gramps was his batman in the army—Uncle Reg, I mean,” he added, blushing slightly as Brinton favoured him with a quizzical look. “Er—that’s what I used to call him as a kid, sir. I’ve known ’em for years, you see, and with him and Gertie not having kids of their own, they used to enjoy making a fuss of us lot when we came visiting. There was never any side to old Reg, for all he’d been an officer and Gramps hadn’t—upset as anyone when he died, and so was Gertie, of course, being such a friend to Gran. I sometimes wonder,” he went on, as his superior said nothing, “if they didn’t feel it more than Gran when he died—Gertie and Reg, I mean, because at least she had the rest of us, which has got to be better than nothing—which is pretty much what the Easters had.”

  He sighed. “Poor Gertie died a month or so back, which made things even worse, with Reg left alone in this great house, and not in the best of health. Mind you, he’s kept—he kept,” Foxon corrected himself, “pretty active, despite the wheelchair—wouldn’t have Meals on Wheels because he’d taught himself to cook when Gertie was first taken ill, and he could still go shopping—he even managed a bit of gardening, though I know he’d been paying the bloke across the road to do the heavy work for some time now. And Gran popped in almost every day—but it’s not the same, is it, sir? As having someone of your own—but Gran’s a lovely person, and—and I wish she hadn’t,” he muttered, remembering again the anguished sound of his grandmother’s voice as she telephoned, in tears, to tell him what she had found, and to ask what she should do. She’d been too upset to think of dialling nine-nine-nine, to think of anything but that her old friend’s house had been broken into and burgled, that he had been brutally attacked, and killed.

  “Like I said, lad, I’m sorry.” For once, Brinton couldn’t find it in his heart to groan, curse, or bellow as was his wont in his dealings with his sidekick. Brinton’s vocabulary, he’d have been the first to admit, wasn’t up to the standard of his friend Chief Superintendent Delphick—but if anyone had asked him to define ebullient, effervescent, or irrepressible, he would have jerked a thumb in Foxon’s direction and considered this answer enough. The younger man was normally so bouncing and bright that Brinton had wondered aloud, more than once, whether there were any rubber-planters in his ancestry ...

  “If you’d rather not be on this case, you’ve only got to say,” he said. “If you want compassionate leave—spend a few days with your grandmother or anything—”

  “No,” Foxon broke in, grim-faced, forgetful of official courtesies. “Sorry, sir, and thanks for the offer—but no. I was fond of Gertie and Reg—I know he’d looked forward to seeing her again—but it shouldn’t have happened so soon, and I want to catch the blighters who made it happen. And Gran’ll say the same thing, I know, when you get round to—to taking her statement,” he concluded, stumbling over the final words.

  Brinton said: “Reginald Easter—that name’s been ringing a bell ever since we got the message, Foxon. Where’ve I heard of him? Quite recently, too. And I knew his face before we saw him ...”

  This was an unfortunate remark. He kicked himself, as Foxon shuddered. The old man’s face had been barely recogniseable, so heavy had been the blows which had fallen on his head and shoulders: so heavy, indeed, that they had sent him tumbling from his wheelchair and sprawling to the floor, from which—the final indignity—those who struck him had already removed the carpet, so that his life ebbed away in a sluggish, red-brown stain soaking into cold, bare boards.

  “On television? Surely not,” said Brinton, “but I can’t help thinking ... it was black and white, I’m almost sure.” He shot a wary look at Foxon. Good, the lad was starting to think again, to act like a copper the way he’d act with any ordinary victim—if there were such a person—to investigate. “Black and white—I can see him still,” the superintendent went on, frowning quite as much as Foxon. “But for the life of me I can’t ...”

  “The local paper, sir, probably.” The detective constable was back on form after his—understandable—lapse. “There was a piece about their golden wedding not so long back, with a photograph, and a nice write-up about his army service. The Beacon really did ’em both proud ...”

  His voice faltered again. He cleared his throat. “They had an enlargement made of the snap, sir, and Gertie kept it in a silver frame on the sideboard ...”

  Brinton grunted. There was no sign of a sideboard—of any furniture of any size, or quality—in the late Reginald Easter’s sitting-room. “Damned Swipers,” growled Brinton, and was cheered to observe the glint in Foxon’s eye.

  “We’ll get them, sir. If it is the Swipers”—even now, Foxon was unable to forego completely his customary role as Devil’s Advocate—“this isn’t the first time, after all. Never mind the West Country and the Midlands—what about the Whempstead bloke the other day, not to mention that poor old girl still stuck in hospital? They’re on our patch now, sir—and they’ve made it personal, because they’ve stopped being just cocky they’ll always get away with it—they’ve turned nasty. They’re cocky enough not to bother waiting to make absolutely sure the house’ll be empty when they go in—they’ve started taking risks, getting careless, giving people time to come back unexpectedly and catch ’em in the act the way that poor old girl says she did: realised she’d forgotten her shopping list and ... Uncle Reg too, for all I know.” His voice was hard. “Cocky, careless, and nasty with it—we don’t want chummies like that taking off to be caught on anyone else’s patch, sir, do we? We want to nobble the blighters ourselves.”

  “If,” Brinton found himself echoing his subordinate’s earlier sentiments, “it really is them. I grant you the method’s the same, as far as we can make out—and I still say we’d stand a better chance of nobbling them if we knew exactly what it was—and granted the smell of the thing is identical—but we don’t know for sure. Like you said with Miss Whatsername the charity bird, could be someone pinched the basic idea and it’s gone wrong because the blighters haven’t done their homework, whatever it is, as well as the original lot do theirs. We don’t want to waste time chasing the wrong lot of chummies when—”

  “Oh, it’s them, sir.” Once more, Foxon forgot official courtesy in the tension of the moment. “You’re always on about a good copper knowing when something isn’t right without being able to say why it isn’t. Well ...”

  He shrugged in as expressive a style as any detective can affect when, in accordance with investigative policy, his hands are thrust deep in his trouser pockets.

  Brinton heroically refrained from questioning his sidekick’s claim to being a good copper, and grunted. “Swipers—damned silly name. If the press hadn’t worked ’em up into something fancy, we’d never have thought about anyone pinching the basic idea because we’d’ve known there was nothing for ’em to pinch in the first place. Your Uncle Reg and millions like him went through hell in two world wars for”—Brinton reddened, but spoke out bravely—“for the cause of freedom—and I can’t think of a better reason. But believe me, laddie, there are times, like now, when I can’t help wishing the freedom of the press could be cut back a bit—they’ll be down like vultures on this little lot, and there’s not a blind thing we can do to stop them. There’ll be headlines—can’t you just see ’em? Sideboard Swipers Strike Again! Old Soldier Slain!” He was so carried away by his own oratory that he failed to observe Foxon’s smothered wince. “Gentlemen of the Press,” groaned Brinton, exasperated before he’d see
n a solitary notebook. “Reporters—I hate ’em ...”

  “Reporters,” sighed Chief Superintendent Delphick, dusting down his jacket and checking that his tie was still tidy. “I hate them—en masse, at any rate, although as individuals”—a vision of Amelita Forby floated before his inward eye—“there are those who have undoubted charm. One cannot, however, ignore the request of a desperate colleague. Duty, Sergeant Ranger, is duty.”

  “Yes, sir,” came the dutiful response, in a tone rather less than dutiful. While the Oracle was to be downstairs riding shotgun for Inspector Terling, helping him to brief Fleet Street’s finest on the latest Ram Raiding incident, Detective Sergeant Ranger had been sternly advised by his superior that the paperwork mountain should on no account be allowed to increase in height—even by the thickness of a single folder.

  “Continental Drift,” said Delphick, “be damned for a theory. There may well, I am prepared to concede, be something inevitable and unavoidable about the way chasms gape and mountains correspondingly grow around the entire surface of the planet—it is, however, the surface of my desk, and yours, which must be the sole business of this office. From the world-wide view to the particular ...”

  He frowned, and shook his head. Something he’d just said had rung a warning bell, though he couldn’t think why; and he shook his head again.

  “Your tie, sir,” said Bob helpfully. “You’ve twisted the knot under your ear.”

  Delphick sighed. “Would that I might come to work in casual clothes, Sergeant Ranger, with no need to knot either ties or cravats.” Pensively, he made the adjustment, turning to Bob for approval of the new symmetry. “Immolation on the sacred altar of the Public’s Right to Know is a terrible matter, Sergeant Ranger ...”

  Bob, who would happily have gone to ten press briefings rather than clear one in-tray of its backlog, had no sympathy with the Oracle’s griping. “You could have a word with Foxon down in Ashford, sir. He’s a pretty snappy dresser—though I’m not sure you’d look as good in flares and flowered shirts as he does. The, er, generation gap, I mean,” he added hastily, as the look in his superior’s eye hinted that he’d been on the brink of insubordination.

  “Foxon!” exclaimed Delphick, snapping his fingers at the sudden realisation.

  Bob sat up: surely the Oracle hadn’t taken him seriously? At his age, it’d be downright daft to go prancing about in platform shoes and kipper ties—specially some of the ties he’d seen Foxon wear—never mind that the villains, who had a healthy respect for the old man, ’d laugh in his face next time he tried to arrest one of ’em, and his reputation’d be shot to ribbons for years to come, if it ever recovered at all.

  “Sir,” he said desperately, “I didn’t—”

  “Foxon,” Delphick repeated, with a sigh. “Ashford, and Brinton ... You had to summon up the other local Presence, didn’t you? This strikes me as paltry revenge, Ranger, for being asked to do no more than clear a few files out of the way. In the War,” he went on, while Bob stared at him in amazement, “which you are, there is no need to remind me, too young to recall, we were warned that Careless Talk Costs Lives; one might amend this nowadays to Careless Talk Tempts Fate. I had hoped, after yesterday, that there would be no further risk—and there’s no need for you to find it all so funny, Sergeant,” sternly, as Bob, beginning to understand the reasons for his superior’s anguish, chuckled. “Adopted nephew as you are ...”

  “Sorry, sir,” said Bob, as Delphick gave up, and absent-mindedly began knotting his tie again.

  “Plummergen, on the Ashford beat, and Miss Seeton, and,” said Delphick, with one fabric-tangled hand overlapping the other, “as the icing on the cake—World Wide Press, if I’m not very much mistaken. Did I speak just now of immolation, Detective Sergeant Ranger? We must consider this the understatement of the year. If rumours as to his absence abroad prove unreliable, I confidently expect to see Thrudd Banner—and, by association. Mel Forby—among the throng of journalists—no,” with a sudden chuckle, because he’d waited a long time to use it and now the chance had at last come, “make that column of journalists ...” He frowned. “For heaven’s sake—what was I saying?”

  “That Mel and Thrudd,” supplied Bob, as Delphick wrenched suddenly at the knot of his tie and unravelled the whole thing to start again from the beginning, “are going to guess Miss Seeton has been called into the case—at least, that’s what I think you were saying, or rather were about to say—only you, er, got carried away, sir. And you were probably also going to say,” as Delphick closed his eyes and sighed, “that if those two work it out, the others will as well. Sir. Weren’t you?”

  “I fear,” said Delphick, “that I was.” He reopened his eyes, and attacked his tie with confidence. “I was indeed—for reasons which are, clearly, all too evident to you, Bob, since you have so admirably extrapolated and summarised my feelings from the few vain burblings which escaped me before the situation utterly overwhelmed me.”

  Noticeably underwhelmed, he put the finishing touches to his tie. “You may, if you wish,” he said over his shoulder, “accompany me into the lions’ den. I have, as Oracles may be permitted to do, changed my mind—there are more important matters than paperwork in this uncertain world. Self-preservation, for one, when Mel Forby is on the warpath ...”

  chapter

  ~ 14 ~

  BOB, GLAD OF any excuse to abandon the files, did not dream of asking Delphick why he wanted—as it seemed he did—a bodyguard: he, like his boss, knew Mel Forby of old.

  Mel was as yet too young to be a Fleet Street legend, though the day, everyone was confident, would come. Originally a fashion reporter, noted for her aggressive manner, assertive mode of speech, and abrasive mid-Atlantic accent, Mel had some years before successfully slip-streamed her way into one of Miss Seeton’s earliest cases; and, in the process, had mellowed. Her beautiful eyes and exquisite bone structure had emerged, encouraged by unwitting comments from the little art teacher, from beneath the excess of makeup with which she had previously attempted to conceal her innately pleasant self from her professional colleagues and competitors; the acid of her tongue had given way to honey, and the accent had begun to drift more honestly eastwards, in the direction of Liverpool, city of her birth.

  The recent influence of Thrudd Banner—hardened hack, cosmopolitan lover, ruthless rival in the matter of scoops—had somewhat slowed Mel’s mellowing. The makeup remained soft; the accent, nourished by a diet of black-and-white movies in retrospective series in Chelsea cinemas, reverted to an echo of the former toughness—not that she was embarrassed by her ongoing relationship with the World Wide ace, but a little protective camouflage made her feel a whole lot better about beating him, as she so often tried to do, to the next big story in Town.

  But if the rumours about Thrudd’s absence were right—and as Scotland Yard had called a news conference about the Ram Raids—and if the Oracle was there, and if Mel could flutter her eyelashes to remind him that they went back a long way together ...

  “She can twist us—you—round her little finger, sir,” warned Bob, following his chief out to the lift and practising a menacing expression while they waited. “That’s the trouble with Mel Forby—she’s good, and she knows it, and she knows we know—that we can trust her. I mean, where with an awful lot of the others we can’t—and she just sits there radiating her blessed trustworthiness in all directions, and you—we—fall for it every time, sir.”

  Delphick acknowledged the accusation with a wry chuckle. Mel might, on occasion, annoy him immensely, but she’d never let him down. Indeed, several times he’d positively relied on her—and, with her, on Thrudd—when a complicated case had grown even more complicated, and a little judicious juggling of the facts had been required.

  “One cannot but admire,” he agreed, “the success of her tactics. Yet we are both, I would remind you, married men, Sergeant Ranger; and Mel, moreover,” as Bob uttered a startled protest, “is, all too obviously, spoken for—even if,” w
ith a smile, “it could be argued that the, ah, claim has not, so far as we know, been legally staked. We may well, in due course of this investigation, weaken and fall—indeed, knowing Mel, I’ve no doubt that we will.” He chuckled. “We must, however, for the sake of constabulary confidentiality”—he permitted himself a discreet smirk—“and dignity, resist the temptation for as long as possible.”

  The lift arrived with a thud. The doors clanked open. Delphick ushered his sergeant inside, and pressed the button. “Temptation,” he went on, as the lift began its stomach-turning descent, “must of course be succumbed to, when it is, with considerable circumspection in every aspect of the case. One should not exceed the bounds of moderation and decorum, Sergeant Ranger, even if in your particular instance you are undoubtedly able to make mincemeat of Thrudd should he object to your—our—understandable admiration of his lady ...”

  He chuckled again as his gigantic sidekick spluttered. “Make mincemeat of anyone, come to that, should the mood take you—which I trust it won’t, though there’s no need, of course, to allow, ah, our audience to harbour even the least suspicion that it might. Continue to loom in that express manner, Sergeant Ranger,” as Bob, suppressing a reluctant laugh, hunched his shoulders and scowled, “and all—Miss Forby and Mr. Banner, should he be present, permitting—will be well ...”

  The lift came to a sudden stop, and Delphick led the way out through the clanking double doors, addressing Bob over his shoulder as he did so. “Now Anne, I feel sure, would do far more than make mincemeat of you. A medically-trained spouse must be a copper-bottomed, to coin a phrase, guarantee of marital fidelity. I imagine ...”

  Bob sighed audibly as he trod in Delphick’s wake down the corridor towards the briefing room. Maybe it was only the relief of getting away from the paperwork that’d scrambled the Oracle’s brains, or had turned them—Bob managed a faint grin—to mincemeat—maybe. Granted, the old man might unbend once in a while and talk nonsense to his subordinate, but he didn’t normally do it in public. Not that there’d been anyone with them in the lift, any more than there seemed to be anyone in the corridor now (and he’d be prepared to risk a small bet there’d be nobody, or at least no Inspector Terling, in the briefing room once they got there) ... but it was the principle of the thing. More than likely—Bob’s next sigh was even louder—much more than likely, it was the cock-eyed influence of that visit yesterday afternoon from little Guess Who. Talk about delayed reaction. Unless the Ritz’d started blending psychedelic tea, or filling the sandwiches with magic mushrooms, MissEss was up to her old tricks again, putting a topspin on everything without even bothering to try. All it took was a joke about Foxon’s kipper ties and a quick mention of her journalist pals ...