Miss Seeton Rules (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 18)

by Hamilton Crane

  “I don’t think they have.” Delphick was studying, for the umpteenth time, photocopies of the envelope and letter received that morning at Kensington Palace by the private secretary to Her Royal Highness, Princess Georgina. While copies of the documents had been rushed to all investigators concerned in the case, the originals remained in the care of the security forces, being subjected to the most detailed scrutiny. “These, Chris, unless I’m much mistaken, are not foreign typefaces.” He coughed. “It was Sherlock Holmes, of course, who could instantly recognise the differences between the leaded bourgeois type of a Times article and the slovenly print of an evening newspaper—but I trust that our own experts do not, nowadays, lag so very far behind Holmes in their expertise. If, just by looking, a humble Yard chief super can see that these cut-out capitals are from headlines in the British tabloid press, the experts should surely be able to tell us which tabloids they are, and which their days of issue—maybe even which edition, and in which region of the country it was sold. After all, Holmes would have done no less almost a century ago.”

  “And he’d have done it a damned sight faster!” Brinton sighed. “How long does it take to read one of those yarns? He makes it all look so easy ...”

  Delphick had to smile. “Conan Doyle played with loaded dice, my dear Chris—as is the case with all writers of mystery fiction. They have, remember, the distinctly unfair advantage of knowing in advance how much significance is to be attached to the fact that the letter was posted in Gravesend by a man with a dirty thumb—”

  “Gravesend?” Brinton gaped at him, horrified. “Are you trying to tell me they’re dragging the poor girl from one side of Kent to the other just to keep us off the track?”

  “Nothing,” Delphick assured him, “could be further from my thoughts ...” But then he frowned. “Unless ... perhaps a true word, spoken in jest ... Might there be at least an element of disguise? I don’t for one moment suggest a tangled red wig or a repulsive scar, but Georgina certainly has been much photographed. Her appearance is more than well-known—her face, her hair ...”

  “Princess Petite,” said Brinton, with a snort he would never have dared to emit in the presence of his wife, for Mrs. Brinton was a devoted fan of Georgy Girl. “Five foot nothing and curls like Shirley Temp—oh. I see what you mean. If they’ve got her anywhere people might spot her, they’ll’ve had to—to camouflage her, if that’s the word I want ... No, it’d be too risky. Wouldn’t it?”

  Delphick did not reply. Foxon and Bob, hitherto silent participants in this discussion, looked at each other; and it was Bob who cleared his throat and ventured to speak.

  “Surely they wouldn’t force ... wouldn’t risk hurting her, sir? I mean—assaulting a member of the Royal Family—that’d be treason, wouldn’t it? She’s always seemed such a—a nice kid. It—it doesn’t seem right, sir.”

  “I doubt,” said Delphick drily, “the folk who have taken HRH are sticklers for the conventions, Sergeant Ranger. One can hardly be considered obedient to the strictest rules of etiquette when one kidnaps a princess of the Blood, takes photographs of her blindfolded, and sends them with a demand for half a million in used notes to be delivered as and when later instructions shall be received. These are not nice,” crisply, “people, Sergeant Ranger.”

  Bob went red, and gazed at his boots. “Sorry, sir ...”

  Delphick was already shaking his head. “No, I’m the one who should apologise, Bob. Blame it on sheer frustration, if you will. There ought to have been a multitude of clues, but whatever we’ve tried has come to nothing ...”

  “Nothing.” Brinton’s echoing groan was heartfelt as he began to enumerate the dead-end leads which they had, at one time or another, pursued: which they were still, for want of anything more hopeful, still pursuing. “The girl’s probably not left the country—might not even have left Kent—but that’s a hell of a lot of places to start looking, without a nudge or two in the right direction. Every nark in the land’s been asked to keep his ears open—but nobody’s heard a thing, though the blighters all worship the ground she walks on. That snap’s no real help. There isn’t a house in England doesn’t have white sheets, and apart from young Georgina in the foreground that’s all anyone can make out, no matter how they take their magnifying glasses to the thing. Every blasted chemist and photographic processor in the country’s been told to sing out if he’s handled snaps of a blindfold girl—and there hasn’t been a murmur ...” He looked up, frowning. “Wonder why they didn’t use an instant camera? The amount of money we’re talking about, you’d’ve thought they could afford a Polaroid—except, I suppose, they can’t afford it till they’ve got the cash ...”

  “Perhaps,” said Delphick, very slowly, “they wished to occasion no remark by a sudden, out-of-character purchase. Perhaps they are not, as has been suspected, the anonymous international gang beloved of mystery writers around the world, but a—a more home-grown enterprise, whose every action would run the grave risk of being observed by their friends and neighbours ...”

  It was not, of course, to be supposed that the presence of a large portion of the Plummergen populace at the kidnapping of a princess would not occupy the greater part of local gossip for many days after the event. It occupied, in fact, the entire part of village conversation for at least twenty-four hours, fuelled and fermented by a large Press presence: in response to which presence Mr. Jessyp made it firmly known that all classes would be held, for the duration, behind shuttered windows, in case illicit close-ups of young Sally should be snatched against his (if not the child’s mother’s) wish. The headmaster further decreed that the additional expense incurred by the use of artificial lighting during the day should be charged, on receipt of the electricity bill, to the Press Complaints Council; and he added that anyone venturing to enter school property did so at his or her own risk. It would be nothing to do with Mr. Jessyp if, in the course of regular autumnal care for the school playing-fields, trespassers were inadvertently sprayed by tractor-driving farmers with high-octane liquid manure.

  The journalists—not one of them born with mud on his boots, and all (thanks to their editors’ monumental lack of foresight) without waterproof clothing—duly took the hint, and decamped to besiege the palaces of Buckingham and Kensington, with small detachments on the steps of New Scotland Yard and the headquarters of MI5.

  And so Plummergen was left in peace—in relative peace, that is. Discussion of the events at Dungeness was not, naturally, abandoned: it formed, as has been explained, the greater part of local gossip: but there was room, now, for fresh subjects to be introduced, for older subjects to be revived ...

  “I still say it’s summat queer they’re about, the pair of ’em.” This from Mrs. Skinner, in the post office, and at full volume, the pair in question having safely—and severally—departed.

  Her words were accompanied by nods, and a general murmur of agreement from everyone—including, to her chagrin, Mrs. Henderson: but there was no denying the truth of her rival’s observation. Summat queer was, if anything, an understatement of the position which had now been maintained by the parties under discussion for some weeks past.

  “Not a word,” said Mrs. Spice, “has there bin from either of ’em, save good morning and such, since long afore that business at the power station—”

  “Sulking on the bus there and back,” chimed in young Mrs. Newport. “Regular old misery-guts, the pair of ’em ...”

  “And what cause Miss Nuttel’s got, of all people,” said Mrs. Scillicough, “to go buying an icing set beats me, on account of it’s the Hot Cross Bun does all the cooking in that house, which we’ve heard tell many a time.”

  “The Bun,” Mrs. Henderson pointed out, “bought three new spatulas and a scale-pan, didn’t she? You’d’a thought she’d enough o’ such things already, and to spare.”

  “Not forgetting,” added Mrs. Spice at once, “the palette-knife—which ain’t to say as she couldn’t sharpen that up and do someone, mentioning no nam
es, a fair bit o’ damage if she’d the inclination, which from the way they’ve bin a-snapping and snarling at each other’d never come as much of a surprise, would it?”

  Even Mrs. Spice had to agree it would not, although the gleam in the eyes of Mrs. Henderson as she spoke of knives made her frown. But Mrs. Flax, to whom all heads turned for the definitive opinion, defused the burgeoning squabble by approving this general agreement with a ponderous nod: following which she decided that the time was ripe for adding her own scandalous—and generous—pinch to the brew of speculation and surmise now that (thanks to the hard work of everyone else) it was coming close to the boil.

  Mrs. Flax drew a deep breath. She gazed slowly round upon the assembled company, and lowered her voice. Everyone flinched in horrified delight: some awful revelation, it was clear, was about to be made. Hadn’t the Wise Woman’s son as worked for Farmer Mulcker bin to Brettenden that very morning, for tractor spares? And hadn’t Miss Nuttel nipped into town on the same bus, so quick there’d bin no time for any to follow her?

  “Aah,” said Mrs. Flax, ominously exhaling. “Ah, and when Miss Nuttel was fixing to buy angle irons, of all things,” gloated Mrs. Flax, in doom-laden tones—“did she tell anyone what for she wanted ’em? She did not!”

  The response to this sinister statement was all the Wise Woman could have hoped. Angle irons? Those who knew the purpose of these small metal fastening-plates paraded their knowledge with glee: those who didn’t clamoured to be told more, and Mrs. Flax looked on in a smug silence as they were told. Angle irons? Why should Miss Nuttel want such contraptions? And screws, to fasten ’em? There’d bin no talk of her taking up carpentry, had there? Putting up shelves? Making boxes?

  “Oh!” Mrs. Skinner’s scream of realisation curdled the blood in everyone’s veins, and froze their tongues in midwag. “Oh ... it was boxes made me remember ... when Mrs. Putts was at the admiral’s asking for honey, and—and Miss Nuttel was a-digging that—that hole ...”

  She could not continue.

  She did not need to.

  “For a coffin,” gasped the post office, with glee ...

  And then gasps turned to echoes of Mrs. Skinner’s scream as there came, from outside, an explosion.

  chapter

  ~ 16 ~

  “THEY PESKY BRATS!”

  Mrs. Skinner was not the only one of Mr. Stillman’s customers to feel justifiably indignant. People’s nerves, already frayed by intimations of Miss Nuttel’s apparently sepulchral intentions, had now been stretched to their limit by the high-spirited detonation, right outside the post office, of a large firework by a small group of children begging pennies for the guy from passing motorists. The noise had not so much been loud as startling in its suddenness: and as sudden was Plummergen’s response. Once everyone realised what had happened, mothers indoors rushed outside to clip their offspring (if present) about the ear, while others looked smug, and spoke loudly of the manners of the younger generation.

  The latter speakers included the childless, those whose children had long since reached years of discretion, and those whose children had made a different guy, and set it up on a different pitch—these last having spent the previous few days lamenting the unfairness of life when, just because others’d got Miss Seeton to give ’em her bashed-up hat and had made the biggest guy, they’d been mean enough to stake their claim to the pavement outside the shop with the best-lit windows in the village, so that everyone driving by, strangers and all—who’d even slow their cars for a proper look, which was unfairer still—threw money in the hat, leaving nothing for t’other kids farther down The Street ... who would never (their mothers now insisted, at virtuous full volume) dream of doing such a dreadful thing as to set off a firework just to attract the attention of a car as didn’t look as if it was going to give ’em any money, their kids not being as mercenary-minded as Some They Could Mention ...

  As the outside mothers came back in, they caught the tail end of these remarks, and waxed even more indignant than they’d been before they went out. Who was being called mercenary? They’d thank Some People not to use words they most likely couldn’t even spell, and even if they could were slander, in any case. Everyone knew it was the luck o’ the draw each year when it came to getting a pitch for Guy Fawkes, and if Some People’s kids were bad losers, well, they’d had to have learned it from somewhere, and where else but home? A pity to set kids a Bad Example, they thought, but then there were Some People as just didn’t know no better, and you had to make excuses for ’em, poor souls. Besides, what else could you expect, Guy Fawkes Week and kiddies with fireworks? One or two let off early once in a while couldn’t hurt ...

  And in all the flurry of insult and counterblast, the matter of Miss Nuttel’s conjectural coffin-building was quite forgotten.

  “Guy Fawkes Week, you expect one or two fireworks let off ahead of time,” said Brinton, slowly. “Just a bit of fun, that’s what anyone’d say—and mostly they’d be right, because there’s no real harm done. But sometimes things go wrong ...”

  He was addressing Sid Noakes, leading fireman of the first appliance to reach the scene. The rest of Sid’s crew were busy packing away their equipment; the crews from the other engines, having played their part, had already packed up, and gone. There was no sense in staying where they were no longer needed: and, indeed, there was some element of risk if they did. As Brinton had said, the week of Bonfire Night was invariably crowded with emergency calls: at any time, the fire brigade might be summoned to tackle some conflagration or other, large or small, which they could hardly do with their tenders dry, their hoses improperly coiled, their turntable ladders sticky with soot. There were all too few tenders to spare once a fire was definitely out; moreover, those there were, were manned by crews with their own lives to live.

  In rural areas of England, the fire service is Retained, rather than full-time. The firemen come from every walk of life, from every town or village or hamlet within bleeper-range; a retained fireman, when on duty, is never without his radio pager, and it is not so very long ago that the old air raid sirens from World War II were finally phased out with the arrival, in most homes, of the telephone. The bleeper, a more modern invention yet, is better even than the telephone: it can be worn, and its summons heard, in the middle of a field, or the middle of the street ...

  Sid Noakes, indeed, had been in the middle of his supper when the alarm was raised: but he had, in the circumstances, small hope of being back in time to enjoy his lamb chop and peas, whether his wife left them warming in the oven or not.

  “How long,” Sid now enquired, glumly, “d’you reckon they lads’ll be, Mr. Brinton?”

  The lads to whom he referred, whose every movement he and Brinton were watching with deep concentration, did not belong to any fire crew. Though they wore uniforms, it was of a constabulary rather than conflagrationary nature, for they were under the command not of Leading Fireman Sid Noakes, but of Superintendent Chris Brinton ...

  “Sorry, Sid.” Brinton shook his head. “As long as it takes—afraid I can’t say better than that. There’s your statement to get as well, of course. We can’t afford to cut corners when it’s a question of a body ...”

  Sid sighed. First appliance on the scene, first man among the crew: it was his responsibility to check, and his luck—whether bad or otherwise he wouldn’t care to say—to have been the one who discovered the dead man in the burned-out building. At least, he’d supposed the body was that of a man: it had been much more badly burned than the building, not to mention damaged by part of the roof collapsing on top—but the bits that were still visible had looked like a trousered leg, a heavily-shod foot. Still, you couldn’t go jumping to conclusions in this job, any more’n you could if you were police ...

  “Know their stuff,” said Sid, paying compliment as the uniformed figures searched through the rubble, warily moved beams, shifted timbers, took photographs and measurements, all in an efficient silence.

  “So do you.”
Brinton returned the compliment. As soon as he found the body, Sid had banished everyone else from the immediate neighbourhood, and taken up his position as guard. He detailed one man to call the police, and sent another to fetch Dr. Wyddial from her sister’s house: everyone for miles around knew the doctor’s car, and by a lucky chance he’d just happened to spot it as they were hurrying to answer the nine-nine-nine call to the KarriKlozzet site.

  Dr. Wyddial was not given to sloth. By the time the police arrived, she had examined what she could see of the body, pronounced it—as required by law—dead, and said she’d be only too happy to do an autopsy on the poor chap once he’d been retrieved, which she expected would take a couple of hours, at least. She’d get back to her family knees-up for now, if they didn’t mind; she would apologise to her sister and leave for the mortuary in an hour or so—all right?

  “Er—all right, Doc—and, er, thanks.” Brinton was long accustomed to the brisk efficiency of Dr. Wyddial, but it always unnerved him slightly. “Er—sorry about the party,” he added: but she’d already been out of earshot.

  As Sid, still brooding on his lost supper, sighed again, there came the purposeful sound of footsteps crunching over rubble and ash and fallen timbers. Delphick, with Bob and Foxon close behind, arrived to join his colleagues as they contemplated the steady searching of the KarriKlozzet ruins by the ranks of uniformed police.

  He raised an enquiring eyebrow in the direction of the leading fireman. “What do you think, Mr. Noakes?”

  “Well, now ...” And Sid frowned. He was not unduly awed by having his opinion sought by a man from Scotland Yard: it was no more than you’d expect, him being as much of an expert on fires as this Oracle was an expert on crime. Each to his own: it made good sense if you wanted to know the why and wherefore of anything. But Sid Noakes wasn’t to be rushed into an opinion without first giving the matter careful thought. He rubbed the tip of his nose, and frowned again. “Well, now ...