Miss Seeton Rules (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 18)

by Hamilton Crane

  “Bonfire Night, o’ course,” he said at last, “and days not so distant either side o’ the Fifth, we do tend to have a fair number o’ what you might call accidents o’ the high-spirited sort ...”

  “But?”

  Brinton closed his eyes, and groaned softly. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t had his own suspicions. He prided himself he was as good a detective as anyone from the Yard, and he’d only been waiting for the preliminary report to back up what his good copper’s instincts had already told him, loud and clear, before he launched into a full-scale murder investigation. Trust Delphick, though, to be the one to put it into words when they weren’t absolutely sure just yet ...

  “But,” said Sid, with a nod of approval. With all the fuss the papers, which everyone knew were allus out to make a story, ’d given this Oracle for being the great detective, seemed they might for once be right. “But—well, there’s not just the matter of the dead’un, whoever he is, though I’ve my own ideas about him—but this looks to be more’n kids lobbing a cracker or a jumping-jack careless-like, if you ask me.” He waved an expressive hand towards the wreckage, and sniffed once or twice. “There’s a queer sort o’ smell t’all this—and I don’t just mean they chemicals for the toilets as spilled when the drums bursted with the heat—which is what you’d expect, and dissolving stuff and disinfectant, so far as I can make out with talking to young Mr. Cuthbert—he’s off home now,” as Delphick’s look made it plain he sought further information. “Reporting to his ma, most like, if I know him.”

  “Cuthbert?” Delphick glanced about him at the ruins. “Ah, yes, the owner of KarriKlozzet, of course.”

  “Not exactly.” Even at such a moment, Brinton couldn’t help a rumble of laughter. “Cuthbert Kelshall, that’s who was here earlier—we only had a few words, with him not staying long once he’d seen what’d happened and how we were dealing with it. Sid’s right, he’ll have hopped off home to report to his mother. She’s a tartar, that one.” He rolled his eyes, and grinned. “Mrs. Caroline Kelshall, she is, and don’t you forget it in a hurry. Never even thought of retiring when her old man died, no idea of handing over to the younger ones—keeps as close an eye on the business as she ever did, and when she says jump, they jump. Cuthbert and Claud, of all the daft names.”

  “And Cleopatra,” put in Sid Noakes, also grinning.

  “Good heavens.” Delphick shook his head, wondering at the peculiarities of human nature. “Some people, I fear, have far too restricted a sense of responsibility when naming their offspring.”

  “Young Cleo married one of the Therfields—Peter,” said Brinton, “the youngest boy. They’re a farming family, but he’d no taste for it. Went in with his wife’s lot instead. He and Cleo have a pair of twins called Oswald and Osbert—not quite as bad as Cuthbert and Claud, but near enough. The poor little devils have been having a tough time of it at school, so I’ve heard.”

  “I’m not surprised.” Delphick shook his head again. “Irresponsibility clearly runs in the family—as does the business,” he added, returning to his original muttons. “A family concern—a large, presumably influential, family. Are they,” he enquired, “popular?”

  Sid Noakes shifted on one large foot. He glanced at the superintendent beside him; Brinton nodded.

  “Go on, Sid. Give the man the local colour.”

  Mr. Noakes cleared his throat, and took a deep breath. “Since you insist, Mr. Brinton—well, no, Mr. Delphick, right now I have to say they ain’t. They’ve laid a good few folk off this past couple o’ months, which jobs lost don’t make them as caused ’em losing none too popular, and open to all manner of mockery, though in part ’tis the kiddies’ daft names, I won’t deny—and then, with talk o’ yet more jobs going afore too long, I can’t help but wonder ... well, if you was to tell me there was petrol or summat o’ the sort in among the chemicals, I’d not call you a liar.”

  Everyone sniffed. The air was heavy with the acrid tang of burned ash, moist and lingering. The firemen’s hoses had spouted thousands of gallons of water to extinguish the fury of the flames, and the spillage from the burst drums of chemicals had only added to the black, muddy, reeking mess. It was hard, of course, to be sure whether the reek was simply that of cinders mixed with disinfectant: they did not all have the long experience of Leading Fireman Noakes in the aftermath of conflagration. Cuthbert Kelshall, when the matter had first been raised, remarked that a heavy smoker like himself had an impaired sense of smell, but that he could not, in any case, seriously credit that anybody would wish to harm one of the largest employers in the district, if that was what Sid and Mr. Brinton had been hinting, let alone risk harming any of the employees. It was nothing more or less than a shocking accident—some honest worker working late, whose honesty had been cruelly rewarded ... still, if they wanted to stir up a mystery, they were welcome to go wherever they chose to look for it. They had his permission, just as he was sure his mother would give it, if she’d been there—and, talking of his mother ...

  Cuthbert had beaten a hasty retreat, to present—as Sid Noakes (who’d voiced the first hint of mystery with his discovery of the body) and Brinton guessed—his report to Mrs. Caroline Kelshall, relict of Caradoc, and currently head of KarriKlozzet Limited, the nation’s third largest supplier of portable cloakrooms for all occasions. As the slogan had it, KarriKlozzet Cared for the Convenience of the Public in Private, and with Discretion.

  “So Cuthbert,” said Delphick, once Sid and Brinton had brought him up to date, “doesn’t believe, or shall we at least say doesn’t want to believe, in a—a vendetta of any sort, recent sackings notwithstanding. Would his view, do you know, be that of the other family members? The redoubtable Caroline, in particular.”

  “Carrie likes to keep her finger firmly on the pulse.” Brinton grinned. “That’s just with one hand, of course. With the other, she holds the whip that gets cracked over the heads of the rest of the family—the rest of the firm, come to that—if they set one toe across the line she’s drawn. If Cuthbert says he doesn’t believe in a vendetta, then he’s saying what Caroline’ll say, and the rest, once we get around to asking them—he’d never dare be different. She probably thinks it’s a downright liberty of the natives even to think of such a thing—always very lord-and-peasant style, KarriKlozzet, even while old Caradoc was alive. Hire and fire—not, mind you, that they did so much firing until recently. Noted for looking after their people, in some ways—so, well, in some ways I could almost believe our Cuthbert when he said there was nothing—nothing vindictive about what’s happened. You don’t turn round all of a sudden and bite the hand that’s fed you for so long, do you?”

  “You might,” said Delphick, “if the shock of being fed no longer had sent you slightly round the bend.”

  Sid Noakes reminded everyone of the petrol he’d felt sure he’d smelled, and pointed out that the fire—wherever it had started, which was hard to tell, and if that weren’t a suspicious circumstance then he didn’t rightly know what was—did seem to have spread awful quickly, considering. Portable toilets being by nature not exactly tinder-dry, that was to say, and back to what he’d said earlier about crackers and jumping-jacks on their own not liable to cause such an inferno ...

  Delphick was frowning. “A strong suspicion of arson,” he murmured. “A firm with a paternalistic style of management suddenly starting to let its dependants down ... Chris, this could be a simple grudge matter. And that poor chap, whoever he turns out to be, could be dead by a dreadful mischance ... yet it seems more than strange for someone, no matter how great the grudge for having lost his job, to ruin the chance of employment for others in the community ...”

  “Round the bend,” Brinton reminded him. “You said so yourself—and you could be right. Could be the grudge got to him faster than thinking about the effect on everybody else—on everybody he worked with, I mean. He’ll have been only too aware of what the effect’d be on the Kelshalls—on KarriKlozzet as a whole. They’ll lose a fair bit
of trade by all this, never mind whatever insurance cover they’ve got—there’s goodwill, lost orders, that sort of thing. Could take ’em years to get back on their feet again ...”

  “If,” said Delphick, “such was the intention. An ordinary, sordid business motive makes it all too easy ...”

  Brinton looked at him; at the eager, interested faces of Bob and Foxon; at the puzzled frown of honest Sid Noakes. “I’m a humble country copper,” he said, slowly. “I’m not up to your big-city complications—I like my crimes nice and easy and straightforward. But I’ve got a very nasty feeling you’re going to complicate this one for me, with bells on. Am I right?”

  “I don’t know.” Delphick shook his head. “Maybe I’m imagining it—but the coincidence cannot, surely, have escaped your attention. We have not one, but two deaths to be investigated here. The first, of the caterer who was in attendance at Dungeness when the princess disappeared. The second—”

  “Don’t tell me!” Brinton almost howled the words. “Why can’t it be a common-or-garden coincidence, for once? Just for once, an ordinary crime? With Guy Fawkes Night three days away, and fireworks all over the place, and if it’s not yobs being careless it’s their dads angry for losing their jobs ...”

  Delphick regarded his friend with some sympathy. “Maybe I’m imagining it,” he said again. “Maybe. I hope, in some ways, that I am, although in others it would be helpful if I’m not—the more complex the coincidences and connections, the easier a crime can be to solve. It’s always the run-of-the-mill affairs, the ones with nothing to distinguish them from a hundred other cases, which are the most difficult to bring to a satisfactory conclusion. Don’t we always look for the pattern, where we can? The more bizarre the crime, the easier the pattern is to establish; and, once a pattern has been established, the solution is so much closer. It’s a question of looking at the facts in the right way ...”

  He chose to ignore Brinton’s horrified wince, his groan of despairing resignation. “And,” he went on, “in order to look at things in the right way, it helps more than a little if one consults someone who is fortunate enough to possess the eye of the trained observer ...

  “I rather think, you know,” concluded Chief Superintendent Delphick, “that I could do a great deal worse in this case than consult Miss Seeton.”

  chapter

  ~ 17 ~

  BY THE TIME they had driven back to Plummergen, it was past supper-time—yet not (Delphick decided) too far past to pay an evening call, if the callers first took the precaution of telephoning to enquire whether or not their visit would be inconvenient. Besides (as he reminded Bob) while Charley Mountfitchet would be only too happy to rustle up a snack and a drink for his guests at whatever hour they requested them—even happier than usual on this particular occasion, since the thrill of being a suspect, however obliquely, in a murder case had delighted the landlord’s enthusiastic soul—Miss Seeton might well have some of her adopted nephew’s favourite gingerbread in the larder.

  But Miss Seeton, it seemed, was not at home. The chief superintendent let the rhythmic “unanswered” tone ring for a count of twenty, then broke the connection.

  “She might,” said Bob—who’d had no thoughts of gingerbread until Delphick raised them, and who was now feeling hungrier by the minute—“be standing on her head or something, sir. You know she doesn’t really like to stop in the middle of her exercises unless it’s urgent. How about, er, trying again a bit later?”

  “While we,” murmured Delphick, “force ourselves down to the bar—there to indulge in some of Charley’s excellent sandwiches, no doubt.” He pondered this proposal for a few moments, then slowly nodded, as if resigned to the sacrifice of entering the saloon bar of the George, and partaking of its excellent supper menu. “It is, of course, Sergeant Ranger, in the very best interests of the investigation that the investigators should remain at all times in full possession of their health and strength. An inefficient sidekick is”—he permitted himself a quiet smile—“something up with which no superior should have to put.” He smiled once more, in a Churchillian manner, then frowned.

  “I can’t recall whether or not there were any lights showing in Sweetbriars as we pulled on to the forecourt of the pub. If Miss Seeton is not, in fact, standing on her head, but has gone out somewhere for the evening, it will be wasting valuable nourishment time to telephone again before we—you—eat.”

  Bob ignored the slur on his gourmandising. When a bloke stood six-foot-seven in his socks, he needed to keep up his strength. (Keep his strength up? Good old Churchill!) If he’d been the size of Miss Seeton, say, or young Georgina, the pair of ’em not an inch above five foot high and eating no more, he’d bet, than sparrows—well, that’d be different: but he wasn’t. What he was—and he weighed seventeen stone, which he’d guess was about ten stone more than either MissEss or Georgy Girl—was hungry.

  “Come to think of it, sir, I didn’t notice any lights, either. But you know what this place is like for minding everybody else’s business. If we ask downstairs where she’s gone while we’re having a bite to eat, fifty-to-one there’ll be at least six people who can tell us.”

  Delphick was no more immune to the summons of the fleshpots than other men who have worked hard all day with little time, or thought, for food. He sighed. “Since you appear, Sergeant Ranger, to be growing weaker even as I look at you, it would seem that I have no alternative than to agree. We will therefore,” he decreed, “take cheese-and-pickle sandwiches and a helping of gossip before another five minutes are out ...”

  Yet for once the Plummergen grapevine was unequal to the task required of it. Both the saloon and the public bars were almost empty, and the few drinkers therein did not, when asked, seem to know anything of Miss Seeton’s probable whereabouts. They were rather more informative on the probable whereabouts of their (possibly) more knowledgeable friends. The Christmas Pantomime committee meeting, and the planning of the imminent Grand Firework Display, not to mention the proposed revival of the Night Watch Men in view of Murreystone’s suspected sabotage of the Village Bonfire, had all taken their toll of the George’s regular customers. Iffen Mr. Delphick was to come back t’ask the same question in a week or so, they didn’t doubt but what they’d be able to tell him a bit more, but as for now ...

  “As for now,” said Delphick, “we will address ourselves to these drinks, and this menu, and to asking Charley for an alarm call after, for once, a relatively early night. We want to be ringing Miss Seeton’s doorbell before she’s had time to slip off for the day.”

  But when they rang her bell at half-past nine next morning, it was not Miss Seeton who answered the door.

  “Oh, Mr. Delphick, it’s only you!” Martha Bloomer stood before them on the threshold of Sweetbriars, her eyes dark with anxiety. “Oh, dear, I made sure you must be Miss Emily come back from shopping and forgot her key and having to ring, with it being one of my days and knowing I’d be here to let her in ...” She peered over his shoulder, past the looming form of Sergeant Ranger, northwards up The Street in the direction of the shops. “She’s not usually out this early, you see, not unless she’s teaching, which I know for a fact Mr. Jessyp said she needn’t, with Miss Maynard there in any case, until she’d got over all the—well, the upset, poor soul, from the other day—but I can’t think what’s happened to her. It’s only half an hour, I know, not such a time as I’d worry about normally, but with all the upset, and no note left, and her always so careful to let me know what she’s doing, even if it’s just pop out for biscuits or a jar of coffee, specially when she thinks she mightn’t be back in time to give me my wages, her not liking to get in a muddle about money, though dear knows I’d trust Miss Emily to pay up sooner than I’d trust most of ’em—and of course I know if you’ve come straight from the George you’ll not have had much of a chance, but—but have you seen her anywhere at all?”

  Delphick glanced at his sergeant in some concern. Bob returned the look without speaking, though
in any case he didn’t need to. The same sudden presentiment had gripped them both at exactly the same time during Martha’s agitated monologue. They remembered last night’s silent telephone calls; they knew, almost as well as Mrs. Bloomer knew it, Miss Seeton’s daily routine ...

  “I’m afraid we haven’t,” said Delphick, trying to sound matter-of-fact about this negative response. Nothing would be achieved by letting Martha worry herself into hysteria if Miss Seeton should, indeed, be missing. With anyone else, of course, there could always be the rational explanation: pausing for a chat (but Miss Seeton didn’t gossip), stopping off to visit a friend (but Miss Seeton would never call on anyone so early in the morning). When Miss Seeton, however, was concerned, years of experience had taught them that it was the irrational explanation—the bizarre, the outlandish, the recherché—the unnerving—which was, more often than not, correct.

  “There’s her shopping basket still here,” said Martha, opening the door wide in an unspoken request for Delphick and Bob to enter. “And she’s not in the garden, because that was the first place I looked when she wasn’t in the house—and wherever she is, for all it’s a chilly morning she’s not took her warm coat, see?”

  She showed them the heavy tweed, hanging on its hook. A vision from the past flashed across Delphick’s inward eye: Miss Seeton, newly returned from Switzerland via Paris, arriving at London Airport in a stylish hat and a woollen coat patterned loudly in red and black. She would keep it, she’d told him, for best. It reversed to a fawn-grey gaberdine for wet weather: might she now have decided that it looked like rain (which indeed it did) and gone out duly prepared for whatever the November clouds might send down?

  The next thought was inevitable. “Which umbrella,” he demanded, “did she take?”

  Although this had been one of the first things Martha had seen fit to check, at Delphick’s enquiry she did so again, running an experienced eye along the rack, a row of neat clips fastened to one wall with a rail underneath, holding their points above the drip-tray. “Her best gold,” she said, “but it’s not Lady Colveden, because I took the liberty of phoning to ask, and there’s nobody there. Busy about the farm, I shouldn’t wonder, and market day in Brettenden, which her ladyship always likes to pop in when she can to look at the stalls and things ...”