“But Miss Seeton can’t have popped yet,” Delphick said, “because the bus”—he checked his watch—“won’t be leaving for another quarter of an hour, will it? And if she’d been offered a lift by Lady Colveden, I agree with you that she would have left a message.”
Mrs. Bloomer’s eyes fixed themselves on his. “You don’t think I’m fussed about nothing, then! Oh, dear, whatever’s happened to her? Poor Miss Emily—”
“Have you looked,” broke in Delphick, “upstairs? What’s missing from her wardrobe?”
“Perhaps,” suggested Bob, in a warning tone, “it would be better, sir, if—”
But he got no further. Martha had already darted off on her errand. Only as Bob groaned softly did it occur to Delphick that there could be a less sinister, though even more unfortunate, reason for Miss Seeton’s apparent absence. She might well be—indeed she was—one of the fittest and most healthy old ladies of their acquaintance, but such things as strokes and heart attacks were no respecters of pers—
“Oh!” Martha’s cry startled the listeners below. They did not stop to think. They headed together for the stairs, collided at the bottom, and as they tried to sort themselves out to hurry upwards, met Mrs. Bloomer hurrying down.
“I never,” she gasped, “thought to look before, with her always up before I come—I just took a quick peek, and only natural I should think she’d made the bed after breakfast same as she always does, but she—she hasn’t, Mr. Delphick. That bed’s made, all right—but it was made yesterday, and never been slept in—you just come and see!”
“How do you know?” He didn’t waste time asking if she was sure. Martha Bloomer wouldn’t—couldn’t—make a mistake about something like Miss Seeton’s failure to sleep in her own bed: but hard evidence was always best in the case of a missing—for whatever reason—person. Even to himself, he hardly liked to use the word abducted—but he had a strong suspicion it would not be very long before he was forced to say it out loud ...
“Clean sheets,” said Martha. “Look!” With a flourish, she showed them her proof. She had already turned back the counterpane: now she whisked the top bedding—sheet, blankets, eiderdown—in one quick open movement halfway down the bed, revealing to their startled gaze Miss Seeton’s neatly-folded nightdress resting beside a smooth white pillow on another sheet, just as smooth. Impossibly smooth ...
“They were late,” she explained, “with the deliveries this week, the laundry I mean, on account of one of the drivers catching flu and having to double up on the rounds, so the minute I heard the engine, a nasty diesel thing makes a terrible racket, I nipped across before she could do herself an injury, yoga or not, trying to turn the mattress on her own, which is what we like to do once a week, even when it wasn’t one of my usual days—and this is how we left it, the two of us, yesterday afternoon. And if that sheet’s been slept on I’ll—I’ll ...”
Her face began to work. She let the bedding fall from her hands. “Oh, dear, poor Miss Seeton—you know how she is, Mr. Delphick, the way things will happen to her, and her not noticing until it’s too late. You can’t help worrying about her, can you? Where on earth can she have gone?”
Delphick briefly considered, then ruled out, any idea that Miss Seeton might have suffered a brainstorm after what Martha had so tactfully referred to as all the upset. Miss Seeton was far too level-headed and unimaginative to allow any such a thing to happen to her.
Whatever else might happen, of course, was entirely out of her hands.
Her hands ...
“Martha, I’d like to examine Miss Seeton’s sketchbook, if I may—and I think I’d better look at the contents of her portfolio, as well. First, though, if you wouldn’t mind checking in the wardrobe ...”
“Her Paris coat,” said Mrs. Bloomer, after a careful search. “And her hat, the red one with the ribbon—and her leather bag she’s only had a week or two, bought special for the Opening—all her smartest clothes, gone. But she’s not,” she said again, “gone off with Lady Colveden, I know she hasn’t. And in any case, why would she dress up smart just for Brettenden market?”
Delphick shook his head, without speaking. Bob, patting the faithful retainer gently on the shoulder, said that Miss Seeton, she must remember, always came bouncing back in the end, didn’t she? To which bromide Mrs. Bloomer, with one of her more expressive sniffs, retorted that she wished he’d sound a bit more sure of it himself, and not try to fool her he wasn’t as worried as everybody else. And if Mr. Delphick thought looking at Miss Emily’s pictures would help, then the sooner they stopped talking and he looked, the better it would be!
Delphick and his sergeant clattered down the stairs in Martha’s wake, automatically registering their surroundings as they passed. No sign of any struggle: but that meant nothing. Wherever Miss Seeton had gone—no, be honest, wherever she’d been taken—she’d been tricked into going: the last thing she’d want would be to worry Martha by going off without leaving a message—and she hadn’t left one, so they’d obviously hustled her away with some excuse for the hurry, and she’d swallowed it. Trickery, then, not violence—yet they weren’t so confident in their tricks they’d risk letting her leave a message: another pointer to the amateurs he’d hypothesised, rather than the professionals the MI boys suspected? They wouldn’t need to be professionals to trick Miss Seeton. Absolutely—almost, sometimes, painfully—truthful and law-abiding herself, MissEss must be a confidence man’s dream. How she’d survived this long unscathed, he’d never know. She found it hard to believe that anyone would deliberately tell lies with intent to harm her: she would always suppose there must have been some mistake. He only hoped she’d survive this latest mistake as well as she’d come through all the others ...
“Guy Forks,” said Delphick, smiling despite himself at Miss Seeton’s sketch of the bearded man in the broad-brimmed hat with his cutlery arms and legs. Odd: he’d never really thought of Miss Seeton as having a sense of humour—though there was, of course, that sketch she’d drawn in Paris of a lady of dubious virtue, nude, flaunting herself on top of a pile of suitcases. Abandoned Baggage, she’d called it—and with good reason, if his recollection was correct. They’d found the lady in question, very much deceased, inside an assortment of trunks and cases deposited at left-luggage offices all around the French capital ...
“Oh.” He stopped smiling; he stiffened. He had pulled the next sketch out of the cardboard folder: and there was Guy Fawkes, with a lantern in his hand—with a bomb in the other. In the background, smoking ruins; in the top corner, a tiny playing-card. He peered. A picture card—a female, crowned ...
“We must advise Chris Brinton,” said Delphick, “that the KarriKlozzet fire was definitely arson—probably caused by some sort of bomb. And that it’s more than probably tied in with the Bragbury murder, just as we suspected—and that both are almost certainly connected with Georgina’s disappearance, as witness the queen, or in Miss Seeton’s version the princess, of hearts ...”
He put the two sketches aside, and turned to the third, for which Miss Seeton had brought out her coloured pencils. “And here she is in person, bless her curly royal head—on this occasion, almost respectably attired, one might say. Although ...” For an instant, he paused in thought; then he nodded, and smiled. “Of course—Manet, again. His version of Zola’s Nana at her toilette ...”
The setting was intimate: the corner of a room carpeted in red, furnished with heavy curtains, an ornate table, a velvet-covered sofa on which satin cushions were heaped. In the foreground stood the celebrated courtesan, in her underdress of cream frilled petticoat and blue satin basque, and wearing dainty black high-heeled shoes. Her body was turned towards an oval looking-glass, mounted on a slim wooden pedestal between two candles in gilded sticks; her head, the rich curls tied up with ribbon, was turned to face the onlooker—and the face was unmistakeably that of Princess Georgina. One hand sported a glittering ring, the wrist a golden bangle; the other—
“To my recoll
ection,” Delphick muttered, “that’s rather different from the original. I wonder ...”
Nana-Georgina’s right hand held a powder-puff of phenomenal size, fluffy and of dazzling whiteness, the focal point of the picture.
“Yes,” said Delphick, slowly. “I wonder—and there’s another difference. In the original, as I recall, it’s the figure of a top-hatted man in evening dress, but now ...”
On one end of the sofa, close together, sat a little girl in frills and laces, carrying a bouquet—and, beside the girl, a small, elderly female figure in a suit, wearing a fancy hat and a necklace. And carrying an umbrella ...
“Catharsis, perhaps.” Delphick frowned, stared again at Nana, then turned to the next drawing, and sighed. “Yes, I thought as much. She’s been trying to work it out of her system—and, though drawing her problems is far more in character with Miss Seeton than a course of professional psychoanalysis would be, I fear it doesn’t help us as much as I hope it helped her ...”
The scene was full of movement, of energy and urgency expressed once more in stark black and white. Two police cars, their lights flashings—you could almost hear their sirens—raced across the paper, with a fire engine, its bell being furiously rung by a burly man in oilskins and a helmet, close behind, and hotly pursued by an ambulance, its beacon ablaze. Keeping watch over the scene, its rotors awhirl, hovered a helicopter; in the background, seeming to float on a low bank of cloud, or mist, was a moated building with a drawbridge and portcullis, with turrets and towers. From the highest window in the tallest tower, a tiny Rapunzel leaned out, her tumbling locks crowned with the daintiest of tiaras ...
“HRH in danger,” said Delphick, “as if we didn’t already know. And this,” he went on, leafing quickly through the other sketches, “is the last of the recent batch. Not as much help as I’d hoped, I’m afraid.” He looked up. “I’m sorry, Martha. We’re going to have to find Miss Seeton by good old-fashioned detection—and that, unfortunately, will take time ...”
chapter
~ 18 ~
MISS SEETON HAD just finished putting away her portfolio and the rest of her sketching equipment when the doorbell rang. She glanced at the clock. It was most unlikely to be dear Martha again, since it was almost supper-time: the Bloomers, like all country-dwellers, preferred to keep regular hours. Martha would have telephoned, surely, if there had been anything of particular importance—yet she had mentioned, when she’d been so kindly helping to turn the mattress, that Stan was off to a meeting later at Rytham Hall, about the Village Watch, and the bonfire. Perhaps her visitor was dear Stan, on his way to the Hall—although if he intended asking for her advice on the matter of Murreystone, she very much feared that he would be disappointed. How could a mere teacher of art, no more than seven years a resident of the village, possibly be expected to know how to end a feud which had endured for hundreds of years?
Miss Seeton, musing sadly on the many machinations of Murreystone, clicked her tongue as the bell rang out again and she hurried down the hall, unable to stop a slight pucker of disapproval creasing her forehead as she finally opened the door.
Oh, dear. She banished the frown. A stranger: one must not appear unwelcoming. He had, she supposed, lost his way, and was seeking directions. Her eyes drifted down the front path to the car parked just outside. Although Plummergen is not furnished with street lighting, the moon was almost full that night, the sky was unusually clear for November, and there were glimmers from carelessly-curtained windows in nearby houses—and more than glimmers from the George and Dragon, diagonally opposite across the road. A dark, sleek, official-looking car ...
“Er—Miss Seeton?”
Miss Seeton admitted her identity. The tall man fumbled in the breast pocket of his jacket, and produced a wallet, which he flipped open and held out to her. “I’m with the security services, Miss Seeton.” He snapped the wallet shut before she’d had time to do more than blink at it. “You can call me Rookwood, if you will.” He lowered his voice. “We need your help rather urgently. May I come in?”
He seemed to be taking her agreement for granted, Miss Seeton couldn’t help but think as he almost pushed his way past her into the hall. Well, perhaps not pushed—as she trotted behind him after closing the door—but he certainly was in a hurry. But then he had, of course, said that the matter was urgent: another IdentiKit, no doubt, which dear Mr. Delphick or his colleagues—hers, too, she supposed, and blushed—wished her to supply. Urgently.
“My sketching things,” said Miss Seeton, conscious of the need to save every second, “are in the bureau in the sitting-room. If you would care to follow me—that is,” realising that in order to lead him down the hall to the room she had just left she would have to squeeze past him, which would be—well, embarrassing, as the gentleman was a complete stranger, “if you would care to walk through—”
“Sketching things?” Mr. Rookwood didn’t move: he stood with his mouth open, staring. Miss Seeton, who had taken his movement for granted, stopped in mid-step, and blessed the muscular control which years of yoga had given her. She was able to recover her original position with only the slightest of wobbles, and with no loss of dignity.
“Sketching things?” Mr. Rookwood came out of his trance, and shook his head. “Er—no, thank you, Miss Seeton, that won’t be necessary. Her Royal Highness doesn’t so much need her portrait painted as a—as a chaperone,” he concluded, in a rush.
Now it was Miss Seeton’s turn to stare. Her Royal Highness? Chaperone? “But—but surely,” she enquired, with a flustered look, “her lady-in-waiting ...”
“Is at Kensington Palace,” Mr. Rookwood told her, “while you, Miss Seeton, are here. There’s been no time, you see, to fetch ... er, her ladyship from London—we’ve only just discovered where the princess has been kept prisoner. She—that is, her lady-in-waiting—will be informed, of course, as soon as possible—a helicopter of the Queen’s Flight and she’ll be here in half an hour—but for now we want someone else Her Royal Highness can ... well, can trust, while she ... while she’s being debriefed. Someone she can relax with after her, um, ordeal—someone to reassure her, now it’s over. Another woman—you know the sort of thing—so, if you wouldn’t mind coming with me now ...”
It almost seemed that he would take her by the arm: but no, she must have been mistaken. Or was she? As she looked at him, puzzled, Mr. Rookwood thrust his hands in his trouser pockets, and took a deep breath. “As quickly as possible, please,” he said, in a voice which shook, just a little—from worry, no doubt. Such a grave responsibility; and here she was with her foolish objections, delaying the poor man when he’d said it was urgent—but ...
“But surely a—a more official person than I would be the best choice to—to accompany Her Royal Highness? A policewoman, for example, since she would be trained, as I am not, even if so many years with children—not that one would consider Her Royal Highness a child, naturally,” with a blush, “although she is still very young, of course—but I would have thought—the uniform, so reassuring, besides being closer in age—”
“No!” Mr. Rookwood saw the startled expression in her eyes, and laughed. It sounded, to Miss Seeton’s ears, somewhat forced: but he was, she reminded herself, a young man with much on his mind. “No, I’m sorry, Miss Seeton, but—but she has asked for you in particular. An older woman—not exactly a mother figure—” Miss Seeton, even more startled, blushed a deep red. Mr. Rookwood coughed. “I’m sorry, Miss Seeton, I’m expressing myself very badly, but—but, well, if you’d just like to look on this as—as being by Royal Command ...”
Miss Seeton paled. Would it be treason to refuse? When the poor young princess had been, one imagined, having so unpleasant a time—although surely they, whoever they were, would not have harmed her—Mr. Rookwood hadn’t mentioned anything of the sort, though perhaps he was trying to spare one’s feelings—but there had, of course, been one’s First Aid training, even if girls fainting at school had been the limit of one’s expe
rience—and yet ...
“Asked for me in particular?” Even now, she couldn’t quite take it all in. “I’m sure I don’t see why—”
“You met,” broke in Mr. Rookwood—he sounded close to exasperation: the anxiety, of course—“at the Power Station Opening, remember?”
And Miss Seeton, who remembered only too well and had hoped that nobody else did, blushed again, and sighed, and murmured that if Her Royal Highness had indeed expressed a wish for Emily Dorothea Seeton, then Emily Dorothea Seeton would be only too happy to do her loyal duty.
Waiting in the hall—for one moment, she’d half expected him to insist on accompanying her upstairs—Mr. Rookwood tapped his foot with impatience at her saying she must wear, not her everyday coat, but her smart check from that very expensive—such a generous present of kind Mr. Stemkos!—shop in Paris, with her best hat, and that she would take the new handbag, which meant transferring her purse and keys and handkerchief from the one she used the rest of the time. And, of course, what other umbrella but her best, with the gold handle? When one was meeting Royalty ...
Miss Seeton did not—could not—explain to Mr. Rookwood (she still blushed at the memory) that her sketch of Princess Georgina clothed in—well, in so informal a fashion had made her more than usually conscious of the sartorial respect due to a member of the Royal Family. Treason ...
“Please hurry, Miss Seeton!” Mr. Rookwood was looking at his watch even as she trotted down the stairs, buttoning her coat. Miss Seeton, still preoccupied with thoughts of treason, trotted even faster. She did not stop at the hall stand to check her hat in the mirror; the notepad by the telephone was ignored as she snatched her umbrella from the stand, slipped the handle over her arm, and announced that she was ready.
Miss Seeton Rules (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 18) Page 17
