Witch Miss Seeton (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 3) Page 5

  “Please, miss. This income tax. If that’s as much as what it is and then there’s all these other taxes on sweets, tobacco and the rest, it seems to me they’re taking more than what you’ve got.”

  Miss Seeton studied what she’d written. It seemed so to her too. “Well,” she said at last, “I must admit it looks that way. Let’s try and work it out. Supposing someone had so much for income but no rent—though rates, of course—and then there’s tax and all these other things… .” They questioned her. They needed facts and figures.

  “Miss, would this someone need football boots?” she was asked.

  Well, no. She didn’t think they would.

  “And sweets—does she eat a lot of them?” Well, no, not many. Very few, in fact. That was good: and what about … They got to work. They left their places, walked around, plied her with questions, discussed the answers and made lists. The girls took food, clothes, linen and the like. The boys took capital, expenditure and tax; allowed for holidays and help.

  While they were thus engrossed, Miss Seeton’s eyes strayed to the next page in the book. It was headed Bankruptcy. She sighed. The bell rang. She stood up. There were protests. “Wait, miss.” “Hang on, miss.” “Just a tick, miss, we’re nearly there.” “Please, miss, we ’aven’t finished.” There was a final flurry; comparing notes, assessing this, resolving that. Miss Seeton sat and waited. The leader of the class, his waggery forgotten, jumped up with pride.

  “We’ve done it, if you please, miss, we got the answer,” he announced. “You’ll ’ave to take a job.”

  • • •

  The late-afternoon sun sinking red behind; gulls wheeling over the sea; dry grass on sand bent before the wind, stained scarlet by the dying sun, shadowed in rags by streaking cloud. Shadowed rags streaming across a yellowing sky, scurrying thwart blood-tinted earth.

  So very dramatic. But so difficult to catch the color. And so much more difficult to capture movement. Miss Seeton laid down her brush. Though, one must admit, one did hope that it would not be quite so windy with the children here. It always involved so much chasing after paper. It really was very kind of Lady Colveden to take the trouble to bring her. Of course, as one of the school governors, Lady Colveden had known of the proposed children’s outing, but to drive one out here in order to choose the view and get the preparatory work done, especially since one understood that she had a guest staying in the house … Miss Seeton looked at her watch. The two hours were nearly up and Lady Colveden would be back at any moment. She began to pack her things. She put her finger to the paper. No, the sketch was not quite dry. She’d leave that till the last.

  Hearing footsteps on the grass, Miss Seeton turned with a smile to say that she was ready. Oh. But how quite lovely. Words failed one. One didn’t know how to express it. Miss Seeton didn’t try; she stood and stared. The girl smiled.

  “Hello. Sorry if I’m interrupting. Don’t mind me, I won’t bother you. I just got out of the car to stretch my legs and look around. I’m on my way to some little one-horse village called Plummergen. Going to put up at the local pub and thought I’d have a look at the district first.” She took a gold cigarette case from her bag and proffered it. Wordless still, Miss Seeton shook her head. The girl lit a cigarette, dragged deep and let smoke run from her nostrils. “Painting the local beauty spots? Wish I had talent.” She laughed. “There are a few things I could …” She saw Miss Seeton’s effort. The laughter died. She gave Miss Seeton a strange look; abruptly she swung around and walked away.

  Slowly Miss Seeton folded over her sketching frame, gathered her paraphernalia and moved toward the road. She was rather silent on the return journey with Lady Colveden. She refused an invitation to tea, somewhat to Meg Colveden’s relief since she could not imagine Miss Seeton and Aunt Bray hitting it off. Miss Seeton, it appeared, had a previous engagement. That huge young sergeant from Scotland Yard had come down on holiday and was staying at the George and Dragon and he and Anne Knight had telephoned Miss Seeton and asked themselves to tea.

  At the beginning of the tea party, despite a cheerful log fire, now that the days were drawing in, there was some constraint. Miss Seeton was a little embarrassed. For her, Sir Hubert Everleigh’s letter hung like a gray cloud over the proceedings. For the sergeant, who had been issued with a copy of the document, it loomed like a black pall. It was all very well for the Oracle to say, I don’t want to write myself, Bob, or interfere unless I have to—as the A.C.’s written in person it would be tactless—but I’ll lay you five to one she refuses; she won’t understand what’s wanted of her and she’ll dream up at least a dozen reasons against it, so it’s for you to knock them down and make her agree. But how did you make someone agree to something that they didn’t want to do; especially if that something was something quite unsuitable and something that they shouldn’t’ve been asked to do anyway? Why couldn’t they have left things as they were? After all, they could always’ve asked her to do the odd drawing, like they’d done before. But the A.C.’d cracked down on that. He’d said they’d no right to ask an outsider to take risks they weren’t paid for. But no one’d ever asked Miss Seeton to take risks. She—well, she just took ’em without knowing. Also the A.C.’d said that judging by what’d gone on in the other two cases she’d got mixed up in, it’d be cheaper to have her officially attached to the force in the long run anyway. And old Brimstone at Ashford hadn’t made things any easier by ringing him up as soon as he’d got down here, telling him to get cracking because she was wanted for this Nuscience meeting at Maidstone, but he couldn’t ask her as things stood now till she was signed up. Signed up? He had a pocketful of forms he was supposed to get her to sign. But how the devil were you supposed to get someone to sign something they didn’t want to sign, especially when that something was something … Oh, hell.

  Anne had been asking how Miss Seeton had fared at the school, since she had been intrigued to hear that many of the children had developed a sudden and surprising interest in finance and would seem to be a collection of budding accountants. She noticed her hostess’ growing discomfiture and broke off. She looked at them both. She put down her plate and chuckled.

  “Listen,” she suggested. “I know it’s not my business but wouldn’t it be better if you two got it over with and then we could enjoy ourselves? Bob’s so scared you’re going to say no, he hardly dares open his mouth in case he brings the subject up by mistake. And from the look of it”—she gave Miss Seeton a sympathetic smile—“well, you aren’t exactly happy about it either. But we can’t all sit round and go on pretending that assistant commissioners don’t exist, because they do. Can’t we”—she appealed to them both—“sort of agree that it’s a good idea, or a bad idea, and then forget it?” Miss Seeton grew pink; Bob red. There was a silence. Anne shook her head in mock despair. “Well, anyway,” she said, “could I have another cup of tea and some more cake?”

  Miss Seeton laughed, apologized and attended to her duties. “You’re quite right, Anne.” She passed the cake to Bob. “I’m being silly. You see, really, though I suppose I should have, I couldn’t imagine that it was, in fact, meant to be serious.” Bob was comforted: that put old Sir Heavily in his place; she’d thought he was funning.

  “That’s lese majesty,” Anne told her. “Even I’m learning that you have to take the assistant commissioner seriously.”

  “Of course.” Miss Seeton was dubious. It was … so difficult to express. Although she realized, perfectly, that drawing would be her main requirement, one did also know that anyone connected with the police must be prepared, at all times, to undertake any other job that might arise. Like the Scouts. And, of course, the Guides. Being prepared, she meant. “It’s just that it’s so—unusual. After all, at my age, not that one would mind the uniform exactly—should that ever become necessary—but to join the police force”—her troubled earnestness was almost too much for Anne—“when one doesn’t even understand traffic and things of that kind; you do see that one can’t—
without the training, that is to say. So I thought that—well, in a way, it must be one. A joke, I mean.”

  Bob spluttered. The black pall had lifted. Traffic. He choked on cake crumbs. Miss Seeton in a uniform at Hyde Park corner or at Marble Arch directing traffic with a wave of her umbrella. “Oh, please,” he gasped, “I wish you would,” and went into another paroxysm. That would do it. That would solve the problem. All London’s traffic stationary for miles and miles. And miles. Right into the suburbs. Never to move again. He hadn’t felt so happy in a year.

  Gradually, between convulsions, they sorted the thing out. The suggestion was, it was explained, that Miss Seeton should receive a small retainer and that in return the Yard should have the first call on her services; to send her anywhere they wished, expenses paid, to see people, to make drawings upon request and each time she was called in she would be paid pro rata for the job. In her mind a fresh young voice repeated, “Miss, you’ll ’ave to take a job.”

  And so Miss Seeton signed, filled in, initialed, read Whereas and In the event of and This contract to be renewed annually and revised if necessary by mutual agreement, and signed the papers Bob produced.

  chapter

  ~5~

  “Today I’m going to talk to you of Freedom.”

  The hall at Maidstone was packed. Miss Seeton sat forward, intent with concentration. On this, her first official assignment for the police, she must really do her best. Such a very pleasant boy who’d brought her here. And colorful, in that pink sweater with the turned-down collar—roll neck, she believed—and then the jacket in a near-magenta. Not, in truth, perhaps, the happiest combination. But colorful. One had somehow thought of the police as being cropped. But no. This Mr. Foxon’s hair was long—well, quite—and wavy. She’d brought a note pad to make notes; record impressions. She made a note; recorded an impression. Freedom; inscribed Miss Seeton.

  “Freedom,” continued the speaker, “which means freedom of the senses …”

  “Poppycock,” muttered Sir George in the front row. Aunt Bray looked outraged. Lady Colveden signed to her husband to keep quiet.

  “… freedom of the mind, freedom of the spirit and freedom of expression …”

  The majority of the audience sat enrapt, but to Bob, who had slipped in at the back with Anne, it sounded gibblegabble.

  “… freedom,” emphasized the lecturer, “from sin; freedom to love.”

  “Bosh,” grunted Sir George.

  Rather a lot of freedom, wrote Miss Seeton.

  Nigel, who had accompanied his parents at his father’s asking, was half turned in his seat. That girl: that gold hair; those red lights in it. That girl: those eyes; that mouth. That … girl. He also sat enrapt. The only words of all the carefully worked up rodomontade that got through to him were “freedom to love.”

  “Here in the Western world,” went on the orator, “we are bound like Prometheus of old by chains; chains whose links are forged—forged,” he repeated, “by false concepts, forged by material considerations, by fear and by wrong thinking. Far in the East in ashrams, in solitary cells, in lonely monasteries, the yogis have known the answers to these problems for countless centuries. This world does not exist. Ah”—he paused and looked around the auditorium—“that surprises you. And yet I tell you that it’s true. You think in material terms of different substances; but once you can free your mind from this illusion and attain pure knowledge, or chit …”

  Miss Seeton frowned, uncertain. These foreign languages. So difficult to spell.

  “… you’ll find that there is but one illusion—the Great Illusion—which is the world, ourselves and all about us; all nothing but the mere reflection of God the Divine Creator. Maya, the principle of illusion which denies reality, or om. Once you have achieved maya you can attain true worship; worshiping all illusion as a reflection of God.” For a moment he stood staring into space. Then: “Eternal life. Eternal …” he reiterated slowly. “Never to die. The Western dream: the Eastern reality. For never doubt it is reality; a reality within the grasp of all possessing faith and perseverance. You might ask, What has this to do with freedom? My answer is, Mukti.”

  “Hear, hear,” agreed Sir George, who shared with Miss Seeton an inability to grasp the finer points of Sanskrit.

  “Mukti,” explained the speaker, “means liberation from the wheel of birth and death; a soul in freedom. It is a state that any human being can achieve—it has been achieved by many in the East. Among the mystics there I have talked and worked with men older than the centuries; men who know your thoughts and actions before you can formulate them for yourself. Some of you may smile, but this is scientific fact. There is much that I am not allowed to tell you, but this I have been permitted: to bring to the West the essential teachings in a shortened version—in Nuscience—almost you might call it a shortcut to Eternal Truth. I have also, at my special pleading, been granted permission to reveal to those few whose subliminals I can recognize the actual Secret of Eternal Life. For some of us”—he shook his head in whimsical reproof—“the fleshly desires, the carnal appetites, make maya difficult. But this is but another facet of the fear I spoke of—and I have told you not to be afraid. Remember that many of the saints led far from blameless lives before they fulfilled their purpose. Do not fear sin. Sin is man’s base inheritance through which he must be redeemed. Unless you truly understand the nature of sin there can be no salvation. Don’t be afraid of sinful thoughts or acts, for without them how shall you be purged? It is an old saying but a true one that without sin there can be no redemption. We look up”—he suited action to the word—“and see the ripe fruit high above us, but we cannot reach the fruit because we are weighed down by chains. My friends”—he flung his arms wide; a gold ring glittered on one hand—“throw off these chains. Rise up as free men and women to pluck the fruit which is your birthright. Do I say birthright?” he demanded.

  Well, actually he had, allowed Miss Seeton.

  “Did I say birthright?” he insisted.

  Should one, perhaps, in kindness, tell him so?

  “The world is a misconception in itself. We are not born,” he told them. “We but return here for a span, a term, a moment merely. A term,” he emphasized in an ominous tone, “a moment that is ending—that is all but gone.” A shiver of apprehension ran through the hall. “For that,” he warned them, “is the message that I bring you from Beyond. Life, as we understand it in the West with our puerile lack of imagination, our childish mental failure to grasp the Infinite, is over.” There were gasps of fear; he rode the wave. “Done with,” he urged; a prophet of old with a denunciatory hand held high and menacing; a modern Jove with thunderbolt upraised. “This earth has run its course.” The vibrant prophecy seemed to dim the lights, casting an eerie shadow. “Those of you who have read my book Beyond the Beyond, published by the Offset Press at thirty shillings …”

  Beyond the Beyond—Offset at 30/-, dutifully noted Miss Seeton.

  “… will realize something of what I mean—will appreciate the awful significance of what is come to pass. For make no mistake: our time, both yours and mine, the time of all of us, is now upon us.” Some of the more emotional of his audience, already indoctrinated by previous inoculations, were in tears. Miss Nuttel held her breath. Her friend expelled hers in a sob. An elderly gentleman in the fourth row blew his nose. “But don’t despair,” their mentor encouraged them, “for that is the reason I am here today. I come to save you. Do you know how to breathe?” he asked them sternly. His hearers looked surprised, a little sheepish. “Breath is the source of life,” he informed them. The inspired truth came as a revelation. “By proper breathing—by pranayama—we control our destinies, our movements; control not only the movement of our spirits, but of our bodies too. You think man cannot fly: I tell you that he can. Governments throw your money into spaceships, nuclear rockets for a brief journey to the moon, and in doing so destroy the stratosphere. Our weather’s gone, our health is ruined and now our world itse
lf must die, destroyed by man’s ineptitude. But I have knowledge that transcends these petty sciences. Nuscience can fly you to the stars—each one of you—with no motor but the mind.”

  In a room behind the speaker’s platform a young man wearing a single earphone sat with his fingers—the third of the right hand sported a blue plastic ring—on the controls of a high-fidelity tape recorder. The door opened and two men entered.

  “How’s the old goat doing, Basil?” the shorter, squarer of the two men asked. “Sticking to his script?”

  “Not bad, Duke,” Basil Trenthorne replied. “I took the Mastermind’s cold tea away from him before the meeting”—he waved at a pocket brandy flask which lay beside the recorder—“and said that was it till he’d spoken his little piece.” He listened a moment. “Just coming up to the breathing,” he told them. “He’s buzzing around the stars at the moment on his motormind. The breathing always gets ’em if they do it hard enough. Gets ’em giddy enough to think they’re going places. Always good for a few converts.”

  The mouth of the man he had called Duke twisted. “Helps to keep the regulars forking out too.”

  The speaker on the platform poured water from a glass jug on the table beside him. He sipped. Once more he faced the hall. “The first essential is to learn to breathe.” He pressed a forefinger against one nostril. “You take a deep inhalation—puraka. Then hold the breath for as long as possible. Then”—he dropped his arm and placed the forefinger of the other hand against his other nostril—“from the other side you expel—rechaka—every trace of breath in the body. Practice this,” he exhorted them, “as often as you can. Pranayama is but the first step—the first vital step—to complete control. Through the ages the greatest men have done it. The great teachers of the Old Testament did it. Our Lord, the greatest yogi of them all, did it. I can do it. And,” he assured them, “you too can do it.”