Heron Carvic - Miss Seeton Draws the Line

The second book in the Miss Seeton series, published in 1969.
Genre: cozy mystery
Cover: bad, I much prefer my Dutch covers



Miss Seeton's every attempt at a portrait of little Effie Goffer has become a chilling picture of a corpse. Is Miss Seeton actually drawing a clue to a series of child murders in rural England? And can she turn from sketching to catching a skilled killer?


Miss Seeton has moved to Plummergen for good, and is content in Sweetbriars, her little cottage. With Martha as her housekeeper, same as she was for Mrs. Banner, Miss Seeton's late godmother, and her husband Stand to take care of the garden and the chickens, they manage fine.
Two new couples have just moved into Plummergen, and the village gossip lines are red hot. The woman of one couple is working as a cleaning lady in many of the houses, while her husband does nothing (his back, you know), and the young brother she is looking after is not going to school at all, as he is deaf and mute.
The other young couple is shy and keeps on their own, which is not approved at all by the gossips, who just want to know everything, so they are making this up. As the young man is working nights, he must be a criminal …
Meanwhile, Miss Seeton is having a problem. Mrs Goffer would love to have a picture of her horrible daughter Effie, and Miss Seeton just can't do it. One half of the face comes out fine, but the second half, is just horrible, a death mask. Is something wrong with her? Did she have a stroke or something? Finally, she decides to see Dr Knight about it. The good doctor checks her over, and declares her extremely fit for her age, and what is her secret? And so it comes out, that Miss Seeton is practicing yoga, as she got problems with her knees a few years ago, and the book promised to remedy that. And so it has!
But Anne, the doctor's daughter, senses something else when she hears the story from her father. Why did Miss Seeton think that? So when she finds out about the drawings of young Effie, she sends one to her boyfriend, Sargeant Ranger at Scotland Yard.

And as Inspector Delphick is in the middle of a serial killer case, where random young children are the victims, he sees a clue. Is this Effie the next victim? So he sends for Miss Seeton, and takes her to the morgue to draw a picture of the latest victim. Miss Seeton doesn't mind being in the morgue, as she has seen dead bodies before, during her drawing lessons at art school. It was a way to learn to draw muscles and such.
So when she draws the young boy, new clues are presented to the Inspector. Are the child murders connected to the spree of home invasions and robberies of post offices lately?

The next day, with her trusted umbrella, Miss Seeton manages to disturb a robbery in progress at their own local post office in Plummergen … setting the gossip tongues into working overtime! She stole the money herself … she is in cahoots with the robbers … she is a heroine … she is the masterbrain, nothing bad happened until she moved to Plummergen …


A great story, with a disturbing killer, but her umbrella saves Miss Seeton just in time!
The shy young couple comes to her aid, and she helps them in turn. And Inspector Delphick is left to clean up the mess.

8 stars.

© 2016 Reviews by Aurian