Your Secret Friend (Timothy Herring)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “One at a time through the window, you silly cuckoos!” shouted the chief witch. “You don’t want to break your silly necks! And pick up your shoes, quick!”

  From the Dorchester road the schoolgirls looked back. No sheet of flame lit up the night; no pall of smoke came wafting towards them on the south-west wind. The clear sky was luminous with stars and a vast peace enfolded Dorset. The weed-entangled river was silent. There were no lights in the public house, or in the mill or in any of the cottages. It seemed a very long walk back to the school. The coven reached the lodge gates at last and, walking on the grass to avoid making a sound on the gravel path, eventually, with dew-soaked shoes, they reached the front door. This they had left ajar. The children crept in, closed the great door with a clang which seemed to their alert and fearful senses to echo and re-echo throughout the ancient house, and, shoes in hand, they ascended the splendid stair.

  “It’s an awful nuisance we didn’t have a chance to stay and do the spell,” said Gillian at break on the following morning. “I don’t think we’d better go to Little Monkshood again. No point in pushing our luck.”

  Her leader finished masticating a section of digestive biscuit and stared at her until Gillian dropped her eyes.

  “I should jolly well think so,” said Sandra. “Who do you think you are, Gillian Schofield? You will leave all decisions to me, and I say we must go back. For one thing, you stupid idiot, we’ve left all those things there, and if they’re discovered they may be traced to us, and then we shall be in queer street. If anybody finds that bottle of paraffin and those matches and candles, they might think we tried to burn the house down, and that’s a crime called arson, and you can be put in prison for years and years and years for doing that.”

  “They wouldn’t put people of our age in prison,” said Gillian.

  “Well, anyway, they’re not going to get the chance. Besides, I’m not going to leave my riding-crop there. It was one of my birthday presents.”

  “There’s the brass vase I pinched from the prefects’ room, too,” said Connie Moosedeer, “and the poker and the knives that came from the kitchen. I expect those things have been missed already.”

  “Of course they have, and they must be put back. We’re not thieves, and it’s just as bad as stealing if you borrow things and don’t return them. Besides, Veronica’s hair still stinks of paraffin, so that’s a nice give-away if anybody gets suspicious. We’d better draw lots to see who’s to go back to Little Monkshood. It doesn’t need all of us. There isn’t all that much to carry, and we can do the spell at the same time. We may not get another chance this term.”

  “You’ll be one of those to go, of course,” said Gillian, sneering.

  “Don’t be insubordinate! I’ve told you once. As it happens, I shall be one to go. The rest of you can take your chance, although, if it was left to me to choose . . .” she eyed her followers one after another . . . “I’d have Connie and—well, it ought to be Veronica, I suppose, because, being newly admitted, she may be in a state of . . .”

  “Grace?” hazarded Stephanie.

  “Well, yes, sort of, I suppose. What about it, you two?”

  “Certainly,” said Connie Moosedeer. “The traditions of my tribe are geared to enterprises of reckless daring.”

  “Yes, well, I think we ought to draw lots, all the same, except me and Veronica,” said Sandra.

  “Oh, please, Sandra, I’d really rather not. I didn’t know we’d have to break bounds and go into spooky houses, and all that. I let you do all those things to me last night, and I—I well, I do think that’s about my share for a bit.”

  “We shall want you to do the spell! You can’t funk that!”

  “What—what spell, Sandra? I’m not going back to that house again! What are you going to make a spell for?”

  “All in good time. Now, I’ve put a cross on one of these bits of paper, and whoever draws that will come with me and Veronica this afternoon. It’s the semi-finals of the tennis tournament, so, if we watch out, it should be easy enough to slip away. Here you are! I’ve mixed them up in the bottom of my glass. They may be a little bit milky, but I think I’ve emptied the glass.”

  “I’ve got it,” said Stephanie. “Oh, well, that’s just my bit of good luck, because I can’t go.”

  “Can’t go?” asked Sandra. “You’ve got to go! You’ve drawn the paper with the cross on it.”

  “But I’m in D. this afternoon!”

  “You silly cuckoo! I told you all to stay out of trouble!”

  “Sorry, and all that!”

  “You don’t sound sorry.”

  “Rather than go back to Little Monkshood and pick up the things we left there, I’d go into D. every day of the week, so there!” said Stephanie defiantly.

  “I believe you got yourself stuck in D. on purpose!”

  “No, I didn’t. How did I know you’d want to go back to that beastly house?”

  Well, you’ll have to cut D. that’s all.”

  “Cut D.! Good gracious, Sandra, be your age! I’d get into the most awful trouble! I’d be sent to Miss Salter, for sure.”

  “Oh, no, you wouldn’t. Just say you forgot.”

  “What, with the tennis semi-finals going on? She’d think I’d sneaked out of D. to watch them.”

  “Um, yes, I see what you mean. We’ll have to draw lots again, that’s all.”

  There were violent protests against this decision.

  “Oh, well,” said Connie, philosophically, “looks like it’s up to me and you, Sandra, but how will we carry out the spell if the proper person doesn’t want to go with us?”she stared hard at Veronica. Sandra made up her mind.

  “You’re right,” she said abruptly. “Veronica, you’ll have to come along. It’s the only reason we let you join, now I come to think of it.”

  “Oh, no, Sandra, please! I—I don’t want to cast spells and kill people!”

  “Did you, or didn’t you, swear you’d be true to the Craft?”

  “Yes, but I didn’t know what it meant.”

  “That’s not my fault. Being true to the Craft means what I choose it to mean, and in this case it means putting a spell on nasty old April Fool and making her sorry she was born. See?”

  “But I don’t want to put a spell on her. I don’t want to put a spell on anybody!”

  “Well, you’re jolly well going to! Meet me and Connie at half-past two at the gate into the woods. We’ll slip out that way because everybody will be watching the tennis, so we can’t risk going out by the front gate. If you don’t come, we’ll put a spell on you, and then there’ll be a train crash on your way home for the holidays, and you won’t be killed, but you’ll be a cripple for the rest of your life. Understand?”

  “But, if we’re caught out of bounds . . .”

  “We simply say that Miss Marchmont Pallis sent us to finish clearing up the house for her.”

  “Would we get away with it?”

  “Unless it’s Marchmont herself who catches us. Two-thirty at the little gate, and don’t you dare be late or try to back out of it!”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The Spell

  To Timothy, standing, pipe in mouth, in the overgrown, summer-tired garden of Little Monkshood, the sight of three small girls, a redhead, a blue-black head, and a mousy-coloured head, came as no particular surprise. He was glad to see them and, taking out his pipe, he waved it at them and gave them a cordial smile and a cheerful, “Hullo, there! How’s tricks?” He assumed that they had been sent by Marchmont Pallis to finish the clearing-up. He had been inside the house again and had noted the burnt straw and the hastily-drawn circles and triangle on the floor of the undercroft, and at first he had put these down to the activities of village children, for the broken window offered easy access to the house.

  What were not capable of obvious and simple explanation, apart from the rickety table which had been left in the undercroft by the outgoing tenants, were a new and expensive riding-crop, a heavy
brass vase, an iron saucepan, (surely something which would have been missed from a village home), a poker sheathed in silver paper (open to the same query), and no fewer than seven half-gutted candles.

  He paid more attention to the graffiti. However advanced the teaching in the school, he doubted whether it included, correctly spelt, the words Adhby, Agial, Tabaoth, and Jahweh, although, of course, one never knew, nowadays, what the curriculum might contain. Then there was the presence of a good quality pillowcase. This he picked up and examined. Clearly stitched on the tuck-in flap was a strip marked Purfleet Hall School.

  “Curiouser and curiouser,” he remarked aloud. “What on earth has Alison been up to?” It was at this point that he had gone outside to see whether, by any lucky chance, she had decided to fall in with his suggestion, conveyed to her by letter, that she should join him and Parsons in their last look over the house before the workmen came in. He had small hope, however, of seeing her. He feared that, in the afternoon, and so very near the end of term, it was unlikely she would be able to get away.

  “Oh, gracious!” exclaimed Sandra, as soon as she became aware of him. “There’s a man in the garden! Oh, he seems friendly enough.” She returned Timothy’s greeting.

  “We’d better go back,” said Veronica.

  “We could wait,” said Connie. “He’s only looking at the roof. I expect he’ll go away soon. We don’t want to walk all this way for nothing. Let’s just pretend we’ve come to have a look at the house, and then walk away and wait for him to go.”

  “We’re going to stick to what we planned,” said Sandra. “I know a girl who was one of Marchmont’s cleaning-up squad, so I’m going to pretend that’s what we’ve come for. Nobody can object to some of us coming along to finish the job. Take your cue from me, and, Veronica, you’re not to say a word. Understand?”

  “Hullo,” said Timothy, as they advanced towards him. “Three of Miss Pallis’s good angels?”

  “Yes,” said Sandra, lifting innocent-seeming eyes to his. “But she doesn’t know, so you won’t ever tell her, will you? It’s to be a surprise.”

  “Doing good by stealth, eh? But where are the brooms and buckets?”

  “Oh, we—we shan’t need them this time.”

  “I see.” He surveyed them with some amusement. “Do we exchange names? I don’t suppose yours are half as silly as mine. I’m Timothy Herring.”

  “If you don’t think of fish, it’s a very nice name,” said Sandra politely. “I’m Sandra. This is Connie. She’s a Red Indian chief’s daughter, rather like a princess, actually. And this is Veronica.”

  “How do you do?”

  “How do you do?”

  “Well, that being that, let me open the front door for you,” said Timothy. “It will be the last time you’ll use it, I expect. We shall bring in the demolition gang on Monday, and begin restoring this place to the shape the builder first thought of.” He produced his key and unlocked the ground-floor entrance. “There we are. By the way, I’m a warlock.”

  Three audible, distinct and terror-stricken gasps were the reaction to this casual and yet startling announcement. Then Sandra pulled herself together.

  “I’m chief witch,” she said, “and you are my master.”

  “Where did you learn the magic arts, O Chief Witch?”

  “From our sacred books, O Master. Actually,” she went on, “I got them out of the library last holidays on my mother’s tickets. I pretended they were for her, because I couldn’t use my tickets in the grown-ups’ section.”

  “What gave you the idea of becoming a witch?”

  “I thought it might come in useful.”

  “I see that it has. I hope yours is white and not black magic.”

  “Well,” said Sandra cautiously, observing that the prudent and practical Connie Moosedeer and the fearful Veronica had sidled away and left her, as leader, to hold the uncomfortable fort, “that depends what you mean.”

  “I mean you make witchcraft potions to cure sickness in mankind and in cattle. You make spells to ensure good crops. You distil love philtres and weave charms against the Evil Eye.”

  “Well,” said Sandra, “we shall do those sort of things later on, I expect, but they’re more difficult, aren’t they? At the moment we’re—we’re on to something easier, but something that has to be done. You see, I’ve been insulted.”

  “Maligned?”

  “Yes, maligned as well.”

  “Slandered?”

  “Well, sort of, yes. I mean, my appearance has.”

  “Surely not!”

  “Yes. It’s my freckles, you see.”

  “But what could be more pleasant?” He inspected her snub-nosed, childish countenance. “Does your detractor not realise that only the fairest face, the most delicate and rose-leaf skin, can freckle so prettily under the summer sun?”

  “She called me . . .” Sandra choked on the wounding words “. . . she called me Cuckoo Egg.”

  “I should have biffed her in the eye and called her Polyphemus.”

  “How do you know she was that much bigger than me?”

  “There is but little which is hidden from me.” One of Sandra’s own size, he reflected, would scarcely have had the temerity to insult so obviously quick-tempered and redoubtable an opponent.

  “So I’m having my revenge on her, you see.”

  “Very proper.” Light had dawned. “Are the magic signs and symbols I espied herein the instruments of your revenge?”

  “Oh, no. Not really. We were—what’s the word I want?—we were only bringing a new witch into the coven.”

  “Ah. Inducting a postulant, you mean.”

  “Yes, that’s it. Inducting a postulant.” She stored up the useful and impressive phrase. “She’s one of those,” she jerked her head towards her followers, “the gommy-looking one with the drabby hair—Veronica. She’s the most awful ass. I’m not sure we ought to have chosen her.”

  “And now you’ve come to clear up. I see. What is new to me in your ritual is the burnt straw.”

  “Oh, that wasn’t anything to do with it. It was that ass Caroline did that. Just because she got a drop of hot grease on her fingers, she dropped her candle, and some paraffin got spilt on the straw, so it all went up in flames and we had to scram, in case we’d set the house on fire, you see.”

  “Paraff in?”

  “Well, olive oil was what it ought to have been, of course—to anoint Veronica, you know—but we couldn’t get any from the kitchen, so we had to make do with paraffin.”

  “Of course. Better than nothing. Well, you’d like to get on with your job. I’m expecting a friend to join me at any time now, and there’s just the chance that Miss Marchmont Pallis may turn up.”

  “Marchmont?” Sandra’s little face went white under the freckles. “Oh, no!”

  “Why? Is she such a dragon?”

  “Oh, no. We like her, lots. Well, admire her, perhaps I should say. Except,” added Sandra darkly, “we don’t think much of her choice of a man. Well, he’s hardly a man, really. It’s Simple Simon.”

  “Simple Simon?”

  “Simple Simon Bennison. He’s our music master, and a right stot.”

  “A right stot?”

  “It’s what Morag Mackenzie calls him. I don’t know what it means. It sounds like swearing, but I shouldn’t think it is, because Morag is Wee Free, and most fearfully upright in religion.”

  “I should like to meet her.”

  “Yes. Well, if you’ll excuse me, I think we’d better start our clearing up, especially if Marchmont is coming.”

  “I quite agree. If she doesn’t know you’re here, you’d better work fast.”

  “You’re not coming inside with us, are you?” asked Sandra, quickly.

  “Not to get in your way. I’m going upstairs to have a look at the timbering in the attics. There’s no mess except a bit in the kitchen. The school press-gang seem to have made a splendid job of the other rooms.”

  “O
h, you’ve been in the house before, then? Before today, I mean.”

  “Oh, yes, several times. Well, see you later, perhaps.” To the great relief of the children, he turned towards the winding stone staircase.

  “We have to be awfully quick with the spell, in case he comes down again,” murmured Sandra. “This is a frightful nuisance. I thought we’d have the place to ourselves.”

  “I still think we ought to go,” urged Veronica.

  “Oh, be quiet!” snapped her leader. “It doesn’t matter a bit what you think. You just do as you’re told!”

  “But if Marchmont is coming . . .”

  “She hasn’t come yet. If she catches us, put a good face on it and swear we only came to finish clearing up. She can’t very well punish us for that, if it’s for her benefit, can she?”

  “She can bawl us out for breaking bounds,” said Connie. “Well, come on. Let’s get on with it, because, when we’ve done the spell, we must do a bit of clearing up for the look of the thing.”

  “Better rub out our magic circles, too, when we’ve done the spell,” said Sandra. “I know Mr. Herring noticed them, and he says he’s a warlock, though I think perhaps he was only pulling my leg. He’s awfully nice, though. Now, Veronica, take the sword—that’s the poker—in your right hand, and my riding-crop—that’s the wand—in your left, and repeat after me . . .”

  “I don’t want to, Sandra!”

  “And repeat after me: by these symbols, the signs of my office . . .”

  “By these symbols, the signs of my office . . .”

  “Being offered in the names of the four sons of Cham-Zoroaster . . .”

  “Being offered in the names of the four sons of Cham-Zoroaster . . .”

  “Namely, Cush, Mizraim, Phut, and Canaan . . .”

  “Namely, Cush, Mizraim, Phut, and Canaan . . .”

  “Being the lords of magic over Africa, Egypt, the children of the desert, and the men of Phoenicia . . .

  “Being the lords of magic over Africa, Egypt, the children of the desert, and the men of Phoenicia—but, Sandra, that’s silly!”

  “Would you blaspheme the ancient gods?”

  “No, of course not, but, well, I mean, Egypt’s in Africa, and so is the desert.”