Your Secret Friend (Timothy Herring)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “I’m asking you to cast a spell, not give a geography lesson,” observed the chief witch coldly. “Now then: and by the sacred magic of Abramelin the Mage, and in the names of Balan and Bayemon, I pronounce this magic spell of sentence of death upon . . .”

  The trembling neophyte pronounced the names of that magician who was the first to appear after the Flood, followed by the names of the demons, and then flung down the poker and the riding-crop and burst into tears.

  “I can’t! I can’t go on with it!” she sobbed. “It’s wicked and it’s horrible! I won’t! I won’t wish her to die!”

  Connie Moosedeer clapped a hand over Veronica’s mouth and dragged her towards the open doorway.

  “Shut up, you fool!” she muttered fiercely. “That man will hear you!” She sent her flying. Veronica cannoned against the wall and the shock arrested her sobs. She sat on the ground with her head between her hands. Sandra came over to her.

  “You’ve broken the spell!” she said. “Now what’s going to happen?”

  “Never mind that!” hissed Connie. “Get on with it yourself, and hurry up! Marchmont may be here at any minute, or that man might come down the stairs. Do the job that’s got to be done, and let’s clear out. There’s no time to mess about now!”

  “You’ll pay for this, Veronica!” promised Sandra. “All right, then. Most of the words have been said. If you want to save your beastly little life, pick up the sword and the wand and hand them to me when I’m inside the magic circle. But first, as they’ve been invoked . . .” She walked over to the roughly-drawn triangle —“I’d better put us outside the power of the demons. O lords of the nether regions, dukes, counts and other noblemen of hell, confine yourselves to this triangle until our spell be cast and our work ended.”

  She stepped into the chalk circle and, poker and riding-crop in hand, stood in front of the altar-table and ceremonially spat three times on the candle-wax doll which lay there. Then she lowered her voice to a blood-curdling growl.

  “In the name of Byleth, king among kings in the infernal regions, and in the name of Bune, demon-haunter of tombs, I do unto this waxen image—got the black-headed pins, Connie? Right!—as I will it shall be done unto April Fool Bounty.”

  Sandra laid the poker on the altar, took the black-headed pins from Connie and, watched by Veronica, now seated on the floor with tear-streaked face and horrified eyes, she stuck the pins, with some difficulty, into the wax effigy of April Bounty. Then she transferred the riding-crop wand from her left hand to her right, waved it three times, and traced with it the course of the innermost circle.

  “That ought to do the trick,” she observed, as she joined the others. “Now we’d better get out of this before Marchmont catches us. Oh, don’t be such a cry-baby, Veronica!” (Veronica had begun to sniffle again.) “I don’t really suppose she’ll die. No such luck! And now we’d better collect the things from the altar and see what we can do with all this burnt-up mess.”

  “Where did you learn the spell?” asked Connie, when Veronica had been sent out to dip their three handkerchiefs in the well after she had emptied the salted water from the last night’s brass vase into it.

  “I didn’t. I sort of made it up out of books and things, you know. In one book I read, there was only white witchcraft, like we used yesterday to initiate that ass Veronica, and it didn’t tell you how to cast spells, anyway. It was more sort of descriptive, and said what good people witches really are.”

  “Is a spell you make up any good, then? You may not have said the right words.”

  “Well, somebody must have made up all the spells at some time or other, mustn’t they? I’ve just made up another one, that’s all.”

  Timothy came down to find three little blackamoors taking the last remnants of burnt straw into the garden, and the kitchen floor messy with half-obliterated damp chalk-marks, but the implements of magic, including the crude wax doll, had been collected into the pillowcase with which the postulant had been blindfolded. He smiled at them.

  “You could do with a wash, couldn’t you?” he suggested.

  “Yes, but we’ve got nothing to wash with,” said Sandra. “We’ve mucked up our handkerchiefs cleaning the floor.”

  “Well, I always carry a spare one to dry the tears of women whose hearts I break, so here you are. You haven’t got all that much on your faces, and your hands won’t notice at all unless you wave them about at people. Don’t tumble down the well! I’ll keep cave for you, in case Miss Pallis turns up.”

  “Oh, thank you! You are nice,” said Sandra. “Actually, she’d be pretty mad at us if she found us here.”

  “So I had rather gathered. Which way will you go back to avoid meeting her along the road?—that is, supposing she decides to come here.”

  “She’s certain to,” said Sandra. “It’s only the tennis tournament this afternoon.”

  “Oh, well, if she does turn up, I think you’d better get into my car and crouch on the floor. Then I’ll inveigle her into the house and you can nip back to school as soon as she’s safely incarcerated. How would that be?”

  “I think you’re an ange!” said the chief witch fervently.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The End of a Summer

  Unaware that he had been rendering aid to the would-be murderers of his cousin, Timothy strolled to the broken gate while the three members of the coven, crouched on the floor of his car, were attempting to stifle their giggles. What with the novel experience of hiding from authority and the relief at not having had to pronounce the spell, even Veronica was overcome by slightly hysterical mirth.

  “Shut up and listen,” muttered the leader at last. Her retinue controlled itself and all three children pricked their ears for any sounds which should indicate that the senior history mistress had arrived. They were not kept waiting. Timothy came up to the car and said:

  “She’s coming along the lane.” Then he strolled back to the gate. “I hoped you’d manage to come along,” he said to Marchmont. “Did your nominee win?”

  “Yes, she did, so I shan’t be able to come tomorrow. The final is going to be played,” said Marchmont, “and I can’t let my own horse down, so I thought I would come today.”

  “Well, the workmen are not going to make a start until Monday. Come inside and I’ll try to show you what we now propose to have done. It won’t be nearly as big a job as we thought. We’re going to demolish the back of the house entirely, as I told you—a case of simple and complete destruction. After that, we shall begin at the top and work downwards.” His voice was lost to the little girls. Sandra got up and peeped out of the window.

  “All clear,” she said. “Let’s scram.”

  “I see,” said Marchmont, gazing through the open trapdoor at the beams of the attic. “The ceiling goes first, and then the party walls.”

  “Yes, they’re only breeze blocks or lath and plaster. By the time you get back from your holiday you’ll be able to move in, if you want to. Of course, you’ll be inconvenienced a bit at first, because the house is to be wired for electricity and we’re going to give you piped water. They’ve got it in those cottages on the main road, so it won’t be difficult to bring it here, and it means you’ll be able to have a bath in comfort. We’re putting a bathroom in the undercroft and making one of the slits into a window capable of being opened.”

  “That’s marvellous,” Marchmont said gratefully. “I wasn’t much looking forward to bringing bath-water in buckets from the well and heating it over an open fire.”

  “Oh, there’ll be no necessity for anything like that, because we can fix you up with an immersion heater in an airing cupboard. That will also be in the undercroft, and you can keep it and the bathroom locked when the visitors are admitted. We’ve persuaded the committee to agree to Saturday afternoons only, and for four months of the summer, May, June, July, and August. In the end, a subversive element jibbed at only three, so, as they’d agreed about electricity and the plumbing, we gave way g
racefully, and I’ve found a chap in Peterminster—one of the curators at the museum there—to come and cope when this place is open to the public, so there won’t be anything for you to bother about, and you need not even be here on those days unless you like. I expect there are plenty of things you’ll want to do on summer Saturday afternoons. I’m still a bit worried at the idea of your living alone in a place like this, but that’s up to you, I suppose.” He smiled at her. She flushed and suddenly said:

  “I shan’t always be alone. There’s a friend who will be here most week-ends, I hope.”

  “That’s good,” said Timothy. “You’re the wrong age to live all by yourself and to yourself.”

  She laughed.

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Not young enough to place independence above rubies, and not old enough to find yourself your own best company.”

  “I see. You appear to know all about it.”

  “I do. I live alone, too, except for a few servants. But then, I never stay put for very long together.”

  “Phisbe?”

  “Mostly. And travel. And visiting friends.”

  The tooting of a horn announced the arrival of Tom Parsons. Timothy left Alison in the solar and went down the wooden ladder which the last tenants had inserted in order to avoid using the newel stair.

  “Hullo, Tom,” he said. “I’ve got the purchaser here, but I haven’t had a chance to tell her everything we propose to do to the house. Perhaps you’d like to take on the job.”

  “I can’t stay long.” Diana’s last words rang in his dutiful, husbandly ears. (If that girl is there, you leave them alone and don’t play gooseberry.) “I was delayed on the road. Picked up a puncture just the other side of Salisbury.”

  “What on earth made you come through Salisbury?”

  “I had to. A job on a reconditioned house. I do have a private practice as well as working for Phisbe.”

  “Of course, of course. Well, come and give this place a last going-over, and then we’ll excuse you from our presence.”

  “So now you know exactly what we’ve planned,” said Timothy to Marchmont when, at the end of twenty minutes, Parsons had taken himself off, “and I’ve had an idea. My own place in the Cotswolds is a partial reconstruction. Why not come and have a look at it?”

  “Well, thank you for the suggestion, but, if you remember, I’ve already seen your house. I went there with your cousin, when she and I were going into partnership over this one.”

  “Ah, yes, but you’d understand much better now. As I think I told you at the time, it was an old coaching inn, and I’ve made it over by roofing in that courtyard you saw, round which the inn was built, and sinking the floor three feet and making it into a sunk garden with a fishpond and water-lilies and things. Rather nice. Why don’t you bring my cousin, or someone, with you and come and stay for a bit? School finishes this week, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes, but I’d intended to stay up and polish off some jobs. All the same . . .”

  “All the same, you’ll come. That’s fine. Look here, why April? The girl’s a pain in the neck. Bring along the friend who’s going to spend the week-ends here with you. Why not?” He felt intense curiosity concerning Simple Simon Bennison.

  “There’s a reason why not,” she said.

  “Too bad.” He was also curious to know the reason, but shrewdly guessed what it was. However, she did not inform him. She said:

  “I’d love to come, but couldn’t I get there and back in a day? April and I did it easily, if you remember.”

  “Meaning you’ll come on your own? Fine! I could meet you in Stroud with my car if you came by train. When?”

  “Oh—oh, would today week be all right?”

  “Surely. Look here, I shall still be in Peterminster then. I’m staying at the George for a bit, while we get the demolition work started. I’ll pick you up at the school and drive you to my home, and we’ll come back the same evening. That would be perfectly easy.”

  “That would be lovely.”

  “Meanwhile, unless you’re on duty this evening, why not let me take you into Peterminster for dinner?”

  “No, thank you very much, but I can’t.”

  “You are on duty?”

  “No, but I’ve promised to play chess.”

  “Well, you’re not playing chess until after tea. Let’s go and have tea in Dorchester.”

  “Why not at the mill?”

  Timothy, thinking of three small girls walking, possibly none too quickly, back to the school, said, “Not the mill. There may be some of your staff there, and I’m not feeling sociable today.”

  “Oh? I’m sorry I came, then, but you did say . . .”

  “Of course I did. And when I say I’m not feeling sociable, you know perfectly well what I mean. Besides, you don’t give me credit for possessing any manners, do you? I find that surprising and hurtful. I should have thought you knew me better, even upon our admittedly short acquaintance, than to suppose I would embarrass a lady by telling her to her face that her company was unacceptable to me. Apologise at once!”

  “Why should I?” She was laughing, and again he was aware of her singular, most individual beauty.

  “Because I tell you to. It’s about time somebody bullied you for your own good. You get things far too much your own way.”

  “You wouldn’t say so, if you knew everything.” The light had died out of her eyes. She was sallow and plain, after all.

  “Perhaps I know more than you think,” he said quietly. “Why are you wasting your time with a chap the kids call Simple Simon?”

  She flushed again, this time with furious anger and a sense of outrage made stronger by her instant recognition of the justice of the nickname.

  “How dare you! How dare you!” she said. She suddenly broke down and began to cry. Timothy took her by the shoulders.

  “I shall shake you in a minute,” he said. “Come on, and get into my car. Big brother talking.”

  The confident, almost insolent grip of predatory hands too strong and (strangely, she thought) too reassuring to be shrugged off, electrified her. The poetic, almost diffident advances of her lover had not this elemental crudity. Timothy looked into her eyes, dropped his hands, smiled, and said.

  “I take it you haven’t any big brothers?”

  “No,” she said, helplessly. “I haven’t any brothers at all.”

  “I guessed it. The assertive and protective nature of brothers is a byword. See any good Border ballad. I’ll go first down the stairs and then, if you trip, you can fall on me.”

  “I don’t call you assertive and protective. I call you arrogant and bossy,” she said. The sense of outrage was gone. She laughed at her own words and, with a curiously light-headed feeling, followed him meekly down the winding, awkward stair.

  “You’ve missed tea,” said the witches’ contemporaries, “but we’ve kept seats next to ours for you at the film.”

  “Is there to be a film? Oh, goody!” said Sandra.

  “Yes, the two tennis finalists were asked what treat they would like, so they said a film.”

  “I hope it’s not a Western. I loathe Westerns. All noise and guns and all those phoney Indians falling off their ponies,” said Veronica, who had recovered her spirits.

  “It’s nice for my people to get the pay,” said Connie Moosedeer unemotionally, “but sometimes they ought to let them win the battles.”

  “What is the film, anyway?” asked Sandra.

  “I don’t know, but any film’s a film.”

  “Didn’t you save us anything from tea?”

  “Yes. You’ll have to sneak into the boxroom and get it. There’s jammy buns and some cake.”

  “Goody. Did anybody—were we missed?”

  “Penelope Ward was at the head of our table. She said where were you, so we said Veronica had had a parcel from home and you were having a picnic with her on Top Meadow.”

  “Fair enough. But didn’t Penelope spot
you hiding the buns and things?”

  “Oh, yes, but she only grinned and said, “If you’re thinking of a feed after lights, Miss Vere Pallis is on duty, so watch out.” Penelope is quite decent, really. Most of the Fifth are. It’s the Sixth who are so upstage and cocky. It was two of the Fifth who won the semi-finals and I’m jolly glad of it. The Sixth would have asked for classical music on gramophone records.”

  Alison Marchmont Pallis was less glad of the film-show. Her game of chess had to be postponed, so that (she reflected) she could have accepted Timothy’s invitation to dine with him at the George in Peterminster. It would have been preferable to staff supper in the common room. She was tempted to ring him up, but what she thought of as wiser counsels prevailed. Simon met her on the front staircase which, except on certain gala occasions, was out of bounds to the school. He said:

  “What are you going to do this evening?”

  “I was going to play chess with Annabel Vale, but I suppose she’ll go into the hall to see the film. All the prefects are on duty on film nights.”

  “Yes, thank goodness, otherwise we might be dragged in. Where did you get to at tea-time? I looked for you everywhere, but you seem to have disappeared as soon as the tennis was over.”

  “Yes, I went along to look at my house.”

  “Whatever for? Anyway, I’d have come with you if I’d known.”

  “You’re becoming adventurous, aren’t you?” She smiled ironically. “I’m just as glad you didn’t. We should only have argued about it all over again.”

  “No, I’ve given up arguing. How long do you intend to stay up after this week?”

  “Only a few days. It might be a week, perhaps.”

  “I shall do the same, then, but we’d better not meet here at school. The servants have long ears and observant eyes. I’ll take a room at the George for a week. We can meet there all right, with Miss Pomfret-Brown and all the staff and children away.”

  “Not the George. It’s far too near the school. Dorchester or Bournemouth would be better, wouldn’t it?”

  “Well, really, Alison! You pretend you don’t mind flouting the conventions by living within three miles of the school and wanting me to stay there with you at week-ends and during holidays, yet you won’t let me put up at a perfectly respectable hotel which is farther away. You’re not terribly logical, my dear!”