Your Secret Friend (Timothy Herring)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “We may as well stick to the conventions as long as we can, I suppose. You seem to prefer it that way.”

  “All right, Dorchester, then. I expect the Bournemouth hotels are all booked up by now. You’ll come every day, I suppose? I can hardly come here to fetch you.”

  “Every day except Wednesday, then.”

  “Oh, why not Wednesday?—or don’t I ask you that?”

  “Of course you ask me that. It’s only that I’ve got to see this Mr. Herring that day.”

  “Well, I’ll come along. You’re meeting him at Little Monkshood, I suppose?”

  “Actually, no. He’s offered to show me his own house, because that’s a conversion, too.”

  “Oh, I see. And where does he live?”

  “Somewhere south of Stroud, up in the Cotswold country. He’s picking me up here in his car, and it means an all-day trip.”

  “I see. What sort of ancient greybeard is he?”

  “Now, you two innocents abroad!” said Vere Pallis, with false heartiness. “Stop blocking up the staircase! You can talk your sweet nothings somewhere that doesn’t inconvenience other people!”

  “How much does she really know?” asked Simon in low tones when he had moved aside to let Constance Vere Pallis pass. “Is she in your confidence? I told you she was dangerous!”

  “Don’t be ridiculous! And of course I don’t confide in her. There isn’t any need. She knows what there is to know. I don’t doubt that.”

  “I don’t much like it, Alison. Has she said anything to you privately?”

  “Certainly not. She would get a hasty, ill-considered answer if she did! She may be my half-sister, but what I choose to do is none of her business.”

  “She may think it her business to approach Miss Pomfret-Brown.”

  “Miss Pomfret-Brown is probably far too sensible a woman to take notice of rumours and gossip. If she is not, then I shall resign and live, like the Lady of Shalott, within my four grey walls and four grey towers, except that the towers would have to exist in the imagination.”

  “And the magic mirror, we’ll persuade ourselves, would not exist at all. Well, I hope Miss Pomfret-Brown doesn’t know about us,” said Simon. “That would make the hell of a complication.”

  “I don’t think you know much about P.-B.,” said Alison.

  “And the ancient greybeard?” pursued Simon. Alison laughed.

  The summer term, which, since the end of examinations, had seemed to drag, suddenly rushed to its end. First the school and then the staff dispersed, and the solid, fine Georgian mansion was left to Alison and the servants. These last were to take their fortnight’s holiday in relays. Alison was to go to Corfu at the end of the week and there join Simon, who would travel a day before she did, an idiotic precaution, as she had pointed out to him, since no other member of the staff would be travelling that day or on their plane, and they would, after all, spend the holiday as man and wife, under a name which belonged to neither of them.

  On the Wednesday that he was to take her to his home, Timothy called at the school at nine o’clock in the morning to pick up Marchmont, and ran straight into the redoubtable Miss Pomfret-Brown, whom he had not previously encountered but whom he felt he could not mistake.

  “Hullo!” she said, abandoning the motor-mower with which she was (quite unnecessarily) showing the gardener how the tennis courts should be cut. “Who’re you?”

  Confronted by a lady who seemed to be a cross between Miss Margaret Rutherford and Bertie Wooster’s Aunt Dahlia, who (according to the saga) if all other sources of income failed, could make a living calling the cattle home across the Sands of Dee, and observing a glint of humour in what could have been a stern and forbidding eye, Timothy decided that impudence would best meet the case. He uncovered in reverent manner.

  “I have the honour, ma’am, to be about to abduct one of your ladies and convey her to my home in Gloucestershire.”

  “I suppose you mean Alison. She’s the only one of the staff who’s staying up for a bit.” She studied him thoughtfully. “Gal’s making a fool of herself over that milk-and-water sop Bennison. Why don’t she abandon him to that half-sister of hers? Vere Pallis wants him badly enough, and Alison is far too good for him.”

  Timothy had been expecting a slight passage of arms. His protagonist, he guessed, was always ripe for battle. What he had not foreseen was that he would be taken into partnership.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know Bennison,” he said, forsaking impudence in favour of carefully-edited truth, “and I have only the slightest acquaintance with Miss Pallis. I’m the secretary of the Society for the Preservation of Buildings of Historic Interest, and I thought Miss Pallis might care to see what I’ve done with my own house before we do too much to hers.”

  “Oh, I see. Hoped you were Bennison’s rival. Would have backed you, too. What’s all this nonsense about Little Monkshood?”

  “Miss Pallis has bought it, and my Society is doing it up for her, but we shall have to make a start by pulling some of it down.”

  “More money than sense, that girl. Oh, well, I suppose she’s waiting for you. See you some other time. What’s your name?—though I think I can guess it.”

  “Herring. Timothy Herring.”

  “Thought as much. Family likeness and the same brand of impudence. Knew your father. Give him my regards.”

  “Thank you very much.”

  “Remind him of the time we bathed naked by moonlight in the Cherwell.”

  “He might not thank me for reminding him of that, ma’am. He’s a most respectable party in these days.”

  “Ah, well, don’t you forget that cucullus non facit monachum.”

  “Eheu fugaces . . . labuntur anni!” returned Timothy.

  “I saw that you ran into our benevolent dragon,” said Alison, when he met her in the hall.

  “Yes, indeed. She was telling me risky stories about my father.”

  “What! You’re joking!”

  “No, no. It appears that they were up at Oxford together, pulling the gowans fine. She reminded me that the cowl does not make the monk and my rejoinder was equally hackneyed but just as much to the point, I thought.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Alas, the fleeting years slip by.”

  “How did she take it?”

  “On the chin, I think. Altogether, she rather surprised me.”

  “Yes, she surprises the parents, too. Did she say anything else? She’s really rather a menace. I can’t think why she decided to descend on the school again like this. We thought she’d gone to Morocco.”

  “She committed to me her views on a certain subject in which she seems to have some idea you’re interested.”

  “Oh, nonsense! She couldn’t have done!” said Alison, in obvious panic. “You couldn’t have been with her for more than three minutes.”

  “The geese on the Capitol managed it ever so much quicker than that.”

  “What did she tell you?”

  “Don’t sound so agitated. Only what anybody who had the merest superficial knowledge of you could guess. She spoke in somewhat slighting terms of a gentleman I have christened Mr. Rochester. Here’s my car. Jump in.”

  “She didn’t really mention Simon?” asked Alison anxiously, when they had taken the Shaftesbury road. Timothy concentrated on his driving. “Well, did she?”

  “In words of one syllable, yes, she did,” said Timothy, seeing no way of avoiding an answer to the breathless question.

  “So she knows!”

  “I have no idea whether she knows, or what there is to know. Is it supposed to be a secret?”

  “I’m in love with him. He’s married.”

  “Yes?”

  “His wife is in a mental home.”

  “It seems to be the old, old story.”

  “Is that meant to be as horrid as it sounds?”

  “Not knowing your Mr. Rochester, I can’t say. Your revered boss referred to him as a milk-and-water sop. She i
s obviously the spiritual mother of her school. The charming children—”

  “Take me back!”

  “And run straight into the far-seeing and unsympathetic Miss Pomfret-Brown again?”

  There was silence. The car ate up the miles.

  “Say you’re sorry,” said Alison at last.

  “My dear girl, I merely asked a simple question.”

  “It was an abominable question. And I’m twenty-nine.”

  “And feeling every minute of it, I don’t mind betting.”

  “Yes, I am, if you want to know.”

  “Right. I’ll stop at the next likely-looking pub and buy you a drink and myself a refreshing snort of bitter lemon, and then we’ll both feel younger.”

  “Do you really not drink when you drive?”

  “I try to study my passenger. I feel that you will feel safer if I stay on the wagon.”

  “I didn’t realise that you studied my feelings at all.”

  “All right. I apologise. What do you think of Miss Pomfret-Brown as a judge of human nature?”

  “You’re going to have to apologise again in a minute.”

  “You’re afraid to answer the question.”

  “Of course I’m not. I don’t choose to answer it, that’s all.”

  “Are you normally an entirely truthful person?”

  “Except when I’m telling the girls at school how inexpressibly shocking I find their conduct, when, really, I don’t find it shocking at all, and behaved far worse when I was their age.”

  “Well, that’s an entirely truthful answer, so you pass with full marks. Why doesn’t Miss P.-B. approve of your young man?”

  “Only, I suppose, just because, being a fine musician, he’s rather sensitive and not enough of an autocrat or a humorist to manage the girls.”

  “Translated, I suppose that means he can’t maintain the standard of discipline to which Miss Pomfret-Brown is accustomed. I don’t suppose any man could.”

  “Well, his classes are a bit more than he can cope with. The girls take advantage of him.”

  “He should put the hussies across his knee. That ’ud learn ’em.”

  “They’d probably adore him if he did that, whereas now they only play him up. It’s a healthier attitude.”

  “And do you adore him, or do you play him up?”

  “I don’t do either. In any case, it can’t be any business of yours.”

  “No, it isn’t, but don’t you agree that it’s rather fun to mind other people’s business? Anyway, I love minding yours, and I wouldn’t mind betting that poor old Rochester is as described by the intelligent young. Besides, I’d take Miss Pomfret-Brown’s word about people, prejudiced though it might be, long before I’d take yours, and I’ve got two good reasons for saying so.”

  “Is it any good to be angry with you?”

  “Well, yes, in a way. You’re so good looking when you’re angry that the temptation to provoke you is more than I can resist.”

  “Oh! Well, I dislike compliments. They are always insincere. So I’m not going to be angry any more. I suppose there’s no reason why I shouldn’t discuss Simon in a rational way, but I don’t care to do it, that’s all.”

  “I understand.”

  “I’m quite sure you don’t!”

  “Oh, but I do. Nothing like rational discussion of an idol to reveal the feet of clay. You were asking me for my reasons for preferring Miss P.-B.’s estimate of your Simon to what appears to be your own. You simply are no judge of character. You’re a nit-wit when it comes to sizing people up.”

  “Being rude will get you nowhere. It’s very little-boy to try to make people angry with you.”

  “I’m not being rude. I’m talking sheer, obvious, down-to-earth commonsense. Look here, now, I’ll justify my assertions. You confuse pity with love. You’re sorry for this Simon chap, that’s all. You know in your inner self—you’re not a fool—that the man is a washout and a nincompoop. You were silly and wrongheaded enough to take up with the family pest, my cousin April, for the same idiotic reason. You underestimate Miss Pomfret-Brown . . .”

  “I don’t!”

  “Let me finish. Finally, and far and away worst, you don’t like me. Well, what have you to say to all that? One thing at a time now. Speak slowly, quietly, and in English, measuring your words and replying to each criticism in turn, giving special attention to the last one.”

  “As to the last one,” said Alison, “I don’t suppose Katharine liked Petruchio much—at first.” To her horror, she found that she was blushing.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Reconstruction

  It was almost the end of the summer vacation.

  “Miss Pomfret-Brown knows about Simon and me,” said Alison to her half-sister, “so, thanks for the warning, but I’m afraid it’s no use to me at all.”

  “How do you know she knows?”

  “Timothy Herring told me.”

  “Timothy Herring? How does he know anything about it?”

  “He’s the man—well, one of the men—responsible for converting Little Monkshood. Miss Pomfret-Brown told him she knew.”

  “Told him? Does she know him, then?”

  “Well, apparently she knows—or used to know—his father.”

  “But what made her tell him?”

  “What makes her do any of the unaccountable things she does?” demanded Alison, determined that Vere was not going to be told the real reason, Vere, however, did not need to be told. She said:

  “Miss Pomfret-Brown thinks Simon’s weak. Is that what she told this Mr. Herring?”

  “How should I know what she told him?” cried Alison, cornered, but determined not to surrender. “What I can’t imagine is how on earth she knew.”

  “I found it my duty to tell her. That’s why I’ve just warned you to give up the association.”

  “What! Oh, Constance, you never did so beastly a thing as that!”

  “I couldn’t let it go on, Alison. I’m some years older than you, and I’ve always made you my responsibility.”

  “Of all the impertinence! When did you tell her?”

  “When I gave in my notice, at the half-term. I felt that somebody responsible should know, as I was no longer going to be here to keep an eye on you.”

  “I could—I could . . .! Oh, what does it matter? I’ve known since the beginning of the holiday that she knew, and she hasn’t said a word to either Simon or me. But, if you knew she knew, why have you left it until now to warn me? I did not know you could be quite such a snake in the grass!”

  “I can’t help your thinking hard thoughts of me, Alison. Believe me, I meant everything for the best. After all, we shared the same father. Well, goodbye. My taxi’s waiting. I’ll write to you from Newcastle and let you know how I’m getting on.”

  “Goodbye, then, Constance. I hope you’ll be happy in your new job—not that I think you deserve to be!”

  “Try to get over the hard feelings, my dear. I suppose you spent the holiday with Simon, as usual? It will be the last time. I really think I acted for the best.”

  “I might believe that, if I didn’t know that you have made more than one attempt to appropriate Simon for yourself.”

  “Oh, nonsense, Alison! That weakling would never appeal to me. Well, I must fly, or I shall miss my train!”

  Alison watched her out of the window and saw the taxi drive away, then she began to rearrange the volumes in her bookcase. She had been back at school for several weeks. Simon, as usual, had been able to manage only a fortnight on Corfu, and, for once, it had seemed to Alison not only long enough, but too long. Simon, in his ineffectual way, had been as chivalrous and (in his own opinion, which, for the first time, she did not share) as ardent as before, but he no longer satisfied her. He was too deferential, too considerate, too unnaturally restrained to be anything (she faced her conclusions firmly) but a bore.

  She told herself that she was unappreciative, ungrateful, uncomprehending. She went furt
her, and called herself a bitch. She knew that he was disappointed in her reactions. Even to his eulogistic appreciation of the weather and the scenery of the magic island, she had returned but halfhearted support.

  “What’s the matter, Alison?” he asked one evening, when, having dined at nine, they were standing on the balcony of their hotel gazing out towards the small island formed when the ship of Odysseus was turned into a rock which now almost closed the entrance to the lagoon. Sometimes it seemed to him that his mad wife was like this island, almost shutting him off from the wider human contacts represented to him by the Mediterranean end of the Adriatic Sea and the mountains of southern Italy.

  “The matter?” She did not turn to him, but continued to gaze into the distance. “Nothing. Tomorrow, let’s go to the Vecchia Fortress.”

  “Why?—not that I don’t want to, but why?”

  “They say there are marvellous views of the sea and the islands from the high terrace there. Sometimes you can even see the mountains of Turkey. They seem such a lovely long way off from here. Do you remember when we stayed in Istanbul, and saw the Greek prostitutes going into the rich houses dressed in their diaphanous pink nightdresses? I almost envied them.”

  “My dear woman! You know, Alison, there is something wrong with you this holiday. You’re not a bit like your usual self.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s just that I haven’t shaken off school yet, I expect.”

  “You’ve always shaken it off before.”

  “And I shall again. You’ll see.” She managed to turn to him and smile. “Cheer up, Simon. It’ll be all right tomorrow.”

  “I want it to be all right all the time. I want every minute to be all right. We shall be back again soon enough in that hell.”

  And now, sure enough, they were back, although her hell, which was that she had fallen out of love with him with the same inevitability as a sleeper wakes from even the most delightful or even the most fearful of dreams, was not the same as his, for in hell, it may be assumed, there are as many mansions as in heaven. His particular hell was his inability to maintain school discipline. It worried him and it shamed him. It took precedence over the frustrations and vexations of his marriage, even over the hell of giving up to his classes and his private pupils the time which he felt ought to be dedicated to his musical compositions and the book he was writing on the art of fugue.