Your Secret Friend (Timothy Herring)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “You’re making a joke of a very serious matter.”

  “A pity Matthew Hopkins did not anticipate my attitude, don’t you think?”

  “You seem to be well versed in your subject.”

  “You, too. Can it be that we have become tarred with Sandra’s brush, and have taken pains to do some required reading? Dinna fash yersel, my dear. Run along and give them the edge of your tongue, then set the little naughties something distasteful to do, and let’s have an end of the matter.”

  “But if they’ve really taken it into their heads, as you tell me they seem to have done, that they killed Simon Bennison and nearly killed Marchmont Pallis . . .”

  “Treat the whole thing as a breach of school rules and leave all other considerations alone. Don’t you see that the very fact their plan miscarried will do more than we ever could to persuade them that the whole thing was a pack of nonsense? Pernicious nonsense, maybe, I grant you, but nonsense, all the same. I’ve never believed in using a sledgehammer to crack nuts, though sometimes I’d like to box ears.

  Hildegarde was not a member of the Roman church, neither would she have dreamed of associating herself with the medieval theory that confession must be extorted, at all costs to the accused, before sentence can be passed. However, her conception of punishing the coven, after she had spoken severely about the iniquity of breaking bounds and of sneaking out under cover of darkness, not to mention house-breaking (which, she reminded them, was punishable by law) was to order the children to sit in separate classrooms on the next half-holiday and write a detailed account of the proceedings which had led to the formation of the society for the liquidation of April Bounty (not that she mentioned her by name), and a further account of what had taken place at Little Monkshood at the first and subsequent meetings of the coven.

  “And you will tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” she added sternly, at the end of her diatribe.

  “Some hopes!” muttered Sandra.

  “Did you speak, Sandra?”

  “I said I hope we shall, Miss Salter.”

  “For your own sakes, so do I. After I have read your essays, I also hope that there will never be any need to refer to the matter again.”

  “What I want to know,” said Sandra, when the coven had forgathered in break, “is what really went wrong. It’s no good you hanging on to us, Veronica. You’re blackballed out, you dirty little sneak.”

  “But, Sandra, you said you were going to Miss Pomfret-Brown. I—I only did it to save you the trouble and—and to get the blame myself.”

  “Liar! You ratted on us.”

  “No, really, Sandra, I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “As a matter of fact,” said Gillian, “Veronica did what you were afraid to do, so there! Why don’t we blackball Sandra?”

  This matter was still under dispute, Caroline and Mavis supporting Gillian, Stephanie and Veronica (who was learning fast) in favour of Sandra, and the inscrutable Connie Moosedeer remaining sardonically aloof from the discussion, when came the afternoon of the next day. This happened to be the mid-week half-holiday. Hildegarde assigned each culprit to a classroom and left a prefect in charge.

  “Terribly sorry you’ve got to give up your ‘half’ to sit in here, Terry,” said Sandra cheekily to her gaoler.

  “Don’t worry about that,” said the prefect. “I’m glad of the chance of getting on with my work, so you’ve probably done me a favour. And now shut up and go to it. You’ve got until half-past four, and I don’t want one single solitary cheep out of you until then.”

  “Very well, Terry,” said Sandra meekly and, bending to her task, she headed her paper, How I Made a Pact with the Devil and What Came of It, by Sandra Millicent Clio Davidson, and settled down to enjoy herself. Not yet had been discovered the way to fickle Tammas Yownie, and Sandra, ignorant of the quotation, was aware of the fact. It proved, in the upshot, however, that Miss Pomfret-Brown had the ace up her sleeve.

  “I’m afraid you’re in for a sticky time,” said Timothy. “They will want to argue that it was a suicide pact. You’ve Vere to thank for that. She seems to have lost her head a bit and told the police that you weren’t a murderess. To substantiate this extraordinary bit of careless talk, she appears to have blown the gaff on you and Bennison to no small extent. I wouldn’t have told you this if I could have helped it, but I haven’t any option. You’ve got to know what to expect when they resume the inquest.”

  “Yes. Thank you, Tim. Constance does appear to have done her damnedest. I suppose she meant well. She always says she does.”

  “The way to hell . . .” said Timothy cheerfully.

  “Miss Pomfret-Brown told me about Simon’s death.”

  “Yes? She told me you knew.”

  “She said somebody had to tell me, and she was the best person because she loved me. It’s a good thing somebody does.”

  “Well, you wouldn’t have wanted me to tell you,” said Timothy. Alison ignored the obvious innuendo, and went on:

  “I think she knew, though, that I’d worked it out for myself. I realised he must be dead, because nobody spoke of him until she did. If he’d been taken to hospital, like me, they would have mentioned it, and if he was all right he would have come to see me. It was easy enough to work out that he was the lucky one.”

  “From his point of view, perhaps he was, but not from yours, Alison, so stop talking like that!”

  “How do you know my point of view? What is there for me after this? I can’t go back to school. Even Miss Pomfret-Brown will have to see that, and there will be enough publicity to close all other schools against me, whatever happens at the inquest.”

  “You’re not dependent upon having a job, so why worry?”

  “But what shall I do without one? And what shall I do without Simon? He began by being my lover, and he finished up by being my good works, and now I haven’t either.”

  “Good works are the resort of those who can’t justify their existence in any other way.”

  “Do you think we have to justify our existence?”

  “I don’t. You seem to.”

  “No, it’s just that I felt I had let Simon down pretty badly, and I had to do something about it.”

  “And did he concur? ‘To be thy bedesman now, that was thy knight?’ That sort of attitude?”

  “He didn’t know I’d changed—well, I’m not sure whether that’s true. No, it isn’t. After Corfu he’d begun to guess.”

  “I see. If it isn’t an embarrassing question, why had you changed?”

  “I don’t know, Tim. Would you be dreadfully bored if I told you about Simon and me? I wouldn’t dream of it, only—well, the thought of this resumed inquest is a bit of a nightmare. I can’t think of very much else. I want to get my mind clear before I have to face the Coroner. I keep asking myself whether Simon did commit suicide, and whether, if he did, he intended to take me with him.”

  “Well, I didn’t really know him, of course, but, from what I saw of him, I shouldn’t have thought he was the type. I mean, the impression I got was that he was an ineffective sort of bloke who might have thought of suicide for himself (although I doubt it very much, because he wasn’t in despair, or anything approaching it, so far as I could make out), but I’m positive he’d never have dreamed of arranging for anyone else’s death, especially without that person’s consent. He was essentially considerate and decent.”

  “That’s what I think, but the fact remains that he died and I nearly did. Tim, what will happen to Little Monkshood now? I couldn’t possibly live there after this.

  “No, I quite see that. When you’ve made up your mind about things, I expect I can get Phisbe to buy it from you, if you don’t put the purchase price too high.”

  “I’d accept any offer they cared to make me, even the token payment of a hundred pounds I made them for the work they did.”

  “They’ll be fair enough, so that’s one thing settled. You were suggesting you should tell me
about yourself—you and Bennison. Do you really want to, do you think?”

  “I want to get things clear before they question me in court.”

  “Not a bad idea, at that. Fire away, and I won’t interrupt. Stop when you’ve had enough. Don’t tire yourself.”

  Alison had been discharged from hospital and she and Timothy were in Miss Pomfret-Brown’s private sitting-room which the owner had loaned to them for an hour.

  “You’d better be the one to brief Alison about this inquest business,” the headmistress had told him. “A villain like you will be able to give her some pointers which a decent citizen like myself would never think of. You can have my sitting-room. Nobody will disturb you there.”

  So there they were, one on either side of a pleasant fire. Timothy picked up the poker, caught Alison’s eye, and put it down again.

  “You’ll spoil it if you poke it,” she said. “I don’t know why men can never leave a fire alone.”

  “Instinct to prod a good thing into flame,” said Timothy, with a return to the flippant manner she recognised, and an insinuation which she recognised equally well.

  “Yes, I suppose it began like that with Simon,” she said. “Or perhaps I was the one who did the prodding. I don’t know. It began six years ago, when he first came to the school. I’d been on the staff for two years then, and was more or less established. Constance came at the same time as I did. They needed someone for what she calls experimental science. It isn’t important enough to be called chemistry. We have to use that lodge at the school gates as a lab. She and I made Simon’s acquaintance at more or less the same time, so, although I was the one who actually suggested that Simon should join our staff, I believe she made him more or less her protege at first, and she was rather possessive about him. He didn’t like it very much.”

  “Vere is a science graduate, then? That means she has access to—”

  “You said you wouldn’t interrupt!”

  “Just getting an idea of the general lie of the land. Talking of which, when are you coming to my home again? I enjoyed that day very much . . . Oh, I’m sorry. You’d got to ‘he didn’t like it very much.’ Why didn’t he? Was Vere showing off her beautifully-washed and well-behaved little boy, or was she a tigress defending her young?”

  “I don’t know. Anyway, it all began at the Christmas party just before Simon joined the staff.”

  The Christmas party in question had not been held at Purfleet Hall, for the school had not then moved from its original home in Sussex. The party was held in three stages and on successive days, the first devoted to the youngest children. These were allowed to wear fancy dress and were looked after by the prefects while the junior staff were given a free afternoon. The second party was dedicated to the Middle School, who were allowed to play records and to dance with one another to pop music The third was attended by the whole staff, and the Fifth and Sixth disported themselves with their opposite numbers from a small public school for boys whose senior masters came along to see fair play. This was an evening affair. It lasted from seven o’clock until eleven, and was the bitter envy of the middle and lower school.

  Simon, one of the masters from the boys’ school, turned out to be a good dancer. Miss Pomfret-Brown, to the relief of the shyer males, did not tread the measure, but remained, an enthroned and benign Buddha, upon the dais which formed the school stage. Refreshments were in the form of a running buffet which was set out on trestle tables in the staff common room. This had been intended for a principal bedroom when the house was built, and a small dressing-room, used by the staff as a convenient dumping-ground for their gowns when morning school was over, opened off it and was kept locked on party nights for fear that any of the hot-blooded young should be misguided enough to conceive of it as a sitting-out place.

  Simon took the floor politely with each member of the staff in turn. Vere Pallis danced with him three times, and it was not until nearly ten o’clock that he came up to Alison and asked her to dance.

  “I don’t,” she said. He had noticed that she was sitting out all the time.

  “Well, I’m rather thankful, really,” he said.

  “Have you had anything to eat? Let’s go and forage,” she suggested.

  They found the buffet deserted and most of the food gone, so he salvaged what he could, found a couple of clean glasses and a jug half-full of what was reputed to be claret cup, and they seated themselves in armchairs.

  “How do you like your school?” she asked. “You haven’t been there long, have you? You weren’t at the party last year.”

  “I hate my school and I loathe teaching, but, you see—do you think we could go somewhere and talk? You say you don’t dance, so I wouldn’t be depriving you of that.”

  “Well, I mustn’t be away from the party too long. With all your young gentlemen around, a little chaperoning is expected of us. Miss Pomfret-Brown doesn’t think about such things, but Miss Salter, very properly, does.”

  “I must talk to somebody!”

  “Ten minutes, then, perhaps.”

  “Let’s go into that little room through there.”

  “Well, that’s what we call the gowns room. It’s awfully small. There’s nobody in here. Won’t this do?”

  “People will drift in and out. The buffet, you know.”

  “It will look rather odd if we reappear from next door. It’s always kept locked on party nights for the obvious reason.”

  “Yes.” He seemed to retire into himself, a thin, melancholy, ineffective man with the ravaged good looks of the fictional musician or painter. “I just thought perhaps . . .”

  “All right,” she said, on impulse. She had had sufficient dealing with adolescent problems and homesick children to realise his need to communicate. She went across to the gowns room, took a key from her handbag, unlocked the door, and they went in. She put on the light, closed the door, locked it on the inside, and sat down on the only chair. “Now,” she said briskly, “what’s the trouble?” So, in the same tone, had she put the same question to twelve-year-olds, and that seemed to her to be his emotional age. He hoisted himself to a seat on the table.

  “I’m a failure,” he said. “I wanted to be a composer. I wanted to be a great conductor. I wanted to be a concert pianist. I had dreams—all my life I’ve had dreams. Folie de grandeur, I suppose.”

  “Haven’t we all suffered from that? ‘The fault, dear Brutus’ . . .”

  “Yes, but the fault does lie in my stars!” said Simon, with a passion which astonished her. “I could have done great things! I know! I’ve got it in me.” Suddenly he had slid from the table and was pouring out the story of his wrongs. He was on his knees beside her, gripping her arms above the elbow. “Take pity on me, for God’s sake! I must have someone! Take pity!”

  It was a situation she had not met before. Adolescent girls could be headed off before they reached this stage. The utter and complete breakdown of a man considerably older than herself found her unprepared and at a loss. He was sobbing and, beyond her sense of pity, there lay the uncomfortable and mundane thought that at any moment somebody might come into the common-room and hear him.

  To muffle the sounds she shook off his grasp and pulled his head against her breast.

  “So that’s how it began,” said Alison.

  “ ‘For love of one poor moment’s kindliness and ease, and sleepy mother-comfort’—yes, indeed,” said Timothy. “Lame dogs do make an appeal to our baser instincts, don’t they?”

  “Our baser instincts?” As he had hoped, she smiled.

  “Yes. You know, the instinct to assert our superiority by playing the Good Samaritan. Personally, I’ve always had every sympathy with the priest and the Levite. At least they had the good sense to mind their own business.”

  “ ‘Leaving the traveller half-dead.’ Well, I couldn’t. I calmed Simon down and he told me more about it. His wife was in a private mental home, well treated, well cared for—and—incurable. It took every penny he could
earn to keep her there. Meanwhile, he himself was adrift—lonely, hopeless, a failure at his job, and—so he told me—desperately in need of a woman’s sympathy and understanding. Poor Simon!” She smiled again, reminiscently this time. “I had a terrible battle with Constance that night, when the party was over,” she said. “Instead of the ten minutes I’d promised, we must have been away from the dance-floor for the best part of an hour. I don’t know whether anyone else had noticed, but she certainly had. Of course, it took him a little time to pull himself together and bathe his face. Luckily there was a little washbasin in one corner of the gowns room.

  “Constance swooped on us the moment we came out into the hall and Simon, prodded by me, immediately asked her to dance again. It was the last dance of the evening, of course, and the fourth one she had had with him. Exactly what she said to him during the dance I don’t know, but the rest is soon told. She must have kept up a correspondence with him the following term, because he wrote to me and told me that my sister had advised him to apply for the post of music master when our school moved to Purfleet Hall the next September, and that, as I had suggested the same thing, he had made up his mind to try.

  “Well, I knew that the visiting mistress who took our music did not want to leave her home and would not be going with us to Dorset, but it had never occurred to me (the reason he gave me at the time, although later I discovered that it was barely half the truth) that the poor misguided man thought girls were easier to manage than boys.”

  “And he soon found they weren’t,” said Timothy. “At least a boy is always in peril of a good man’s wrath expressed by a good man’s strong right arm. Girls, I assume, are subject to no such repressive measures.”

  “Constance monopolised him and mothered him at first, then he began to side-step her. About a month after the beginning of the autumn term he asked me to go into Bournemouth with him to choose a little gift for his wife. ‘She doesn’t recognise me,’ he said, ‘but she loves bright things and, although I think the nurses take them away from her as soon as I’ve gone—in case she should try to choke herself or do some other mischief with them—at least she has the pleasure of them when I’m there, and they’re awfully good at remembering to bring them out again when I go next time. She’s no trouble to them, you know. I always ask, and they always tell me that. They say she’s quite docile, and I don’t really think she’s unhappy.’