Your Secret Friend (Timothy Herring)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “Well, I was twenty-four at the time,” Alison went on. “It’s a good age for a man, I think, whether he’s married or single—better, perhaps, when he’s single and has no money problems—but it’s rather a betwixt and between age, I always think, for a single woman. You’re either becoming as hard as nails or you begin to go soft. It was that with me—beginning to go soft, I mean. Simon’s life seemed to me to be one long, wretched martyrdom, and I was passionately sympathetic.

  “He was not a highly-sexed man. I soon found that out. I suppose you could hardly say we were lovers, in the accepted sense, even when we cast care to the winds and went on holiday together. That happened the first Easter.

  “It was a lovely spring; the sort of spring that makes you feel nostalgic and yet lightheaded. Do you know what I mean?”

  “I should do,” said Timothy, with so much meaning in his tone that she turned her eyes from him. “So you began going for these holidays,” he went on in his ordinary voice. If it’s an allowable enquiry, how could he afford them and still pay the fees for his wife?”

  “At first he overworked. He used to stay after school to coach individual girls, and then he used to rush home for his private pupils. Then he changed his digs and went into a horrible little bed-sitter in one of the cottages where there wasn’t even room for him and his piano, let alone a bed.”

  “What did the pupils and their mothers say to that?”

  “Oh, he used to go to them, not have them come to him. He said that there was no point in teaching them to play the piano if they hadn’t one at home to practise on. Then he began to economise on food, and got so thin that I realised something was wrong and put a stop to it.”

  “By paying for the holidays for both of you, I suppose?”

  “Yes,” she said. “That was it. I’d become dependent on them, you see.”

  “Dependent upon him, I think you mean.”

  “I suppose so. He was tender and kind and very considerate and sweet.”

  “I’m sure he was. Alison, why did he die? Where did the poison come from?”

  “I don’t know. It was some form of food-poisoning, I suppose. I can’t think of any other explanation.”

  “It wasn’t food-poisoning. The doctors found something had been added to the advocaat—a lot of it—and a quantity, although not nearly so much, to the madeira. Their analysis told them that Simon had drunk the advocaat. Do you think he felt that things between you had come to an end?”

  “I don’t know. I think we had virtually agreed that our secret meetings at school would have to stop, but I think, actually, he was rather relieved about that. It was the holidays he wanted, times when we could be together without wondering whether anybody was going to rattle the handle of a locked door. It all sounds rather undignified when one has to put it into words.”

  “Not to me. One has to take what one can get when one can get it. I’ve lived my whole life on that principle.”

  “You must have hurt some people very badly.”

  “I don’t flatter myself to that extent, my dear.”

  “Will you be in court when they resume the inquest?”

  “Nothing will keep me away.”

  “It’s all such a nuisance for the school.”

  “What will happen about Bennison’s wife?”

  “I shall pay the fees, of course.”

  “Is there any way of letting her know what’s happened to him?”

  “If she didn’t even recognise him when he went to see her, there wouldn’t be any need to tell her anything.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Inquisition

  “So here,” said Miss Pomfret-Brown, “we have the criminal’s own confession.” She tapped Sandra’s essay, which lay on the table. The table was a period piece of the time of Queen Anne, elegant, simple, an early example of veneered walnut. Miss Pomfret-Brown was a connoisseuse and her rooms had been furnished with taste and at considerable expense.

  “Yes,” said Sandra. “We didn’t mean to kill Mr. Bennison or hurt Miss Marchmont Pallis, really we didn’t.”

  “Between ourselves, who was supposed to have been the victim?”

  “I—I’d rather not say.”

  “I take it that you have given up these excursions into the macabre?”

  “Oh, yes. We’ve broken up our—our coven. We’ve absolved ourselves from our vows.”

  “But will your familiars—you do have familiars, I trust—not take umbrage at this disaffection?”

  “I—we didn’t have familiars. I don’t think we are old enough.”

  “Oh, nonsense! Sarah Carrier, a child of seven, had a familiar in the form of a black cat.”

  “Please may we not talk about it any more? We really, really are sorry.”

  “I did not decide to talk about it in the first place. It was you who convened your coven.”

  “I know, and I’m terribly sorry, really and truly I am. I don’t know what else to say. We’ll never do it again.”

  “Do you know your Julius Caesar?”

  “Not very well. I don’t think we do him until the Lower Fourth.”

  “Ah, well, let me quote to you. ‘Meddle with no tradesmen’s matters nor with no women’s matters, but with awl.’ Do you know what it means?”

  “No, Miss Pomfret-Brown.”

  “Then let that be a warning to you. And now, although I cannot think that you deserve it, for you’ve been very naughty little gals, I am going to set your minds at rest. The death of poor Mr. Bennison and the serious illness of Miss Marchmont Pallis were not brought about by witchcraft, but by human agency. I cannot go into details, but you may all be questioned by the police and, if so, you must answer them simply and truthfully. You understand? I didn’t want them to question silly little gals, but it’s out of my hands. Agreed? Simplicity and truth. Warn the others.”

  “Yes, Miss Pomfret-Brown.”

  “And there will be no victimisation of Veronica Tooby. I am aware that her surname rhymes with ‘booby,’ but you will not take advantage of that fact.”

  “No, Miss Pomfret-Brown.”

  “Your essay has merit. The spelling leaves much to be desired, but you have a lively style and some pretensions to composition and arrangement. Now—your end-of-term report.” She picked up an envelope and drew a document from it. Sandra, for the first time, looked distressed. A tear dripped over the freckles on her small snub nose. Miss Pomfret-Brown tore the document into pieces and threw the pieces on to the open fire. “You appear to have annoyed several members of my staff, notably Miss Bounty, but I will get them to re-word their opinion of your work and conduct—not that you deserve it,” she said.

  “Oh, thank you!”

  “And now, one last word. If you persist in upsetting lessons and inciting others to do so, I shall have you in here and I shall smack you!”

  Sandra blanched. She looked up at the rock-carved face. She tried to smile. Smacked! Like a small child! If that happened, her credit, her authority, her leadership would be gone and would be irrecoverable. As it was, her rival, the up-and-coming Gillian, was at the gates.

  “I’ll—I’ll try my best,” she muttered.

  “That’s a good gal,” said Miss Pomfret-Brown. “Here, have a chocolate. Help yourself to two or three. And now be off, and take your essay with you.”

  “They’ll say that it was a suicide pact,” said Alison. “You were right about that.”

  “Oh, yes? Well, I’ve been talking to Phisbe’s lawyer. He tells me that, until the passing of the Homicide Act of 1957, the survivor of the pact you specify was held to be guilty of murder.”

  “They say the law is an ass.”

  “In this case, it has redeemed itself. After 1957 the survivor was found guilty of manslaughter, not murder, provided that he had fully intended to kill himself but had not managed to pull it off.”

  “What is the punishment for manslaughter?”

  “It all depends. It can be a life sentence. The Act w
as amended, however, in 1961, and nowadays the most the survivor can be found guilty of is something called (and, in this sense, it’s a legal term) complicity.”

  “Legal term or not, it seems to mean the same as it would in everyday English.”

  “Complicity in law involves aiding, abetting, counselling, or procuring the suicide, or the attempted suicide, of another person. Penalty on conviction, fourteen years.”

  “I didn’t know that. I thought . . .”

  “You thought the survivor would get off scot free?”

  “Well, if suicide is no longer a criminal offence—it isn’t, is it?—I don’t see how they can think it right to punish the survivor.”

  “Well, they have to make a pretty close investigation, just because he is the survivor, don’t you see. There’s really nothing to prove that he didn’t aid, abet, and so forth, the death of the other, while all the time having no real intention of dying with him.”

  “I see. And I didn’t die. That was silly of me, wasn’t it?”

  “No, you had just enough sense not to go so far as that.”

  “It would have been better for me, really, if you hadn’t come along in time to save my life. It looks as though the resumed inquest won’t be the end of it. I may still have to appear in court and the magistrates may decide to commit me. I tell you, Tim, I would much rather die than spend fourteen years in prison.”

  “I’m not sure I don’t agree—as regards myself, of course. Now, seriously, Alison, you just listen to me. This nonsense about you and Bennison having made a suicide pact is poppycock. You know it is, and so do I.”

  “But if they say it isn’t? After all, I expect people know that Simon and I used to go away together. It will all come out.”

  “Nobody thinks anything of that sort of thing nowadays. Both of you were poisoned, one of you fatally. Your solicitor’s line will be that Bennison decided to die and take you with him, and, although you may not like it, that’s the way you’ll have to plead, if it does come before the magistrates.”

  “I refuse to let people believe that Simon tried to kill me. I know he didn’t!”

  “If you take that line the police may think that you decided to make away with him, and took poison yourself to make it look as though . . .”

  “Oh, Tim, surely nobody could think that!”

  “We have to face facts, my dear, and the facts in this case are that Bennison drank the advocaat, which was made lethal, and you drank the madeira, which was not. That’s what we may be up against. You don’t know what the police can think when they put their minds to it. I know what’s in your mind, and you’re very likely right. Somebody put the drug in the drinks, and you don’t believe it was Bennison. Well, my poor girl, there are only three obvious suspects, and, as I refuse to believe that you did it, they boil down to two. And as neither of us believes Bennison did it, it boils down to one. That’s the unpleasant fact we have to face.”

  “If I say it was a suicide pact, it boils down to none. Don’t you see that?”

  “Such fun for your friends to hear you sentenced to fourteen years for complicity.”

  “If it’s known we were lovers, everybody will believe I meant to kill myself, too.”

  “Truth will out, you know, and the truth is that Vere—”

  Alison cut him short by shouting wildly,

  “Truth lives in a well, and I’m going to drown her! I won’t have Vere—”

  Timothy rose, pulled her to him, and kissed her.

  “You’re a chivalrous fathead,” he said, when he had released her. “I may add that, for a woman who has had a lover for six years, you don’t seem very clever at the rough stuff.”

  “I hate you,” said Alison, without any great conviction in her tone. She sat down and turned her face from him.

  “Splendid! What did Mrs. Malaprop say in 1775 about a little aversion before marriage? It was Mrs. Malaprop, wasn’t it?” he asked, in his normal, half-teasing tone.

  “Before . . .?”

  “Marriage. This is a proposal. Didn’t you know? Don’t answer me yet. Just keep the idea in mind until after the resumed inquest.”

  After the resumed inquest it was ruled by the police that there was a case to be answered, and Alison was charged to appear before the justices as having been a party to a suicide pact. Under the new system she was represented by counsel instructed by Phisbe’s solicitor. Timothy and Miss Pomfret-Brown had put their heads together and had decided that the strongest card to play was the fact that Alison had bought Little Monkshood so very recently and proposed to live in it. This, they argued, indicated beyond doubt that a suicide pact was out of the question.

  “But if you don’t allow my client to claim that the deceased was the victim of a suicide pact, we may find her charged with murder,” counsel pointed out.

  “Not unless they can trace the drug to her possession, and they’ll never do that,” said Timothy. “What’s more, the doctor we called in, and the people at the hospital, will probably swear that, unless their help had been forthcoming as soon as it was, Alison herself might very well have died, too. If there was no suicide pact, either Bennison committed suicide and intended to take Alison with him without her knowledge and consent, or else he was murdered by person or persons unknown, and he or they intended to kill Alison also.”

  “But can you name such person or persons?”

  “I am not prepared to do so. Luckily, at present it isn’t necessary.”

  “Poison doesn’t get into a bottle of advocaat by accident, Mr. Herring, nor into a bottle of madeira either.”

  “That’s what I’m saying.”

  He himself was called as a witness, as he was the person who had discovered Simon’s body. He answered the questions fully and frankly, not only because he was on oath, but because he had nothing to hide. After he had described his experiences, he was asked,

  “What were you doing at Little Monkshood on the evening in question? What caused you to go there?”

  “I had been invited to a house-warming party.”

  “But the party had not begun, had it?”

  “No, I was early.”

  “How did that come about?”

  “I had motored down from Gloucestershire with two friends who had also received an invitation. I had allowed plenty of time because of wintry weather.”

  “How did you expect to get into the house if the party had not begun?”

  “I assumed that Miss Pallis would be there to make the preparations, and would let us in.”

  “But Miss Pallis was already suffering from severe poisoning, so, in the event, she did not let you in. How did you gain admission to the house?”

  “The front door can be opened, unless it is locked, by turning an iron handle which lifts the latch. That is what I did.”

  “You are familiar with the house, then?”

  “Very familiar with it. The Society for the Preservation of Buildings of Historic Interest, of which I am honorary secretary, had just finished renovating and restoring the house for Miss Pallis, and the Society’s architect and myself had been supervising the work continually from the beginning.”

  “Will you tell us again, in your own words,” said the presiding magistrate, “what you discovered when you entered the house? I should like to be quite clear as to details.”

  “I found the defendant, Miss Pallis, lying unconscious on the hall floor, Your Worship. She had been sick twice before she collapsed. It seemed to me that she had been trying to get to the front door, but had failed to reach it.”

  “You also found the body of Simon Bennison. Where was that?”

  “It was in Miss Pallis’ sitting-room which opens out of the hall. I have a plan of the house, if it will assist Your Worship.”

  “It took you some time to find the body, did it not?”

  “Yes, it did. My first concern was for Miss Pallis. I had no idea that anyone had been with her in the house. I discovered the body by accident, so to speak.”
>
  “How well did you know the defendant before Mr. Bennison’s death?” asked the counsel who was acting for the police.

  “I had met her perhaps half-a-dozen times to consult with her about the renovations.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Herring. I call Miss Constance Pallis.”

  Timothy had known that Vere was to be a witness, but he had assumed, with unusual innocence and lack of perception, that she would be called for the defence.

  “Your name is Constance Vere Pallis, and you are half-sister to the defendant?”

  “That is so.” Vere was superbly composed.

  “The last witness has told us that he met the defendant some half-a-dozen times before Mr. Bennison’s death. Can you substantiate that?”

  “I do not know how many times he met her, but I do know that two of those times were at his own home in Gloucestershire.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “My half-sister herself told me so.”

  “Thank you, Miss Pallis. Call Miss Pomfret-Brown.”

  Miss Pomfret-Brown took the oath and added, at the end, the discarded and, as the oath is now worded, the redundant phrase, “so help me God.” She preferred this addendum in the tone of one who dares God to let her down. Then she said, turning a threatening eye upon the chairman of the Bench,

  “Now, then, Henry Wight-Seeley, what’s all this nonsense?”

  “Miss Marchmont Pallis, as you must have heard,” said the magistrate austerely, “stands charged by the police with complicity in the death of the late Simon Bennison by agreeing with him that they should commit suicide together.”

  “Then the police must be mad.”

  “You must not submit opinions. You are here to answer questions. Now, Mr. Summerhayes.”