Having rid the meeting of the firebrand, he broached the subject of Rafferty’s forthcoming nuptials, and the meeting was then declared closed.
“Well, Tim,” said the president, when he, Parsons, and Timothy were seated at dinner, “what’s all this about Miss Pallis agreeing to sell? I thought she was crazy about Little Monkshood.”
“While you were disporting yourself on your winter sunshine cruise, strange things have been happening,” Timothy replied. He gave a short account of these.
“Oh, I see why you think she might be willing to sell,” said the president. “Well, you can get on to her straight away now.”
“Yes. I shall have to make a fairly tactful approach. She’s not altogether easy to deal with.”
“Pigheaded?”
“I think so.”
“Still, if this man died in the house, and she herself nearly did, you’d suppose she’d have taken a bit of a slant. Anyway, good luck to your efforts. The Society could do with Little Monkshood. What, by the way, was the reason for the suicide? An unhappy love affair, as it’s called?”
“I must have notice of that question.”
“That’s a cagey sort of answer.”
“Yes, I suppose it is,” Timothy agreed.
“You wouldn’t care to enlarge on it, I suppose?”
“Not at present. You see, I don’t believe the chap did commit suicide. This unhappy love affair, as you call it, had been going on for years. There didn’t seem any real reason why it shouldn’t have gone on for years more.”
“Come off it, Tim,” said Parsons. The president raised his eyebrows, but his curiosity remained unsatisfied. Timothy slept at his club and next morning left London immediately breakfast was over, and drove pensively to Peterminster and the George hotel. Here, he thought, if anywhere, was the place where he might get Sandra’s ingenuous statement confirmed. He was actuated by no vengeful feelings towards Vere Pallis. His urge was not even impelled by what is known as vulgar curiosity. Simply, he wanted to know, almost in the sense that a research student wants to know. What he proposed to do with his knowledge, if he gained any, he had not the slightest idea. The thought of bringing Vere Pallis to book, so far as the law was concerned, became more and more repugnant to him the more he thought about it, so, ostrich-like, he decided not to think about it, the equivalent of burying his head in the sand.
He was well known in the hotel by this time. After he had signed the register, he turned back the pages until he found the dates he was looking for.
“Not many visitors this time of year, Mr. Herring,” said the receptionist.
“Did you have an All Hallows party?” asked Timothy, still searching the columns of hasty and mostly untidy writing.
“I’ve never heard of such a thing. We do our usual Christmas—you know, three days” inclusive.”
“I know—inclusive of crackers, paper hats, and squeakers.” He continued to turn back the pages.
“Well, people seem to enjoy it, Mr. Herring. Saves them all the bother of cooking their own turkey and inviting their relatives to Christmas dinner.”
“I suppose so, yes.” He found the page he wanted. “Here it is,” he said.
“Here’s what, Mr. Herring?”
“Probably the book-in for your All Hallows party. Hallowe’en, I suppose I should say. October thirtieth.” He turned the book towards her. “There’s your list of week-end guests. Read that.”
“What for?”
“Just a bet with a friend of mine.”
“Not trying to find out whether your wife and her boyfriend stayed here under the name of Mr. and Mrs. John Smith, I suppose, are you?”
Timothy grinned, and turned the book round again.
“I might be. Got to find some grounds for divorce, you know. I’m tired of having her wait behind the front door with her black-jack when I come home pie-eyed from the pub.”
“Go on with you! I didn’t think you were married, and now I know you’re not. What’s this all about, anyway?”
“Who’s this Elsa McQueen?”
“Oh, her! A right one, she was. Broad as she was long, American, complained about everything.”
“Oh, really? I shouldn’t have thought there was much to complain about here. She must have been hard to please.” He scanned the rest of the entries and then turned to the list of names under October thirty-first. “This is the night,” he intoned, “when graves give up their dead. What have we here? Nothing but les hommes? Did you have a stag party that night, or what?”
“Four gentlemen and a lady, but the lady wasn’t with the gentlemen. They were four of our regulars. Commercials.”
“There are five names here, all men’s names.”
The receptionist switched round the book so that she could read the names right way up instead of upside down.
“That’s right,” she agreed. “Five men’s names, but Victor Prance was a lady. I suppose her real name was Victoria. Lots of girls prefer boys’ names, don’t they? You know, like Robin, Bobbie, Freddie, and all that—though I shouldn’t think it lasts into middle age.”
“What was this Victor Prance like?”
“To look at? Tall and thin and vinegary. What they used to call a proper schoolmarm, only schoolmarms aren’t so much like that nowadays. We get ‘em in here, a party of ‘em, when they’ve been paid or it’s breaking-up day, and a livelier lot you couldn’t wish for. Don’t spend much, mind you. It’s mostly sherry and cider and bitter lemon and hard-boiled eggs and sandwiches and pickled onions, but, my, they do enjoy themselves!”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Vere
It was not proof.
“I see it’s the second name on the list,” said Timothy.
“What is?”
“This Victor Prance. I suppose you don’t remember at what time of day she clocked in?”
“Before lunch, anyway. I remember that, because I had to tell her her room wasn’t quite ready. Old Mr. Blues didn’t move out until one minute to twelve. He never does, the old so-and-so, but he’s been coming here for years, off and on, and, anyway, we can’t say anything, because twelve noon they’re allowed up to, so he keeps to what you might call the letter of the law, but it makes it hard on the maids when they can’t do out a room till the mid-day. So Miss Prance had to sit herself down in the lounge, and she wasn’t very pleased, I can tell you.”
“Miss Prance? Sure of that?”
“No wedding-ring. Signed the book with her left hand, so, of course, I noticed.”
“I see she’s given her address as London.”
“That’s right.”
“Rather vague, isn’t it?”
“Oh, I don’t know. So long as they sign in, and put British, whether they are or not, and something in the column for the address, I suppose we have to be satisfied. It’s all the law seems to want, anyway. We’ve never had any trouble.”
“It seems pretty casual to me. Suppose you’d had one of the train-robbers, or an escaped convict, book in here.”
“He’d give a false name anyway, I should think, and he’d hardly give his address ‘late of Parkhurst prison,’ would he now?” She closed the book, put it aside, then gave Timothy a straight and shrewd glance. “I wasn’t born yesterday, you know,” she said. “What’s all this about Victor-Victoria Prance? You’re not CID, by any chance, are you?”
“No, I’m a founder-member of the international dope ring,” said Timothy. “Miss Prance—an alias, of course—is one of our most valuable contacts in this country.”
“Oh, Mr. Herring! You really are the limit!” giggled the receptionist. “Suppose anybody that didn’t know you was to hear you!”
“I should be in dead trouble. I hope I may count upon your discretion?”
He decided to wait until after lunch before ringing up the school. Alison would be in class, he supposed, until the end of the morning, but while the girls were at games it might be possible to arrange a meeting with her to find out whe
ther she had changed her mind again about selling Little Monkshood, or whether she was still prepared to let the Society have it.
The school secretary answered the telephone.
“Miss Pallis? Will you hold the line, please? Who shall I say is calling? Mr. Herring? Oh, how do you do, Mr. Herring? I think she’s in the common room. Just a minute, and I’ll see.”
It was not long before he heard Alison’s voice. Even over the telephone it was unmistakable.
“Hullo, Tim. Alison here. I’m terribly busy. Is it anything in particular?”
“Don’t get in such a panic. This is mostly on business. Where can I meet you?”
“Look, I’ve stacks of history essays to mark and three sets of history notebooks to go through.”
“Right. I’ll be at school in half-an-hour’s time.”
“No, you can’t come here. There’s a reason. Constance has turned up. She’s in a dreadful state. I can’t stop to tell you now. Can’t you say whatever it is over the telephone?”
“Very well, then. At least, I can say part of it.”
“Why only part?”
“The rest is about Vere.”
“Oh, dear! Very well. I’ll meet you for tea at the mill-house at half-past four.”
“Fair enough. Good-bye until then.”
She was punctual, but Timothy was waiting for her. She found him standing at the roadside gazing across the river, and she joined him without saying anything. Then they went into the mill and he ordered tea. The table he had chosen was in a far corner, although the rest of the room was empty. Alison sat with her back to the dark-painted wall and Timothy moved a vase of early daffodils to one side so that he could see her. There was a lifelessness about her and a look of fatigue which distressed him. He smiled at her.
“Business now, or afterwards?” he asked.
“Just as you please,” she answered.
“Tired?”
“Worried.”
“Not my young friends?”
“The children? Oh, no. They’re much as usual. Tim, how did the poison get into those bottles? Simon didn’t commit suicide, you know.”
“I’m afraid it’s all too obvious, my dear. She was down here at the end of October. That little gingertop Sandra saw her, and I’m certain she stayed at least one night at the George, in Peterminster.”
“I didn’t tell you, but she rang me up from there. She wanted to see me. I didn’t go, partly because my excuse that I couldn’t avoid showing up at the Hallowe’en party was true so far as it went, but, of course, that wasn’t the only reason. I’d made this arrangement with Simon to show him the finished house and drink a toast to it.”
“You didn’t suggest, then, that if she wanted to see you she could come along to the school? I can see you wouldn’t want her at Little Monkshood if you were going to meet him there later in the evening.”
“I thought she would have no reason to meet me unless she wanted to quarrel, but now I’m wondering whether she had only needed half a term to see that she’d given up a rather easy job at Purfleet for a much tougher one in Newcastle, and wanted to persuade me to use my influence with Miss Pomfret-Brown.”
“To give her her old post back again?”
“Yes. I wouldn’t have done it, of course, but I’m glad I didn’t think of it at the time. I’d have hated to disappoint her. Whatever she is, and whatever she may have done, I can’t help feeling very sorry for her.”
“It’s all too clear what she may have done, I’m afraid.”
“The only thing is—oh, they’re bringing the tea—the only thing is,” Alison went on when she had filled the cups and the waitress had gone out of the room, “that anybody might have drunk the stuff, you know. I mean, up to that time, and for a week or two afterwards, anybody could have got into Little Monkshood. You heard what the foreman said to the magistrates. There were workmen in and out, doing all sorts of little clearing-up jobs until at least the middle of November, and then I left the place unlocked for the convenience of the furniture people, as I couldn’t always be there when things were delivered. Suppose children, or a tramp, had got in and tried an experimental swig out of those bottles? Surely Vere would have thought of that? She wasn’t prepared to wish anybody dead except Simon and me—especially me.”
“Where did you put the bottles when you and Simon had drunk your toast to the house?”
“We left them on the window-seat in the solar. Anybody could have got at them, as dear old P.-B. pointed out to the Bench.” She flushed and smiled for the first time since they had met that afternoon. “It’s a good thing the presiding magistrate is her godson, or she would have been committed for contempt of court and thrown into a dungeon, I should think.”
I don’t believe a magistrates’ court can commit for contempt but she certainly was a breezy performer,” said Timothy. “Reverting to the subject under advisement, my own opinion is that Vere was so jealous of you and Simon that her only aim and object was to do you both a mischief. I don’t suppose anything occurred to her except that. She was sure that, at some time or another, you would come back and use the bottles again.”
“The single-track mind? Yes, Vere has that, I think. But you said you wanted to see me on business, as well as talk about Vere.”
“Let’s finish one thing at a time. You said over the telephone that Vere was at the school and was—to quote your actual words—in a dreadful state. Tell me more about it.”
“She’s got three days” compassionate leave of absence from her school—she seems to have told them that I was terribly ill—and she’s come down here to plead.”
“With Miss Pomfret-Brown?”
“Yes. She wants so much to come back.”
“Surely the High Priestess won’t wear it?”
“It’s difficult, Tim. We’ve never been able to find a science teacher since Vere left. P.-B. has tried, but when they come for interview and find the so-called chemistry lab. is the gatekeeper’s cottage, naturally, if they’re qualified and any good, they jib. Of course, to do her justice, if they’re unqualified she won’t take the risk of letting them loose among the chemicals. Vere is very well qualified, likes a lazy life and can at least keep order. If it weren’t for me, P.-B. would have Vere back tomorrow, and, even so, when she’s weighed the pros and cons, I think she will, in spite of what she thinks of her as a person.”
“Great minds are apt to think alike, they say.”
“What do you mean by that? Which are the great minds?”
“Mine and Miss Pomfret-Brown’s. She is counting on your loving and leaving her. That’s why she’ll have Vere back.”
“Even if Vere came back on the staff, I shouldn’t leave the school. I don’t run away from Vere. I never have.”
“Not even to get married?”
“Don’t be silly.”
“Again my mind marches with that of the Matriarch. She reminded me—not that I needed the reminder—how wrong-headed, obstinate, proud and cussed you are.”
“Another cup of tea?”
“And she suggested that I should beat you.”
“If you’ve quite finished, perhaps we could discuss the business matter which you mentioned.”
“Oh, that? Yes. We were wondering whether you would be prepared to sell Little Monkshood to the Society. You did say something about it, if you remember.”
“I’ve changed my mind.”
“Even if you are going to be married?”
“Once and for all . . .”
“Once, and, I hope, for all. I am not in favour of divorce.”
“Are you ever serious? If you’ve had enough tea, let’s go. I have to take prep. at six.”
Timothy took leave of her at the school gates.
“All I can say, apart from au revoir, is what the Arabs say.” He took off his hat. “My head, my hand, and my heart at your feet. You might write it in your diary, will you? I should like you to keep it in mind.”
“Fancy having Vere Pallis ba
ck again!” said Mavis.
“Not till next term,” said Caroline.
“It was perfectly sickening, the way we all had to clap when Miss Salter told us,” said Stephanie.
“My parents had a letter in the Easter holidays,” said Gillian. “We’re going to have a proper lab. It’s to be out in the grounds somewhere. I suppose it will cost the earth. My father says it will, and that means the fees will go up. He says what do girls want with a lab., anyway. He’s terribly unwith it.”
“Before they move all the stuff out of the present lab.,” said Connie Moosedeer, “we ought to help ourselves to what we shall want for Guy Fawkes Day.”
“We shall be in Lower Four.” said Sandra. “Only kids keep Guy Fawkes Day. I’ll tell you what, though. We never really took the spell off Little Monkshood. Mr. Herring stopped us. We ought to do that before it’s too late.”
“Too late for what?”
“There’s a notice in the local paper. It’s going to be open to the public next Saturday and so on, for ever and ever.”
“But it’s all locked up. We could never get in before next Saturday.” said Veronica.
“We could get in on next Saturday.” Sandra pointed out, “and I vote we do.”
“What for? It’s going to cost half-a-crown each.”
“We needn’t all go. I’ll have to, because I was chief witch, and you’ll have to come, I suppose, Veronica, because we initiated you specially, and Connie can be the third, if she likes.”
“I’ll be the third.” said Gillian.
“No, you’ll muck things up. You’ll try to be boss, and you can’t be, because I am. Now, three half-crowns, that’s seven and six, so that’s a shilling all round, and I don’t mind giving the extra sixpence because I’m the leader.”
“It said children half-price. I saw the notice,” said Connie Moosedeer.
“All the better. Sixpence each, and ninepence for me.”
“I don’t see why those who aren’t going should pay sixpence,” argued Gillian.
“You can have my place, Gillian. I don’t want to go,” said Veronica.
Your Secret Friend (Timothy Herring) Page 22