Bismarck Herrings (Timothy Herring)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “Some time,” he said, “when it’s convenient, I think you’ll have to invite me to look over it.”

  “I hoped you’d stay long enough to have a look at it today, but I suppose you’ve got to get back. I’d have liked you to see it before my chaps get busy tidying it up, but they begin next week, and I suppose you couldn’t get down here again before then?”

  “Afraid not. By the time we tie up I think I shall have to leave you, and then there’s the committee meeting to prepare for, apart from a school prize-giving I’ve promised to attend, complete with speech and compliments, and an Old Boys’ reunion and a couple of formal dinners at which I’m supposed to be the guest of honour.”

  “See what it is to be famous and in demand! Will you take over the controls? She only needs two and a half feet of water, so we shan’t run aground unless you turn her into the bank.”

  Apart from the illimitable sky, there was nothing to see but the marshes, their vast expanse and unending sameness broken only by an occasional windmill or the incidence of a small stream or an even smaller brook meandering its way towards the river. There were sedge and rushes in varying shades of green and russet and, as the boat drew nearer to the estuary, fields of sea-lavender turned to a dull grey-green, the sea-level saltings.

  At the last bend of the river before it reached the island there was a slight change in the scenery. To starboard the salt-marshes became a chessboard marked off by little rivers, but to port there was a small park on an unexpected rise. Among its trees a compact Georgian house could be seen and, in line with it, seeming to be not more than half a mile away, another of about the same size and date. Between them, on the riverside in the middle of the last bend, was a wooden jetty in good condition and with a motor-cruiser, larger than Timothy’s own, moored alongside.

  The president took the left-hand fork round the island and the boat went almost due north along an arm which skirted more of the sea-marshes. At the northern tip of the island he said regretfully,

  “Afraid we shan’t get right out to sea today. I see by the chart we’ve another five miles or more to do before we get to the end of this channel and round the sandbank. I suggest we circumnavigate the island and leave the rest for another time.”

  As they rounded the point, the flat and strangely-shaped island was to starboard, while on the port side, between the boat and the open sea (which was plainly visible from the deck of the cruiser) stretched the five-mile spit of the sandbank which the president had mentioned. Through the glasses Timothy could even see the end of it, where, at Blithe Weir Point (as it was marked on the chart) the narrow mouth of Warlock Haven entered the bleak North Sea.

  The president brought the boat through the choppy water where the two streams met at the southern base of the island, and at the head of the creek they cruised at about five knots between the close-set banks of the river. Once past Timothy’s broken jetty, the scenery became less monotonous. The sunshine slanted golden on the side of a distant church tower. Small boats, tied up to willows, were reflected in shimmering water. Woods came down to the river. There were mallards, a family of swans, the dipping white heads of sooty-feathered coots, and an occasional water-vole which, disturbed by the boat, left a bubbling wake and widening ripples as it swam across the water to the shelter of the oozy bank of the stream.

  The river wound and turned. Occasionally a tributary, not much wider than a brook, entered it in an overshadowing of reeds. In the distance there was a farm, and beyond it the landscape became less uniformly flat. More woods, slight rises sustaining pasture, another farm, and, further off, a village, came into view. At a white-painted mill, where a notice gave warning that, beyond it, there was insufficient depth for vessels drawing more than two feet of water, Timothy put about and the cruiser came downstream again on the almost imperceptible flow. Timothy’s rented moorings were about a mile and a half up-river from the broken jetty which belonged to Warlock Hall, and were on the same side of the stream. He and the president disembarked and walked a couple of hundred yards or so to where they had parked their cars.

  Before he took his leave, the president looked around him and then gazed downstream towards the estuary.

  “So Alison likes this countryside?” he said. “I’m rather surprised. It’s not much like either Dorset or the Cotswolds, is it?”

  Timothy looked out over the marshes and up at the illimitable sky. On the ground were great patches of marsh-ragwort, blisteringly yellow, tall reeds with leaves like swords and ragged heads like fluttering, tattered pennons on the ends of broken lances. There were osier willows, stunted greyish alders, some curious pink flowers of which he did not know the name, and, over all, the relentless, enormous bowl of blue and grey, the unending, incomprehensible, and strangely luminous sky of the East Anglian countryside.

  “She does like it here,” he said. “She wants to spend part of the year at Warlock Hall. She wants to re-name it Herrings. But I don’t know, I’m sure. So far, I hate the place. Apart from the house itself, which is not only as ugly as sin but is probably steeped in it as well, there’s such a damned draught in the place. So far, I haven’t traced its origin. In fact, it isn’t so much a draught as an area of bitter cold which seems to seep into your bones and leave you half-paralysed.”

  “Sounds like a haunting,” said the president lightly. “Is Warlock Hall supposed to house a ghost?”

  “According to the caretaker, yes, it is. Personally I couldn’t care less—well, not much less”—he remembered the cry which had shaken his self-confidence about ghosts—“but I must find out what causes this cold spot and put it right before we can think of staying in the beastly place.”

  “Let me know how you get on. Well, see you at the meeting on the twenty-third. Love to Alison. Good-bye.”

  Timothy stood back and watched until the president’s car was out of sight, then he returned to his boat and tidied up, poured himself another drink, and then thought of driving home. By the time he went into the cockpit again he had changed his mind. He made himself some supper and then found himself with an urge to go to Warlock Hall and find out whether it was tenanted again by the three men. If it was, he thought he would go to the police in the morning and complain that Warlock Hall was being used by squatters. The palliasses were proof enough of this for all practical purposes. He could give Jabez’s name and a pretty accurate description of the other two. It would then be up to the authorities to take such steps as seemed good to them, and the matter of the smuggling, if that was what the men were engaged in, would be investigated.

  By the time he had come to these conclusions the sun was beginning to set over the marshes, and was reflected in lurid red and deep gold in the cuts and ditches. The river was already filling up with cotton-wool mist and the evening was turning chilly. Timothy put on a dark sweater and an anorak, pulled the monk’s-hood cowl of the latter over his head, picked up his heavy torch, left the cruiser, and drove to the decrepit jetty. He parked his car again behind the sheds and set off on the three-quarter-mile walk to the Hall.

  There was a lamp in the gatehouse window, so he approached cautiously and slipped quietly in under the archway. There were no lights. Not even a flickering candle was showing from the mansion, so he felt reasonably certain that it was untenanted, since it was still too early for anybody to be asleep. However, to make doubly sure, he crept round the entire outside of the house before he put his key in the lock of the front door. The fact that it was not bolted increased his confidence that nobody except the ghost (if it existed) was inside.

  Torch in hand, he began to make the rounds of the stark, forbidding mansion. The air, especially on the minstrels’ gallery, seemed even colder than before. Moreover, as he stood on its threshold, he was startled to hear the sounds of somebody moving about. He stood very still and held his breath. After about ten seconds, as near as he could judge, he heard the sounds again. He listened, straining his ears. How long he stood and waited he hardly knew, but his first uncomfortab
le reaction was soon replaced by a mixture of amusement and annoyance. The damned cheek of it, he thought, to be using the house again as a base so soon after he had disturbed them!

  “I think we’d better have a show-down,” he said to himself. Very quietly he nipped down the balustered main staircase, traversed the cul-de-sac passage into which it led, and followed its open end until he reached the short screens passage. In his great-uncle’s living-room there was an umbrella stand in which several of the old gentleman’s walking-sticks had been left. Timothy tried each one of them for weight and, having selected the heaviest, made his way back to the gallery. He paused on the threshold and listened again, but the sounds were not repeated. Only one person, he judged, had been moving about, but it did not follow that only one alien presence was in the house.

  Prepared for trouble, but determined to confront the intruder or intruders, he gripped the heavy stick and, torch in his left hand, he began his search by descending from the great hall into the undercroft. Here his first surprise awaited him. The palliasses had all disappeared. The stone floor was as bare as when the builders had first laid it down. He flashed his torch into every corner to make certain of this, but every vestige of beds and bedding had gone. He went quietly up the spiral stair again, inspected the state bedroom in which he and Alison had slept, paused to listen for a repetition of the sounds he had heard, but could distinguish nothing.

  He had received an impression that the sounds had come from the minstrels’ gallery, so he made that his next objective. Creeping through the library, he gained the landing from which the straight Tudor staircase descended, and stood at the entrance to the gallery. He allowed his torch to play on its walls and on its solid front and was again aware of its extreme coldness. In fact, as he stepped on to its boarded floor, it seemed to him colder than ever, and, what was more, he thought he could feel the icy blast of a knife-like draught. It blew about his head, from which he had pushed back the hood of the anorak and, looking for its origin by the light of the torch, he spotted a finger-width opening in the panelling of the back wall.

  “This house becomes more interesting as time goes on,” said Timothy, under his breath. “A bolt-hole of sorts, no doubt.”

  He inserted four fingers when he had laid down his walking-stick, and pulled hard. Without a sound, a sliding-door came back and he could see a stone floor broken by a flight of steps. He knew that the flooring must be on the top of the screens passage, but where the steps could lead was a mystery which could only be solved by trial and possible error. He picked up the heavy walking-stick after he had pulled the hood of the anorak round his head again and descended the steep flight of stairs. At the bottom of these was a tiny landing with a door to the righthand side of it, but there was also another flight of steps. Making a mental note of the position of the door, he went on down.

  “Talk about Alice and the rabbit-hole,” he thought, “I wonder whether I’m dreaming?”

  At the foot of this second flight of stairs was a passage which sloped gradually upwards. The further end of it was blocked by another door, but this, he found, when he played his torch upon it, could be opened from the inside. Beyond it the passage widened out to form a small, square, compact room containing a cupboard, a two-tiered bunk, a camp bed, and a large bucket. Two tin hats of the type sold to civilians during the war lay on the topmost bunk, and in the cupboard were three civilian-type gasmasks. Timothy had come upon his great-uncle’s air-raid shelter.

  He felt let down, in one sense. The stairs and passages held no secrets, after all. They were simply a war-time safety measure. The passage, however, continued for perhaps ten yards or so until it reached yet another door. This had a two-inch circular hole in it through which, by the light of his torch, Timothy could see the iron latch going across on the other side of the portal. He inserted a forefinger, lifted the latch, opened the door, and found himself confronted by one more flight of steps. At the top of these another door, which could be opened by the same simple means as the last one, brought him to the top of the gatehouse stairs—in other words, to what was the entrance to Mrs. Gee’s partitioned-off rooms.

  “So that’s how the milk got into the coconut,” thought Timothy. “So easy, when you know how. No need to be seen entering the mansion by the front door. I suppose Jabez—if it was Jabez I heard—slipped back to the gatehouse this way.” Determined to carry the matter further, he hammered on the stout and nail-studded door. A scared Mrs. Gee opened it, the light from behind her outlining her homely cottage-loaf figure.

  “Who is it?” she asked. “If it’s Jabez you’re wanting, he ain’t ’ere.”

  Timothy realised that his own figure was in darkness and that, to her, his face was probably no more than a white blur. For this reason he believed her assertion, but decided that he would make doubly sure.

  “Oh, dear,” he said. “I was rather counting on him. I’m in a spot of trouble again. My boat this time.”

  “Oh, it’s you again! Well, you did give me a start! Anyways, I wouldn’t have thought you could do much about a boat at this time of night,” said Mrs. Gee, sharply. “But, there! It’s no business of mine. Jabez is away down the creek. You’d ought to know that.” It was clear to Timothy that she had not recognised his voice. She must have mistaken him for the tall, thin, young man whose accent was much the same as his own.

  “Why ought I to have known it?” he asked. This time she appeared to realise who he was. She spoke in a startled tone.

  “Why, bless us all, if it isn’t Mr. Herring! I do beg your pardon, sir, I’m sure. I was mistakin’ you for a mate of my boy’s which I was ’alf expectin’. What can I do for you, sir?”

  “Nothing, if Jabez isn’t available,” said Timothy. “The fact is that I’ve been trying out my new cruiser, and I think something has fouled the propeller.”

  “That river do be full of weed, sir, but not even Jabez couldn’t do nothing for you in the dark. You don’t seem to be one of the lucky ones with machinery, do you, sir?”

  “No, I’m afraid I’m not. All the same, if I could have a word with Jabez just to explain what the trouble is . . .”

  “Which you cannot do, sir, my boy bein’ absent from ’ome on ’is lawful occasions.”

  “Oh, I see. Well, that’s a blow. When do you expect him back?”

  “Which I could not put upon myself to say, sir. It might be tonight, but I don’t reely think so. Tomorrow evenin’, at the very earliest, is what I would charge myself with supposin’, if I was asked to make a stipulation. Was you thinkin’ of spendin’ the night at the ’All, sir?”

  “Possibly. There’s nothing I can do about the boat until I get some help. I thought Jabez might like the job, but if he isn’t available first thing in the morning I’ll get somebody at the moorings to see to it.”

  “The ’ud be best, sir. Well, I don’t know what I’m thinkin’ about, keepin’ you standin’ at the door. If you’d care to come in, sir, I’ll make you a nice cuppa cocoa.”

  “No, I won’t stay, thanks very much.” He was anxious to get back inside the Hall. If it had not been Jabez moving about on the first floor, he had an overwhelming desire to find out who it was. He shone his torch, clattered rather noisily down the inside stone stair of the gatehouse, banged the outer door, and then waited in the shadow of the gatehouse archway. Having allowed enough time for Mrs. Gee to settle down, he climbed the stone steps again, noiselessly this time, and returned to Warlock Hall by way of the air-raid shelter and the minstrels’ gallery. The sliding door which he had left open was now shut.

  “So there is somebody here!” thought Timothy. “If it isn’t Jabez, who is it?” He made a careful search of the first floor and the ground floor, for the sliding door had opened easily enough, but found no trace of any intruder. The obvious explanation seemed to be that whoever it was must be up on the attic floor and was probably one of the immigrants. Oh, well, the police could be informed later on. Illegal immigrants were their business, not his.
He walked back to his car, deciding to drive home through the night, and was about to unlock the door to the driver’s seat when he heard the sound of a boat’s engine. He peered out from behind the shelter of the sheds and could make out a dark shape moving downstream towards the estuary.

  The craft, whatever it was, was moving without lights, but in the dimness he thought he could make out that it must be a cabin cruiser of a type common enough higher up the river not to excite remark or any particular interest. Had it carried lights he would have thought nothing of it, unusual though it was to move so small a craft down-river instead of leaving it moored for the night. However, with his suspicions of the smugglers in the fore-front of his mind, he left his car, took the road to where he had moored his boat, embarked, and followed in the wake of the other boat towards the sea. There could be one good reason, if he was right about the smuggling, for it to be beating against the tide, which must be running nearer the estuary, and that was to meet a ship which was coming in on the flood.

  He had no hope of overtaking the other cruiser. He continued the chase, however, cutting out his own engine at intervals and listening for the sound of the quarry, but only for a matter of seconds each time, for his boat, as it reached the tideway, yawed and fell away, slapped at and slewed sideways by the incoming water. Four times he cut out in a distance of about a mile and a half, and the fourth time, keeping his craft’s head to the small waves which now came rolling in, he had the satisfaction of hearing the engine of the other boat. He let his own craft drift towards the bank, fending her off with the boathook from actually going aground, and while he was doing this the engine of the other boat stopped.

  There was only one place, so far as he remembered from the map, where a ship could have tied up, unless she was braving the shoals where the creek parted to include the island he and the president had circumnavigated, and this was at a stretch of hard known as the Old Quay. It was probably still in use, because there must be (he thought) sufficient depth of water on that side of the channel to take ships of fairly considerable draught. Possibly, however, the Old Quay was more of a shelter in bad weather than a place to unload cargo, for again, according to the map, there was no longer a road to it which was suitable for lorries.