Bismarck Herrings (Timothy Herring)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “I suppose not. Are we going over to Herrings tomorrow?”

  “Yes, if you like. The clearing-up ought to be nearly finished by now. The pond is the big job, but I left orders with the contractors, so they’ll be getting on with it.”

  “And it is going to be turned into a swimming pool, isn’t it?”

  “It depends upon whether we’re going to keep the place or whether I put it up for auction.”

  “I shall be terribly disappointed if it passes right out of our hands, but, even if it does, wouldn’t a swimming pool help to bump up the price?”

  “Yes, to an extent which very few people would be willing to consider.”

  “Oh, I see. Tim, why do you hate the house so much?”

  “It’s so damned ugly. It’s a zombie of a house.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, it’s got all the fixings—great hall with minstrels’ gallery, stone-built undercroft (which must have cost a packet in a countryside where the only stone is flint), Elizabethan chamber complete with fine oriel window, long gallery turned into a library, the mediæval kitchens (when we’ve turned my great-uncle’s little suite back to its original use), newel stair—it ought to be marvellous and right up my street, but it isn’t. Somehow, it’s all lifeless and wrong.”

  “Well, pull it down, then. It isn’t scheduled as a building which has to be preserved. Let’s build the country cottage we talked about, because now we’ve got the motor-cruiser it seems such a pity to let the whole place go.”

  “All right. We’ll trail over there tomorrow . . . Oh, no! We can’t. I’m awfully sorry. I can’t go anywhere tomorrow. I forgot to tell you. Miss Coningsby-Layton is coming to give us the once-over and get a briefing from you. She’s going to housekeep for me until Christmas.”

  “Oh, Tim, what a good idea! When do you expect her?”

  “I got her on the ’phone—she’s still at the warden’s lodging—and she thinks she can get over here soon after three. She’s got her own car. I said we’d put her up for the night. She can’t drive over here and back to Lady Matilda’s Rest in one day. At least, I suppose she could but I wouldn’t like it. Is that all right?”

  “Yes, of course it’s all right. They’ve broken up the almshouses rather suddenly, haven’t they?”

  “Well, there’s been a lot of publicity of a very unwelcome sort, and that has put pressure on the council. You know the sort of thing people say in the case of a woman like Mrs. Dasti. ‘Poor old thing! Murdered in her own back yard, and nobody to care whether she lived or died!’ I had a talk with the council chap who gave evidence and he told me that they’d had anonymous letters and signed complaints, too. People love it if they can wax all indignant. To my way of thinking, Mrs. Dasti was a dope-pedlar, but that wouldn’t weigh with Indignant and Hands Off Our Old Age Pensioners and all the others who write in at the drop of a hat without even bothering to find out the facts.”

  “Be reasonable, Tim. Nobody has ever said that she peddled dope, and it’s a good thing if people do stick up for old age pensioners. I’m sure they have a very hard life of it with prices going up all the time.”

  “Too right, darling. I bow my diminished head.”

  “Even you don’t know that about her—the dope, I mean. It’s only a guess and even then there’s nothing really to go on.”

  “True, true. Don’t rub it in. All the same, I shall be interested to hear Miss Coningsby-Layton’s views.”

  “Do you think she’ll be able to find her way here? We’re rather off the map.”

  “I promised to meet her in Stroud, or, rather, on the edge of Rodborough Common, and guide her here. I shall take the car, of course. Do you want to come?”

  Miss Coningsby-Layton was only too anxious to discuss the inquest. She also had news about her own future.

  “The council have offered me the post of curator of the museum when it is established, and that will be as soon as they can get the collection re-housed in the dining-room and kitchens at Lady Matilda’s Rest,” she said. “At present it is kept at the public library, where there is not enough room for it, so that a great number of the items have to be stored in the cellars there and are never on view. This appointment means that I shall be allowed to keep my present quarters and so, I’m afraid, Mr. Herring, that, after all, I shall not be able to accept your most kind and considerate offer of a position in your household, since I believe it would be unwise to give the council reason to think that I am able to find employment outside of their jurisdiction, and, of course, the post you so kindly offered me would have been a temporary one. I’m so sorry, and so very grateful to you for your kindness.”

  “I quite understand,” said Timothy, secretly thankful that he would not need to explain the introduction of a housekeeper to his good-tempered but highly sensitive cook, Mrs. Nealons, who, in fact, did the housekeeping with very little assistance from Alison. “I’m so glad the council has realised what it owes you for your years of service.”

  “They might easily have taken a different view,” said Miss Coningsby-Layton. “Of course, I was told that the fact that my nephew is keeper of the archives at the headquarters of the Society for the Preservation of Buildings of Historic Interest has been a deciding factor in procuring me the appointment, so I am more than grateful to Phisbe. The inquest on poor Mrs. Dasti might have predisposed the council to blame me for all the very unwelcome publicity consequent on her death, but they have taken a broad and charitable view and have absolved me completely from any charge of negligence.”

  “I should hope so, too!” said Timothy. “I suppose you were out on the Saturday afternoon when the matron saw those men on the roof of one of the cottages?”

  “Certainly I was, otherwise I should soon have enquired their business. I always went out on a Saturday. It was the only time for private shopping and a visit to my hairdresser, except for a quarterly meeting with the Ways and Means Committee to make my report to the council, and that took place on fourth Wednesdays and in the evening. I don’t think anybody truthfully could accuse me of negligence, but, of course, scapegoats have to be found and I would not have been surprised to find my head on the block about this dreadful business. What I keep asking myslf, Mr. Herring, is the reason for Mrs. Dasti’s death. Who would want to kill an old age pensioner living in an almshouse? It seems so senseless, as well as being so cruel.”

  “What did you know about Mrs. Dasti prior to her entry into Lady Matilda’s Rest? It seems to me that there must have been something in her past to account for her murder, unless, of course, she was consorting with criminals while she was actually in residence with you. Did you ever suspect that your old ladies had the means of leaving their cottages secretly by way of that broken fence?”

  “Well, I guessed, of course,” said Miss Coningsby-Layton, surprising Timothy by making this admission, “and I was rather worried about it. It seemed better to know whether they were in or out. All the same, I sympathise with their attitude and I have tried, on a number of occasions, to get an obsolete and irritating rule altered—I mean the rule which made them sign on and off at the porter’s lodge. However, I always met with the most determined opposition from council members. We are told that all power corrupts, but, apart from absolute power corrupting absolutely—Hitler was a case in point—it is my experience that a very little power in the hands of uneducated, petty officials has a most unfortunate effect on them. They cannot bear not to exercise their authority and, because their power is small, they exercise it only at the expense of those least able to resist it. I am not only referring to council members, but also to the porter.”

  “Apart from knowing that your old ladies had the means of leaving the almshouses without going past the porter’s lodge, did you ever suspect that they might have clandestine visitors?” Timothy enquired.

  “No, of course not. My views about that would have been different, and had I been in charge, say, of delinquent girls, I should have made certain that no such thi
ng was possible, but who would ever think of such a thing in connection with respectable old women, all of them over seventy years of age? But you were asking me what I knew about Mrs. Dasti prior to her admission to Lady Matilda’s Rest. I knew nothing apart from what was on the official papers. I have been looking them up—the council has a duplicate set, of course—and there is nothing helpful in them, so far as I am able to determine. However, I have brought them with me, because I knew you would be interested, otherwise you would not have taken the trouble to attend the inquest.”

  The papers offered no information which would support Timothy’s theory. Mrs. Dasti had been born Matilda Matchlock and had married a man named Narayan Dasti in 1928. He had been born in England and had never left the country, so far as was known. His parents had come over as servants to an English family who had returned home from India and whose houseboy and ayah they were. On the death of their employers they had taken service at an Indian restaurant and their son had been educated at a school in Ipswich. He had been apprenticed to a cobbler, for he had given up his parents’ religion and become a member of the Church of England, so that dealings with leather—or what approximated to leather—no longer contaminated him. The couple had had two children, both of whom had died in infancy, and had moved soon after their marriage to the town whose council supported Lady Matilda’s Rest.

  On the outbreak of the 1939 war, Narayan Dasti, then thirty-two years of age, had joined up and was invalided out in 1943. He had been mentioned in despatches and had been awarded a D.C.M. His widow had been taken on as cleaner at the local school and had applied, at the age of sixty-five, for admission to the almshouses. She had been elected in the following year and had been in residence for five years before she was killed. It was a straightforward account of an apparently blameless life. Of any suggestion that either she or her husband had been associated with malefactors of any kind there was none.

  Timothy handed back the papers without commenting on them except to say:

  “According to the evidence at the inquest, Mrs. Dasti appears to have been a rather solitary and secretive woman.”

  “Yes, I think she believed the others despised her because she had married an Indian. I’m sure she was wrong, but you know how people get ideas into their heads that no amount of argument can dispel,” said Miss Coningsby-Layton.

  “What about this allegation that on Saturdays, when the others were spending their pocket-money, she had something to sell in the town?”

  “I think it was simply a spiteful remark.”

  “Spiteful, maybe, but mustn’t there have been some truth in it? It was remarked on at the inquest, and it is very dangerous to tell lies when you are under oath.”

  “An ignorant old woman may not have considered that.”

  “Look, Miss Coningsby-Layton, I don’t think there can be any doubt but that Mrs. Dasti did have clandestine visitors. Why shouldn’t they have brought her something to flog in the town on Saturdays?” suggested Timothy.

  “But what?”

  “I had my own ideas about that, but, from the report on Mrs. Dasti which you have just shown me, they don’t make as much sense as I thought they would, so I’d better not disclose them. How did you find Mrs. Dasti’s conduct while she was a member of your little community?”

  “Quite satisfactory. She would not have been allowed to remain with us for five years otherwise.”

  “I suppose it was left to you to turn a blind eye when you thought it advisable?”

  “Well, no, Mr. Herring, I cannot agree about that. I was in a position of trust and the council’s rules were strict and I followed them strictly.”

  “Even though you knew some of the old ladies some of the time went out and came in by the back door?”

  “There was no actual rule about that,” said Miss Coningsby-Layton, with a slight smile, “and I had made several applications to the council to have that fence repaired. I imagine, though, that a child visitor would have had to drown before anything would have been done about it. Mr. Fortesque Aily always blocked that particular reform.”

  “Fortescue Aily? Who’s he?”

  “A very elegant and eloquent member of the General Purposes Committee, and a great friend of Mr. Lorrimere, who has a house and a small estate on the creek down-river from here, some miles on the further side of the mill.”

  “Really? Then he must be a sort of neighbour of mine. I wonder whether your nephew has ever mentioned to you that I was recently left a property called Warlock Hall?”

  “I have never heard him speak of it.”

  “Oh, well, perhaps he didn’t know. No reason why he should, now I come to think of it. Perhaps, one of these days, I’ll look up this Mr. Aily. What manner of man is he—apart from his elegance and eloquence and his no-doubt worthy ambition to save the rate-payers’ money, I mean? And what of my neighbour Lorrimere?”

  “Oh, he is fairly young—in his early thirties, I should think—very tall and rather thin. It was owing largely to his representations that Mrs. Dasti obtained her nomination to Lady Matilda’s Rest, or so I heard. He has great influence locally, being a landowner and such a particular friend of Mr. Aily.”

  “Oh, indeed? This might indicate that my theory is not so far-fetched, after all.”

  “You don’t think Mr. Lorrimere is our tall thin Third Man, do you?” asked Alison, when they were in bed that night.

  “I’ve known more unlikely things. His house may be the ‘my place’ referred to on the night the three of them muscled in to Warlock Hall when I listened to their conversation. Anyway, when I call on him I shall know, because I got a very good look at him, both then, by candle light, and also when we spotted them in their boat off Christchurch.”

  “Was he at the inquest?”

  “Not so far as I know, but I was too much interested in the proceedings to bother about the audience, so he may have been. I should think it unlikely, though. The council had their solicitor present to watch their interests and there was also the town clerk, or someone, who gave evidence. I shouldn’t think any members of the council or their close friends would have bothered. All the same, if Lorrimere is my man, I think I would have spotted him more or less automatically, if you know what I mean.”

  They saw Miss Coningsby-Layton off on the following day immediately after lunch, went for a drive around some of the Cotswold villages, spent a quiet Sunday, and on the Monday Timothy took his wife back to the school. The last thing she said to him before they parted was:

  “Don’t call on Mr. Lorrimere without me. A man needs his wife on these formal occasions.”

  “And on all others,” said Timothy gallantly. “Look, I can’t find it in my heart to ask you never to leave me again in favour of Sabrina and her blasted school, but please don’t do it too often.”

  “I don’t suppose I shall ever do it again. Will you take me if you go to visit Mr. Lorrimere?”

  “Other things being equal . . .”

  “Which they never are. All right! Go and vet him on your own! Now, then, what else do I think you might get up to when I’m not here to keep an eye on you?”

  “I don’t know. I’m afraid your thoughts really do sometimes lie too deep for tears.”

  “I did cry the first night I was away from you at the beginning of the term, if you really want to know.”

  “Oh, lord! Did you?”

  “Yes, but it was all right. I think P.-B. must have guessed, because she put her head in and said, “Whisky, ginger wine, and sherry in the cupboard. Help yourself.” So I giggled and helped myself pretty lavishly and that was the end of that.”

  “Tired Nature’s sweet restorer, a nice whisky mac, eh? I’m ashamed of you, really I am. Fancy finding comfort in the bottle while I crept away to my lonely bed unloved, unhonoured, and unsung!”

  “And also undrunk, I hope, but never mind that now. Look, you haven’t answered my question and I’ve got to get out of this car in a minute to go and take prep., and as the prep. room i
s immediately above P.-B.”s sitting-room I’d better get along before the rioting begins.”

  “Don’t tell me that girls throw inky darts and commit general mayhem when the eye of authority is elsewhere.”

  “No, but they make a good deal of noise. Anyway, now everybody uses ball-point, I shouldn’t think even boys throw inky darts any more, do they?”

  “Oh, well, there are always pins and penknives, not to mention flickable rulers and the sharp point of a pair of compasses.”

  “Our boys don’t go in for that sort of thing, I’m perfectly certain. Gentlemen, one and all.”

  “God bless your innocent heart! Well, you’d better push off before Ermyntrude snips the elastic of Geraldine’s reach-me-downs and a free-for-all ensues.”

  “They all wear tights, except when it’s P.E. or games, and then they wear shorts on a foolproof waistband, so sucks to you, and keep your schoolboy humour to entertain your bird-witted friends.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The Ghost Materialises

  “Quiet yet; but if ye make

  Any noise, they both will wake,

  And such spirits raise, ’twill then

  Trouble Death to lay agen.”

  Upon a Wife That Died Mad With Jealousie

  Timothy had a clear idea of what he intended to do. He had obtained from Miss Coningsby-Layton the addresses of the two old almswomen who had given evidence (and the coroner a headache) at the resumed inquest, for Miss Coningsby-Layton had insisted upon being told where all her former flock were billeted and had promised to visit any who expressed a desire to see her again.