Bismarck Herrings (Timothy Herring)

by Gladys Mitchell

  Mrs. Plumb had gone, as she had stated, to live with a married daughter in Ipswich. Mrs. Baines, pending her transfer to the new council almshouses which were not completed, was established in a caravan on a site owned by the council near the seaside village of Abbotts Greysand, five miles from Warlock Hall as the crow flies, but nearer twenty by road because of the creek and the marshes.

  Timothy tossed a coin to decide which of the two old women he should visit first—heads Mrs. Baines, tails Mrs. Plumb. It came down heads and, as he had been brought up never to challenge the result of the toss, he drove from the Cotswolds to Abbots Greysand on the morning following his parting with Alison, trusting that he would find the old lady at home and that she would be willing to talk to him.

  He felt that he had ample excuse for interesting himself in the circumstances of Mrs. Dasti’s death because he was determined to find out whether he was right in supposing that it had some connection with the activities of the three men at Warlock Hall. If it had, he thought he would have a case to put before the police. If it had not, the matter, so far as he was concerned, was closed, and the police could be left to solve the mystery of the murder in their own way. Only on one point did he feel doubtful about his theory. He could not decide whether the boat he and Alison had seen off Christchurch could have got back to the creek in time for the men to remove the chimney-pot from one of the almshouse cottages on the following Saturday before they murdered Mrs. Dasti on the Saturday night or in the early hours of the Sunday morning. Questioning the two witnesses he was going to interview would do nothing, he supposed, to solve this problem, but at least there were some things they could tell him.

  Mrs. Baines appeared at first to be more than willing to tell him everything he wanted to know, so far as this lay in her power and within the scope of her knowledge. To begin with, having welcomed Timothy and introduced him to another old woman who shared the caravan with her, she repeated almost word for word her opinion of Lady Matilda’s Rest, its hospital matron and, above all, her cookery partner, Miss Melsom.

  “But I’m shut of her, thank God,” she concluded. “They’ve put her to Kitty’s Pity, and serve her right.”

  “Kitty’s Pity?”

  “Ah. That’s what I calls St. Catherine’s Piety, a church place over by Wilmhaven, and a nasty old place that is. Nothing but one big dormitory, that isn’t, with a black and red cloak to put on when you goes into the town, and a tall ’at, the like of what witches wears. Give that Lucy Melsom a broomstick and you’d never know the difference.”

  “Why don’t you like her?”

  “They only takes virgins there,” said Mrs. Baines, not entirely disregarding the question. “What I says is as virgins is an affront unto the law of nature, however pleasin’ to the saints above.”

  “St. Paul in particular, I take it.”

  “Oh, him! Get married if you can’t do without. That’s what he said. When I gets up there I’m a-goin’ to ask him one question and one only. ‘Then why is it called the ’oly estate?’ I’m a-goin’ to demand of him. I’m lookin’ forward to hearin’ what he got to say to that one. What do you think?”

  “Yes, it should be interesting,” Timothy agreed. “So you think he would approve of Miss Coningsby-Layton.”

  “Miss Coningsby-Layton? Oh, the warden. Mind you, she was an improvement on the other silly bitch we ’ad when first I went there seven years ago. Ah, she was a nasty mess, she was, and no mistake. Threatened to report you to the council as soon as look at you, she did, and three reports and you was out, she went and told us. First meetin’ we ever ’ad with ’er, that was.”

  “Good gracious me! Were many turned out during her time?” asked Timothy.

  “Nary a one,” replied Mrs. Baines, with a horrid chuckle. “Me, I got the girls together and I says, ‘Mark my words,’ I says, ‘she ain’t a-going to turn nobody away. ’Cos why?’ I says. ‘Because, for one thing, it would look as if she was a dead an’ gone failure at ’er job,’ I says, ‘and, for another, the council would ’ave to find somewheres else to put us, and that sort of worry ain’t a-going to soften ’em up towards ’er,’ I says. Course, there was some as was afraid of their own shadders, like you always find, and they licked ’er boots, the blacklegs!—but the rest of us played merry ’ell. My ’usband ’ad bin a shop stooard in the motors, so I learnt a thing or two, I can tell you.”

  “So I suppose it was before Miss Coningsby-Layton’s time that the back fence got broken down. Was that the result of fair wear and tear, or did it, so to speak, receive assistance?”

  “That’s tellin’, ain’t it?” She looked at him craftily. “Look,” she said, “how much is it worth to you?”

  “Is what worth to me?”

  “Oh, come orf it! You knows what I means. First you comes moseyin’ about around the garding while your lady wife goes into me cottage with the warden, and then you goes to that inquest on Mattie Dasti, poor old cow, and now you comes ’ere. Oo sent you, and ’ow did you know where I was? I wasn’t born yesterday, you know. You’re after something, and I know you ain’t police, and if you’re from the newspapers, well, they pays for information about dirty murderers, don’t they?”

  “So, I believe, do the police, if the information is worth having, but they have to be quite sure it is worth having, you know, Mrs. Baines. All the same, I am not a policeman, as you indicate, and I am not a journalist, and you have already told me what I wanted to know.”

  Mrs. Baines stared at him for a few moments while she rehearsed her next remarks, and then she treated him to an outburst of profanity so all-inclusive, incisive, and rhetorical that he leaned back in his chair and listened with critical attention not untinged with envy.

  “Well,” he said, when she seemed to have exhausted herself, “I’ve heard the cox of my college boat, I’ve heard the hooker and some prop forwards in the scrum, I’ve heard cattle-hands and bargees, a costermonger in his cups, a coalman whose mate had dropped a sack of coals on him, and a yachtsman when another bloke cut in and stole his wind, but never in all my puff, Mrs. Baines, have I listened to such a magnificent outburst as yours. By heaven, I envy you your vocabulary.”

  “No ill-feelin’, sir,” she responded, her wrinkled countenance breaking into a most unexpected smile. “I knowed you was a gentleman when you picked up my stitches for me. So you wanted to know all about that broken fence, did you? You got it out of me very clever, I must say. Yes, it was done before the present warden got there, but it took Mattie Dasti to see ’ow the best use could be made of it, and that wasn’t until about a year ago when she ’ad the first of her visitors.”

  “By way of the broken fence?”

  “Oh, no, not the first one. He come there right and proper. That old cow I was tellin’ you about, she made a rule as we was only to ’ave visitors at certain times, like in an ’orspital, but the new warden made it so anybody could come in any time.”

  “Did you see him, this first visitor?”

  “Oh, yes, a little tiddly pea-jacket sort of feller he was, with a face like a monkey. A seafarin’ man, I daresay. Name of Zeekant, which is what I call a funny sort of a name and maybe he never got it from ’is father—if ’e ’ad one.”

  “A relative of hers?”

  “Well, she said ’e were ’er nevvy, for what that’s worth. Anyway, ’e couldn’t ’ave been ’er fancy man, not at ’er age. And we never seen ’im again.”

  “Did he bring anything with him?”

  “Ah. ’E brought ’er a big bag o’ sweets. She ’anded ’em round, I’ll say that much for ’er, but they was mostly stickjaw, so some of us never ’ad none. I reckon she told ’im the kind to bring, so’s she wouldn’t need to give away too many.”

  “What sort of bag was it?”

  Mrs. Baines stared at him.

  “Why, just a bag. What you gettin’ at?” she enquired.

  “Oh, nothing,” said Timothy. “Did she hand the sweets round immediately she got them?”

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nbsp; “No, not ’til the man ’ad gorn. Anyway, I reckon she wanted time to pick out a few for ’erself before she started actin’ bountiful.”

  “How did the man get there?”

  “Now ’ow should I know that? Walked over the fields from the town, I reckon.”

  “Did she ever have any visitors who came by boat?”

  “By boat? Not as I ever heard of. Why?”

  “I just thought a boat might have saved him the walk, that’s all. Sailors aren’t usually very keen walkers, I believe.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that.”

  “But she had other visitors, you think, who got to her back door by way of the broken fence. She left her cottage that way, too. Even Miss Coningsby-Layton suspected that.”

  “Well, more than Mattie made use of a back way out and in, so there’s nothing to that . . . Oh, thank you, I’m sure, sir! You wouldn’t have it in silver, would you, sir? There might be questions asked if I went shoppin’ with my mate with a pound note in me purse what she knows I do not ’ave . . . Ah, that’s better. Yes, sir, a fifty and the rest in smaller is all right, not but what I don’t ’ate them nasty clippy bits of fifty things. They ain’t genteel, not to my way of thinkin’, whereas paper ten bob notes was classy and didn’t get mixed up with your two-bob-bits like them nasty cheap little fifties do.”

  Timothy felt he had gained something from Mrs. Baines, but was unlikely to gain any more unless Mrs. Plumb was able and willing to tell him something with which he could confront Mrs. Baines in order that it might either jog her memory or induce her to disclose facts which, so far, she had kept from him. Certainly the description of Mrs. Dasti’s first visitor did not approximate in any way whatever to the appearance of any of his three suspects, but the fact that Mrs. Baines thought he might be a seafaring man was valuable information and must surely have some bearing on the doings at Warlock Hall.

  In the land of creeks and rivers, with the open sea not so very many miles away, a seafaring man visiting the almshouses would have little real significance so far as the inmates were concerned, and they would have had no reason to imagine that the bag of sweets had contained anything else.

  It was in no very hopeful spirit that he set off to contact Mrs. Plumb, and on the journey to see her he was in more than half a mind (supposing that she had nothing useful to tell him) to give up his quest for Mrs. Dasti’s murderer so long as Warlock Hall ceased to be a rendez-vous for smugglers and a nest for their birds of passage.

  Before he could get to Ipswich to see Mrs. Plumb, however, there was a strange little interlude introduced first of all by Alison. The week-end which followed his interview with Mrs. Baines promised to be so fine and warm that when he collected Alison from school on the Friday afternoon she said, “Why shouldn’t we go to Herrings for a couple of days and take Tom and Diana? We could all sleep on the boat and go for a trip up and down the river. I’m sure they’d like it.”

  “All right, if that’s what you want,” said Timothy. “I suppose I shan’t get any peace until you’ve been to that house of doom again.”

  “I thought perhaps, when we’ve seen how the workmen and gardeners are getting on, we might come to a final decision.”

  “On what?”

  “Oh, Tim! Whether we’re going to sell, pull down, rebuild, or what, of course.”

  “Yes, I thought that’s what you meant.”

  “Actually, I think you ought to have some consideration for your great-uncle.”

  “You don’t want to sell or pull down and rebuild?”

  “Of course I don’t. Where would the ghost go if we deprived it of its home?”

  Timothy thought of the cry he had heard in the minstrels’ gallery, a sound not yet accounted for, and said that he did not know.

  Tom Parsons had a weekend free from commitments, so, on the Saturday morning, he and his wife joined Timothy and Alison for an early lunch, left their car in Timothy’s garage, and the four went together in Timothy’s Humber to Warlock Hall.

  As the work in the house itself was being carried out by the firm which the Society for the Preservation of Buildings of Historic Interest always employed for its own renovations and reconstructions, a good deal had already been done. The great-uncle’s somewhat squalid quarters had been stripped out and restored to their original form of kitchen and buttery, the screens passage had been re-floored with stone flags, and a second doorway from the screens passage into the great hall—a doorway which had previously been blocked in—had been discovered and restored.

  Timothy had consulted with Tom on the subject of the Tudor stair. It was badly placed and communicated on the ground floor with nothing but a cul-de-sac passage whose open end led to what were now the kitchen regions. On the other hand, it was in itself a handsome feature and, apart from discarding it altogether, there seemed little else to do but leave it where it was. It formed a means of reaching the rooms built over the kitchen without using the difficult and narrow newel stair and without traversing the long gallery which was built over the great hall. In the end, they decided to leave it exactly as it was, but to open up the cul-de-sac wall so as to provide another means of access to the gardens which were now taking pleasant shape under expert hands.

  Consultations over, the two men went off to look over the boat and run the car, which held sleeping bags and pillows, down to the moorings, while the two women remained up at the Hall. Any question of pulling down and rebuilding had now been settled because of the expensive alterations and improvements which had been or were to be made. The only decision still to come was whether to keep on the house or sell it.

  “If only Tim didn’t hate the place so much,” said Alison, “I wouldn’t have a second thought about it. I love our Cotswold home and, anyway, I know he wouldn’t give it up, but I’d like to think we could come here for part of each spring or summer. The trouble is that he not only dislikes the Hall—although I think he might be more reconciled to it now that it’s coming back to its rightful shape—but he can’t see any beauty in this wasteful, watery countryside.”

  “He may think differently about that now he’s got the boat,” said Diana. “All the same, I’m not at all sure that I’d want to live here. It’s creepy.”

  “Yes, but that’s one of the things I like about it.”

  “Wouldn’t it get on your nerves, though?”

  “I don’t know. I think I’ll suggest that we try it for a time and sell it later if it bores or frightens us.”

  “You don’t think it’s haunted, do you?”

  “Well, I do hope it is. I’m sure ghosts exist, although I’ve never seen one.”

  “I should hate to think it’s possible to see one, but I think spookery exists only in the imagination. Anyway, that’s quite bad enough. In fact, it’s really as bad as the other. My own imagination can frighten me as much as a ghost would.”

  “When my imagination frightens me it’s only when I think of anything happening to Tim. Sometimes I lie awake at night imagining all sorts of horrors. It’s silly and unnecessary, I know, but—well, there it is, and I can’t always cope with it. Let’s go up to the attic floor and see what can be done with the rooms up there. Tim says they are all connected, which is going to make complications if we ever want to use them as guest rooms.”

  “The very old or the very young—those who go to bed early—would have to be given the one furthest through, and arrangements made to suit the others. Oh, and what about bathrooms? I don’t seem to remember any on the other floors.”

  “I’d thought of that. The rooms above the buttery and kitchens will have to be turned into bathrooms and the so-called ‘usual offices,’ and the same could apply on the attic floor, I suppose, so that problem can be disposed of pretty easily, I hope.”

  They ascended the Tudor stair and found themselves stymied. As Timothy earlier had discovered, there was no way up from the landing to the floor above.

  “Well, there must be a way up, because Tim got there,” said Ali
son. “I believe he said something about the screens passage. Let’s explore.”

  Arrangements for meals had been simple. From shops which catered for the many pleasure craft to be found at the up-river moorings, Tom and Timothy were to purchase bread, eggs, bacon, butter, and marmalade for Sunday’s breakfast. Tea and coffee were already on board and Saturday dinner and Sunday lunch would be taken in Cambridge or Ipswich.

  “We don’t want to cruise all day,” Timothy had said. “Breakfast on board, a morning trip up-river, lunch at a pub, an afternoon cruise down-river back to moorings at about five, then homeward bound, stopping for dinner and the night in Bedford. From there, Tom and Diana make tracks for Shrewsbury as soon as we’ve had lunch, and I push Alison back to school.”

  The two men took a couple of hours to carry out the first part of the programme. The shopping was soon done, for there were supplies of all kinds to be had near the up-river moorings where the cruiser was berthed, but, once on board, they loitered, gossiped, inspected the boat, had a drink, and at last returned to the Hall. They had left two women there. They came back to find three.

  “This is Grete,” said Alison in a casual tone. “Are we going along to the boat now? Did you manage to get all the things I put down on the list? If so, we might as well be going, mightn’t we? Grete, this is my husband and this is Mr. Parsons.

  Timothy greeted the girl in the accepted way. Tom Parsons did the same. She was a tall, strong, angular young person who spoke with a marked German accent and confided to them that her surname was Bismarck—“but ze von I do not have,” she added, showing her large teeth in a mirthless smile.

  “Grete is joining us for the week-end,” said Alison airily. “I suppose we can squeeze her in, can’t we?”

  “Surely,” Timothy replied. “The boat sleeps six, although the berths in the nose are a bit on the short side,” he added, looking at Grete, who was almost as tall as himself. “Well, if we’re all set, let’s get weaving. Can you three manage on the back seat of the car if Tom and I sit in front?”