Late and Cold (Timothy Herring)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “I say,” said Pembroke, “that woman who’s been here with the monk person. Would you describe her to me again?”

  Timothy did so, emphasizing her height and girth.

  “From the description you gave of your sister, I thought we agreed that this woman is somebody else,” he concluded.

  “I wonder whether it’s worse than that,” said Pembroke gloomily. “Could you make a guess at her height?”

  “Not much good at that sort of thing, but, as I said, she’s pretty tall,” Timothy replied. “Taller than Marion, anyway.”

  “I’m five feet six and three-quarters,” said Marion, “and she’s quite a bit more than that, and takes at least a six and a half in shoes.”

  “I wish you’d come upstairs with me, then,” said Pembroke. “I want to show you some clothes.” He and Marion went up together, leaving Leonie and Timothy downstairs. She accepted a cigarette from him and said,

  “You don’t think anything’s happened to Olwen, do you? I’m sure the clothes we found in a wardrobe and in a chest of drawers up there are hers. They would never fit a woman as tall and big as you say Trousers is. Pembroke is worried to death about Olwen since he insisted upon snooping into wardrobes and drawers. He found what I am positively certain must be his sister’s clothes—and an awful lot of them, too.”

  Pembroke and Marion returned to the ground floor. Leonie raised her eyebrows. Her husband scowled and nodded.

  “I’m going to put the police on the job,” he said. “A woman doesn’t just go off and leave most of her clothes behind her. It’s ridiculous. There are coats and hats and shoes and everything.”

  “I’ve tried to persuade him that she may not have gone off at all,” said Marion. “The fact that Tim and I didn’t see her when we came last time proves nothing.”

  “All right. I’ll find out what they can tell me in the village, then,” said her cousin, “but if it isn’t satisfactory I shall go to the police and get them to trace my sister. I know we had a row and said we never wanted to see one another again, but that’s beside the point. I’ve got to satisfy myself that she’s all right, and I’ve got a bloody awful feeling that she isn’t.”

  “We’ll go home now,” said Leonie, “and sleep on it. Then, if you’re of the same mind, we’ll drive into the village tomorrow and make some enquiries. If those don’t work out, then you can get in touch with the police.”

  “There’s an hotel near the village, isn’t there? If they can let us have a room, we’ll stay the night and begin our enquiries the very first thing in the morning,” said Pembroke. “I shan’t be satisfied until I’ve sifted things. What will you do, Marion?”

  “I’ve got my return ticket for London. I’m afraid I can’t afford to stay at hotels. Are you going back tonight, Tim?”

  “No. I’ve a fancy to camp out here,” said Timothy, “if Jones has no objection. I want to find out whether those two have really slung their hook.”

  “That’s rather a scheme,” said Pembroke. “I think I’ll join you. You two girls can stay at the hotel if there’s room. Don’t bother about the bill, Marion. That will be all right.”

  The hotel was full, but the receptionist recommended two cottages which let rooms. Arrangements were made, the party had tea at the hotel itself, and stayed on for dinner, then the two women were escorted to their lodgings and Timothy and Pembroke returned in the fading light to Nanradoc by the road which led to the front of the house. There they left the car, locked, on the gravel outside the main door and went inside.

  “Better just snoop around to make sure we’ve still got the place to ourselves,” suggested Pembroke. Timothy agreed, although he had little doubt of it. A short but complete survey convinced them that they were the only occupants, so Pembroke locked up and they sat talking and smoking until, at close on midnight, Pembroke announced that he was going to bed.

  “In somebody else’s sheets?” enquired the fastidious Timothy. “I’ll kip down here in a couple of armchairs, I think. I don’t somehow fancy a bed that the flapping Father has slept in.”

  “Oh, I shall lie on top of the blankets,” said Pembroke. “Can’t undress, anyway. No pyjamas. Wonder how the girls will manage?”

  “Girls always manage,” said Timothy. “Did you lock up, or shall I?”

  “It’s all fixed, except the bolts on the front door. I suggest we leave them alone. I’d like to know it if those two do come back. Not that I think they will. They don’t appear to have left anything of their own behind them. I wish I knew how Olwen fits in to all this. I shan’t rest until I’ve found out.”

  “Is she a sensible sort of girl?”

  “I wouldn’t have said so. She’s headstrong and unstable. Spoilt, you know, and, of course, quite unworldly-wise. I’m afraid this precious pair may have taken her for a ride. I only hope she’s safe.”

  When Pembroke had left him, Timothy settled down in a couple of armchairs, slept uncomfortably and on a hair-trigger, and got up as soon as dawn broke. He was feeling stiff and rather cold, and decided to go for a brisk walk. Before taking the air he prowled around the ground floor of the mansion, examining doors and windows, but everything was intact, so he let himself out and walked to the bridge and up through the woods to the castle.

  He entered the ruined keep and again marked the depression in the floor which indicated the presence of a well. He supposed that at some time the family had had it filled in as a precautionary measure when Pembroke and Olwen were children. He climbed the safer of the newel stairs and admired the view, and when he climbed down again he turned his attention to the remainder of the buildings. It was very clear that there had been some very recent attempt to restore what he took to be the chapel, and he was reminded that there had been the reference to a studio for Leonie. Then he thought of Father Ignatius, that flapping black crow of a man, and his incongruous companion. Their every action, from their first gesture in giving him a key to the bridge, had been a cause for suspicion and a mystery. Contemplating the little building, he wondered whether the Father had been in the habit of holding strange, heretical services there. Perhaps there would be rumours of this in the village. He ducked in under a small Norman arch and looked about him at the chapel. A projection at the apsed end might have been used as an altar, he thought, and somebody had been at pains to lay a rectangle of flat stones in front of it to form some rough flooring, but that might have been for Leonie’s benefit, he surmised. For the rest, the weeds grew rank but had been trampled, and that quite recently. In one corner there was a hawthorn bush, and in another some ash saplings had been planted. In the middle of the weedy nave a dead elm-branch had been stuck into the ground.

  “Not much doubt about it, there have been some peculiar goings-on in this little place,” thought Timothy. He went outside and examined the walls again. It was easy enough to see where and how they had been built up, but no attempt had been made to put a roof on the small building, as Pembroke had explained. Then another point occurred to him. An apsed end to a chapel in a castle, although not, perhaps, rare, was sufficiently unusual, so far as his experience went, as to be of interest, but there was something about this particular apse which was not so much unusual as, possibly, unique. It was not only new—that is to say, it was not a restoration—but it faced the wrong way. Instead of being at the east end of the chapel, it faced north. He fished out his pocket compass to make sure of this. He was not mistaken. Whoever had added the apse to the existing remains of the building either had paid no attention to the usual, in fact, the generally-accepted, orientation of a sacred edifice, but had deliberately placed the altar so that the congregation would be facing in what, by popular superstition, was the devil’s direction.

  Possibly there was nothing significant in this. But the apse was new. Like the French store-keeper, informed by the English sergeant that he wished to purchase meat, cabbages, a couple of fowls, potatoes, chestnuts, milk, and brandy pour la messe, Timothy was inclined to exclaim, “Mais, quelle religio
n!” Leaving his contemplation of the surprising little adjunct to the chapel of the great hall, he turned his attention to the latter.

  It would be no great matter, he thought, to build up the walls, using the stone which was scattered about the bailey and on the outside of the curtain, to a sufficiently impressive height to give the windows, at present mere topless gaps, a form and a significance. He walked round inside the building, making mental notes. Of course, it would be a job for Parsons—he was the expert—but, from what Parsons himself had said, there appeared to be no particular obstacles to overcome in the task of reparation.

  The hall built up a bit in this way, the chapel restored to what must have been the original rectangular shape with the altar at the east end, the keep made safe so far as the newel staircases were concerned, and the well dug out and fenced round, and there, Timothy concluded, would be a fitting monument to Phisbe’s enterprise and raison d’être.

  He went back to the house in a thoughtful but jaunty mood, to find Pembroke sluicing himself at the kitchen sink and preparing to dry himself on his handkerchief.

  “Not a towel in the place,” he explained. “It looks to me as though whoever was here has cleared out for good and all. And there isn’t a hope of a shave because we are both minus a razor. Have to see whether the hotel can help us out, or else we’re going to present a tramplike appearance at breakfast. You seem to have been up with the lark. Couldn’t you sleep?”

  “Not very soundly. I’ve been out to look at your ruins. If your sister will agree, I’d like to rent them. I don’t want the whole estate, and certainly not the house, but I can see what could be done with the castle.”

  “So far as I’m concerned, you can do what you like. Look here, Herring. I’m devilish worried about Olwen. If those people you met here are all right, why have they cleared out like this? And where has Olwen gone? I’ve got to find her. When I do, I’m sure she’ll agree to what you want. Dash it all, she seems to have let this house to this fishy couple over my head and without offering me either an explanation or a penny piece, so I think I’ve got the whip-hand. The only trouble is that I hope I do find her. Spinsters living alone are a noted prey for adventurers and confidence-trick merchants. Most lonely women don’t seem to have the sense they were born with. That certainly holds good for Olwen. She always was an obstinate, dreary, moony-eyed little mutt! One of the ‘stars are God’s daisy-chain’ experts. Oh, well, rinse up, if you’re going to, and let’s get along to breakfast. I can do with a nice cup of coffee and a plate of bacon and eggs.”

  “And I can go ahead with the castle?”

  “Sure. I’ll square Olwen when I find her. I only wish I could.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Nanradoc Renaissant

  The hotel produced electric razors and towels, so that the two men presented an acceptable appearance at breakfast. Enquiry from the hotel manager failed to extract any information concerning the inhabitants of Nanradoc, but the post-office was more forthcoming.

  Very few letters had been addressed to Nanradoc House for the past year or so, and no parcels had been delivered there, not even at Christmas. Father Ignatius and the trousered woman sometimes came to the village, but always on foot. They were never accompanied by Miss Olwen Jones, but she had been known to drive about in her little car, although not recently. “Not recently,” it transpired, turned out to be not since the previous summer, or possibly even longer—it might be two years, perhaps.

  It was rumoured that a group of people, perhaps as many as ten, had come to Nanradoc with Father Ignatius and his companion, but there seemed to be no certainty about this, and none of them had shopped in the village. As the Jones family had not shopped in the village either, this caused no surprise, although it may have occasioned some passing disappointment.

  Except for these negative items, Pembroke gained nothing from the conversation except an even stronger determination to find out what had happened to his sister.

  “Find out what’s happened to the deeds of the house first,” said Leonie. “Get Simms on to that. It will save you a lot of bother, and the banks will do for them what they might not do for you. And now let’s all go home. There’s nothing more that we can do here.”

  “There’s one person I think we ought to see,” said Timothy, “and that’s the parson or minister, or whatever he is. If Father Ignatius was passing himself off as somebody in holy Orders, the local man of God is bound to know something about him, I should think. Ask them where he hangs out.”

  The minister was a Baptist. He was a bearded man with a curious and unbecoming habit of appearing to blow his nose through his fingers as a kind of punctuation of his statements, although, fortunately, no unseemly result ensued. He had met the Father, but once only, and had spoken with him.

  “He seemed a courtly man,” the minister informed them. “Very soft-spoken and gentle he was, and without arrogance or prejudice. He was telling me he had had a group of his own, a community calling themselves the Congregation of the Heavenly Unity, but that failing health had caused his retirement, so that only a handful of his people had followed him into Wales. Theirs, he said, was not actually a religious denomination, but what he called a brotherhood of the spirit. He assured me—although I had not mentioned the matter—that he would do no proselytising among my flock. “That I know,” I said, “for they would not listen to you.” He told me that Miss Olwen Jones had offered shelter to him and his followers after she had been to one of his meetings, and that he was very glad to accept it. I did not see him to speak to him again.”

  There was nothing helpful about all this. Timothy drove Pembroke and Leonie home to Mold after the party had lunched at the hotel, and then took Marion on to Chester to catch her train. He himself went to Shrewsbury to put his ideas for the rebuilding of Nanradoc Castle before Parsons, and to ask him to draw up the necessary plans and arrange for the work to be carried out.

  “So you’re flogging that dead donkey, are you?” said Parsons.

  “If the deeds of the property are still in safe hands, yes. It would be a gem of a place, don’t you think? I’ve always wanted to be the owner of a castle, and this will be almost as good as though it were my own. If only we can trace Olwen Jones, and get her to agree to a sale of the ruins and the bit of the estate, it would be my own, and I might (and I might not) let Phisbe in on it.”

  “I suppose you realise what it will cost to put it into reasonable repair? Apart from the purchase price, I mean.”

  “Near enough. Of course, as I say, Jones can’t sell without his sister’s consent, but he’s willing enough to let me undertake repairs, so I’m going ahead.”

  “I always thought you had your mad moments, and this is one of them. Still, if you’re determined to chance your arm, who am I to stand in your way? I made some sketches and rough plans, as you know, so what I think needs to be done is this . . .”

  Timothy Herring’s considerable fortune allowed him to ride his hobby-horses, so to speak, to almost any limit. He was a level-headed, business-like man as a rule, although possibly less so than he himself supposed, but when his interest was caught he did not count the cost of his experiments. No sooner had work begun on the partial restoration of Nanradoc Castle than his enthusiasm hatched new and expensive plans.

  The first of these concerned the great hall. From a decision to raise the walls to a sufficient height to incorporate the windows, he added a scheme to replace the flooring between the undercroft and the hall proper, and so give the building an appearance which approximated to that which it must have presented when it was first erected.

  It was not possible to tell of what material the original flooring had been constructed, and a study of the subject in a modern standard work on medieval buildings* gave him a choice of stone, wood (with a packing of beaten earth on top), mortar, clay, or tiles.

  He settled for wood with two inches of packed mud, covered, when it had dried out, with straw, and then, to make this floor acce
ssible, it was necessary to renew a spiral staircase, traces of which remained in an angle of the wall. To build this, the restorers had recourse to a late twelfth-century plan whereby each step incorporated its own addition to the circular newel post.

  Some of the more specialised jobs had to be performed by a firm of contractors, but, by Timothy’s orders, none of the ordinary workmen was ever laid off during these times. There was always some aspect of the reconstruction on which they could be employed. Parsons always had a job to give them, even if it was only to widen and improve the way from the road up to the site, so that lorries and trucks could ascend the hill more easily, or to sort out likely chunks of fallen stone which could then be used in the rebuilding of the walls.

  They were fortunate in the weather, although there were several days when rain made the work impossible. These, however, were fortunately few, and by the end of the first three months considerable progress had been made and the end of the reconstruction was in sight.

  “We can carry on until the end of October, with any luck,” said Parsons, after supper one evening in September. “We ought to be finished by then. You say you don’t want roofs. It’s still got to look like a ruin. You have, I would say, an eighteenth-century mind.”

  “People wouldn’t find it romantic if it was all made wind-and-weather-proof,” protested Timothy. “And I want lots of people to come. Incidentally, when all else is done, these fellows will have to dig out the depression in the base of the keep. I’m certain it’s an old well. There ought to be traces of another one somewhere, too. We could look out for that and dig it out. There should be one much nearer the hall, sunk in the bailey. I’ll have a look for it myself.”

  At mid-September there was a committee meeting of Phisbe which Timothy had to attend. The subject of Marion’s tenancy ought to have come up at the previous meeting in June but had been adroitly shelved by the president, briefed by Timothy, but the members could not be expected to entertain her and the children indefinitely, apart from the fact that Marion had written to say that the Dewes were again becoming restive and that Dewes had laid it down that he was not prepared to carry wood and coal up several flights of stairs if the central heating system proved inadequate to warm the upstairs rooms, which, in his opinion, was likely. The noises at night, she added, still went on. She suspected the Dewes and they suspected her.