Late and Cold (Timothy Herring)

by Gladys Mitchell

  On the fourteenth of September, therefore, Timothy drove to London, put up at his club and, on the late afternoon of the following day, garbed himself for the dinner which was to follow the committee meeting and drove to the Phisbe headquarters, where he telephoned his garage to collect the car and bring it back at seven.

  He read the minutes (beautifully set out and typed by Coningsby) and the committee meeting proceeded according to plan until it came to Other Business. The president, who was, as usual, in the chair, looked meaningly at Timothy.

  “Yes,” said Timothy, “there are two things I’d like to bring before the meeting, if I may. Both are a little out of the ordinary. Members have heard the letter from Miss Marion Jones in which she requests the Society to repair a thirteenth-century Welsh castle so that it may serve her (and three children for whom she has made herself responsible) as a dwelling-house. Very rightly, members have pointed out that we cannot undertake to do anything of the kind, and her submission, therefore, has been dismissed.

  “Last April, as I felt some private interest in the matter, I went to look over the castle and the upshot is that I myself have undertaken to repair it to some extent, and our architect, Tom Parsons, is keeping the work under review. I need not add that the matter is personal to myself and that I have in no way involved Phisbe in the transaction. Parsons is being retained by me in a private capacity as architect, and I am paying for the labour and the materials.

  “However, as the result may be of some interest I shall invite all members of the Society who care to make the journey, to attend a medieval banquet in the great hall of the castle as soon as the work is completed.” There was an appreciative murmur from the committee, but, before anyone became articulate, Timothy went on, “But now I have to beg your indulgence. I found the writer of the letter and her three small dependents living in considerable squalor, and for several weeks I have domiciled them on the hitherto unused third floor of this house. They are still here, but I have every intention of seeing that they leave as soon as suitable accommodation can be found for them, which I hope will be very shortly.”

  He sat down and waited for the storm to break, but before anyone else could speak the president rose.

  “I should like to add to that,” he said. “It was not possible to canvass the committee and find out the general opinion until this meeting was called, but Mr. Herring very rightly informed me of what he had done and, as it was to be a purely temporary measure, I saw no objection to it.”

  The treasurer asked whether any rent was being paid.

  “No,” replied Timothy, “but there would be no objection to its being charged and, of course, backdated. The only point I think I ought to raise—and I am sure members will appreciate it—is that, as the rooms on the third floor were entirely devoid of furnishings, it might be very difficult for us to get rid of rent-paying tenants if they decided they wished to stay. As matters stand, Miss Jones has nothing but squatters’ rights, and could be ejected tomorrow if necessary.”

  “Is this woman the mother of the children?” asked a woman member. “I believe I heard you refer to her as Miss Jones.”

  “No, she is not the mother,” returned Timothy. “Two of the children are her brother’s orphans and the third is an unwanted baby of two, of whom she takes charge.”

  “Well,” said a young man with an impudent, lively face and a slight Irish accent, “it appears to me that by taking on these creatures and giving them a home, this unmarried lady is saving the taxpayers or the rate-payers or Doctor Barnado or somebody, a very great deal of money. Where’s the harm in letting them stay?”

  “Phisbe,” said an elderly gentleman with a thin mouth and a straggling moustache, “is not a charitable institution, Mr. Rafferty.”

  “Oh, come off it, Cockington!” retorted the young Irishman. “What harm are they doing, at all?”

  “What harm are they doing, Tim?” enquired the president.

  “I should imagine they’re doing a great deal of good,” said the woman member, before Timothy could reply. “Houses were meant to be lived in. I wish we could see the children,” she added. She was a wealthy, childless widow.

  “Nothing easier,” said Timothy. “They’ll have finished their tea by now. Perhaps Coningsby, who knows them, wouldn’t mind trotting up to the third floor and bringing them down—with Miss Jones, of course.”

  Coningsby was gone some little time, and Timothy concluded that Marion was giving her charges a wash and brush up before submitting them to the scrutiny of the committee. They appeared at length, shepherded by an obviously nervous Marion who, all the same, looked considerably brighter than when Timothy had first made her acquaintance at the Earls Court lodgings.

  Bryn and Bron advanced hand in hand, and Bryn made the company a deep bow.

  “What darlings!” said the woman member. “Come here, children, and tell me your names.” In addition to sprucing them up, Marion apparently had had time to give the twins a briefing, for they came forward, gave their names, and Bryn said, pointing,

  “And she’s Miranda.”

  The woman member pushed back her chair and went over to Marion and the baby.

  “Will you give me a kiss?” she asked, picking the tiny child up in her arms.

  “A wet one, full of love,” said Miranda, obligingly.

  “It’s all over, bar the shouting,” muttered Timothy to the president. “Nobody’s going to turn them out after that!”

  Relieved that he had no longer any need to find somewhere for Marion and her family to live, for, offered security of tenure on Phisbe’s third floor, she had accepted it gratefully, Timothy returned to Nanradoc to see how the work was progressing.

  As the keep was entirely separate from the great hall, work was done, under Parsons’s supervision, on both at the same time. There were delays, but these had been expected. There were days so wet that no work was possible, holdups when loads of extra stone were not delivered at the promised time, a strike on the railway which lasted three weeks and held up essential materials, a go-slow by the workmen when one of their number (entirely through his own fault) fell from some scaffolding and broke an arm, whereupon the men claimed danger-money and were not pleased when this was refused, and, in mid-October (a fortnight before it was planned to stop work for the winter) a bug which decimated the labour force and called a halt to the work until the following spring.

  The winter snows fell, and it was not until almost the end of March that a fresh start was made, but Timothy and Parsons had every hope that a further four months, with luck, and not more than six, without it, would see Nanradoc in a fair state to receive visitors. The costs soared, but Timothy was happy.

  It had been decided to make no walled sub-divisions in the undercroft of the great hall, but to support the first floor on a row of columns and a ribbed vault. On the first floor the stone screens which marked off the dining-hall from the kitchens and the buttery were built up, a permanent dais was erected and Timothy decided, after all, to have the building roofed. There were two reasons for this. He intended to furnish the place with tables and benches and to have a fire in it when he held his house-warming feast, and he intended that this feast should be prepared and cooked in the hall’s own kitchens. He had not forgotten, either, Marion’s idea of offering such banquets to the holiday public in return for money, and it would be expected, he felt, that these should be held under cover.

  Meanwhile the little chapel had been cleaned out, floored with packed earth, and re-oriented, and the keep, with its two staircases, had been so far renewed as to allow not only the stairs to be ascended in safety, but a walk round the ramparts made possible. Here Parsons had copied the scheme in operation at Clifford’s Tower in York, where it is possible and, for convenience’ sake, desirable, to ascend by one narrow staircase and descend by the other.

  The dilapidated curtain walls of the bailey, except where the hall and chapel had been built against them, were left in their state of picturesque deca
y, but the surface of the path to the small ruined gatehouse was improved and an inconspicuous lodge built at the roadside end of it, so that tickets of admission could be sold to the public by a paid custodian if Timothy decided to open the castle to visitors.

  This second attack on the work proceeded so smoothly and at such an excellent pace that the builder was darkly discouraged and voiced superstitious prophecies.

  “It has gone too well; very much too well. I do not like it. It is very strange that it has gone so well. I do not like it, indeed I do not. There will be something go wrong, now. You will see.”

  “Oh, come, Mr. Thomas!” said Parsons. “Every bit of the work has been tested and supervised by you and by me.”

  “Ah, yes, indeed,” said the dark, round-headed Celt, in sombre agreement. “Tested and supervised, I promise you, but there is something strange about it, for all that. I do not speak of Say-tan, for that is a name with which I do not soil my lips, but I fear the worst. Yes, indeed I do. You will let me know how you get on.”

  “If he were a Catholic I think he would promise to pray for us,” said Parsons, with a nervous laugh. Way back, his people had been Macphersons from Badenoch. After the ’45 they had settled in Shropshire and anglicised their name, a fact of which Parsons was cognisant but not proud.

  Timothy shared none of his nervousness. He was delighted to think that it should be possible to hold the next annual dinner, following the annual general meeting of Phisbe, in the Great Hall of Nanradoc, and in July he sent out—or, rather, Coningsby typed out—his invitations to the feast with, at the foot of them, an urgent “R.S.V.P. at an early date so that catering arrangements may be made.” As the banquet was not part of the meeting proper, which would be held in the principal lounge of the village hotel, Timothy felt free to ask other guests. These included Marion (who refused the invitation), the builder and his wife, Pembroke and Leonie, and the hotel manager and his wife.

  Timothy had made no secret of his plans, and, far from resenting a private enterprise which would provide meals in a valley where, between Betwys-y-Coed and his own place, no meal was procurable, the hotel manager had embraced the scheme with enthusiasm, seeing in it an attraction over and above the ordinary in his part of the country, and one which, although it might deplete his dining-room for one night in the week during the holiday season, was offering no kind of lodging, no breakfast, luncheon, or tea, and therefore could do his business little harm and, possibly, a great deal of good. He accepted with alacrity the invitation for himself and his wife to attend the function, and so did the builder, Pembroke, and Leonie.

  Service for the banquet had looked like posing problems, but Universal Aunts had been approached a couple of months before the date which had been fixed for the feast, and, in their usual vein of near-magic, the Aunts had produced a master-chef who had spent his formative years in the kitchens of Christchurch, Oxford, and a sufficiency of kitchen-boys, kitchen-maids, assistant cooks, and table servitors to ensure that, whatever else happened, the guests would not go hungry.

  It was seldom that the annual dinner produced more than about a hundred and fifty guests, even when it was held in Phisbe’s London headquarters, so that Timothy was pleased when sixty persons, almost all of them members and members’ wives and husbands, accepted his invitation. Not more than a couple of dozen had attended the meeting, but, by seven o’clock in the evening, the car-park, which had been levelled out and gravelled, was reasonably full, and the guests, in cheerful, party mood, were streaming towards the great hall.

  Timothy, upheld by the president and flanked by Pembroke Pritchard Jones and Leonie Bing, was at the opening of the screens to receive them, and they were promised a tour of the castle as soon as the banquet was over. A low-voiced question from Timothy produced from Pembroke the information that there was still no news of his sister or of the strange couple who had tenanted Nanradoc House.

  * * *

  * The English Medieval House, by Margaret Wood.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Knives at the Feast

  Wisely or not, Timothy had decided to temper the wind to the shorn lamb by providing dry sherry as an aperitif, torches which were guaranteed to burn for a couple of hours before they began to stifle the diners with acrid smoke, a master carver at a side-table instead of allowing the guests to hack the meat for themselves, and modern steak-knives which were, at least, sharp. The medieval touch was in evidence to the extent that forks were not provided, that the platters were of wood, and that the bulk of the food consisted of meat, poultry, and game, great hunks of bread and, to end the repast, a series of elaborate open tarts and some fresh fruit. A kind of hors d’oeuvres consisting of salted herrings, cockles, mussels, and pieces of stewed eel were offered, but found few takers. There were root vegetables to accompany the meat dishes, and beer and wine were served. As well as the flaring torches in their sconces on the walls, light was provided on the tables by candles of the modern kind.

  Timothy sat at the high table with the president, the treasurer, Parsons, Pembroke Jones, and the wives of these. Timothy, lacking a wife, was partnered by a famous woman columnist who had been invited because Timothy knew and liked her, and who had asked, as a condition of accepting the invitation, that she might be allowed to make notes with a view to writing up a description of the castle and the banquet for her paper.

  Timothy had chosen a night when the moon was large and bright, and had crossed his fingers for fine weather. At the end of the feasting the usual speeches were made but, by agreement, were kept short so that the tour of the castle might take place at a reasonable hour. Timothy, called upon to speak, contented himself by describing very briefly the state of the castle when the repairs were begun, and left it to his audience to see for themselves what the restoration had accomplished. It was a happily-chattering gathering which left the great hall and abandoned it to the servants who were to clear up.

  Timothy waited until everybody except himself, Pembroke, Leonie, and the woman journalist had left the hall. Parsons and his wife had been among the first to go out, and his party was followed by a coterie of questioners who felt, rightly, that, as the architect-in-charge, he could tell them all that they wanted to know about the restoration.

  The journalist did not keep Timothy long. She had to get back to London that same night. He gave her the details she wanted—hers, she explained, was a column of snippets, none of them longer than about one hundred and fifty words—and then she went off. Pembroke and his wife still lingered.

  “Did you manage to take a look round before dinner?” Timothy enquired.

  “No. We thought we’d like to walk round with you,” replied Leonie.

  “I won’t be available for some time yet, I’m afraid. I have to wait until the servants have finished their jobs and then I have to pay them and make sure they all get on their motor-coach. We’ve arranged beds for them in the village, and then the coach will take them back to London tomorrow. I expect to be here for at least another hour.”

  “Then we had better look round on our own, I suppose,” said Leonie. “Do you know, Tim, I have an idea I saw your monk when we arrived.”

  “Really? Where?”

  “Skulking about by that hut thing you’ve put up at the entrance.”

  “What, the ticket lodge?”

  “Yes, if that’s what you call it. Down there almost on to the road.”

  “That seems odd.”

  “I should imagine he knew nothing about the banquet, still less that there would be more than half a hundred people milling around.”

  “I don’t mean that. Of course he couldn’t have known. I meant it seems an odd sort of place for him to be. You’d think he’d make direct for the house. You haven’t seen the woman, I suppose?”

  “I wouldn’t know her if I did, would I? I only knew it was the monkish creature because of the way he was dressed. There was nobody with him and he vanished before I could speak to him. I wanted to ask him about Olwen.
We’ve advertised for her in all the papers, asking her to contact us, but no luck so far. Another thing—I’m sure that Marion was one of the waitresses at table. Didn’t you spot her?”

  “Marion? Oh, come now!” said Pembroke. “You must be mistaken. What would Marion be doing as a waitress?”

  “Particularly as I had invited her to the do, and she refused to come,” said Timothy. “They were all dolled up in thirteenth-century costume, and the women had wimples and things. None of them would be easily recognisable, especially with only torches and candles to light the place. You must be mistaken, you know.”

  “I might mistake a face, but a sculptor isn’t likely to mistake a body, clothed or not clothed,” said Leonie coldly, “and, if it was Marion, she was up to n.b.g., if you ask me.”

  Timothy thought of the night at Phisbe’s headquarters and his own suspicions of Marion, and said,

  “Well, I can soon find out when I check the pay-roll. Be seeing you!”

  “Where is the washing-up being done? In the kitchens here?” asked Leonie.

  “Yes, of course. Apart from the fact that it would be an awkward business carting all the stuff over to the house at night, we found a well.”

  “I fell into it once,” said Pembroke. “Have you thought any more about buying the castle and the hillside? I’ll throw in the woods, of course—everything down to the bridge.”