Late and Cold (Timothy Herring)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “If we could get your sister’s consent . . .”

  “Oh, Olwen will have to consent. Anyway, I’m sure she wouldn’t mind. What do you say?”

  “I say that until I’m sure of a clear title, I shall go on renting from you, but I certainly shouldn’t buy.”

  “I’m only charging a peppercorn rent, so I suppose you’re taking a sensible line. If only I could get the whole of Nanradoc off my hands!”

  “That will be the day,” said Leonie. “Anyhow, you’re saving sixty pounds a month and getting this bit from Timmy, so what’s your worry?”

  “Olwen. I’m sure something’s happened to her. If not, why doesn’t she answer our advertisements? That’s my worry, and that’s why I’m perfectly certain that it would be safe for Herring to buy.”

  “All in the future,” said Timothy. “Well, I really must see how things are going, and pay these people off.”

  The clearing-up of the tables had been concluded and laughter and conversation were coming from behind the screens. The chef and his scullions had changed their clothes and now, with their medieval costumes packed in brown paper and stacked in the buttery, were only waiting for their pay. The washing-up was done in water previously brought from the well and heated in the newly-constructed “medieval” kitchen. Nothing but a wooden platter, a cup to drink from, and a knife had been issued to each diner, and, apart from these, there were only the enormous dishes and the pots, pans, and turning-spit to be dealt with.

  The rest of the helpers had changed their clothes before they had begun to tackle their task of clearing up. Timothy paid them off as they finished their work, adding a generous tip to each wage-packet, and then, in the brilliant moonlight, saw them off. He had no wage-packet left over, and none of the girls resembled Marion. There was only one disconsolate voice. It came from a kitchen-maid.

  “Please, sir,” she said, “didn’t you say as there was sixty ladies and gents at dinner? Well, I on’y counted forty-seven knives as come out to be washed and wiped.”

  “Everything that was left on the tables was brought out here, Mr. Herring,” said the head waiter. “I inspected the tables myself.”

  “Some of the knives might have got lost in the straw on the floor, sir,” said a waitress. “Some of the ladies and gentlemen was having a rare old time chucking down their chicken-bones, and the like, under the table, I noticed.”

  “I’m getting a couple of men from the village to come in and clean up the floor tomorrow,” said Timothy, “so I daresay the knives will turn up, unless, of course, people are keeping them as souvenirs. Mind how you go on that winding stair. Feel your way carefully, won’t you?”

  Having seen the last of his helpers, he went back into the hall, where the torches had almost burnt themselves out, and kicked about among the straw. He found nothing in the form of a knife, so he blew out the candles and then, coughing a little in the smoky atmosphere, he groped his way to the newel staircase and felt cautiously for the wall.

  He made a slow, groping but safe descent and was glad to find himself out in the moonlight. People were already beginning to drift back to their cars, although an insatiable little band was still gathered at the entrance to the keep, eagerly putting questions to Parsons. Timothy joined them and was eagerly questioned in his turn. At last he and Parsons were left alone.

  “Well?” asked Timothy.

  “All the earmarks of a success, I think. Everybody seems to have got quite a kick out of it. One or two suggested making it an annual affair, with a subscription next time, of course, and the Society and their guests also to be in fancy dress.”

  “Whether they got a kick out of it or not,” said Timothy, “thirteen of ’em got a steak-knife out of it.”

  “You don’t say! The miserable jackdaws! I can’t understand people’s morals. Anything portable seems to be anybody’s property nowadays. Well, we seem to be the last. Better make sure those torches have burnt themselves out. Diana got tired and has gone to sit in the car.”

  They were not the last to leave. As they came out from the hall, having coughed their way round the walls and inspected the burnt-out torches by the light of an electric one which Parsons had had the forethought to bring with him, they encountered Leonie.

  “I say,” she said, “you haven’t seen Pembroke, have you? He left me to go into the bushes, and I strolled on down to the bridge, but, although I called to him on my way back, he didn’t answer, so I concluded he had gone off to have a look at the castle on his own, but I couldn’t find him. I went down to the car to see whether he’d got fed up and had parked himself there, but he hadn’t. Then I climbed to the top of the keep, but he wasn’t up there, either. I can’t think where he has got to, and I want to go home. He is a nuisance, really!”

  “How long since you went to the car?” asked Timothy.

  “Oh, I don’t know. About twenty minutes, I should think.”

  “He probably missed you somehow, and is now in the car, cursing you for hanging about. Let’s go and see.”

  There was only one car left in the car-park. It was Parsons’s, in which Timothy had been brought to the castle, leaving his own car in Parsons’s garage in Shrewsbury.

  “Well, really!” exclaimed Leonie. “What on earth does he think he’s up to! He’s gone off in the car and left me stranded!”

  “Did you have a row?” asked Timothy. “Has he gone off in a spat, do you think?”

  “I don’t know what to think. Yes, we did have a bit of a toss-up, but nothing worse than usual, if you know what I mean.”

  “Oh, well, plenty of room for one more in my car,” said Parsons. “I’ll drive you home. It isn’t far, and we’ve the rest of the night before us. Hop in, and let’s go, shall we?”

  “It isn’t like Pembroke,” said Leonie tremulously. “We fight pretty often, but it’s always all right. Don’t you think perhaps he may have taken the car and gone to the hotel for a drink? I hadn’t thought of it, but, ten to one, that’s the answer.”

  “Could be,” said Timothy, “but he ought to have let you know. Would he have had time to get a drink, though, at the hotel? I expect they keep pub hours, except for residents, you know.”

  “Pembroke can wangle anything,” said Leonie, “so I expect the hotel is the answer. I suppose you wouldn’t take me there?”

  Timothy raised his eyebrows. Parsons nodded.

  “Of course,” he said. “We can’t leave you marooned here. Hop in. We’ll soon catch up with him.” Half a mile from Nanradoc, Parsons’s headlights picked out a car parked on the grass verge between a broad ditch and the road. It was on the left-hand side, facing towards the village.

  “Somebody in trouble,” said Timothy. Parsons pulled up.

  “Better find out whether he wants any help,” he said. The road through the Pass was a lonely one and the time was close on midnight. He got out. As Timothy, who had been seated next to him, opened the nearside front door, Leonie exclaimed,

  “Good heavens! That looks like our car!” She joined the two men. The abandoned car was empty and uninjured. Leonie called Pembroke’s name. There was no response, so Timothy tried. Then Parsons bellowed out the name of Jones.

  “Are you sure it’s your car?” asked Timothy, when nothing happened after ten minutes of lung-bursting shouting had failed. Parsons shone his torch on the number-plates.

  “Of course I’m sure. Whatever can he be doing?” Leonie exclaimed.

  “Run out of juice,” suggested Parsons.

  “He can’t have done. The tank was full when we started out from Mold. We’ve not done more than fifty miles.”

  “Mind if I have a look?” He ascertained that there was plenty of petrol in the tank and that the tyres were intact. “Well, there must be something wrong somewhere,” he said, “but, if so, you’d think he’d walk back to the castle and find us, not go on to the village. That’s a much longer walk, and, likely enough, no help to be got there at this time of night, anyway.”

  “Perh
aps he did walk back and, somehow, missed us,” said Timothy. “Tell you what. Suppose you three drive on to the village and ask for him at the hotel, while I walk back to the castle and yell for him there? One way or the other, we’re bound to locate him. Whichever it is, you can pick me up at Nanradoc on your way back. By the way, is Jones’s car locked? Try the door, Leonie, will you?”

  “Yes, it is locked,” she said, when she had tried it, “but I’ve got a key.” She produced it from her handbag and in another moment she was in the driver’s seat and had started the engine. “Nothing wrong there,” she said, when she had switched it off. “Perhaps it’s the brakes or something.” She re-locked the car. “I suppose, Tim, you wouldn’t care to—?”

  “Yes, I’ll try it out,” said Timothy. “You might lend me your torch, Tom. You won’t need it at the hotel. Oh, thanks! So long, then. See you soon.” He drove back briskly along the way they had come, but wondered, as he covered the half-mile back to Nanradoc, what madness could have taken possession of Pembroke Jones. Many artists, painters in particular, had the name for being unpredictable, fickle, zany, and irresponsible, but to go off in his own car without a word to his wife, leave it abandoned and locked by the roadside, and not to be within call, seemed extraordinary by any standards of improbability. Timothy parked, turning over in his mind the events of the evening, trivial though they had been. He was pretty sure he knew the party which had kept his expensive steak-knives as souvenirs. They were not members of Phisbe, but were the sons and the sons’ friends of members. The stealing of souvenirs—ashtrays from the saloon bars of pubs, face-towels from hotels, signs indicating a direction to a public lavatory, road signs, notices in foreign hotels—was considered fair game by a moronic circle of young people, therefore the theft of the steak-knives was understandable, if not excusable. The dramatic disappearance of Pembroke Pritchard Jones was neither.

  The moon has risen at about half-past seven and would not set until half-way through the morning, so, in a cloudless sky, it was still shining brightly. The keep of Nanradoc rose starkly out of the hillside and the great hall was a menacing hulk to the left of it. Timothy stood in the ruined gatehouse, which was now little more than an archway in the curtain wall, and yelled for Jones. It was both eerie and ridiculous to stand among the ruins at midnight shouting his head off and receiving no answer. What was even more ridiculous, he felt, was that he shrank from exploring the ruins. He had the fantastic fear that at any moment the monk, like some enormous, evil, black-feathered bird of prey, would come flapping and hopping at him from one of the dark doorways.

  “How puerile can you get?” he asked himself angrily, and, with that, he crossed over to the small keep and switched on Parsons’s powerful torch.

  There was nobody in the keep, but he noticed the deep depression in the floor and it reminded him that, so far, they had not dug out the well which, he had no doubt, had at some time been sunk in the flooring.

  “Have to see about that,” he said aloud, and the sound of his own voice startled him so much that, to drown his fears, he called Jones’s name again and again, until the narrow place re-echoed. There was no reply, and he tried the great hall and the little chapel with no better result.

  “Last seen entering the bushes in response to a call of nature,” he muttered. “Can he have been taken ill there? No. He drove the car half a mile down the road. All the same . . .” He followed the narrow path which led to the bridge over the river, flashing his torch and alternately calling and listening. He did not expect anything to come of this, and was startled and astonished when, from the woods on his left, he distinctly heard a groan. “Jones! Jones! Where are you?” he cried.

  Another groan was the answer. Timothy thought he had located it, and this was so. The torch picked out a small thicket and, extending beyond it, a pair of shoes. Westward of these lay the rest of Jones. He was lying sprawled out, face downwards, and the haft of a knife was sticking out above his shoulder blades.

  “Just as well for you, sir, that it was such a short-bladed knife and that you weren’t on a diet,” said a large and cheerful detective-sergeant a day or two later. “It’s a great thing to have plenty of flesh on your bones when jokers start playing with knives. The surgeons tell me another quarter of an inch to the left and a bit lower down, and you’d be having flowers on your coffin instead of at your bedside. Now, sir, they say you’re well enough to be questioned, so what can you tell us about all this?”

  “Damn-all,” said Pembroke. “All I can think is that some joker, as you say, was playing with knives. I had just unzipped my trousers when—bing!—the perisher had punctured me.”

  “And that’s really all you can say, sir?”

  “Absolutely all.”

  “Have you any enemies?”

  “Good Lord, yes! Of course I have. Who hasn’t? But none of them would pink me.”

  “Did you have words with anybody at this dinner-party? It was rather an odd sort of party, so I gathered from your wife and the gentleman who found you.”

  “It was a bit out of the ordinary, perhaps, but I wouldn’t call it odd. You make it sound improper. It wasn’t any kind of orgy, if that’s what you think. It was simply an attempt, and, to my mind, not too clever a one, to recreate the atmosphere of a medieval banquet. You know—straw on the floor, one platter, one knife, and chuck the bones and the bits of gristle under the table.”

  “But it was well-behaved, so far as you know, sir?”

  “Oh, yes. Mind you, there was one group of young idiots who’d tanked up, I fancy, before they arrived, but, apart from a lot of noise and some bread-throwing—that sort of thing—I didn’t notice any dirty work on their part.”

  “Thirteen knives were pocketed, sir.”

  “And one of them was planted in my back?”

  “That’s so, sir. We’ve accounted for the other twelve.”

  “The devil you have! Well, what do you know!”

  “What we don’t know, sir, and what we have to find out, is who took the thirteenth.”

  “Yes, quite a point, that. Well, I’m afraid I can’t help you, and that isn’t to say I wouldn’t if I could. I’d very much like to know who the blighter is who tried to give me my quietus with a bare bodkin.”

  “I understand your wife was with you just before you retired into the bushes, sir. Did you notice anybody else?”

  “Nobody. People were milling about all over the show, looking at the ruins and so forth. All I can think is that I must have surprised a courting couple and the chap took umbrage—something of that sort. Don’t you think so?”

  “Could be, sir, but you say you didn’t actually see anyone?”

  “I certainly didn’t. Didn’t hear anyone, either, come to that, except the voices of lots of people round about the castle. I certainly didn’t hear anyone in the woods, but, then, I wasn’t expecting to, you know.”

  “Your wife mentioned two people whom she was surprised to see at the castle. Would you know anything about that?”

  “I know whom she means, but I didn’t notice either of them. You’re referring to a cousin of mine and to a rather odd bod who goes about as a caricature of a monk. Personally, I think my wife was seeing double. She’s been suspicious of my cousin Marion ever since Marion wanted to make her home with us. As for the monk, well, unless he had changed into civvies, he certainly wasn’t at the dinner-table.”

  “Is it true, sir, that, if you were out of the way, this cousin would inherit a considerable property?”

  “Not unless my sister, who is co-owner with me, was out of the way, too.”

  “Your sister was not at the function, I believe, sir? Your wife made no mention of a sister to us.”

  “We have no idea where my sister is. I would very much like to find out. When you’ve tracked down my funny circus-performer, perhaps you’d oblige me by throwing out a dragnet for her. I’m extremely worried about her.”

  “If you were out of the way, your sister, I suppose, would be th
e sole owner of your property, would she, sir? Or would it go to your wife?”

  “Oh, it would have nothing to do with my wife. Apart from myself and my sister, the only person with any interest in the estate is this cousin of mine, apart from my baby daughter.”

  “Your wife thought this religious gentleman might have something to gain, sir.”

  “Nothing but squatter’s rights.”

  “Could you explain that?”

  Pembroke gave a succinct account of what little he knew of the tenancy of the trousered woman and the monk. At the end of it the detective-sergeant nodded and flipped back the pages of his notebook.

  “That tallies with what Mr. Timothy Francis Herring has told us,” he said. “We like to cross-check when we can. Mr. Herring also alleges that the man is some kind of maniac who breaks into houses, throws furniture about, and climbs on roofs. Can you substantiate that, sir?”

  “Of my own knowledge, no. Herring has mentioned it to me, of course, but I have no first-hand information about the chap. In fact, it’s only from Herring that I know of the fellow and his woman at all, and that they were squatting at Nanradoc, but I jolly well hope you find them, and then you might ask them what they’ve done with my sister. Anything more I can tell you?”

  “Not at present, thank you, sir. That’s the lot, so far as you are concerned. We are checking on everybody who was at the dinner, of course, including the domestic staff. In fact, we had a pretty good go at some of them to fill in the time before the surgeons would let us question you. Good day, sir, and I wish you a speedy recovery. We shall be keeping in touch.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Pussy in the Well

  The twelve steak-knives which had been appropriated by a party of the younger guests were recovered easily enough and were duly returned to their owner. The thirteenth, which had been taken out of Pembroke’s body, was retained by the police to be produced at the trial (if trial there was) of the would-be murderer.

  “Of course, sir,” said the detective-sergeant, “we have no means of knowing, at present, whether one of the parties might not have got hold of two knives, one of which is in the bundle I’ve returned to you, and the other of which we are holding as an exhibit when we catch the criminal and bring him to book.”