It was a point which had not occurred to Timothy.
“I shouldn’t think it was possible for one person to get hold of two knives, you know,” he said. “I suppose the waiter knew from which places the twelve knives were missing.”
“Just so, sir. They were all from the one part of one of the long tables, and your seating-plan gave us the names and your young man at your London office found the addresses for us. It was as simple as that. But I’m afraid we’ve got a long row to hoe before we can fix on the party that had the thirteenth knife.”
“Of course,” said Timothy to Parsons, with whom he was staying so that he could visit Pembroke while the other was in hospital, “if I didn’t know that they’re still very much in love with one another, I wouldn’t look further than Leonie Bing. I mean, look at the facts, so far as we know them. Nobody else would have known that Jones went into those bushes.”
“Yes, quite,” said Parsons in a dubious tone. “He did or said something annoying, you mean, and his incensed wife buried the knife in him and as near as a toucher rendered herself a widow. It sounds all right, and I suppose it’s logical enough, but, damn it all, you might as well argue that Diana here is capable of sticking a knife in me!”
“Which she jolly well is, at times,” said his wife, “so don’t say you haven’t been warned.”
“Well, carry the warning one step further,” urged Parsons, grinning. “Which, among my many irritating habits, is the one that, in the interests of my own safety, I ought to give up?”
“Your attack of conscience every Christmas when you think we ought to ask your sister-in-law to live with us. I would willingly murder you if you ever went the one step further, and actually invited her to make her home here. I could not stand it, so now you know!”
“I think she’s pretty lonely. I feel rather sorry for her since Richard died.”
“Since she nagged him into his grave, you mean.”
Timothy looked thoughtfully at his hostess.
“Tell me, huntress chaste and fair,” he said, “would a housewife, who is also a dedicated artist, be visited by murderous intentions at the thought of having home and studio permanently requisitioned by a spinster cousin-in-law and three small brats?”
Diana raised her eyebrows.
“I’ve known slighter reasons for being visited by murderous intentions,” she replied.
“So that’s what you think?” said Parsons. “Oh, but to have the intention is one thing; to carry it out is something quite different. I can imagine Leonie Bing leaving Jones, but I certainly can’t imagine her trying to kill him.”
“I don’t know so much. Pretty hot stuff, these sculptors. But to turn to more important matters. First, when are we going to get people to dig up the floor of the keep at Nanradoc to find out whether there’s another well?”
“Whenever you like. Isn’t there some electrical gadget called a proton magnetometer that archaeologists use? You’d better make some enquiries.”
“It might be more practical to employ a dowser first. We don’t want to dig out a blinking great hole that’s simply got to be filled in again. Besides, there might be a third well somewhere in the bailey. A dowser could find that, too.”
“Rather fun. I know there’s a British Society of Dowsers somewhere about. We’ll get them to send someone down. What other ‘important matters’ have you thought of?”
“I’ve had a letter from the president, who’s had a letter from Coningsby, to say that the Dewes couple have threatened to give notice if Marion Jones and her kids are to be permanent lodgers at our headquarters. There are still these furniture-throwing noises at night, and the couple are properly cheesed off.”
“Oh, Lord! We can’t possibly lose the Dewes! What’s the trouble this time?—anything apart from the noisy kids?”
“The police.”
“Oh, questioning Marion about the Nanradoc banquet, I suppose. But she can’t know anything about the attempt on Jones. Didn’t you say she refused the invitation to be present?”
“The deuce of it is that Leonie Bing still swears she saw her there. All absolute nonsense, of course, but unless Marion has a pretty good alibi she’s in for a sticky time, I rather fear. You see, unfortunately, she might have a motive for getting Jones out of the way.”
“Oh, of course! This third-party title to the Nanradoc estate, you mean. Yes, that is a bit of a facer. Let’s hope, for her sake, she can prove she was blamelessly occupied in London while somebody was pricking Jones with a stiletto. How is he, by the way?”
“He’s out of the wood now. He’ll be able to go home in a few days’ time, he tells me, so, as soon as I’ve seen to the dowser and diggers . . .”
“I’ll do that, if you want to get back to Town to see Dewes and Marion. I think prompt action needs to be taken there.”
“I do agree. All right, and thanks very much. I’ll send the president a wire—he seems to think that smoothing and soothing the Dewes is by way of being my pigeon—and I’ll get back to London tomorrow.”
He found Marion alone, unhappy, but resigned. The children had been taken into Kensington Gardens to play, as it was Saturday, and she had left them there for an hour.
“I don’t blame Mrs. Dewes,” she said. “It isn’t very nice to have visits from the police, and we’ve had three. I don’t know why I have to be mixed up in this stabbing business. I wasn’t even at Nanradoc that night.”
“Well, surely you can prove that, can’t you?”
“No, as it happens—as it would happen, with my sort of luck!—I can’t. I go to cookery classes as a rule on Wednesdays, but on that particular Wednesday I didn’t go.”
“Oh? How was that, then?”
“We were going to do the main dishes—the entree and game, you know—of a seven-course dinner, and I simply couldn’t afford the stuff. The week before that, we’d done hors d’oeuvres, soup, and fish—that was bad enough; the soup took sherry and the fish was Dover soles—but that particular night it was to be fillet steak and pheasant, and I simply couldn’t run to it, so I ducked the class.”
“But the Dewes could have said you were here all the evening, couldn’t they?”
“No, because I wasn’t. You see, I have an agreement with Mrs. Dewes that she will pop upstairs once or twice during the evening to make sure the children are all right—I give her half-a-crown a week for that—so I didn’t tell her I wasn’t going to class, because it’s my only free evening of the week. I went out at the usual time, and walked about a bit, and went to a News Theatre and saw the whole programme through twice, and then I walked about a bit more and then I bought a ticket on the Inner Circle and used up the rest of the time that way, and then I went home. I don’t see how I can prove any of it. I’ve told the police what I did, but I know they don’t believe me. Who on earth can have told them I went to Nanradoc?”
“I believe Leonie Bing let it slip that she thought she had seen you there.”
“Does she hate me, then?”
“I’m sure she doesn’t. She meant no harm, but, of course, the police think that you have a stronger motive than anybody else for putting Pembroke out of the way.”
“Yes, I realise that. The police have questioned the Dewes about me, too, and, of course, more came out about that awful monk coming here.”
“I see. By the way, how did he get on for food while he was here? He couldn’t have gone out to buy any, and he must have been hiding in the house for the best part of three days.”
“He stole from me. I thought it was Bryn and Bron.”
“Oh, of course he had the run of the top floors during school hours.”
“Yes. Tim, what am I going to do?”
“Don’t worry. We’ll work something out. You can’t stay here, of course.”
“You think the Dewes mean that they’ll go if I stay? That’s what Mrs. Dewes told me. She’s dreadfully upset about these visits from the police, and we’re still getting those very disturbing noises.”
“Yes, I do understand, but it doesn’t make it any easier.”
“Well, I got you into this, and I’m going to see you through, so not to worry. Get your own and the kids’ things packed. We can deal with your furniture later. For the time being, I’ve taken rooms for you in a guesthouse near Ealing Common. You can get the train from there to take you to school, can’t you? The proprietor and his wife are retired teachers and are prepared to welcome the children and see them settled in at a local school. How will that do? Permanent arrangements to be made later.”
“Oh, Tim!” He found his arms full of a sobbing girl. It was not unpleasant. He led her to a chair and pulled her on to his knee.
Coningsby was congratulatory, Mrs. Dewes apologetic, when Timothy informed both of them on the following day that Marion’s furniture would be collected and put into storage.
“I’m sure, sir, as I’m very sorry to be the cause of her going,” said Mrs. Dewes, “but it was them visits from the police, and always one of ’em in uniform, and what people must have thought I can’t think.”
“Well, there it is,” said Timothy curtly. He was not feeling very pleased with the Phisbe caretakers. Marion and the children could not live indefinitely at a guesthouse, particularly as she insisted that she ought to pay half what it cost to keep them there, a sum which he knew was more than she could afford, and which he was determined not to let her in for if he could help it. He met her on the following Saturday and drove her round to look at flats, bungalows, and houses, but there seemed to be nothing within her means and she flared up so angrily when he offered her the purchase price of one of the flats that he felt bound to apologise and withdraw the offer.
“I feel like a kept woman, as it is, with you paying the money for us in Ealing,” she said. “I suppose the only answer is a caravan. Do they sell them on the instalment plan, I wonder?”
Timothy returned to his Cotswold home, and Marion’s problems soon ceased to occupy his mind, for in the middle of the following week he received a most disquieting letter from Parsons. The hollow in the floor of the keep at Nanradoc had indeed indicated a filled-in well, but, in digging it out, the men had come upon a horrid discovery. Near the bottom of the well they had found a body.
“Could you come up here and support my story?” wrote Parsons. “Of course the men reported it to the police, the police called in a pathologist, (one of these forensic experts, you know), and it turns out that the body could not have been buried more than a few years ago. Murder is suspected, of course, and I’ve been pretty well grilled by the gendarmes as to my object in having the thing disinterred. They don’t suspect me of having made away with anybody, but they waste my time and, anyway, I can tell them almost nothing that seems of the least use.”
Timothy did not see that anything he could say would be of much use, either, but he could hardly leave Parsons, who had supervised the digging merely to oblige him, to carry the can, so he telephoned to say that he was coming and, as the letter had arrived by the morning post, he drove to Gloucester and on to Hereford and through Ludlow to Shrewsbury that same day.
Tom and Diana were delighted to see him, and on the following morning he drove to the police station at Caernarvon and reported. They found him more helpful than he had supposed they would—at any rate, they told him that his statement had cleared matters up so far as Parsons was concerned. They also told him that they had been in contact with Pembroke Jones and, having said that, they proceeded to question him so closely that he guessed they were checking his statements against those which Jones had given them.
“How did you come to rent Nanradoc Castle in the first place? What brought you to it? Why did you think there was a well under the floor of the tower? When did you hear that Mr. Jones’s sister was missing?”
In answer to the last question Timothy mildly observed that he had not heard that Miss Olwen Jones was “missing.” All he knew was that at one time she had been residing at Nanradoc House, but was no longer there. He had reason to believe that she had let it.
“To whom? Can you describe the people? What made you go to the house? Why did they give you a key to the bridge? Were you alone when they gave it to you? Oh, what made you take this other Miss Jones with you, then?”
Timothy decided to hedge on this one. Once the police were certain—as they probably were already—that the body was that of Pembroke’s sister, Marion would be even more deeply in the soup than she had been over the stabbing of Pembroke, since, if both the brother and the sister died, her claim to the estate would be unquestioned except for little Miranda. Sooner or later she was bound to be seriously involved, but Timothy was determined that it should not be through any ill-timed words of his if he could possibly help it.
“I didn’t intend to take her to see the house. I thought she might be interested to see the castle, as her cousin had promised it to her if she would repair it.”
“But you did take her up to the house.”
“Yes, I did, but it was quite an afterthought. When we had looked at the ruins it occurred to me that she might be interested in having a look at the house. After all, it was her ancestral home, I suppose.”
“Yes, I see that, sir, but what exactly was your interest in her?”
That was an easy one, and Timothy answered it confidently.
“She had been offered this castle by her cousin, as I said. She wrote to my Society to find out whether we could help her financially about putting the place into some sort of repair. Of course, we couldn’t, but I felt rather sorry for her, so I took her along to show her how hopeless it was.”
“Not so entirely hopeless, sir, if you later decided to effect the repairs, surely?”
“That was an entirely different matter. The repairs are sufficient to turn the castle into a show-place for tourists, but Miss Marion Jones wanted it for a dwelling-house. It is quite unsuitable for that.”
“So, realising its unsuitability, you took her up to the house.”
“Yes.”
“Did you expect to be shown over it?”
“I didn’t expect anything.”
“Did you go inside?”
“Yes. The people who were living there asked us in and offered us tea.”
“What people would those have been?”
“A middle-aged, rather mannish type of woman who called herself Olwen Jones, and a chap dressed like a monk. You must have heard of them from people in the village. They were quite a remarkable-looking couple.”
“You say they invited you and Miss Jones in, and offered you tea. Had you met them on any other occasion, then?”
“Yes. I had run into them on a previous visit I had paid to the ruins after my Society had received Miss Marion Jones’s letter. They handed me a key to the bridge so that I could cross the river. That was how I was able to take Miss Jones up to the house.”
“Yes. Did you meet these people again?”
“The monkish chap, yes, but not the lady. He got into our London headquarters for some reason known only to himself, and I chased him on to the roof after he had knocked me cold with a poker. The police in Kensington have the details, although, as I couldn’t prove the assault, I didn’t mention it.”
“What was his object in entering your Society’s premises, sir?”
“I didn’t get a chance to ask him, and I don’t suppose he would have told me, anyway. I formed the impression that there was something fishy about his tenancy of Nanradoc House and that he thought we might be holding the deeds, or something of that sort.”
“His object, you think, was burglary, then?”
“Yes, burglary of a sort.”
“You mentioned the London police. How did they become involved?”
“Somebody called them and told them
this chap was on the roof.”
“Did you charge him with breaking and entering? You say you did not charge him with assaulting you.”
“No. I had no proof that he was the person who had hit me over the head, and, actually, I thought him some kind of a crank.”
“A very liberal attitude, if I may say so, sir.”
Timothy smiled at the irony and said,
“‘Live and let live’ is my motto, sergeant. It saves a lot of unpleasantness.”
“Could I have the address of your Society’s premises, sir?”
Timothy gave it, and added,
“There’s nobody there during the day except our secretary, who has the downstairs office, and the caretaker’s wife, who does the cleaning. At night she and her husband look after the place. I don’t think you’ll find them much help. So far as I know, neither of them even saw the monk. And now, may I ask you a question?”
“Ask away, sir,” replied the sergeant, with a secretive, Welsh smile. “There is no harm in asking, but I shall answer only at my own discretion, of course.”
“This body my men found in the well. Has it been identified?”
“Not positively, no, sir, but we have Mr. Pembroke Pritchard Jones at the mortuary at this very moment. And now, sir, can you give me Miss Marion Jones’s address?”
“Marion’s address? But she has nothing to tell you about this wretched business of a body in the well! Except for a couple of visits to Nanradoc House, she’s been living in London all the time. She’s a teacher. You can ask at her school. They’ll tell you where she’s been living.”
“There are such tilings as school holidays, sir, and there are such things as Saturdays and Sundays. I may tell you that we have not yet concluded our enquiries into the attack, murderously conceived, on Mr. Pembroke Pritchard Jones.”
“I’ll lay you a bet on that, sergeant.”
“I do not accept wagers under any circumstances whatever, Mr. Herring. Apart from my being a member of the police force, my chapel does not countenance any form of gambling.”
Late and Cold (Timothy Herring) Page 16