Late and Cold (Timothy Herring)

by Gladys Mitchell

  What reason she could have had for wishing Pembroke so much harm it was impossible to say. The fact that Pembroke had refused to press charges must mean, as Timothy had decided from the beginning, that he knew who had attacked him. The further fact that he and Leonie were still living together seemed to indicate that the incident was closed. That Leonie had seen the monk and Marion at Nanradoc that night was so much moonshine. That could be taken for granted.

  Whether the police had tested the knife for fingerprints Timothy did not know. They certainly had not taken the dabs of anybody who had been present at the party. That was a pity, in a way, because it would probably have cleared Marion if Pembroke had decided to invoke the law. One thing in Leonie’s favour, he supposed, was that none of them had noticed any bloodstains on her clothing. Then he remembered that, although she had worn evening dress at the dinner, she had had on a full-length, long-sleeved evening wrap and gloves when she got into Parsons’s car. If her hand and bare arm and the front of her gown had been splashed with Pembroke’s blood—and, with that particular stab-wound, it need scarcely have spurted at all—she would have been able to cover up the marks all right.

  He turned over in bed and, bouncing himself into a position of comfort, continued to meditate. His problem was based on Diana’s assertion—it amounted to that—that Marion was in love with him. However true that might be—he retained a recollection of a foolish occasion on which she had thrown herself into his arms and he had taken her on to his knee in what (he had believed when he did it) was a sublimely platonic manner, but which she might have interpreted rather differently—there surely could have been no reason for her to think that he had stabbed Pembroke Jones.

  Timothy pondered over this, and the answer made him sit up in bed and laugh. She must have thought that he was in love with Leonie and had attempted, therefore, to put Pembroke out of the way. If she really thought that, she must be extremely simple-minded, he thought, as he lay down again and readjusted the bedclothes. He went over those encounters of his with Leonie when Marion had been present, but could think of nothing in his own conversation and conduct which should have given rise to an idea that he thought of Leonie as anything but the merest acquaintance. Leonie, of course, was one of those women who flirt, unconsciously or, at least, instinctively, with every man they meet. She called him Timmy, a diminutive of his name which Marion herself did not employ, and evoked, he supposed, a show of gallantry in himself by way of automatic response.

  He thought over what Diana Parsons had said about Marion. She was the self-sacrificing type. Look at the way she half-starved herself, and denied herself the pleasures that were the prerogative of her age and generation, in order to look after those children. Yes, if Marion believed that he had tried to kill Pembroke, it was just possible that she would have taken the blame, leaving him (Timothy grinned and then grimaced at the thought) to take care of the children while she was in prison.

  At the idea of himself as the father of three, he thumped his pillow, settled himself for slumber to shut out the horrid vision this conjured up, and dropped off to sleep. Immediately after breakfast on the following morning he drove to the nearest garage, had the tank re-charged and the tyres checked, and then drove north to Chester.

  It was a city of which he was fond, although he preferred Winchester and York, and when he had garaged his car at the hotel where he proposed to have lunch and had had a drink, he spent the rest of the time before one o’clock in strolling about and looking, with what he called his Phisbe eye, at the city walls, the unique shopping arcade called the Rows, the exterior of the rose-coloured Cathedral and the beautiful half-timbered houses. During his peregrinations, which were leisurely in the extreme, he located the art gallery which he proposed to visit as soon as he had had lunch.

  As befitted its function, it turned out to be a lovely old house of the mid–sixteenth century, its panelled walls and Tudor ceilings benignly sheltering the modern paintings and sculpture which were on display in its ground-floor and first-floor rooms. He inspected these, bought (“to be sent to you later, sir, when the exhibition closes, if I may have your name and address, sir”) a small, repulsive oil which was catalogued as Martha With Canary, (neither Martha nor the canary, of course, being visible except, perhaps, to the eye of the artist himself), and then enquired for Mr. Hugo. He was directed to proceed downstairs and apply at a door marked Office.

  Mr. Hugo turned out to be a suave but pleasant Jew, exquisitely mannered, equally exquisitely tailored, with beautiful hands and a public-school accent. Timothy introduced himself, was remembered as having been at some time—the fine hands waved discreet apology that their owner did not recall the exact date—in correspondence with the gallery, and stated his business. Summing up Mr. Hugo as a man with whom it would be useless and rather undignified to attempt to fence, he came to the point at once.

  “I know you are not expecting him to exhibit again until the spring, but I’ve come on behalf of Mr. Pembroke Pritchard Jones—a personal matter which Mr. Jones did not feel able to deal with himself.”

  “A personal matter? I see. I was so sorry to read in the papers of his terrible loss.”

  (So it was going to be pretty plain sailing, thought Timothy.)

  “You see, the police are questioning some unfortunate young woman, Mr. Jones’s cousin,” he said, “in connection with the affair, whereas Mr. Jones is convinced that the guilty party is someone who must have been living in the house with Miss Olwen Jones at the time. Unfortunately, he has insufficient evidence of the relationship which existed between his sister and this party—parties, actually; there were two people involved—to go to the police with his theories and clear this cousin of his.”

  “I see. What I do not quite see is how I can help him.”

  “It’s a long shot, I know, but he thinks she met these people in Chester, possibly here. You see, Mr. Jones and his sister had had a pretty bad quarrel, so he thought it a bit odd that she should have troubled to come here about a couple of years ago to look at his pictures. He wondered, therefore, whether . . .” Timothy stopped, for the dark eyes which, so far, had betrayed nothing but polite, if guarded, interest, had suddenly widened.

  “Hullo,” said Timothy to himself, “I’ve struck oil. Now what?”

  “So that’s what it was!” said Mr. Hugo. “We thought at the time she was drunk. The paintings, of course, were written off as a dead loss. We accepted responsibility, and we are always fully covered by insurance, so Mr. Jones received, in every case, his reserve price for the paintings, less our commission. Well, at the earnest entreaty of Miss Leonie Bing, who also exhibits here from time to time and is, as you probably know, his wife, we wrote to Mr. Jones, when we sent his cheque, in congratulation that the paintings had been sold. Miss Bing pointed out how very distressed he would be if he ever found out what his sister had done to them, and, naturally, we quite saw the force of her argument.”

  “This is all news to me,” said Timothy, careful to keep excitement out of his voice. “What, exactly, had she done to them?”

  “Slashed them and ripped them to pieces. Six of his best paintings were utterly destroyed before we could get to her and stop her. She threatened my attendant with the knife when he attempted to intervene, and he had to call on myself and Miss Leonie Bing for help before we could disarm her.”

  “Weren’t there other people in the gallery—other visitors, I mean?”

  “Oh, no. She must have bided her time and waited until that particular room was empty. My attendant was in an adjoining room from which he had just shown a party of American visitors downstairs to the sculpture gallery, which is on this floor, of course, and he did not immediately grasp what was happening in the next room. I suspect him of loitering in order to count and rejoice over the tips which I feel sure the Americans had given him, but I do not blame him for that. A good man is entitled to gloat over his pickings, and Salaman is a very good man indeed. He has a gift for pointing out the beauties of t
he most unbeautiful paintings, and therefore getting us a sale for them, and is worth twice the money I pay him, although, when he points this out, it would be unbusinesslike in me to admit it. However, I am afraid I’m wandering from the point.”

  “Not at all,” said Timothy. “It’s clear that, wherever Miss Olwen Jones met these two people I mentioned, she did not meet them here, unless, of course, she visited the galleries on other occasions.”

  “That, of course, I could not say. We charge for admission, as you know, but we do not keep a visitors’ book. Is there any other way in which I can help you?”

  “No, I think not. It is most obliging of you to have been bothered with me.”

  “Not at all. Only too pleased. And so kind of you to have bought one of Mr. Ribb’s paintings. He will be so delighted.”

  “How on earth did you know I’d bought one?”

  “Oh, the inter-comm.” He waved a hand at it. “How else could Salaman have summoned Miss Bing and myself so quickly on the melancholy occasion I have outlined to you?”

  “Yes, you mentioned that you and Miss Bing went to your attendant’s assistance. Where was Mr. Jones, then?”

  “At his home. When there is an exhibition of his work or of hers, they take it in turns to drive into Chester and either show up as the artist, or stroll around the gallery praising the other’s works in order to bump up sales. It does, too,” said Mr. Hugo, with great satisfaction.

  “Yes, I see. Miss Bing must be a woman of considerable courage if she was prepared to tackle somebody who was armed with a knife sharp enough to slash canvases.”

  “Oh, a woman of immense courage, and, one may say, hopping mad at the destruction of her husband’s finest pictures. She has great strength, too, of course. All that bashing away at stone, especially in the preliminary stages of sculpture before one gets to the finer work, you know, needs a considerable amount of energy.”

  “Yes, I suppose it must,” said Timothy. “Well, thank you again. Good-bye.”

  He went into the street and mopped his brow. So that was it! It no longer mattered about tracing the first meeting between Olwen Jones and the Birds. The Woodpecker and the Crow were out of it. The police had been right. The Birds were only petty criminals, after all. The major crime of murder was, and always would be, beyond their scope. They had found and buried the body.

  He directed his steps, urged by some inner prompting, towards the Cathedral, and went inside. He wanted to think things out, and this seemed a better place than his car in which to put his thoughts in order.

  The fourteenth century was not his favourite architectural period. It had produced Geoffrey Chaucer and King Edward III, but neither of these was an architect. It had also produced the Black Death. So far as architecture was concerned, he considered that it had bowdlerised the severe but beautiful and sophisticated simplicity of Early English by giving it (as the Victorians are said to have given the legs of their furniture, which is to say, unintentional vulgarity) church windows with geometric and curvilinear tracery, and had embellished its pillar capitals with lush and unnecessary carvings in the form of natural foliage and flowers.

  The interior of Chester Cathedral, however, was far better, to his way of thinking, than the red sandstone exterior as seen from the south-east. The north transept was that of the original church built by Hugh Lupus, the Norman Earl of Chester and Lord of the Welsh Marches. The first rebuilding had taken place between the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth century. Then the monks of St. Oswald’s—for the building had not become a Cathedral until the time of King Henry VIII—had begun alterations which had been interrupted by the Black Death. Then had come the work of the fifteenth and early-sixteenth-century abbots, and whether this was an improvement on the planning of the fourteenth-century monks could only (Timothy thought) be a matter for conjecture.

  He seated himself in the thirteenth-century vestibule to the Chapter House where, in addition to finding the starkness of the pillars and arches soothing to his chaotic thoughts, there was little likelihood that he would be troubled for long at a time by the visitors who thronged the nave and chancel.

  For twenty minutes or so he brooded. Then, still with his mind only partly made up, he returned to the art gallery. Mr. Hugo received him in his former courteous and urbane manner. His first words, after they had exchanged greetings, surprised Timothy. They were: “I expected you back.”

  “You did? I can’t think why.”

  “Oh, surely!” said the smiling, handsome Jew. “I can put two and two together, you know.”

  “Well,” said Timothy, “the thing is, what am I going to do about it?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t advise you.”

  “You can help me to sort things out. Look here—and please believe that the last thing in my mind is to be offensive—but how much would your galleries stand to lose if Leonie Bing got a life-sentence?”

  “I cannot say. It would depend upon how long she is able to keep up her present standard of work, which is excellent and, of course, saleable. But there is another thing. If Leonie Bing went to prison for murdering her husband’s sister, I could not undertake to say what would be the effect on Pembroke Jones, and his work is not only excellent, but, as pictures command a readier sale than sculpture, he is much more valuable to us as a potential asset than is his wife.”

  “You mean he might stop painting?”

  “Oh, no. They never do that. I mean that, although it would go on, his work might be different, inferior, even superior, to what he is doing today. One cannot surmise.”

  “And it might not be so readily saleable?”

  “Do not mistake me, Mr. Herring. There is more to it than the money. I grant you that I am not in this business for my health, as they say. I like money. Who does not? But if all I wanted was money, well, with my background and my connections—I have a brother in Hatton Garden, my father was a banker with a European reputation, my cousin owns a chain of motels in America—I could do far better for myself than I do here.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Timothy. “I didn’t mean to be cynical. The point is that I’m desperately worried.”

  “Well, I am not. Let us face this issue. If anybody—I mean this cousin whom Pembroke Jones has in mind—is convicted, I think that you and I must come forward with what we know to be the truth. If the police drop the case, then I do not think it wrong for us to keep silence. It is, in a way, The Doctor’s Dilemma all over again, I know, but this time I think we must put the artist first as long as ever we can. Do you agree?”

  “Is Leonie Bing—is Pembroke Jones—I mean, are they all that good?”

  “Posterity must decide that,” said the Jew, with his charming smile, “but I think we might at least give posterity a chance to make the decision. Don’t you?”

  “I shall tell Leonie Bing what I think. I shall not, of course, involve you in any way.”

  “Thank you. I would rather you did not, unless it becomes essential. My relationship with her and with Pembroke Jones would suffer, and that, from all points of view, would be a pity. Well, good-bye, Mr. Herring, and good luck. Don’t roam dark alleys after nightfall.”

  With mutual esteem and, on Timothy’s side, a considerable amount of relief and respect, they parted.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The Stately Home

  Timothy had tea at the hotel where he had left his car and then drove the short distance to Mold. He did not relish the thought of confronting Leonie Bing, but he had the normal human urge to get a distasteful business over as soon as possible. In one respect, and an important one from his point of view, he was fortunate. He found her alone in the house. The charwoman had gone home and Pembroke had taken the children and Marion to Timothy’s house in the Cotswolds.

  “She said you had promised to give them a home for a bit,” said Leonie. “So awfully good of you to have made the arrangement, Timmy darling. It’s lovely to have the bungalow to ourselves again.”
/>   “Did you say, ‘and Marion’? Is she in the clear, then?”

  “Oh, yes. She was only assisting the police. You didn’t think they were going to arrest her, did you?”

  “I wasn’t at all sure about it.”

  “Well, I’m sorry you’ve come here for nothing, if you were expecting to see her.”

  “I didn’t come expecting to see her. I came to see you.”

  “Oh, Timmy darling, this is so sudden!”

  “Look, let me come to the point.”

  “You’re looking terribly serious. Come on in here and sit down. Would you care for a drink?”

  “No, thanks. Look, Leonie, I’ve just come from the Chester galleries—those private ones run by a chap named Hugo.”

  “Oh . . . yes?”

  “He told me about the trouble when Jones’s sister went there.”

  “Oh, did he? So what?”

  “So nothing—unless somebody—unless the wrong person gets charged with murdering Olwen.”

  “I see. Thank you, Timmy. You’re a gent. Does—er—does Hugo—?”

  “Yes, he came to the same conclusion as I did. It’s the truth, I suppose?”

  “Yes, it is, and I’d do it again. Oh, Tim! Pembroke’s best work! The finest things he’d ever done! Wouldn’t you have wanted to kill her?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “But you don’t think you’d have done it?”