The Herring in the Library

by L. C. Tyler

  ‘The real world?’

  ‘No, that noise out there.’

  And indeed there was a sound of scuffling and heavy boots on the stone floor.

  ‘If they’ve come to arrest you again,’ said the Prioress, ‘don’t expect me to pray for you this time.’

  ‘You didn’t pray for me last time.’

  ‘And how right I was,’ said the Prioress, turning indignantly to Thomas and thus missing the entry of the Sheriff and his two henchmen, plus a fourth man who did not appear entirely happy to be with them. This last-mentioned individual suddenly pitched forward, either having been precipitously released from their hold or perhaps having been deliberately flung onto the rush-covered flagstones. He groaned softly and pulled himself to his knees, where he remained. Thomas noticed that the man was dressed as a clerk and wore a dark grey hood. It was a bad choice of costume under the circumstances.

  ‘I think,’ said the Sheriff, addressing Master Thomas, ‘that we have our murderer.’

  The man looked imploringly at Thomas.

  ‘I’m not sure . . .’ Thomas began.

  ‘Not sure?’ repeated the Sheriff. ‘You signed a statement to say that you saw clearly a man dressed as a clerk, wearing a dark grey hood. A hood the colour of summer thunder-clouds, I think you said. Very poetic. This is just such a man. We also found a dagger . . . as close by as we needed to.’

  ‘Only not my dagger,’ said the man in a way that suggested he had said it a few dozen times before.

  ‘It is to be expected that you would deny it,’ said the Sheriff indulgently. ‘There was fresh blood on the dagger.’

  ‘If I were the murderer,’ said the man, ‘I would have cleaned my dagger straight away. It only takes a moment. Never let the sun set on dried blood – that’s what my grand-mother always used to say.’

  ‘You know a great deal about murderers then,’ said the Sheriff. ‘Why should that be?’

  ‘It’s because he is one,’ said one of the henchmen, with a genuine desire to be helpful.

  ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ said the Sheriff. ‘Now, Master Thomas, could you just confirm that you saw somebody like this lurking (as I think you so skilfully phrased it) near the scene of the murder.’

  ‘For pity’s sake,’ said the man, fixing Thomas with an imploring eye. ‘Tell them the truth. Tell them that you did not see me.’

  ‘But,’ said the Sheriff, before Thomas could answer, ‘Master Thomas has already signed a statement to say that he did see somebody exactly like you. He signed it . . . where was it now? . . . ah, yes, it was in Bramber Castle only this morning. I am sure that an upright servant of the King would not have committed the crime of perjury, carrying as it does so many heavy and painful penalties. Extremely painful penalties that it would make me quite nauseous even to describe. I am sure that Master Thomas would not wish to retract a statement of such importance to those who enforce the King’s Law. I am sure that he would merely wish to confirm that you fit the description of the man he swears he saw, so that he can go peacefully on his way and have a trouble-free journey back to his family in London. Is that a fair summary, Master Thomas?’

  Thomas did a quick count. That was two thinly veiled threats, possibly three. Obviously one good one was all you actually needed-say the one about waylaying him on the way home. That was easily good enough on its own.

  ‘I am not retracting my statement,’ Thomas began, ‘but . . .’

  ‘But?’ asked the Sheriff, getting more meaning into a single word than most poets managed to get into several quatrains.

  ‘I beg you,’ said the man on the floor. ‘I am innocent. They have dragged me out of a tavern, and taken me to some desolate spot that I never visited before in my life. They have gone through a play-acting to find a knife dripping pig’s blood, or some such thing, that I am supposed to have cast aside when I stabbed Sir Edmund. They have brought me here, to meet a man I have also never seen before. I thought it was a bit too good to be true when somebody made me a present of a nice new hood this morning. Talk about a complete stitch-up. Kind sir, if you are a Christian, I beg you. Tell them that you have never seen me.’

  ‘He is a Christian,’ chipped in the Prioress.

  ‘Let me help you,’ said the Sheriff to Thomas, in tones so mild and friendly that they struck fear into Thomas’s very soul. ‘If you do not wish to state categorically that this is not the man – as perhaps is the case – then I have the right to assume that it is the man. Do you follow me? You don’t actually need to say a thing. Silence is fine. In many ways, silence is the best thing for all of us – except possibly for the guilty person snivelling in front of you.’

  ‘They will torture me,’ said the man.

  ‘That’s true,’ said the helpful henchman.

  ‘Only if he denies his guilt,’ said the Sheriff, with a mildly reproving look. ‘We are not savages.’

  ‘Reverend Prioress,’ said the prisoner, switching his attention away from Thomas. ‘Can you not intercede for me?’

  ‘How,’ said the Prioress, squaring up to the Sheriff, ‘do you know he is guilty?’

  ‘We won’t know until he confesses or we have tortured him or both,’ said the Sheriff. ‘But Master Thomas’s testimony is admirably clear. You have no idea how grateful we are to him.’

  ‘The man says he’s innocent’

  ‘Well, he would, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘But – St Lawrence’s lemons! – you could be torturing an innocent man. You imperil your soul, sir knight’

  ‘It rarely happens that we torture an innocent man. Almost all prove to be guilty – or so they tell us eventually. My lady Prioress, you must pray for the unhappy prisoner, which is what you do best, and leave us to do . . . what we do best. In view of Master Thomas’s very conclusive silence, we shall be on our way.’

  ‘Dolted daffe,’ said the Prioress, though it was not clear which of the men she was addressing.

  The Sheriff smiled. ‘Pax vobiscum,’ he replied.

  The henchmen half-dragged, half-carried the prisoner to the door. With difficulty he turned his head towards Thomas one last time. ‘Please?’ he begged.

  ‘I . . .’ said Thomas.

  ‘Take him to Bramber,’ the Sheriff said. Then turning to Thomas he added: ‘Bramber is many miles away and the walls are fourteen feet thick. Unlike me, you will not be troubled with this miserable wretch’s screams. Probably. So I bid you both a very good night and a restful repose.’

  The footsteps echoed again on the bare stones, then there was the crunch of boots on soft snow, then, at long last, blissful silence. The fire spat and crackled briefly, as fires will.

  ‘Well, that was good,’ said the Prioress with some of the heaviest irony Thomas had encountered in a person of religion.

  ‘What was I supposed to say?’

  ‘You could have said you definitely saw somebody but that wasn’t the man.’

  ‘I suppose I could . . . I just didn’t think quickly enough.’

  ‘Dolted daffe,’ said the Prioress, thus clarifying who the remark had been addressed to earlier.

  ‘What now?’ asked Thomas.

  ‘You have,’ said the Prioress, ‘just sent an innocent man to be tortured and hanged. Maybe drawn and quartered as well if it’s not his lucky day. I have never seen anyone framed in a more blatant manner. You’d better come up with a way of springing him from gaol’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Tell you what,’ said the Prioress, ‘I’ll do what I do best: pray. You can do the rest of it.’

  It was getting late. From what seemed to be a long way off, I heard Elsie’s gentle snore from my bedroom (and indeed from my bed). I reread what I had just typed. The Master Thomas stories were normally quite light. This tale had suddenly become much darker – the moral dilemma that Thomas was in more complex – than in previous books. If writers draw constantly on their own experience, how did this relate to my own? Or was it just a story about fourteenth-century England?

/>   I closed the lid of my computer, changed into my pyjamas and, pulling an inadequate blanket over myself, tried to find a sufficiently comfortable position on the sofa to allow me to sleep. There was no such position, but eventually I slept anyway.

  Twenty

  ‘Shouldn’t you be back in London by now?’ asked Ethelred (always the perfect host) over a fairly late breakfast.

  ‘My place,’ I said, ‘is by your side.’

  ‘I’m going up to London anyway,’ he said, ‘to talk to Fiona McIntosh. I phoned her earlier. I’m meeting her this afternoon.’

  ‘But you’re coming back?’

  ‘Yes, I’ll be back late afternoon.’

  ‘Then I think I should stay until I’m sure you are absolutely safe,’ I said. ‘You need more butter, by the way.’

  ‘I don’t think any of us needs protecting,’ said Ethelred. Outside, the sun was shining and there was the reassuring sound of the world going about its business. ‘The Maggs girl was probably just out at some club in Worthing. That she wasn’t home by midnight might worry her mother, but for teenagers these days, the evening is only just beginning round about then. It doesn’t mean she’s been murdered or that she’s fled the country. If I need more butter, it’s because you’ve eaten it.’

  ‘That’s what you are supposed to do with butter. Let’s ring her later. What time do teenagers get up these days?’

  ‘You must have been eating it straight from the tub with a spoon. If she’s supposed to be at school or college or something, she should already be up,’ said Ethelred, looking at his watch.

  ‘I certainly did not eat it with a spoon. I licked it off the knife-the one you were using to spread your toast. We could go and doorstep her again,’ I said.

  ‘Or,’ said Ethelred, putting his knife to one side, ‘we could ask Mrs Michie what she knows. They work together, after all. If Gillian Maggs had a trip planned, she ought to have known. We’ve time to see her before I catch the train to London. I’ll also ring Gerald Smith later and see what was in the envelope that I forwarded on Robert’s behalf

  Mrs Michie’s number was equally easy to track down and, with more or less good grace, she agreed to see us before she went off to work at Muntham Court. Her bungalow in Findon Valley was neat and almost identical to all of the others in the road.

  ‘No,’ she said, eyebrows raised, ‘I didn’t know that Gillian Maggs was planning to go anywhere. She should really have checked with me first that it was convenient. Still, if Her Ladyship knows and approves, who am I to question it?’ I think it was what is called a rhetorical question, in the sense that she ended it with a sniff.

  ‘Barbados would be a bit expensive for her?’ I asked.

  ‘Her Ladyship doesn’t pay any more than she has to.’

  ‘Would that apply to John O’Brian as well?’

  ‘I can’t say. She certainly doesn’t overpay Gill Maggs, or me come to that.’

  ‘Does Mrs Maggs’s husband have a good job then?’

  ‘Doesn’t have any sort of job at all. Who says that’s where she’s gone anyway?’

  ‘Her daughter.’

  This time Mrs Michie just sniffed, but it was an eloquent sniff.

  ‘What does the daughter do?’ I asked.

  ‘Same line of work as the father.’

  ‘So not likely to be able to afford a trip to the Caribbean at short notice?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  On the subject of the passage she was more contemplative.

  ‘Everybody in the village knew there was supposed to be a secret passage. It’s even mentioned on the village website,’ she said with a frown, ‘but I thought it was just a story. I never saw it myself. If Gillian Maggs knew, she never said nothing to me.’

  ‘Could Gillian Maggs have discovered it – while cleaning, say?’ I asked.

  ‘Could have done, I suppose. She worked for the previous owners of Muntham Court too. She could have known about it for a long time.’

  ‘And not told anyone?’

  ‘She’d have told Her. Maybe not Him.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Just a feeling. I sometimes thought Gill Maggs was a bit too pally with Her Ladyship.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just because,’ said Mrs Michie, as if the answer was obvious, except to somebody who used the subjunctive on a regular basis. ‘Anyway, Her Ladyship might have found a secret passage quite handy.’

  ‘Why?’ repeated Ethelred, though again the answer was pretty obvious to some of us.

  ‘Good place to hide one of her boyfriends if Sir Robert came back unexpected, eh?’

  Back at the flat, Ethelred made coffee for himself and hot chocolate for me.

  ‘I need to get some more coffee,’ he said, inconsequentially, as he handed me my own steaming mug. ‘I’ve still got plenty of decaffeinated, but I never drink it myself

  For a while we consumed our respective hot beverages and thought about the late and much-missed Sir Shagger Muntham.

  ‘Look,’ I said, ‘this business with the passage. It’s all starting to make sense. Annabelle knew about the passage. So did Gill Maggs. When questioned on the night of the murder, Annabelle said nothing to the police about a secret route into the library.’

  ‘Out of the library’ said Ethelred.

  ‘Whatever,’ I said. ‘Then, the next day, it’s suddenly vital that the passage is discovered, and we go through the farce of having to discover it for her.’

  ‘Even allowing the unlikely premise that Annabelle knew about the passage beforehand, it still doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘Yes, it does. Annabelle knew Robert was going to be murdered and she knew who was going to do it, because she was in on it. She’d told the murderer about the secret passage. After he had strangled Robert, he slips away into the passage. Annabelle is in the dining room in the full view of half a dozen people when the deed is done, so that’s a perfect alibi. She then raises the alarm. But she can’t tell anyone about the secret passage because her accomplice could, for all she knows, still be hiding there. Once he’s gone, the existence of the passage can be made known, but she now can’t admit that she knew about it before and failed to mention it to the police. So she goes through that bit of play-acting. But, she still has a problem because Gillian Maggs might let slip to the police that Annabelle had been well aware of the passage for some time – possibly also that one or other of her lovers was aware of the passage too. So, the one person who could give the whole game away then conveniently vanishes. When you start to question the daughter, the daughter vanishes too, having also gone to “Barbados”.’

  ‘Yes, they went to Barbados,’ said Ethelred. ‘In the West Indies.’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘they went to “Barbados” in inverted commas. Mrs Michie said they hadn’t got the money for that sort of trip. All three of them are probably somewhere off the coast of Sussex with heavy weights attached to them.’

  ‘So, who is the accomplice hiding in the passage?’ said Ethelred, with a note of sarcasm that he would regret when I was proved right.

  ‘Clive Brent or John O’Brian.’

  ‘If it was Clive Brent, Annabelle knew exactly where he was. By the time the body was discovered he was right beside her. She wouldn’t have needed to lie about the passage.’

  ‘John O’Brian then,’ I said, slightly reluctantly. ‘He claims to have left before the murder occurred. But who knows where he was? It all fits together.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t fit together at all. If you have just conspired to murder your husband, and if the police are convinced it’s suicide, then surely you’d say: “Yes, thanks, suicide, I’ll take that.” You wouldn’t spend the next two days trying to persuade everyone it was murder and get the police to open up the case again. Above all you’d keep the secret passage secret.’

  I ran through my argument again. There did seem to be a small flaw in it.

  ‘Something happened,’ I said, ‘between the discover
y of the body and our conversation with Annabelle in the library the following day. Whatever it was caused her to change her mind about keeping the existence of the passage to herself. If we just knew what that thing was then we’d know . . . well, we’d know a lot more than we do at the moment.’

  Ethelred sighed. ‘Maybe Fiona McIntosh can throw some light on it all this afternoon. In the meantime, I’m going to the post office to buy some coffee,’ he said. ‘Is there anything I can get you?’

  ‘You need butter,’ I said.

  It was while Ethelred was out purchasing essential groceries that his phone rang. I obviously answered it, but the caller got in the first word.

  ‘It’s Lady Muntham. Is Ethelred Tressider there?’

  A little formal for one of Ethelred’s closest friends?

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘He’s just popped out. Butter crisis.’

  ‘Well, when he just pops back, could you give him a message?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Tell that evil lying little shit that I never want to see him again.’

  ‘Is that the whole message?’

  ‘You can add that he’ll hear from my lawyers shortly.’

  ‘Got that,’ I said. ‘Have a nice day now.’

  I put the phone down. I wasn’t quite sure what Ethelred had done but, whatever it was, I definitely approved.

  Twenty-one

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ve no idea what she meant.’

  ‘Well, you must have done something right,’ said Elsie. ‘She absolutely hates your guts.’

  ‘You must have got the message wrong,’ I said.

  Elsie said nothing but her smile was deafening.

  ‘There’s clearly been some terrible misunderstanding,’ I said. ‘I’ll go straight over and sort it out.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘This time I’m going on my own. Aren’t you needed back in London?’

  Elsie shrugged. ‘Fine. You can drop me off at the station first.’

  ‘It’s not on my way to Muntham Court.’

  ‘I never claimed it was.’

  I drove back from the station as quickly as the traffic regulations allowed. As I turned off the main road onto the gravel drive that led to Muntham Court I felt my heart beating faster than usual. I couldn’t imagine how the misunderstanding had occurred, but the sooner I saw Annabelle, the sooner we could resolve it. I was ready to counter recriminations. I was ready to laugh about some miscommunication. I was ready to apologize for anything I had done or indeed not done. By the time I arrived at the house I had rehearsed almost every eventuality other than the one I encountered. The house was shut up. Nothing stirred. Nobody answered my repeated sounding of the doorbell. I walked round to the back of the house, but the garden too was deserted.