Bismarck Herrings (Timothy Herring)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “You’re on the Phisbe committee, you know. How about dodging the fair and coming up to Town with me?”

  “I can’t very well. I could have got out of being there on Open Day, but the fair is for charity and she’s put me down to take a stall. There’s something more. She writes to say—in that letter you’re holding—that her Lady Macbeth has fallen off a horse and broken a leg, poor girl, and she wants to know whether, at such short notice, I feel I could possibly take the part.”

  “Hasn’t she got an understudy?”

  “Yes, but not one who is capable of playing opposite Kilbride Colquhoun.”

  “Who the devil’s he?”

  “A professional actor, father of a child in the second form. The girl who’s broken her leg had obtained a place at RADA and comes from a well-known family who are all on the stage. Now that she can’t take the part this wretched Colquhoun says he won’t play opposite a schoolgirl, and P.-B.—usually as obstinate as sticky paper when she’s thwarted—actually says she agrees with him and calls upon me to fill the bill. Shall I?”

  “My darling girl, it’s entirely up to you.”

  “I ought to back up P.-B.”

  “I wish I knew how she’s managed to raise you to this level of co-operation and obedience! I really must study her technique. Are they doing the whole of the play?”

  “No, but there’s to be a fair amount of it. It’s all in the letter. Couldn’t you bear to read it? Then you’ll know as much as I do and, as you probably know Macbeth backwards, you’ll be able to tell me exactly what I’m undertaking.”

  “Act one, without scenes two and four,” read Timothy aloud, “act two, scene one; act three to the end of scene four; act four, scene one; act five, scene one, and the whole to conclude with Macbeth’s famous speech . . .”

  “The one you always quote when anybody mentions your bête noire Mrs. Miles . . .”

  “. . . at the end of the fourth scene in act five. Hm! Sounds as though Macbeth and his lady will be carrying the can with a vengeance, doesn’t it? That means you and this Colquhoun fellow, I suppose, if you take the part. I see she calls it the sixth form play! A fat lot the sixth form are going to have to do with it! All the chief parts seem to be taken by men—or are they boys from a neighbouring school?”

  “I expect they’re fathers and elder brothers of the girls. She believes in roping in the friends and relations. As for calling it the sixth form play, well, I suppose it was that, in the good old days before she had to put girls in for the public examinations. When she started her school the pupils didn’t go on to Oxford or Cambridge, they went to be ‘finished’ abroad, and at school nothing much was expected of them except French and music and a smattering of this and that. It’s different now. They expect to have careers until they marry, and after they’re married, too, many of them, so they have to get their ‘A’ levels like everybody else, and that means they haven’t time to learn and rehearse long parts in the sixth form play.”

  “So now she brings in outsiders to fill the bill.”

  “Yes, and gives the girls the bit parts.”

  “The three witches?”

  “I suppose so, and attendants and soldiers and all that sort of thing.”

  “I suppose you’ll have to spend a good deal of time at rehearsals between now and the twenty-fourth.”

  “Yes, I’m afraid I shall. There are only about three weeks. I’m afraid I’ll have to—more or less—live at the school.”

  “How do you really feel about it?”

  “Frightened but keen. I’ve always wanted to do Lady Macbeth. I don’t know what it will be like playing opposite a professional, though.”

  “He’ll probably be a ham.”

  “Oh, I do hope not! That would be worse than playing opposite a star! Anyway, you really don’t mind if I write back and say I’ll do it? I must say I’d rather love to.”

  “Anything which pleases you delights me.”

  “You know,” said Alison, “you’re really much too sweet to be a husband.”

  “Well, let’s pretend I’m not. Then we could have a forbidden love affair, all clandestine and exciting. I think we will! Married blues banished for ever! When in doubt, begin all over again! Come here, and let’s jump the gun!”

  They left their Cotswold home immediately after lunch and drove to Purfleet Hall School. This was a very fine Georgian mansion on the outskirts of the village of Monkshood Mill in the county of Dorset, and Alison had spent the years before her marriage on the school staff as senior history mistress—the seniority a tribute to her attainments, not her age.

  The formidable Miss Pomfret-Brown, apprised by telephone that morning of their imminent arrival, was waiting to receive them.

  “Knew you’d oblige me if you could,” she said to Alison, “and as I know you can twist this Adonis of yours round your finger . . .”

  “Oh, hush!” said Alison, laughing. “He doesn’t know that yet.”

  “Oh, doesn’t he?” said Timothy. “What’s all this about Macbeth being a professional actor?”

  “He’s a rather nasty feller named Colquhoun,” replied Miss Pomfret-Brown. “Lives somewhere in Suffolk or Essex, but is stayin’ with some shady friends of his on the other side of Peterminster, so he’s quite handy for rehearsals and I don’t need to put him up here, thank God. He’s what these actor-types call ‘restin,’ so that’s why I was able to get him. ’Phoned him for an extra rehearsal as soon as I got your message, and he’s comin’ over first thing in the mornin’ to have a run-through with Alison. Strikes me as a boorish kind of person when he ain’t turnin’ on the charm, so I don’t want her to stand any nonsense from him. He ain’t Sir Laurence Olivier—now, good luck to him, a lord—although he’d like to think he is.”

  “He sounds rather terrifying,” said Alison, “and I’m frightened to death already.”

  “Nonsense! You’ll make rings round him. And don’t accept his view of your part. He’ll hog all the fat if you let him. You play it your own way, even if I have had to let him act as producer. Tell him to go to hell. He owes me for last term’s fees.”

  On the following morning Timothy took leave of his wife and his hostess, knowing that Alison would not want him there for her first read-through with the up-and-coming Kilbride Colquhoun, and, having advised her, in a metaphor she understood, not to accept any wooden nickels, drove back to a home which, since his marriage, seemed lonely and unattractive without her.

  He lunched at leisure and then rang up Coningsby to tell him that he could manage the twenty-third, but that Alison could not. He got the date confirmed and then sent for his horse and rode moodily over the common and, as his mount ambled along, he thought about his wife and wondered how she was shaping opposite a professional actor. Alison rang through that evening and said that she had met Colquhoun and did not like him.

  “Then for goodness’ sake throw in your hand and come home,” said Timothy. “I don’t mind saying I’ll be glad to see you.”

  “I’ll stick it out for a couple more days, darling. The rest of the men are quite attractive.”

  “The rest of the men? Those fellows whose names are on the programme?”

  “Yes. There’s one called Eaves who takes Banquo, another called Downwell doing Ross, somebody named Brock as Angus, and playing Lennox is a man of about twenty-five. I don’t know his name, but he collected me most adroitly when I slipped on P.-B.’s horribly well-polished boards as I was hurrying along to rehearsal, and saved me from hitting my head against a door.”

  “Present my compliments and offer him his choice of weapons. Sure you’re not hurt?”

  “No, I’m quite all right. He plays Rugby Football and picked me out of the air as neatly as I’m sure he intercepts a loose ball.”

  “Probably from a forward pass when the ref’s got mud in his eye! Well, what happened then?”

  “He laughed and put me down and steadied me and said: ‘You must have patience, madam.’ ”

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nbsp; “Oh, well, I’ll forgive him a lot for that. Quite smart, to quote from the play on the spur of the moment. What did you say? I hope you thanked him nicely and told him I’ll have his blood? How dare he lay hands on my wife!”

  “I said: ‘Where are these gentlemen? Come, bring me where they are.’ That happens to be from the play, too, if you know it well enough to remember the quotation. By the way, how are you getting on? I almost forgot to ask.”

  “I’m not getting on. I’m pining away, if you want to know. This place is a morgue without you, and Mrs. Nealons says I’m going off my food. It sounds as though you’ve made up your mind to stay on at the school until this binge is over. Is that so?”

  “Yes, I can’t do anything else. I do wish, though, that someone else could play Macbeth. Colquhoun is a bit of a ham. You said he would be.”

  “Well, get your Rugby footballer friend to lay him out. If he can field young women as they fly through the air, he ought to be tough enough to account for a ham actor. What’s he like to look at, this Lennox Romeo of yours?”

  “Not as tall as you, darling, and not nearly so good-looking. Not to worry about him. He’s . . .”

  “Blunt-featured but honest?”

  “I was going to say he’s red-haired. I’ve always loved red-haired men. They’re unpredictable, and I find them fascinating.”

  “And I’m utterly predictable, I suppose.”

  “Oh, yes. Bossy and arrogant and supremely sure of yourself. Quite detestable qualities, but . . .”

  “But what?”

  “Rather reassuring ones, on the whole.”

  “Stop flirting with me over the telephone!”

  “How do you want your fillets o’ beef done, sir?” asked Mrs. Nealons, his cook for the past ten years, appearing just as he had put down the receiver. “Perhaps you’d like ’em rare, as the mistress isn’t here to want ’em medium.”

  “Them? You speak in the plural, Mrs. Nealons.”

  “I ’ave orders from the mistress to see you eat, sir.”

  “I bet you have! All right, let’s have ’em nice and bloody. I shall go over to look again at my inheritance this afternoon and will spend the night there. Back tomorrow for dinner, though. Say about eight o’clock.”

  “Very good, sir. Shall I bring the early peas in ’ere for you to shell, sir? You always liked shellin’ the early peas, and they’re reely lovely this year.”

  As it now seemed certain that Alison would be obliged to remain for the best part of the next three weeks in residence at the school, it was necessary, Timothy thought, for him to find some agreeable way of passing the time until the Phisbe committee meeting and the performance of the scenes from Macbeth. Another visit to Warlock Hall seemed to offer travel, employment, and a change of scene. The house nagged at him with its lonely ugliness and its trivial, significant mysteries.

  He saw no reason to apprise Mrs. Gee of his intended visit. He had the keys; the four-poster bed, he presumed, would still be aired; as for the strange manifestation of the box of matches, he decided that it would be far easier and more satisfying to track down the ghost without having Alison on the premises. In spite of flattering himself that he had a modern outlook and a firm belief in the absolute equality of the sexes, his instinct was still to clap the women and children under hatches when danger or the unforeseen was in the offing. Alison, married to him, had soon been obliged to give way to this outmoded point of view, since she had discovered it to be so deeply intrenched that it was beyond her power to move or alter it.

  “Bossy, arrogant and supremely sure of yourself.” Timothy grinned as he shelled the peas which Mrs. Nealons had brought in. For some reason, Alison’s words reminded him of an episode in his schooldays. He had been sent to his housemaster for creating some sort of disturbance, the details of which he could not remember. (He had gone to a school where the older boys were no longer allowed to punish the younger ones, except surreptitiously.)

  “Well, Herring,” his housemaster had said, “you are an intelligent boy, on the whole, and I find you comparatively harmless. I shall allot you four strokes instead of the usual six.”

  “Thank you very much, sir,” said Timothy, aged fourteen. “I will remember that, sir, when I am housemaster and have your grandson in my care. I will temper the wind for him, as you are being kind enough to do for me, sir.”

  “My grandson?”

  “Well, yes, sir. I don’t think, considering your age and mine, sir, that I am likely to be lucky enough to be housemaster to your son, sir, so, of course, it will be your grandson, sir.”

  “Herring, rash youth, do not try me too high!”

  “Indeed, sir, such was anything but my intention. I was merely thinking that noblesse oblige, sir, still has a meaning, even in this degenerate age.”

  “I fear, Herring, that you will come to a bad end. You are glib, boy, and glibness is a criminal attribute.”

  “I don’t think I’m glib, sir, and as to becoming a criminal, sir, well, actually, I expect to have a carefree life and a happy marriage, and you can’t really have those things in prison, sir, can you?”

  “As I have no experience either of marriage or prison life, I cannot answer you . . . Oh, for goodness’ sake, take fifty lines, and get out!”

  “Thank you very much, sir. Your grandson . . .”

  “Look, Herring . . .”

  “Oh, yes, sir. Thank you very much, sir. I was only going to say that your grandson will be perfectly safe with me, sir, because by that time, sir, corporal punishment will be completely out of date. We have to move as history dictates, sir, and your leniency on this occasion . . .”

  “Herring, your life, intrepid child, is in your own hands! Flee, boy, flee!”

  Timothy grinned as the episode came back to his memory. Old Trafford had been made a bishop, he remembered, and well deserved the honour. Incidentally, Trafford had neither chick nor child, and neither had his pupil ever become a housemaster. Timothy drove his car into Stroud, topped up with petrol and set off across England for Warlock Hall and its (possibly) ghostly occupant.

  It was turned half-past two when he left the garage. He was not particularly concerned with finding the shortest route, as he did not intend to reach his destination until fairly late in the evening. He stopped for an early dinner in Cambridge and reached Warlock Hall at just after sunset. There were no lights in the gatehouse. He had brought Alison’s small car, so he drove slowly under the archway, parked the car in the courtyard, and walked up to the front door of the Hall.

  Having inserted the key and pushed the heavy door open, he listened intently, but, hearing nothing, he left the door ajar and returned for a bottle of whisky and the eggs and bread and butter he had brought with him for his breakfast. Then, having entered, he deposited his provisions and made a tour of the house. It presented one or two new features. In the undercroft several palliasses stuffed with straw and provided with moth-eaten rugs had been laid side by side on the stone floor, and in the two bedrooms on the further side of the library camp beds had been set up and were furnished with blankets and pillows. Another camp bed, similarly accommodated, was on the minstrels’ gallery landing, under the window.

  “Hardly necessary equipment for ghosts!” thought Timothy. “Is Warlock Hall a doss-house for tramps, or are the Gees planning a family reunion or something? This is extremely odd, and, together with the ghost, needs looking into.” It occurred to him that on his last visit lack of time had prevented him and Parsons from exploring the second floor of the mansion. Jabez had referred to the rooms up there as attics housing a collection of junk. However, one man’s junk is another man’s treasure trove, Timothy reflected. He had brought with him a powerful torch, preferring its steady and brilliant light to the flickering and uncertain illumination provided by candles.

  By its light he explored the floor he was on, but there was no way up from it to the floor above. Jabez had told him as much, but he wanted to convince himself that this was so. Being assu
red that it was, he went down to the great hall by way of the newel stair, traversed its length, and, in the wall of the screens passage, found the door which opened on to the back stairs. These were narrow and spiralled upwards until a sudden bitter chill in the otherwise close atmosphere caused him to believe that he must be level with the minstrels’ gallery.

  He continued to climb upwards until he came to another door. It opened on a latch and he passed through to find himself in a wooden-floored room which contained two palliasses similar to those in the undercroft. The other rooms—there were five of them—opened one out of another, for there was no passage and each room appeared to take in the width of the great hall, but, except for the one by which he had entered, they did not seem to be in use as sleeping quarters, but contained the junk which Jabez had mentioned. One item which could scarcely be classed as junk was in the furthest room. It was an almost new divan bed.

  Timothy intended at some time to sort out the various items and to investigate the contents of a number of bales, trunks, sacks, and boxes which were housed on this otherwise unremarkable floor, but he decided that this was a task which demanded daylight. The palliasses, the divan, and the camp beds, however, were a different matter. The smuggling in of illegal immigrants had become a lucrative form of employment, and the lonely situation of Warlock Hall would be a godsend to smugglers, especially as there was such easy access to it from the creek. He decided to explore the possibilities. He got into his car and drove towards the water.

  The road was no more than a narrow causeway over the marshes, but the surface had recently been made up—possibly, Timothy thought, by Jabez himself, for the work was solidly amateurish—and the width was barely enough to take a car. Of passing-places there were none, for the marshes extended implacably on either side of the way and the sedge and reeds which bordered the route were sufficient indication that any deviation would be unwise. Of two cars approaching one another, one would have to back as far as the river bank or the other almost as far as the gatehouse of Warlock Hall before they could pass. The minor road, by which Timothy, with Parsons, had first approached the mansion, was useless for his present purpose, for it ran northwards from Warlock Hall to the village with the Norman keep, and only one short lane led down to the river.