Late and Cold (Timothy Herring)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “T. F. Herring . . . what are the T. F.?” asked Leonie.

  “Timothy Francis, please, ma’am.”

  “Timothy was just beginning to tell me all about it when you came in. He went to Nanradoc after he’d seen Marion. Now, Tim, go on from there.”

  “As a matter of fact, I took her with me the second time,” said Timothy. “She hadn’t seen it when she wrote to us.” He produced Marion Jones’s letter. Pembroke waved it aside.

  “Give us the gist,” he said. “I can’t stand the sight of other people’s handwriting.”

  “The gist is that you seem to have given her Nanradoc provided she lives in it. You told her that it was in need of repair, and she asked us to do something about it. Well, of course, we can’t undertake that sort of commission—housing people, and so forth—it’s outside our scope. However, I went along to have a look, and then I thought she’d better see for herself how hopeless it was. Well, on my previous visit I’d met a man and a woman who seemed to have swopped roles. She wore an uncompromising trouser-suit in fairly heavy tweed, and he was robed in a monkish sort of get-up and is either insane or phoney. They were kind enough to give me a key to the bridge across the river which separates the castle from the big house, and so, when I went the next time, I took Miss Jones along to visit them, as well as to let her see the ruins.”

  “Why?” demanded Leonie.

  “Does it matter why?” asked Pembroke.

  “Of course it does! Tim guessed it mattered, didn’t you, Tim?”

  “Well, I did rather wonder,” Timothy admitted. “There were things I didn’t know, and if, in the end, my Society feels inclined to do anything about the castle—not, I hasten to add, so that Miss Jones can live in it, but on our own account, if we decide to carry matters so far . . .”

  “You would want to know whether Pembroke’s title is a good one; what rights his sister has; whether the property is one and indivisible or whether the castle and the manor are separate estates,” said Leonie. “It’s all right,” she added, observing Timothy’s surprise. “I began studying law before I took up modelling and carving. I don’t remember much of what I learnt, but Conveyancing and the Law of Property have always interested me, ever since I knew that Pembroke had an interest in Nanradoc.”

  “Please go on,” said Timothy.

  “Well, you can confirm it all later, but this is how it stands, so far as Nanradoc is concerned, as I’ve tried to explain to Pembroke.”

  “I hate the place,” he said. “Never want to see it again, and you know why, Leonie.”

  “We needn’t go into all that, darling. It only upsets you, and that upsets your work, and then you upset my work, and that upsets me. Go away, if you don’t want to listen. In any case, we can all do with another drink. Now, Tim, so far as I know, Pembroke and his sister are joint owners in fee-simple of the whole of the Nanradoc estates. His sister who, as you saw, lives there, decided to bar off the bridge because the ruins are open to the road, as you know, and trippers and holiday-makers used to cross the river and picnic on the meadow in front of the manor and sometimes actually walk into the manor grounds. It was very much cheaper to put a locked gate on the bridge than to fence the whole place round, and it didn’t spoil the look of things, either.”

  “I rather suspected that the estate was all one. That means, of course . . .” said Timothy. She interrupted him.

  “That means, of course, that while both owners are alive, if one of them parts up, which he has a right to do, the new owner has equal rights with the other partner. That means that the survivor, whether he is the new co-owner or whether he is the original shareholder, automatically inherits the lot provided the dead partner leaves no heir. That’s Common Law, as I remember it. Of course, in the case of an appeal, they might consider another course, but I should doubt it.”

  “On that, if Mr. Jones here makes over his interest in Nanradoc to Marion Jones, and she survives his sister, who holds an equal interest, the whole estate goes to Marion. That’s just what I thought.”

  “I only meant the castle for Marion, not the house and grounds, and she knew I did,” protested Pembroke feebly.

  “You can’t divide it up, darling, as I’ve explained, unless your sister agrees, and she certainly won’t. Why should she?”

  “Well, it doesn’t matter, anyway,” said Pembroke. “There’s nothing in writing, as you know. It was only an oral agreement, and Marion hasn’t taken me up on it yet.”

  “An oral agreement is enforceable in law, as again I’ve tried to explain to you, once it’s been carried out. Once Marion is given your interest in Nanradoc, with your permission and by your promise, oral or written, she becomes the heir to the estate if she takes up her option and outlasts your sister. Age for age, she’s almost certain to do that, and then where does Miranda’s claim go?”

  “We had to get Marion to take on Miranda, you know we did! Neither of us wanted her here.”

  “Tim will be ashamed of you if you talk like that. He will think we are most unnatural parents.”

  “There’s nothing unnatural in not wanting an unwarrantable interference with one’s work. That was our only reason for shunting the kid, and I’m very sorry about it, but it just had to be. After all, we never intended to have a child.”

  “I know, I know. Well, Tim, there is it is. What can I do to convince this wrongheaded idiot? We may not be willing to have our one and only child to live with us, but we can hardly bounce her out of what’s rightly hers.”

  “Oh, hang it all!” exclaimed Pembroke, with the impatience of a man who feels he is losing an argument. “I suppose, if Marion is the sole survivor, she can will the stuff to Miranda, can’t she, darling? What’s the answer to that?”

  “She’s got those two brats of her own to think about. That’s the answer,” said his wife.

  “Her brother’s children, do you mean?” asked Timothy.

  “Bless your kind heart!” said Leonie. She laughed. “I can’t understand Pembroke’s sister taking to tweed trousers,” she added. “It doesn’t sound like her at all.”

  “Well, it all seems quite clear to me,” said Timothy’s sister. “Miss Jones has not yet been able to take up with her cousin’s offer, therefore she’s not in possession at Nanradoc, and as there’s nothing but an oral agreement—and that’s been made conditional—I don’t see what there is to worry about. It’s not your problem, anyway. You’ve done quite enough already.”

  “I’ve got her and the kids bedded down in the Phisbe house, but it’s only a temporary measure and Marion doesn’t like it. Says those big rooms right at the top of the house scare the children. Says the caretaker’s wife doesn’t like her or them. Says there’s a dangerous road to cross for the children to get to school. Says shopping’s difficult. Says there are funny noises at night.”

  “Tell her to get to hell out of it, then. What on earth is the matter with the girl? She’s living rent-free, and she’s got away from those women who were persecuting her. Whatever more does she want?”

  “She wants the Nanradoc estates, I expect. No doubt she’s got over her fear of the people who live in the house, and a house, of course, is what she needs. She doesn’t say it baldly, but that’s what it all adds up to.”

  “As I say, if only you hadn’t put it into her head that she might be entitled—Oh, Tim, you can be an idiot when you really get the bit between your teeth!”

  “That’s just the point. I’ve involved myself in the business, and I’ve got to stay involved until I can clear things up.”

  “But there’s no need for you to clear things up. So long as the wretched girl isn’t able to stake her claim (such as it is), everything is just as it was before Pembroke Jones made her this ridiculous offer.”

  “Quite. But what happens when she is in a position to stake her claim?”

  “How can she ever be in that position, Timmy? She can’t go and live at Nanradoc while those other two people are occupying the house. They might have h
er, but they wouldn’t have the children, and she certainly can’t take kids to go and live among the ruins, unless Phisbe repairs them enough to make them habitable. You say Phisbe won’t do that, so what’s the headache, my precious? All you’ve got to do is to go to Marion Jones, talk sense to her, and show her where she gets off. She hasn’t really got a leg to stand on.”

  “Awkward for her when she gets off, of course.”

  “I’m glad you can still joke about it. There you are, then. Go and put it across her. She’s an ungrateful, scheming little cat, I shouldn’t wonder, and you’re a ruddy imbecile for showing her where she can dig her beastly claws in. Why, she hasn’t even got anything in writing to prove her claim. She lied to you about that.”

  “I know, I know. I blame myself entirely. Of course, the original congenital idiot is P. P. Jones, for leaving the way wide open for her to step along and stake her claim.”

  “The pot calling the kettle black, dear. Suppose Marion Jones leaves the Phisbe house, what then?”

  “She won’t, until she’s found somewhere else to go. That’s just the trouble.”

  “Well, that ‘somewhere’ won’t be Nanradoc, so do stop fretting. Go and see her again, and satisfy yourself that you’ve been inventing bogeymen.”

  “I haven’t been inventing them. Like Topsy, they just growed.”

  He called at the Phisbe headquarters at a quarter to six that same evening. The conscientious Coningsby was just about to leave. His hours were elastic, for on some days there was little or nothing to do, whereas, at other times, it meant, perhaps, that he put in a twelve-hour day. Timothy greeted him and asked how were tricks.

  “Not too good, Mr. Herring,” Coningsby replied. “I have had to spend a great deal of time with Mrs. Dewes.”

  “I’m surprised at you, Coningsby!”

  “No, really, Mr. Herring! These interruptions for arbitration are beginning to affect my nerves. I am, as you are aware, a mild man, but today I’m afraid I snapped Mrs. Dewes’s head off, and told her to refer her complaints to you. I was so much affected that I would have appealed to the president himself to turn this woman and her children out, had you not expressly desired me . . .”

  “Yes, quite. I shall have to tell the committee at some time about the illicit nest at the top of our little tree, but I want to choose a suitable moment, and get the president on my side first, before I make my general confession.”

  “I should be relieved to have the position fully understood, sir.”

  “Well, I’ve called expressly to see Miss Jones, so I’ll have a word with Mrs. Dewes as well, and see what I can sort out. I’m sorry they’ve given you the works.”

  “Thank you very much, Mr. Herring. Good night, sir. Perhaps, if there are any developments—you see, it is such an interruption to my work.”

  “I’ll let you know what transpires. Miss Jones is dispensable. Mrs. Dewes isn’t—and that’s that!”

  “I knew you’d understand, Mr. Herring.”

  There was no lift. On the ground floor was the office block, with the members’ washroom and a couple of rooms given over to the caretaker and his wife, who were also accorded the large attic at the very top of the building. On the first floor were the principal rooms. Here were the committee room and the original ballroom, now used for cocktail parties, conferences with learned bodies and such other Societies as had an affinity with Phisbe. The annual general meeting and the annual Christmas party for members’ children were also held in it, and in its ante-room the more important archives were kept.

  On the second floor were the rooms devoted to photographs, plans, and maps showing the scope and range of Phisbe’s activities, together with framed letters from all over the British Isles testifying to the Society’s generosity and kind assistance, and the third floor, ordinarily disused except for the dust which settled on it unless and until Mrs. Dewes suffered an attack of conscience, was now occupied by Marion and the three children.

  Timothy climbed the handsome eighteenth-century staircase and knocked on the door, from behind which a considerable amount of children’s noise was coming.

  “Oh, hullo, Tim,” said Marion. “We’d better go into my bed-sitter. There’s too much racket in here. Have you come to pay a social call, or are you here on business?”

  “Business first,” said Timothy. “What have you and Mrs. Dewes been a-doing to poor little Coningsby? The lad’s a nervous wreck.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. It must be Mrs. Dewes. It’s nothing to do with me. I’m out all day, as you know.”

  “You’re in all the evening, and so is Mrs. Dewes.”

  “I know. That’s just the trouble. Look, Tim, I told you the last time you came, either Mrs. Dewes or I will have to go. As it can’t be her, it must be me. She makes our lives a perfect misery. I’m sure they never used that attic before we came here, but now Dewes does carpentry or something up there. I wouldn’t mind so much if he’d do it while the children were up, but I’m certain he waits until he knows they’re in bed and asleep and then he begins this hammering.”

  “I’ll have a word with him. What about Mrs. Dewes?”

  “She won’t let the children use the front door or the front stairs. They get home from school before I do, because I have to go and fetch Miranda from the nursery. She sends Bryn and Bron right round by way of that mews and along a sort of alley at the back.”

  “I see. Well, look, can’t you just make the best of it for a bit? After all, the twins aren’t babies. It can’t really hurt them to go round by the back way, can it?”

  “One day it was raining. They got soaked to the skin.”

  “Yes, but they’d have got pretty wet coming home from school anyway, wouldn’t they, if it was raining as hard as all that? Still, never mind. I’ll tackle Mrs. Dewes and see what she has to say. All the same, you know, I can’t really agree it’s any hardship to send children round to the back of the house and make them use the back stairs. Most parents do it, I believe, on the score that children are apt to come in with dirty shoes and tread mud all over the place, and children are death to decent carpets, anyway.”

  “Mrs. Dewes is paid to keep the place clean, isn’t she?—and I don’t suppose your Society would go bankrupt if they had to buy a few yards of staircarpet, would they?”

  “Look,” said Timothy, “I hate to put it in this crude way, but sometimes it’s as well to call a spade a spade. You and the children are living here rent-free. You’re not expected to do anything except keep your own rooms clean. You’re here because you hated the place you came from, and, apart from all that, I shall have the devil’s own job to persuade my committee to accept you as tenants, anyway, but more so if you don’t behave yourselves. Forgive me, but you do see what I mean.”

  “Yes, I suppose I do.”

  “Then, for heaven’s sake take the rough with the smooth and stop making heavy weather!”

  “Grin and bear it, I suppose you mean.”

  “It seems to me you’ve got quite a bit to grin about and not all that much to bear. And now I’d better be going and having my barney with the Dewes.”

  “Before you do, is there anything more to tell me about Nanradoc?”

  “No, and there won’t be, I’m afraid. I’m very sorry indeed I ever took you there. I’m pretty sick with myself to think I raised your hopes. Jones sticks to what he said to you—although he didn’t write you a letter. You lied to me about that. It wasn’t very charming of you, was it?”

  “He telephoned me at school. I wrote asking for more money for Miranda, and gave the school number because I knew he hated writing letters.”

  “Anyway, apart from the fact that you’ve got nothing in writing, until I came lumbering in, and tried to be clever, you firmly understood him. He meant you to have the ruined castle if you would get it repaired and wanted to live in it. He never intended to give away his rights in the Nanradoc estate. You know that perfectly well, and so do I, now I’ve seen him and this Leonie Bing and
talked to them. We’ve been reading something into the gift that was certainly never intended.”

  “You’ve changed sides, haven’t you?”

  “I’ve changed my slant a bit, that’s all.”

  “Oh, Tim, why? You were sorry for me before, and were sympathetic and kind. What’s altered you so much?”

  “Good heavens, Marion, I haven’t changed my sympathies! They’re still with you. The only thing is that you’ll have to give up this idea of Nanradoc House and the estate. You haven’t a shadow of claim to anything except the ruined castle, and that is part of the estate and can’t be separated from it unless both Jones and his sister agree to let it go. The position is quite clear. You haven’t a hope of that house.”

  “My cousin has given his share to me. You can’t get away from that. You showed me the whole of my claim. Now it’s up to you to help me get my rights.”

  Timothy groaned.

  “I’m a meddling fool,” he said. “Honestly, when I first heard what you had to say, then went and looked at Nanradoc, I believed that Jones was making you his heir, not just to the ruins, but to the lot. But I’m convinced, now that I’ve met him, that he had no idea of the implications of what he may even have meant as a joke. In any case, there’s no conveyance to you of his ownership. You haven’t a hope, my dear girl. You’re living in cloud-cuckoo land, so forget all about Nanradoc. That’s the reason I chanced my arm and brought you here. And now I’m going to chew the fat with the Dewes.”

  “Tim,” said Marion, “what do the Dewes get up to after midnight? Last night they were throwing furniture about.”

  Timothy stared at her.

  “You must have been dreaming!” he said. “Anyway, I’m going downstairs to talk to them, so I’ll mention what you say.”

  “I’m not dreaming! Oh, Tim, I wish we’d never come here! It’s getting frightening! I wish we were back in Earls Court!”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Ways and Means

  Timothy was disarming, the caretakers apologetic.