Your Secret Friend (Timothy Herring) Read online

  “There’s something else in the neighbourhood you might enjoy, I think. Have you ever heard of Little Monkshood?”

  “I went to look at the church, and the lady who was doing the flowers mentioned it.”

  “Oh, Mrs. Cox, I expect. Well, Marchmont Pallis is tremendously interested in it. She thinks it was built in the thirteenth century. Of course, it was a good deal altered by the farming family who lived there, I believe, but she says there have been no structural alterations that would matter. Why don’t you go and have a look at it, if you have the time to spare? It’s only about three miles down the Dorchester road. Mr. Trimble, at the mill, has the key.”

  “Thirteenth century?” said Timothy. “I wonder whether she’s right? If she teaches history, she probably is. Thank you, I’ll certainly take a look at it.” He glanced at his watch. “Yes, I’ve a dinner date at Bradford-on-Avon, but I’ve plenty of time.”

  He called at the mill and asked for the key.

  “Have to get your deposit down as soon as you can, if you’re thinking of buying,” said Trimble, a Londoner who had seen the possibilities of the mill as a restaurant and who was well on the way to getting back the money he had spent on it. “A couple of ladies are interested.”

  “Miss Marchmont Pallis?” asked Timothy.

  “Oh, I see. You’re going to look it over on behalf of the school, are you? Well, it looks ramshackle, I’ll admit, but the fabric is sound enough. The house has stood for five hundred years or more, and it’ll stand as long again, I shouldn’t wonder.”

  “Which way do I take?” asked Timothy.

  “Turn to the left and follow the road, that’s all. It’s about three miles. You can’t miss it if you look out for the lane that leads up to it. The signboard is still there. It says Little Monkshood Farm Only, but the house is empty now, and for many years the farm has been no more than a small-holding. If you’d care to make me your agent, I might be able to get something knocked off the price, not that I know what’s being asked for it. But you’ll have to get your word in quick, if you want to beat the ladies to it.”

  Timothy drove off in the direction indicated, spotted the signboard, and turned into a narrow lane. It ran uphill on a gradual slope and, at the last bend, the farmhouse came into view. A five-barred gate, partly broken, opened on to a rough piece of ground which had been a chicken farm. Beyond this was a two-storey stone-built house. Timothy left his car in the lane and walked along the track made by a lorry.

  The house had the forlorn and yet somewhat sinister appearance of all abandoned stone buildings. It had an outside stone staircase leading to a bricked-up doorway on the first floor. In the brickwork a small, ugly window had been inserted. The chimney stack, built out from the end wall, was partly the original one, but the top part had been roughly repaired.

  Timothy, interested (for there was no doubt that Miss Marchmont Pallis was right) in indications that the house did indeed date from the thirteenth century, strolled round to the back of the building. An ugly wing had been added which partially enclosed a small courtyard, and on this side of the original building some sash windows and a back door had been inserted on the ground floor. Timothy returned to the front of the house. Below the blocked doorway was one of nineteenth-century date and a couple of very small windows had been added at the sides of two thirteenth-century slits. Very pleasing additions to the house had been made in the sixteenth century. Two magnificent windows, to which Timothy assigned a date in the late years of the Tudor period, graced what, he deduced, had been the great hall and the solar of the original building. At some time in its history Little Monkshood had been something more than a farmhouse. So much might well be surmised.

  He tried the key in the Victorian door which had been hacked out on the ground floor, and found himself in what had been the undercroft, but which had been converted into a farmhouse kitchen and a living-room. The ceiling was low. Timothy stood six feet two, and there was barely a foot of clearance above his head. A row of pillars divided the undercroft into two equal parts and had served to separate the cooking-space, in which a kitchen range had been installed, from the living-room, but there was no sink. The washing-up and the washing must have been done by the last occupants in an outhouse, Timothy supposed, and further exploration, when he had concluded his survey of the house, proved that this had been the case.

  A newel staircase in the thickness of the wall at one of the angles led to the floor above. Here, as he had supposed, were the principal rooms. When the house was built they had consisted of a great hall and a solar, but in the fourteenth century a second chamber had been added. The farmer, however, whose family had needed more privacy than its forebears, had partitioned these magnificent examples of medieval domesticity into five bedrooms and a parlour. Ceilings had been added and it was not until Timothy had ascended a loft ladder into what were now the attics that he could see the full beauty of the timbered roof.

  The rafters, it was obvious, had been repaired and occasionally replaced over the centuries, but their original structure remained unaltered. Taking the farmhouse as a whole, Timothy thought that it had been a small manor house, unfortified, but of local importance when it was built.

  He studied the rafters. The roof was of the box-frame construction to be expected in Dorset, with butt purlins supporting the common rafters. It was double-framed, and the purlins rested upon principals placed at regular intervals to bridge the width of the building. A collar purlin supported on a crown-post held the collar rafters, these were further supported by struts and the whole was strengthened by wall-posts based on stone corbels.

  “Very nice,” said Timothy. He descended the ladder, stared resentfully up at the ceiling which hid the rafters from below, descended the dark, winding little stair to the undercroft, let himself out, locked the Victorian front door, and returned the key to the mill.

  “You said you had no idea what they’re asking for the place?” he enquired.

  “No idea at all, sir. Lucky to get a few hundreds I should think. What could you do with a queer old building like that? The land isn’t much good, either. The last tenants were chicken farmers, but they couldn’t make it pay. Everybody sells eggs around here. Besides, there’s no gas or electricity laid on, and it’s cesspool drainage and every drop of water to be fetched up from a well. There isn’t even a pump. But, of course, if it’s to be made a sort of annexe to the school, perhaps they’d manage.”

  “When did the last tenants move out?”

  “Oh, some time before I came here.”

  “But you hold the key?”

  “Ah. Sir Thomas left it with me when he sold Purfleet Hall to the school. He’d like to sell Little Monkshood if he could. As to what he’d take for it, well, if it was mine, I’d close pronto with the first bid of five hundred pounds, but the Purfleets would want more than that, I daresay, especially if the school was in the market. Needs to expand, I expect. Sir Thomas won’t let ‘em enlarge Purfleet Hall, although I did hear tell that he’d let ‘em build extra classrooms, provided they sited ‘em proper, dotted about the park.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Purfleet of Purfleet Hall

  Timothy kept his dinner date and then, very late in the evening, drove home to his house in the Cotswolds, and on the Monday morning rang up the Phisbe headquarters in London. Coningsby, called irreverently by Timothy, “our dogsbody,” although never, of course, in his hearing, answered the telephone. He was a serious, ultra-conscientious young man, efficient and enthusiastic, who was in charge of the Society’s archives and who dealt with its correspondence.

  “Oh, Coningsby?”

  “Speaking.”

  “Herring here. Have we any record of a thirteenth-century farmhouse called Little Monkshood? It’s about three miles north-west of the village of Monkshood Mill in the county of Dorset.”

  “Yes, I think so, Mr. Herring. One of our members noted the property in 1953 and reported on it to the committee, but the house was then
in occupation. If you will hold the line I will look up the details.”

  “Right. Thanks.” There was a break of three minutes.

  “Here we are, Mr. Herring. Little Monkshood was noticed by our committee member, Lady Grace Norton, when she was visiting friends at Purfleet Hall, which, I believe, has since been sold. She called on the owners, or, rather, the tenants, of Little Monkshood and was able to inspect the house, although the people who showed her over it were unimpressed when she pointed out the historic significance of the structure. She then suggested that it should be put into the care of our Society, who might be prepared to restore it to its original appearance, but the owner, a Sir Thomas Purfleet, said he wouldn’t have the place altered against the wishes of his tenants.

  “According to Lady Grace Norton, the thirteenth-century building had been re-roofed with modern tiles, ceilings had been inserted, blocking out the original beams and rafters, two walled fireplaces had been bricked in and the principal rooms on the first floor, consisting originally of the Great Hall, a second chamber and the solar, had been partitioned and screened off to convert them into a parlour and bedrooms. The outside stone staircase remains, and it was this, coupled with a thirteenth-century bricked-in doorway above it, which first attracted Lady Grace Norton’s attention.”

  “I see. Well, thanks very much, Coningsby. I’ll go along and have another look at it. It might be well worth our while to get a title to it and do it up. Have you any idea where Sir Thomas Purfleet hangs out?”

  “No, Mr. Herring, but if he has a London address no doubt he will be in the book, and, if not, I could ring up Lady Grace, who will be sure to know where he lives, and so will Mrs. Miles who, if you remember, suggested at the last committee meeting that the Society might be interested in the mill-house at Monkshood Mill. I believe she also was a friend of the Purfleet family.”

  “Oh, that tiresome old party! She’s sent me on more wild-goose chases than the whole of the rest of the members put together! Well, never mind about ringing up Lady Grace. I’ll do that myself, and set the ball rolling at once. There’s no time to lose, as I believe other parties are interested in buying Little Monkshood.”

  He rang up Lady Grace at ten o’clock on the following morning, a time when he deduced that she would be breakfasting in bed. In this he was in error. She had been up for two hours and had just returned from exercising her dogs in the park.

  “And what can I do for you, darling Timothy?” asked the old lady.

  “I wondered whether you could tell me where Sir Thomas Purfleet lives.”

  “You are not proposing to fight a duel with him, I trust?”

  “Why should I?”

  “I wondered whether you had one of your loose designs on his wife. He has married for the second time, and is a very jealous and possessive husband.”

  “I look forward to meeting him. Where can I?”

  “At the other Purfleet Hall. It’s a few miles out of Northampton, between Northampton and Wellingborough. The signpost says Easton Lutterell.”

  “Many thanks.”

  “If you’re not fighting a duel, why do you want to see him? Is it Phisbe?”

  “Well, I rather hope so. I’ve seen the house called Little Monkshood, in Dorset.”

  “It’s no good, darling boy. I’ve tried. He’s got smallholders in. They won’t budge.”

  “They have budged. The house is empty and up for sale. I’ll let you know how I get on.”

  In spite of an exclamation from the other end of the line, he hung up and rang the president of Phisbe.

  Purfleet Hall, differentiated by the family from their former mansion in Dorset by being referred to as Easton Purfleet, was a late seventeenth-century house possibly attributable to Wren. It stood in fairly considerable grounds and a narrow, pleasant stream divided the gardens from the surrounding park. Immediately in front of the house was a paved area which served as a terrace, and, in the middle of this, a large stone basin with fluted edges held goldfish and water-lilies. Standing beside it when he arrived was one of the most beautiful women Timothy had ever seen.

  “Hullo,” she said, “you will be Mr. Herring. Come in and meet my husband. He’s longing to see you.”

  If this were so, it was well disguised by Sir Thomas. He was a tall, thin, stooping man in his middle fifties and he put out a limp, bony hand to the visitor, grunted in a suspicious manner, and observed that it was a fine day.

  “Seen Earls Barton church?” he asked.

  “Many times,” Timothy truthfully responded.

  “That tower can’t be as old as they say. What d’yer think?”

  “Tenth century,” said Timothy flatly.

  “You think so?” The stringy baronet clapped him surprisingly on the shoulder. “And you’re an expert, eh?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “This society you represent, then? Phoney?”

  “Oh, no, we have our experts, but I don’t claim to be one of them. I just go round and look at places, you know. I’ve come about that property of yours in Dorset.”

  “I’ve sold it to a girls’ school.”

  “Not Purfleet Hall. Little Monkshood farm.”

  “Oh, that! What about it?”

  “I understand that you’re prepared to sell it.”

  “Look here, if you’re bidding against the schoolmarms you’re too late. I’ve given them first option. They’ve got until next Tuesday to make up their minds. If they jib, you can have the next offer. How’s that?”

  “Will they leave it as it is, or do it up?”

  “It’s in pretty good repair. How d’yer mean-do it up?”

  “It’s a mess as it stands at present—horrible! You’ve blocked up that doorway at the top of the outside stair, you’ve let the last tenants muck up that lovely undercroft, and they’ve put up party walls in the great hall, the solar and the second chamber and inserted some loathsome sash windows and a ground-floor doorway, besides adding on a horrible wing at the back and blocking up the old fireplaces, some of the earliest wall-fireplaces in existence. My Society would put all this right if we decided to buy the place. How much are you asking for it?”

  “Three thousand. Dirt-cheap. There’s a good bit of land attached, you know.”

  “And the place has been empty—how long?”

  “Have to look it up.”

  “And there are no main services, not even tap water.”

  “The last tenants didn’t complain.”

  “No, but they went.”

  “The old chap died, and the sons had jobs in Southampton, I believe. Anyway, as I said, I’m tied until after next Tuesday.”

  “Well, now, supposing your prospective buyers opt out, is there any clause in the agreement which would prevent my Society, if we buy, from carrying out alterations and demolition work so as to restore Little Monkshood to its proper shape and make?”

  “Not that I know of, and I’d be glad to see it done. I’ve a written and signed agreement with the school, you know, that they’re not to make structural alterations to Purfleet Hall. Wish my grandfather had had the sense to do the same with Little Monkshood, then I might have sold it to the Americans to be shipped over there, stone by stone, and made a decent profit. No, if you buy the place, you can go right ahead. It’ll be yours.”

  “What made you stick a price-tag of three thousand pounds on it? The chap at the mill told me that a few hundreds would be enough to buy it.”

  “Well, they won’t. There’s nothing wrong with the fabric and there’s the land. What would your Society be prepared to offer, if the schoolmarms decide to back down?”

  “I should have to consult my committee.”

  “Better leave it at that, then. Give me your address, and I’ll let you know.”

  “Of course, if the house is needed as an annexe to the school, I don’t suppose they will back down. I suppose that, in addition to not letting them build on to Purfleet Hall, they mustn’t put up extra classrooms in the grounds.�
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  “Who told you that? I won’t let them enlarge the house, of course. Won’t let them touch it at all except on the second and third floors, where they’ve partitioned off dormitories and so forth, I believe. But, so long as they’re hidden from the house windows and the drive, they can build extra classrooms where they like, so far as I’m concerned. They’re thinking of a laboratory or some such nonsense, I believe.”

  “Then why do they need Little Monkshood as an annexe? Are they proposing to house some of the staff there?”

  “Little Monkshood isn’t being opted for by the school as such. It’s under option privately. Two ladies.”

  “Oh, I see. Well, all the more chance of our getting a look in, perhaps. Do you mean that two of the school staff want to live there? It seems an odd sort of idea.”

  “Women are odd,” said the baronet. “Have to keep an eye on them, you know. Always up to something, aren’t they Griselda?” He leered lecherously at his wife.

  “Come and have some tea, Mr. Herring,” said the beautiful woman.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Little Monkshood

  When Timothy had taken a fancy to an ancient building he did not, as a rule, make an immediate approach to the committee unless a formal inspection had been commissioned by its members. If there came to his private notice anything he thought deserving of Phisbe’s attention, his custom was first to drop a hint to his friend Tom Parsons, the Society’s architect.

  He had made up his mind to adopt this procedure in the case of Little Monkshood and was on the point of telephoning Parsons when he himself received a call. It was from his cousin, April Bounty, and came from Purfleet Hall where, as he had learnt from Miss Salter, April had become a member of the teaching staff.

  Timothy, accustomed as he was to his cousin’s vagaries and unpredictability, nevertheless listened with disapproval and some disquiet to what she had to say.

  “You’ve what?” he demanded incredulously.

  “Bought this farmhouse. Why shouldn’t we?”