Late and Cold (Timothy Herring) Read online

  “Yes,” said Timothy, keeping his eyes on the road and his tone light and casual, “I suppose Miranda has the seeds of genius in her.”

  “Why should you say that? She’s a darling baby, that’s all.”

  “I didn’t say she isn’t. You let a small cat out of a rather large bag when you mentioned Miranda last.”

  “I did? Oh, I see. I didn’t want to let down Pembroke, as he’d been so kind to me about Nanradoc, that’s all, so I invented my friend on the stage.”

  Timothy could not help wondering whether she had also invented her claim to Nanradoc Castle, and little more was said before they got back to the Parsons’s house in Shrewsbury where they were to spend the night before returning to Malmesbury to collect the children and take them back to London.

  “So here you are, at last,” said Diana Parsons. “If you want to wash before dinner, hurry up, and don’t bother to change. We expected you hours ago. When you didn’t get back for tea we thought you must have broken your necks or ankles or something, climbing about on the ruins, but tell us all about it at dinner—don’t stop to talk now, or my cook will give notice.”

  Dinner, however, proved to be a rather silent meal. It was evident that Marion was tired and unhappy, and not very long after the meal had concluded with coffee, she said that, if nobody minded, she thought she would go to bed.

  “What happened, Tim?” asked Diana. “Marion seems properly hipped about something.”

  “I think she’s feeling disappointed about the result of our expedition.”

  “Really? Do tell us what happened. I didn’t like to ask any questions over dinner. The atmosphere was charged with gloom, I thought. Did you get lost, or make improper advances, or fail to make them, or what?”

  “Nee lurng, nee lays oters, as I was taught by my French master to say. As a matter of fact, we had an exciting and vastly entertaining afternoon, but it doesn’t seem to have appealed to Marion as either. Personally, I couldn’t have enjoyed it more. I gate-crashed a small stately home, was not particularly polite there, and met two ogres and the prospect of a lost or else a mythical letter.”

  “Go on. This sounds as promising as Wuthering Heights or any other Victorian horror-comic. How did you come to meet the ogres?”

  “They inhabit Nanradoc House.”

  “Oh, the monk and that woman in trousers you spoke with in the Nanradoc woods?” asked Tom Parsons.

  “The same. I took Marion to visit them. They were not very pleased to see us, but the woman showed us over the house and they seem to think that Phisbe should do it up for them. In return, they are prepared to allow Marion to occupy one floor. Nothing was said about the children, but I should think the pair of them would frighten children to death.”

  “What made you take Marion to Nanradoc House? I thought it was only the castle in which she had an interest.”

  “She took one look at the castle and decided that it was hopeless to think of living there, as, of course, it is. Then I suppose I must have said something which put into her head an idea that was already in my own.”

  “That when her cousin told her that she could have Nanradoc if she liked to do it up and live in it, he was referring to the mansion, not the castle?”

  “Exactly.”

  “So what happened then?”

  “I unlocked the gate which closes the bridge at the further end, and we strolled across the meadow which forms part of the estate, and so into the park and the gardens, and up to the front—or, rather, the garden—door. They don’t appear to keep any servants, for the woman opened the door to us herself and showed us in.”

  “Was she surprised to see you?”

  “She didn’t seem surprised, but it was all a bit odd, right from the word Go. Marion turned rather belligerent—through nervousness, I fancy—and stated her claim. The woman—whose name is Olwen Jones, by the way, which rather intrigues me—took an instant dislike to her.”

  “I’m not surprised. Hasn’t Marion any tact at all?”

  “I doubt whether she realised at first that she was proposing to dispossess these people, and, anyway, at the moment, she is not in a very strong position to do so. She claimed, from the beginning, to have received a letter from her cousin, Pembroke Pritchard Jones, offering her either the castle or the mansion or both. She says she sent the letter to Phisbe, but we haven’t seen it. I don’t think she’s an imposter, but I feel inclined to stall a bit. I dislike being taken for a ride.”

  “She’d hardly make a claim to the place unless she had something to go on,” said Parsons. “Anyway, before you left here, she referred to it as a pipe-dream, so her hopes can’t have been very high.”

  “Poor girl!” said Diana. “She may have thought it was a castle in the air, but she’s bitterly disappointed, all the same. I expect she’s gone to bed to have a good cry. I’ll go along in about half an hour and take her some hot milk with whisky in it.”

  “Not the Glenlivet,” protested Tom. “I’m not going to have that tipped into any hot milk. If you’re giving her that, she gets it straight, mind now!”

  “Tim,” said Diana, “what do you make of it all?”

  “I don’t know yet,” he answered. “I shall take the girl home tomorrow and pick up the kids, but I’ve made it a point of honour to get them out of that ghastly bughouse where they’re living, and house them decently. I know where I can put them, too, at any rate for the time being, until we get Nanradoc sorted out. The top floor of the Phisbe headquarters is completely empty, and that wouldn’t be too far, I imagine, from Marion’s job. The caretaker’s wife, for a small consideration, I’m sure would have the youngest kid down in the basement during the school hours, and the twins might have to change their school, but that doesn’t matter at their age. Marion’s bits and pieces won’t take much time to pack up, so, if I arrange with a removals firm, she and the youngsters can be in their new quarters by Saturday. How about that for organisation?”

  “What’s Phisbe going to say?” demanded Diana. Timothy grinned.

  “I always present awkward persons with a fait accompli,” he said. “Once Marion is in, they’ll have the devil’s own job to get her out.”

  “And what about Nanradoc?” asked Diana. “I mean, if it’s really hers—”

  “My dear girl, all Marion Jones wants is somewhere respectable and secure for those children. She won’t give a damn about Nanradoc if she can get rent-free apartments in Phisbe’s clean, safe little nest.”

  “Rent-free?”

  “Of course,” said Timothy, surprised. “Surely an indecently opulent Society isn’t going to chisel the poor girl out of money for rent? They ought to think themselves lucky to get that third floor occupied and—er—kept warm and dry and so forth.”

  “I thought our headquarters was centrally heated,” said Parsons, grinning. “I also think, Doctor Barnado Herring, that you’re a mug.”

  “Oh, Tom, don’t be a spoil-sport!” said his wife. “I think it’s a marvellous idea, and what you’d better do is to get along there and measure up the biggest room and buy Marion a carpet for it. But, Tim, dear, something must be done about Nanradoc. If this poor girl has got a claim to it, that claim must be investigated.”

  “How right you are,” said Timothy, calmly. “It will be looked into, but I’m much better at that sort of thing when I’m not clogged up with the hopes and fears of the claimant. I want to get Marion off my neck for a bit. You heard what she said, and she meant it. She’s scared of the two odd bods at Nanradoc, and she’s scared of being let in for a law-suit because she’d be sunk if she lost. I want to park her somewhere while I get on with the sort of job which I wouldn’t have missed for the world. Let’s hope that Phisbe won’t find me just one other thing to do before I’ve sorted out Pembroke Pritchard Jones and all his works. I shall go and see him next week, and find out what he really meant Marion to have, or whether the whole thing was a rather cruel hoax.”

  “When we began this conversation,” said Tom
Parsons, “I got the impression that you thought Marion was trying to pull the wool over Phisbe’s eyes in making this claim, yet now you’re prepared to take up the cudgels on her behalf. Why?”

  “I’ve never laid the cudgels down. Those two harpies at that frightful lodging-house got right under my skin. But, as the Nanradoc woman’s name also appears to be Jones, the thought that she is Pembroke Jones’s sister rather worries me.”

  “I can’t see why. I mean, why shouldn’t she be? You say she’s in possession at Nanradoc . . .”

  “As she was at some pains to point out to me, adding, unnecessarily, that possession is nine points of the law. Nine-tenths was her actual expression, but it comes to the same thing.”

  “She’s probably right. It’s not an easy matter to throw the cuckoo out of the nest, and, in this particular case, it doesn’t seem as though she is the cuckoo. She’s Miss Olwen Jones . . .”

  “She didn’t mention that, though, until the monk put the words into her mouth.”

  “Oh, really? That’s rather interesting. You’d think she’d have mentioned it at once.”

  “I know. And there’s another point and, I’d be inclined to think, a conclusive one. Marion told them that she hadn’t set eyes on Pembroke Jones since she was a child of eight—incidentally, it seems as though you must be right about her age—and that, so far as she knew, she had never met Olwen Jones, his sister.”

  “And this woman claims to be Olwen Jones. I don’t see anything wrong in that. Marion can’t say she isn’t, if she’s never met Olwen Jones.”

  “Marion could say she isn’t, but the point didn’t seem to occur to her.”

  “What point?”

  “That Olwen Jones is Pembroke Jones’s much younger sister. Marion does know that much. Now, then, Diana, you went to an exhibition of Jones’s paintings. Did you see him? Was he there?”

  “Yes. I didn’t speak to him, of course, but he was pointed out to me.”

  “What would you say his age might have been?”

  “Oh, forty, perhaps. Not more than forty, anyhow.”

  “And how long ago was this?”

  “It was last summer.”

  “What would you understand by the expression, ‘his much younger sister,’ do you think?”

  “Anything from five to fifteen years younger, I suppose. You mean this woman who says she is Olwen Jones would seem to be . . .”

  “Fifty-five at least, I should say. Won’t see fifty again, anyway.”

  “Now that is interesting,” said Parsons. “So we deduce from this . . . ?”

  “That the woman calling herself Olwen Jones is an imposter. That would be my summing up.”

  “Then the real Olwen Jones may have sold out to her and the monkish fellow.”

  “If so, why should the woman claim to be Olwen Jones? I’m going to look up Pembroke Jones next Monday.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Pembroke Pritchard Jones

  The omniscient Coningsby knew the address of the art gallery in Chester, and the art gallery, scenting a client and thinking of their commission, readily supplied Timothy with Pembroke Pritchard Jones’s private address and telephone number. Timothy arranged, over the telephone, for an interview with Jones. The following Thursday found him leaving his car outside a large new bungalow. It was not so very near Chester, but stood in a village not far from the little town of Mold. The front door was reached by way of a large garden against whose dark shrubs pieces of statuary had been posed, the work, it was reasonable to guess, of the enigmatic Leonie Bing with whom, presumably, Jones shared the wooden studio which had been added to one side of the broad brick building.

  The door was opened by a middle-aged, henna-haired charwoman wearing a blue coat-overall and fur-lined slippers. Timothy stated his business and was invited to step inside and take a seat.

  “I’ll get him,” said the woman. “Wouldn’t be decent for you to go pushing into the studio just now. They’re modelling.” She left him in a beautifully furnished room which, nevertheless, was rendered somewhat overwhelming because of the number of paintings which obliterated the surface of the walls. The pictures were mostly landscapes, and he was sufficiently informed to realise that they were very fine work. Here and there was a portrait, and there were seven nudes observed, Timothy thought, by someone who had a fastidious distaste for the contours of the female body. Not that they were in any sense caricatures. They merely offered, as it were, a devastating criticism of God’s taste in line and mass when He created Eve.

  Jones was a long time in coming, and Timothy had been able to study his work for nearly half an hour before the door opened and the painter came in. He fell, so far as his appearance went, into one of the more familiar patterns in artists. He belonged to the bulky, red-haired, tweed-clad, paint-bespattered variety, extroverted, jovial, lecherous (probably), and, apart from his smock, which was filthy, he was ideally, blatantly clean, and his trousers were as beautiful as Timothy’s own.

  “Hullo,” he said, “sorry to have kept you waiting, but the model’s time was nearly up, and we were determined to finish her off before she went. I gather you wanted to see me about my cousin. Care to stay to lunch?” Without waiting for a reply, he went to the door and bellowed, “What’s for lunch, Mrs. Bellows? Will it run to three?”

  “Oh, yes, sir,” was the reply. “Thirty-three, if you like. It’s a casserole and there’s plenty of extra veg.”

  “That’s that, then,” said the host, coming back into the room. “Well, now, sit down, won’t you? Leonie will be in as soon as she’s paid the model and scrubbed up, and then we can have a drink. What’s all this about Marion? You’re not her lawyer, are you?”

  “No, I’m not her lawyer,” said Timothy, “although, in a way, I have her interests in view. Is she right in thinking that you have given her leave to live on the property at Nanradoc?”

  The painter looked him over with cool appraisement.

  “You’re not going to marry her, are you?” he asked.

  “Not so far as I know. Perhaps I had better begin at the beginning. I wouldn’t like you to think my questions impertinent,” said Timothy, stiffening as he scented a fight.

  “Oh, I’m sure they won’t be. You look, if I may say so, a business-like young chap. I’m convinced that any question you asked would be completely pertinent. But save everything up until Leonie comes in. She’ll love to hear all about it. Ah, here she is.”

  If Timothy had formed any mental picture of Leonie Bing it dissolved into thin air as soon as she came in. She was tall, slim, and fair, with green eyes and a thin, wide mouth. Her nose showed too much fighting spirit for beauty and her chin too little. Her whole face, in fact, was a contradiction in terms. She wore black jeans, which showed her long legs to great advantage, and a green sweater which deepened the colour of her eyes and softened the contours of her slightly aggressive breasts. Timothy offered her a smile of respectful admiration to which she responded by giving him a kiss.

  “You pet!” she said. “What tide washed you up, I wonder?”

  “One of those tides in the affairs not of man, but of woman,” said Timothy. “Mr. Jones asked me to wait until you joined us before I unfolded my tale. I’ll be as brief as I can, because I’ve really no right to be coming and bothering you at all.”

  “But we love people to come bothering. Do you think you could go into the kitchen and make me a John Collins, Pembroke, dear? What for yourself? And what for the gorgeous guest?”

  These matters being settled, Jones went out of the room and Timothy was left alone with the lady. To his surprise, she became entirely serious, sat down opposite him, leaned forward, and said, with intensity,

  “You look all right, but I’m not having Pembroke put upon. He’s a baby where business matters are concerned, and I might as well tell you at once that I’m his wife, so anything that concerns him concerns me. I hope you get the message.” Her eyes, which, when she was smiling, had dancing gold flecks in th
em like the sun shining through leaves, had hardened to cold green stone. Timothy was reminded of gangster films.

  “Believe me,” he said meekly, “I have no desire or intention to put upon anybody. This is it.” He handed her Phisbe’s card. She studied it. He noticed her long eyelashes and beautifully marked eyebrows. She handed back the card, saying frankly,

  “This doesn’t mean a thing to me. What’s it all about?”

  “Just what it says, I’m afraid. We get letters from archaeologists and vicars and owners of castles and moated granges, and all that sort of thing, and it’s my job to go along and have a look at whatever it is, and advise my Society whether to play along, or whether to leave well alone. We pay for repairs and general salvage of historic buildings, and such.”

  “Oh, I begin to see. That tumble-down tower at Nanradoc?”

  “Exactly. I went along to look at it after I had seen Miss Jones, and . . .”

  “Oh, don’t tell me until Pembroke comes back. It sounds as though it’s going to be . . .” She did not complete the sentence, for Pembroke returned, ushering in Mrs. Bellows who was carrying a loaded tray.

  “Here we are,” said Pembroke. “Let’s all get beautifully bottled. Now, Herring, fire away. It doesn’t matter how long-winded you are, because Mrs. B’s casserole can go on stewing ’til Doomsday, and she can take the veg. up and put them over a saucepan of water. We’ve got her very well trained, haven’t we, lovey?” he concluded, addressing himself to the charwoman-cum-cook.

  “It’s a good thing I’m used to artists,” “lovey” responded. “You’re a bloomin’ funny lot. Mind if I have a bit of a tipple in the kitchen before I go, Mr. Pembroke? I been hard at it all the morning.”

  “Help yourself, my dear, help yourself. You might see how we’re getting on, by the way. I have an impression we’re a bit low on some of the ingredients. Phone the bootleggers if we are. You know what’s needed. Well, now,” he went on, when Mrs. Bellows had closed the door behind herself, “where do we go from here?”