‘I thought you did not allow visitors?’
‘You can’t keep the police out.’
‘I suppose you yourself have friends in?’
‘That’s different, but it doesn’t happen often. I don’t even like my nephew having a friend in, but what can I do? He’s family, you see. By the way, I suppose you’d be willing to sign a lease for a three-year occupation?’
‘Three years? But your advertisement said the room would be let on a week-to-week basis.’
‘That was because I only expected gentlemen, not ladies, to apply. Their work might take them elsewhere at any time, you see.’
‘Wouldn’t that apply to women?’
‘Oh, I took you for a lady of independent means.’
‘I don’t know why. I work for my living like everybody else.’
‘I couldn’t consider anything but a three-year agreement.’
‘Then I’m afraid that settles it.’ Laura held out her left hand. ‘I might want to get married again, you see. Anyway, I couldn’t settle down happily in the room of a murdered man. I should always think it was haunted. I’m psychic, you see.’
‘Good gracious me! Poor Mr Pythias wasn’t murdered in here!’
Laura pointed to the luridly decorated wall.
‘No,’ she said. ‘If he had to live with that, I should think he committed suicide.’
Mrs Buxton admitted that she herself would not care to live with the painting, but added in defence of the decoration that it had been compared to the work of ‘somebody called Turner, whoever he was’.
‘The Fighting Téméraire painted while the artist was under the influence, then,’ said Laura. ‘I think you’ll have to wash that gory mess off the wall before you can let the room, you know. It’s a nightmare. Who painted it? Mr Pythias himself?’
‘Did you really call it a gory mess?’ asked Dame Beatrice, when Laura reported her visit.
‘Well, it is just that. Anyway, I don’t think Mrs Buxton and I exactly hit it off and I didn’t meet her husband or any of the tenants, although I have an idea that the nephew was on the stairs and had a good look at me. It seems that he is a privileged person. He seems to be the only tenant who is allowed visitors. Tomorrow I’d like to go to the school and see what I can find out from that angle.
‘What excuse can you offer for troubling the headmaster?’
‘I shall present myself as the relative of a prospective pupil. I know all the ropes, so I shan’t trip up. A first-class character-actress was lost when I became first a teacher and then your secretary.’
‘I still cannot see why you find this case of particular interest,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘A man carrying a fairly large sum of money has been murdered. In spite of the present lack of evidence, the murderer is almost certainly somebody living in Mrs Buxton’s lodging-house. Sooner or later the police will find out which of the inmates it was. What possible interest is there in such a sordid little affair?’
‘The choice of a burial place, but I shall know more about that when I’ve visited the school. Having wormed my way in, I shall tear off the mask at what appears to be a suitable moment and invite the headmaster to come clean.’
Dame Beatrice cackled, but made no other comment upon this statement and, after breakfast, Laura drove from the Stone House to the town and, having enquired the way to it, she soon reached the school.
Two or three cars were already parked near the front door. She drew up beside them, mounted the steps and entered the vestibule. Margaret Wirrell’s guichet was open and Margaret said, ‘Good morning. Did you want somebody?’
‘I suppose I want to see the headmaster. I want to enter a boy for next term,’ said Laura.
‘Will you come in here, please.’ Laura entered the small office and was given a chair. ‘May I have your name and address?’
Laura gave both and Margaret wrote them down and then looked up at her. ‘Wandles Parva?’ she said. ‘But that isn’t in this county.’
‘Oh, the boy doesn’t live with me. I am not his mother. I am merely making enquiries. The address would be Padginton. That is not very far from here, is it?’
‘Padginton?’ said Margaret Wirrell. ‘Well, I know our catchment area has widened quite a bit now the new buildings are finished, but I think Padginton will still be outside our range. I’ll ask the headmaster whether he can see you. Even if he can, you may have to wait for a bit. We’ve been kept very busy lately. I expect you’ve heard about it. I think the police are with him now.’
‘Oh, yes, I read about it. It happened a long time ago, though, didn’t it? I’m surprised the police haven’t worked something out by now.’
‘It’s been some weeks, yes.’ Margaret picked up the newly installed intercom. ‘A Mrs Gavin is here, Mr Ronsonby. Is it any good asking her to wait?’
‘What does she want?’
‘To enter a boy from Padginton village.’
‘We can’t take him. Padginton is still out of our catchment area.’
‘Even if she insists upon a single-sex school for the boy? That’s still her right, isn’t it? She seems a very nice type of woman.’
‘All right. There won’t be much chance that we can take the boy, but Routh is just going. The local police may be handing over to the Yard.’
Margaret turned to Laura. ‘He’ll see you in a minute,’ she said, ‘but I don’t think you’ll have much luck.’
‘My husband is a policeman. He is at New Scotland Yard,’ said Laura.
Margaret exclaimed, ‘Not really? Is there any chance he would be sent down here?’
‘I hardly think so.’
‘I must tell Mr Ronsonby, all the same. He will be very interested, as it happens.’
Receiving the news, Ronsonby relayed it to Routh.
‘This Mrs Gavin who wants to park a boy on me next term has a husband at New Scotland Yard. How’s that for coincidence?’
‘Gavin?’ said Routh., ‘I saw a Gavin and his missus once at a special police do. There’s no coincidence about this, sir, if you ask me. He’s the Assistant Commissioner for Crime and his good lady devils for Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley and Dame Beatrice is the psychiatric consultant to the Home Office.’
‘Good gracious! We must be mixed up in something bigger than we know. I wonder whether the Greek embassy comes into it somewhere,’ said Mr Ronsonby.
‘Could well be, sir. I’ll pass the time of day with the lady on my way out. Not that she’ll remember me.’
‘Ah,’ said Margaret, as the headmaster’s door opened, ‘here comes the inspector. Mr Ronsonby will see you now, I expect.’ But Routh, as he had indicated, did not take his departure from the school until he had looked in at the secretary’s little window which opened on to the vestibule. Margaret came to the opening. ‘Is he ready to see Mrs Gavin?’ she asked. Laura got up from the chair Margaret had given her and went to the secretary’s door to meet Routh.
‘Detective-Inspector Routh, ma’am,’ said he.
‘Just the man,’ said Laura. They looked at one another. ‘Haven’t I seen you before?’
Routh recalled the occasion to her.
‘It was one of those times, ma’am,’ he said, ‘when, as they say at the Olympic Games, the important thing is not to succeed, but to take part. I was in our section of the police choir. Unfortunately we didn’t win.’
‘As Robert Louis Stevenson said,’ remarked Laura, ‘to travel hopefully is better than to arrive.’
‘I expect, all the same, ma’am, most people would prefer to arrive. I suppose you know the Yard will probably be called in on this case of ours?’
‘I don’t see why. It sounds to me a very local affair.’
‘Political undercurrents, the Chief Constable thinks.’
‘And what do the rest of you think?’
‘Not ours to think, ma’am. As soon as a thing looks like being political, to some extent it’s out of our hands.’
‘But there’s no real evidence that it is politica
l, is there?’
‘Pythias was a Greek, ma’am.’
‘And was prepared to conduct a school party to Greece. He would hardly do that if he was in trouble with the Greek government. Come with me to the headmaster,’ said Laura. ‘I want to get all the low-down on this murder that I can. It doesn’t sound like politics to me. I might tell you, as I shall now tell the headmaster, that this boy of mine from Padginton is a myth. It was an excuse to get into the school, but I never expected to have the luck to run into you, Inspector, in this helpful, informal kind of way. I’m trying to get Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley interested. If I do, you won’t need anybody to come muscling in from London. It will remain your case, as it should.’
‘I’m afraid that, so far as the Chief Constable and my Detective Chief Superintendent are concerned, Mrs Gavin, the die is cast. As soon as we were sure it was a case of murder, the Super and the Chief Constable took over. As it is, I’m only the dogsbody now.’
‘That seems hard luck after all the work I’m sure you have put in,’ said Laura sympathetically.
‘Well, ma’am, if we’d known from the first that it was murder — although, of course, we had our suspicions of that — the Detective-Superintendent would have taken over the case from the beginning, but we thought this man had simply absconded with the money, so I can’t grumble. I’ve had quite an interesting time.’
‘What happened at the inquest?’
‘Just routine, ma’am, and an adjournment. The county pathologist couldn’t find out exactly how the murder had been committed owing to the length of time the body had been underground. There were details of putrefaction, ravages by maggots and all the other nasty things which take away the dignity of death. What we do know is that there had been a knock on the head, but we don’t know yet what the murder weapon was. There’s only one thing I’m certain about in my own mind. Whether the Buxtons have any knowledge of it or not, Pythias was killed in their house. I’m as certain of that as I am of my own identity.’
‘So when you mentioned a political murder, you did not really see it as that.’
‘Certainly not at first. I reckoned it was a straightforward mugging until we found where the body was buried.’
‘Mrs Buxton knew Mr Pythias had the journey money on him,’ said Margaret Wirrell. ‘She admitted as much to me when I went round there at the very beginning of this dreadful business before any idea of murder had entered anybody’s mind.’
‘Well, I had better not keep the headmaster waiting,’ said Laura, as Mr Ronsonby came to the door and opened it. Routh, postponing his departure, allowed Laura and Margaret to precede him into the headmaster’s sanctum and said, ‘It seems we are entertaining angels unaware, sir. It turns out that Mrs Gavin is the wife of an Assistant Commissioner at New Scotland Yard.’
‘Dear me! Then why does she wish to enrol a boy at my school? Is he to act as copper’s nark?’ asked Mr Ronsonby, smiling at Laura. ‘I remember a most interesting detective story by Cyril Hare — Judge Gordon Clark, you know, Mrs Gavin — in which the vicar’s wife insisted upon inserting herself into the police force in just that capacity.’
‘I’m afraid,’ said Laura, taking the armchair he offered her, ‘there isn’t any boy. I had to think up a plausible reason for getting into the school to see you, that’s all. I certainly didn’t expect to run into Mr Routh as well. That is a bit of luck.’
11
Concerning Chickens
« ^ »
So there we were,’ said Laura, on her return to the Stone House, ‘all cosy and relaxed in the headmaster’s den and, thanks to Detective-Inspector Routh, with me the belle of the ball. He was present at a police jamboree which Gavin and I attended some time back and he recognised me and sort of guaranteed my bona fides to Mr Ronsonby. I got all the gen they could give me about Mr Pythias and then the caretaker came in with a story about chickens.’
‘I have been thinking about your visit to Mrs Buxton. You said you did not get on with her very well,’ said Dame Beatrice.
‘I didn’t. I checked her advertisement in the local paper — they had a copy in the reading room at the public library — and it stated plainly and clearly that the room the Buxtons had to spare would be let to a suitable tenant on a week-to-week basis, but, when I entered into negotiations with the woman, she wanted me to sign a three-year lease.’
‘Her tactful way of pointing out that she did not want you as a tenant?’
‘Obviously. For one thing, she prefers men lodgers. All the tenants are men. They are given their breakfasts, four cooked suppers a week at which everybody sits down, and individual high teas are provided on Fridays for anybody who says he will be in. No visitors are allowed, not even for a cup of tea. It all sounded very much regimented to me.’
‘Not for a household of men. The male sex goes out of the home for its pleasures, even if it is married. I do not suppose Mrs Buxton’s lodgers find her rules restricting. Was the house well kept?’
‘Oh, yes, it was neat, orderly and very clean.’
‘Were you shown Mr Pythias’s room?’
‘I was. It’s a good room on the ground floor, but it does have that awful great daub painted on one wall. I gained nothing from being shown it. The real fun was when I went round to the school.’
‘Ah, yes, the caretaker and the chickens, you said. Does he keep chickens?’
‘No. The boys do. The school, it appears, branches out in all directions when it comes to out-of-school activities, and the chickens are presided over by the younger boys. Well, the caretaker came to report that it was thought a fox had got one of the birds. The tally was minus one hen and there were feathers blowing about on the school field.’
‘Did the caretaker break into the headmaster’s conference merely to report on a missing hen?’
‘Yes, because it seems that he has a guilty conscience about not reporting another raid on the henhouse, which he now thinks may have something to do with the murder of Mr Pythias.’
‘You fascinate me. Proceed.’
‘Well, he came in, as I said, to report that one of the school chickens was missing and that there were feathers here and there about the school field. It appears that the chickens function in the corner of it furthest from the caretaker’s cottage, so that the cackling doesn’t disturb him, but if the boys who are on the rota for holiday feeding and egg collecting don’t turn up for any reason, the caretaker’s wife does the needful feeding and is rewarded by being allowed to keep the eggs. It is known that one of the back gardens of the houses which border the school field on two sides harbours a vixen and her cubs, and the caretaker came to report that he thought the missing hen was in her den.’
‘So what about the guilty conscience?’
‘The school secretary, Mrs Wirrell, dragged that into the light of day. She said, “Lucky not to have lost one or two chickens during the Christmas holidays.” Mr Ronsonby said, “How do you mean, Margaret?” At this the caretaker, looking a bit flustered, said that kids from the primary school had opened the henhouse at Christmas time and the fowls had scattered all over the place and had to be chased up and caught. The caretaker said he had not reported it, as the people who were staying in the cottage for Christmas had been able to round up the chickens and account for all of them, so no harm had been done and he had thought nothing of it until this fox and hen thing had brought it back to his mind. He said he realised he ought to have reported it, because obviously some unauthorised person or persons must have been on school premises. Mr Ronsonby agreed that he should have reported it. They have had two other break-ins, you see, and much more serious ones. Twice during last term a couple of people — men, not kids — managed to get inside the building itself and mess about in the school quad.’
‘Dear me,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘How did they manage that?’
‘The first time it was easy enough. While the builders were still at work there was no way of keeping people from entering the school from the rear. When the
building was finished and the back of the premises made secure, the trespassers broke a window to get in. Again, they were two men.’
‘The same two men?’
‘The caretaker doesn’t know, but he supposes they must have been, as each time their objective seems to have been the quad, and that, of course, is where the body was found.’
‘I think I would like to have a word with that caretaker,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Will you take me along and introduce me to the headmaster?’
This proved to be unnecessary. Margaret Wirrell took Laura’s telephone call and asked her to hold on. When she returned, she reported that Mr Ronsonby would be delighted to see Dame Beatrice at any time which was convenient to her and a meeting was arranged at which Laura did not put in an appearance. Routh, however, was present. Apprised of the imminent visit, he made a particular request to be allowed to attend the conference.
‘If Dame Beatrice is interesting herself in the case, sir, there may be something in it for me.’
It was not long after the polite preliminaries had been gone through when Sparshott was summoned. The reason was so that he might render an account of his stewardship in front of the visitor. The matter of Sparshott’s Christmas leave and the broken window in the boys’ washroom came up again. Mr Ronsonby was a reasonable man and spoke of these things more in sorrow than in anger.
‘You know, Sparshott, you really should not have left the school unguarded,’ said Mr Ronsonby. ‘You had proof of how simple a matter it was for unauthorised persons to enter the premises while there were still no back doors to the building.’
‘But, sir,’ protested Sparshott, ‘like I told you before, the premises wasn’t left unguarded. Me and my wife and Ron went off to friends for Christmas Day and Boxing Day, that’s true enough, but my older son, Geoffrey — you’ll remember Geoffrey, Mr Ronsonby?’
‘Oh, yes, yes. A most sensible, reliable boy.’
‘There you are, then’ said Sparshott, giving Routh a triumphant glance. ‘Well, Geoffrey, not having nothing but a council flat for him and his wife, they was glad enough to take over the cottage for a day or two and I promised ’em they could stay for another couple of days after we got back, which is what they done.’ He looked at the headmaster. ‘It’s not as though anybody at that time knew what terrible mischief there was afoot, sir.’
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