No Winding Sheet (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

Routh’s next assignment—and he was not altogether sorry to have his work laid out for him instead of having to chart a course for himself—was to trace, if he could, the clothes and golf-clubs which Mrs. Buxton’s visitors had collected from the lodgings. The inference was that they must have been very quick to get rid of the things before the news broke that the body had been discovered. If he could find out who had bought them, he stood a good chance of getting a description of the vendors.

  “The chances are, though,” said the detective-superintendent, “that the things are weighted down and are in the deepest part of the river by now. On the other hand, these people may have sold them to an old-clothes dealer almost as soon as they had collected them from the house. Pythias was a dressy man. That suit which was on the body had been made of good material, so his other clothes may well have been worth a bob or two.”

  “No hat or overcoat was found with the body, was it?” asked Routh.

  “No. Why?”

  “Wouldn’t he have been wearing both to go out on a chilly winter evening, especially if he was going on holiday?”

  “Yes, I suppose he would.”

  “And what about a suitcase?”

  “Probably stuffed his pyjamas and a toothbrush into his briefcase with the money, if he only intended to stay away a day or two.”

  “We have only Mrs. Buxton’s word that he intended to stay away at all,” said Routh, “now that I come to think of it.”

  “Good Lord, you don’t think that old party murdered the man and buried him, do you?”

  “No, but she’s got a husband and a nephew who could have done both.”

  “Forget it and chase up these obvious suspects who walked off with Pythias’s clothes and golfing bag.”

  In accordance with this instruction, Routh, taking the sketch of the foreigners with him, went to the only old-clothes dealer in the town.

  “Ever bought anything off this couple or one of them?” he asked, displaying the crude picture.

  “Not me. When?”

  “Very recently, I think, but it could have been just before or soon after Christmas.”

  The dealer in cast-off clothing shook his head.

  “I’d have remembered that tit-fer,” he said, pointing to the Russian-style cap. Routh thanked him and was not at all surprised by the answer. He had never supposed that, if Pythias’s effects had been sold, the sale would have taken place so near home. His mind was still running on the town of Springdale and it was there that he received positive news that somebody had sold Pythias’s possessions.

  He applied first to a dealer in secondhand clothes, watches, and bric-a-brac, but all he obtained there was a piece of advice.

  “I reckon you’re trailing stolen property,” said the dealer. “If you wasn’t, it wouldn’t be a police job, would it?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  “Fair enough. Well, look, anything hot—or even a bit warm, come to that—wouldn’t be offered to a business like mine. I couldn’t afford to touch it, see? It isn’t on the list of stolen property. That don’t bother with old clothes, so what you want, mate, is the stalls in the Toosday market. Here today and gone tomorrow, as you might say. What’s the fancy name for stall-keepers?”

  “Itinerant vendors.”

  “Got it in one! You try of a Toosday in Broad Street. Always been a Toosday market there as long as anybody can remember. Of course it ain’t Petticoat Lane, but some surprisin’ stuff do turn up there from time to time.”

  So on Tuesday Routh went again to Springdale to track down the Tuesday market. Here he had what he called will-o’-the-wisp luck. The very first stall-holder he approached did not recognise the picture of the man in the Russian cap and his woman companion, but confessed to having bought clothes, a pair of shoes, a clock, a wristwatch, a tape-recorder, and a suitcase “somewhen around last December.” This, thought Routh, sounded very promising. “Said he was a student and owed his landlady money,” explained the stall-holder.

  “I wonder why he parted with the things? Why not have gone to a pawnbroker?” asked Routh.

  “They’re rare birds these days. Bob may still be your uncle, in a manner of speaking, but the uncle of the old pop shop, well, he’s nearly what you might call an extinct species. Everybody’s on the never-never now, and you can’t pawn them sort of things.”

  “I suppose you haven’t still got any of the stuff I’m looking for?”

  “Gov’nor, with me it’s easy come and quick go. I ain’t got storage space, you see.”

  “None of it left?”

  “Not unless you count a folded-up docket of sorts as I found had slipped down a slit in the lining of his overcoat.”

  “Oh, an overcoat was part of the haul, was it?”

  “And a very tatty, poor-quality overcoat, too, squire, and not hardly worth what I gave him for it.”

  This reply almost obliterated Routh’s hopes. He could not believe that a senior master on the top of the salary scale, with a special increment for being in charge of his special subject and with a junior master under him, would have owned a tatty, poor-quality overcoat hardly worth the money the stall-keeper had paid for it. There was also the description the vendor had given of himself as a student.

  “Can you remember exactly when you bought the things?” asked Routh.

  “Ah, near enough. It would have been on the Tuesday before Christmas week.”

  “Not the Tuesday in Christmas week?”

  “No. I was down with flu then and never come to market at all. My old gal had to manage the stall and she had strict orders not to buy nothing from nobody without me being there.”

  “How old was the fellow who sold you the things?”

  “A matter of eighteen to twenty, a student, like I said.”

  “And you haven’t bought old clothes since then?”

  “Use your loaf, gov’nor! Course I have! Last Tuesday as ever was. But you spoke of round about Christmas time. Anyway, soon as they come in I flogged ’em. Good stuff they was and went like hot cakes.”

  “You wouldn’t know who bought them?”

  “There was three good suits and they went to three different customers. The good overcoat went to another and there was four pairs of good shoes not hardly worn at all. They went to four other customers. Know the customers? Of course I don’t. I ain’t like a shopkeeper as is there all the week and has his regulars.”

  “You mentioned a piece of paper you found in the lining of that tatty overcoat you got from the student. Can I see it?”

  “You could if I’d got it on me, but I haven’t. I can tell you what was on it, though.”

  “You said I could see it if I wanted to.”

  “Oh, so you can if you likes to go to my place and tell my old woman to take it from under the front leg of the table as it’s propping up, but I don’t reckon it would be hardly worth your while. It’s a London theayter programme and there ain’t nothing writ on it. If it hadn’t been so thick and bulky I’d never have felt it in the lining, but just have got my old woman to cobble up the slit.”

  “These things you bought recently, there wasn’t a bag of golf-clubs included, I suppose?”

  “Golf-clubs? No. Them as can afford to play golf wouldn’t sell their stuff to the likes of me.”

  At the Stone House, Wandles Parva, a village on the edge of the New Forest and not many miles from the makeshift grave in which the corpse of Mr. Pythias had been discovered so accidentally, Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley and her secretary, Mrs. Laura Gavin, were having an after-breakfast conversation.

  “Well, the case has certain features of interest,” said Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley, “but I cannot see any reason why I should involve myself with it, neither have I any excuse for doing so.”

  “It’s a muddle and you’re good at sorting out muddles. It’s practically in our neighbourhood, so you could operate from here. It concerns a school, with which, as a once-trained teacher, I feel myself involved. The dea
d man is a Greek, and foreigners, whether one likes them or not, are always romantic and interesting. There is speculation as to whether this man was merely set upon, robbed, and murdered by muggers, or whether he was some sort of undercover agent working either for or against the Greek government, in which case his death may have been an assassination for political reasons. Shall I continue?”

  “I feel you have covered the main points of interest. There is one other, however, which may be worthy of mention. The body, it seems, was buried in the school quadrangle.”

  “Looks like local knowledge of some sort.”

  “And very limited local knowledge. That is what adds to the interest. The murderer knew that the quadrangle was there and he knew that workmen had dug a hole in which to bury their rubbish. He seems to have realised the possibilities of using their labour to save his own, but he does not appear to have known that a later excavation was to be made in order to sink a pond for goldfish and water-lilies.”

  “Why don’t you write to the local paper and point all that out?”

  “You are the scribe in this establishment.”

  “Well, if I wrote to the papers, the first point I would make is that Pythias, in spite of some of the rumours which seem to have been passed around, cannot possibly have been a subversive character at odds with the Greek government, or he would certainly not have been planning and organising this educational trip to Athens.”

  “A valid argument—unless, of course, he was an undercover agent not against the Greek authorities, but for them. In such case, the holiday journey might have been seen as a means of getting him back to his own country without arousing suspicion.”

  “Yes,” said Laura. “Well, I don’t think this cloak-and-dagger stuff is much in our line, do you?”

  “Neither do I think it has any place in this particular case. I think the people where Mr. Pythias lodged are far more likely to know why he was murdered. I feel sure that this was a simple matter of robbery, although possibly not by his landlady or her husband. There were others living in the house.”

  “Would you remove my name from your visiting list if I got on to Gavin at the Yard and urged him to persuade the Bankshire police to co-opt you?”

  “No. I have become addicted to your society.” Dame Beatrice looked at an unusually serious-faced Laura and added, “I wish you would tell me why, apart from its connection with a school, this particular case fascinates you to such an extent that you want to drag your beloved and ever-busy husband into it.”

  “To begin with, it’s right up his street. He is, after all, Assistant Commissioner for Crime up at headquarters. To go on with, I’m intrigued by the murderer’s choice of a burial ground. Surely there is plenty of wild countryside round about where a body could be buried secretly and never found? After all, until this particular body turned up—and that only for a reason which the murderer could not possibly have foreseen—it was taken for granted that the man had scarpered with the money.”

  “I think that is too sweeping a statement. As I read the accounts given in the various newspapers, it seemed to me that the headmaster who had had Pythias on his staff at a previous school as well as at this one has been convinced throughout that the man would never have made off with money which was not his own. That being so, the theory that Pythias had been murdered for the money was always a possibility and must have been in the headmaster’s mind. I am sure the police suspected it, too, but, so far, have been unable to procure the evidence they need to charge one or more of this Mrs. Buxton’s lodgers.”

  “Do you know what I’d really like to do? I’d like to take a room in that boarding-house and turn that rabble of men lodgers inside out. One of them must know something and I bet I could chisel it out of him. I wouldn’t mind betting there’s one of them who doesn’t go out to work as a general rule. He’s our man.”

  Dame Beatrice looked at her secretary almost with superstition. She was accustomed to what Laura called “hunches” and, although Laura had never very definitely claimed that she had the Gift, as second sight is tactfully and obscurely described by Highlanders, Dame Beatrice had often had reason to believe that Laura, without being able to explain why, had displayed a knack of hitting what appeared to be hidden nails on the head and forcing them to reveal lethal points protruding from the reverse side of some rough carpentry. She mentioned this in these same metaphorical terms and added, “But on no account are you to take lodgings with Mrs. Buxton. That must be agreed between us before you go.”

  “Aha!” said Laura. “Right! The villain of the piece has been singled out and will soon be named. I suppose Mrs. Buxton is a sort of female Sweeney Todd, is she?”

  “That will be for you to judge,” said Dame Beatrice. “I doubt, though, whether she was responsible for disposing of the body.”

  10

  A Finger in the Pie

  “Are you one of those reporters?” demanded Mrs. Buxton.

  Laura briskly replied, “Certainly not. I understand you have a room to let.”

  “Oh, well, you must excuse me asking. I can’t be too careful. You’d be surprised the trouble I’ve had since they found poor Mr. Pythias. Gawpers and reporters and the police, there’s been no end to it.”

  “Who is Mr. Pythias?”

  “Was, you mean. Don’t you read the papers?”

  “I scan the front page of The Times occasionally.”

  “You better come in. This is my sitting room. Next door is the room poor Mr. Pythias had when he was among us. I haven’t let it yet. It didn’t seem decent, somehow, so soon afterwards and with the rest of the inquest still in the future. Well, it does seem strange you don’t seem to have heard of our troubles; still, the room won’t give you no bad dreams. Me and my husband and all my five gentlemen been so harried and worried and badgered by the police and the reporters as you’d never believe. There’s never been anything like it. Ours is a quiet little town, as you must have noticed. Of course there’s been a lot of strangers about while the school was being built, but they’re all gone now. Nothing like strangers for bringing trouble, is there?”

  “May I see the room? I haven’t much time.”

  “Next door to this, through the folding doors. Well, they used to be folding doors, but the tenants like their privacy, don’t they? So I had them barred over as well as kept locked and you have to go out into the hall now to get in there.”

  They went into the hall and Mrs. Buxton produced a key. This, she explained, was a master key “same as in hotels, because, of course, the girl and me, we have to get in while the tenants are out and clean up and make the beds. Well, this is the room. It looks over the garden, as you can see, and you got your own french doors on to the balcony and steps down to the lawn. It’s the best room in the house, barring my sitting room next door, but you need not worry about me disturbing you from there. Buxton and I only use it for Christmas and me for taking the tenants’ rent once a week. Fridays is rent days, if that’ll suit you, and seeing that yours is the best room in the house—”

  Laura looked at it from the open doorway. It was a sizeable room with a high ceiling and, as the landlady had said, french windows. There was a three-foot single bed in one corner, a gas fire, a table, a writing desk with a swivel chair, an armchair, and two bookcases. There was neither a radio nor a television set. The only other furniture was a wardrobe. Laura’s attention was drawn to the painting on the wall.

  “Do you tell me that all your tenants at present are men?” Laura enquired.

  “Gentlemen,” Mrs. Buxton said in a tone of correction. “Yes, I don’t, as a rule, take ladies, but I’m willing to make an exception in your case, you not being of the type to cause trouble, I’m sure. Single gentlemen—well, unattached single gentlemen, say—is what I look for mostly. When they form an attachment with a view to marriage, or whatever other ideas they may have, they have to go. Would you be a widow? I see you’ve got a ring.”

  “I am not sure that I should like being the only
female tenant and I think your gentlemen might resent my presence, too,” said Laura, without answering the question. “Is there a communal spirit among them?”

  “They all sit down to supper together four evenings a week. I don’t cater for them Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays without I’m asked special and under no circumstances do they bring guests here. That’s my strictest rule. If they want to be sociable, they have to go out and be it some place else.”

  “Oh, dear! It sounds as though I should have a lonely life here. I have a large tribe of relatives and am accustomed to entertain them in my own house.”

  “Sorry, but rules are rules and my rules have always kept me out of trouble.”

  “Until now, it seems. You mentioned reporters and so forth.”

  “Oh, you mean poor Mr. Pythias. Well, I can tell you one thing: wherever he met his death, it was not in this house.”

  “You refer to him as ‘poor Mr. Pythias.’ What kind of death did he meet? Was it the result of a street accident?”

  “I could say yes to that, but you’d soon find out the truth. Mr. Pythias was set upon and robbed of a large sum of money he was carrying, and then brutally murdered, and whoever done it buried him somewhere in the grounds of the new Sir George Etherege school on the other side of the town.”

  “Good gracious! What a terrible thing!”

  “Which is why I’ve got a room to let.”

  “I wonder whether I could meet your other tenants? One likes to know with whom one will be associating.”

  “Oh, they’re all out at work except my nephew. He’s the top-floor tenant. He’s an artist and likes the solitude up there. The others won’t be home much before six, I’m afraid, and then they’ll want their supper. We’ve had so many visitors of the wrong sort, you see, poking and prying and asking all sorts of questions.”

  “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?”