No Winding Sheet (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “No, no, Sparshott. We quite appreciate that. Now then, Dame Beatrice has some questions to put to you.”

  “I know you wouldn’t try to victimise me, sir. You always been a fair-minded gentleman. I be ready to tell the lady anything as will help.”

  “Any objection to Mrs. Wirrell taking down questions and answers and letting me have them?” asked Routh. “If no objection, you’ll talk more free without me, I reckon, so I’ll take myself off.”

  “Everything will be unprejudiced,” said Mr. Ronsonby to Sparshott, “and we all want to know the truth about Mr. Pythias, don’t we?”

  Sparshott looked at the very old, very thin, yellow-skinned little woman opposite him. He averted his gaze. Her mirthless grin reminded him of a puff-adder he had seen at the London Zoo. Dame Beatrice saw a retired village policeman, honest, wary, probably rather stupid, but with a kind of bovine innocence about him. She began her questioning as soon as Routh had gone, and without preamble.

  “What did you think when you found two strangers on the premises on the evening when the school broke up for the Christmas holidays?”

  “Louts larking about. That’s all I thought they was. They scarpered quick enough when me and my dog come on the scene. I reckoned they was there for mischief, but I rumbled ’em too soon for them to do any damage. Of course I can guess now what they was up to. I reckon one or both of ’em had done for Mr. Pythias on that breaking-up Friday and was looking to see whether that hole in the quad was a good place to bury the body. I don’t reckon they intended to bury it that night, though they might have had that idea. All the same, me being an ex-policeman and full of suspicious thoughts, as I reckon you have to be in the Force, I got the idea, thinking things over, as Mr. Pythias perhaps wasn’t dead when them chaps come to the quad, but they was planning the murder and was looking for a good place to put the body. I reckon the chickens give ’em a good way of distracting attention when they did bury it. There was always a bit of a mystery about who filled in that hole. It was thought Mr. Filkins and his gardening club done it in the Christmas holidays, but Mr. Filkins says they never.”

  “Mr. Filkins would not have ordered his boys to do such a thing without my permission,” said Mr. Ronsonby mildly.

  “P’raps not, sir. Anyway, I reckon it was on the night of the chickens as his killers buried Mr. Pythias, sir, and, of course, we knows now as it must have been them that filled in the hole.”

  “They seem to have run serious risk of discovery. I still wonder they took such chances. In any case, how would anybody outside the school know that such a convenient hole existed? The quad is not visible except from the interior of the building,” said Mr. Ronsonby.

  “Three hundred and fifty boys and more than a dozen masters knew of it, sir,” said Sparshott, “and these things get passed around in idle chatter, don’t ’em? Anyway, that’s why they come the first time, I reckon. Like I said, sir, they come to spy out the lie of the land.”

  “I wonder where they hid the body before they buried it in the hole?” said Mr. Ronsonby. “Those few days were the time of the greatest risk, one would think.”

  “If they killed him at Mrs. Buxton’s, sir, I reckon that’s where they left him ’til they could dispose of him. Them’s basement houses. The back door leads to a passage which nobody would use except the Buxtons themselves.”

  “If you are right,” said Dame Beatrice, “then Mrs. Buxton is implicated. Given the circumstances as we know them, I agree that it is most likely Mr. Pythias was murdered in the house and that the story of his going to friends for Christmas was fiction. If that is so, I think it likely that he was killed either in his own room or in that of his murderer, and I have it from Mrs. Gavin that there was little or no fraternising among the tenants, so that the body could have remained undetected in one of the rented rooms.”

  “And there was Buxton’s van to transport it to my quad when the time came,” said Mr. Ronsonby. “I see only one difficulty with regard to that. Once the building is empty, the gates are locked and no van could get into the school grounds.”

  “It could get round to the road what border the school field, though, sir,” said Sparshott. “All they’d have to do then would be to take the body round the alleyway and get it over the fence. Then they could have took it through the school from the back entrance where there wasn’t no door and so through to the quad.”

  “I see an objection to that theory,” said Dame Beatrice. “You think that the interment was carried out when the hens were dispersed. Your relatives would have been out on the school field chasing them and must have been aware of any interlopers.”

  “Not if them interlopers had already dumped the body in a classroom or somewhere afore they let the hens out, ma’am.”

  “Ah, that would explain matters. What were the exact circumstances under which your cottage was tenanted that night?”

  “Being as my wife and me and my son Ron was away for Christmas, my older son Geoffrey and his wife took over my cottage for a couple of days, and they brought a couple of friends with ’em. Me and my wife and Ron, we come home latish on Boxing Day after Geoffrey’s two friends had gorn and was told as some mischievious persons had let the hens out and what a job it had been a-chasing of all them chickens and getting ’em back inside. Geoffrey said he’d as soon try to round up a couple of dozen young pigs as them dratted, pestiferous fowls!”

  “How long did it take to catch them all?”

  “The others helped, but it took the best part of three hours, I reckon, because they had to keep going round to people’s front doors and asking if they could go into their back gardens. Geoffrey and Geoffrey’s wife and another chap done the chasing and an older lady stood by the henhouse to open the door for them to bung the chickens in and shut it up again. Lucky most of the hens was white Wyandottes, because it was dark time they finished and if they’d of been Buff Orpingtons they never would have caught ’em because they wouldn’t have been able to see ’em.”

  “While this safari was going on, would there have been any access to the school or its grounds other than by climbing the fence?”

  Sparshott, who had appeared animated, so far as this was possible in so phlegmatic a man, shook his head, but not in negation of the suggestion.

  “As to that,” he said, “well, Geoffrey soon realised as him and the other chap couldn’t keep climbing over the fence into the alleyway behind people’s back gardens. Him and the other chap might have managed it, but not Geoffrey’s wife, so he unlocks one of the side gates at the front of the school so as to get in and out. You will have noticed, ma’am, as there’s big double gates to admit cars and on either side of these there’s pedestrian gates leading on to paved footpaths to keep boys out of the way of staff cars coming in. Not as it do, but that’s another matter. Well, Geoffrey unlocks the left-hand one of these little gates with special instructions to the others to pull it to again when any of ’em went in or out. You could never have told from the street that it was unlocked, but, all the same, anybody could have used it to come in, if they’d knowed.”

  “Hindsight informs me,” said Dame Beatrice, “that your older son’s movements had been carefully watched and monitored and the release of the chickens which so effectively engaged the attention of the whole household was part of a carefully fabricated plan.”

  “Please don’t tell my missus that, ma’am. She’d never get another wink of sleep if she thought the cottage had been spied on by a murderer. Can’t say I fancies the idea too much myself.”

  “No, a disturbing thought. But tell us more. So Geoffrey, with the best of intentions, had unlocked the small side gate.”

  “But he locked it up again when all the hens was accounted for.”

  Dame Beatrice was sceptical about this, but she made no comment. She also wondered how the hen-chasers could be sure that all the birds had been accounted for. She said nothing of this either. She asked what had happened after Sparshott, his wife, and his younger son had r
eturned to their cottage.

  Sparshott, it appeared, had made his late evening round as usual. He had gone in by the back way and crept cautiously around the ground floor of the building, but there had been no lights anywhere and no sounds of any intruders. He had been told about the chickens, but had been sure that releasing them had been the work of mischievous little boys.

  “Did you go and inspect the quad?” Dame Beatrice enquired.

  “I didn’t see no need. There wasn’t never no lights nor no voices nor nothing at all.”

  “When did you go and look at the quad by daylight after the school Christmas holiday?”

  “By daylight? Well, there wasn’t no call for me to see it by daylight, ma’am. While school is on, the quad is no business of mine. I does a snoop round after school to make sure everybody is off the building before I locks up, but after that, unless any sort of alarm is give, I contents myself with pussyfooting round the building before I has my supper. Mondays is a kind of open evening, so I’m specially careful then, but there’s evening classes Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, with school clubs mostly on Fridays. On Saturdays and Sundays I keeps my weather-eye lifting, same as on Mondays, but excepting for two boys who tried to have me on a piece of string because they’d dropped a biro in the quad there’s been no more upsets of any kind. That matter was an upset, not on account of the boys, but because all the school outside-doors being on and fastened firm be that time, I found as two jokers had broke a winder in the boys’ washplace and got into the quad; that winder was a pro job and not done by boys.”

  “Did you actually find anyone in the quad when you investigated?”

  “Not to say find them, ma’am. They done a bunk when they heard me and cut a dash out the front door as I’d unlocked to let me and the dog in, and nearly knocked my boy clean down the front steps as he could easy have broke his neck.”

  “When the workmen had finished, did you see them off the premises?—when they had really finished all they had to do, I mean.”

  “No, ma’am. They went off as usual in their lorry and the foreman walked me and Mr. Ronsonby and Mr. Burke all round everywhere to ask us whether we was satisfied with the work.”

  “We were glad to see them go,” said the headmaster, “but I must say that they had left the place very tidy, very tidy indeed.”

  “Yes,” agreed Sparshott. “Even where them last two fellers what broke the washroom winder and then tried to scuff up the quad, even that was all smoothed over again. The foreman’s lads done that. I reckon the scuffing-up was where them villains was beginning to dig up the body when they found out as a pond was going to be sunk there.”

  “Well, thank you very much, Mr. Sparshott,” said Dame Beatrice. “I think you are right about the reason for the scuffing-up. You must have disturbed them before they got very far.”

  “I would of reported them chickens earlier, sir,” said Sparshott to Mr. Ronsonby, “but seeing as no harm was done to the chickens and me thinking it was only dratted little junior-school boys—”

  “Yes, yes, I quite understand, Sparshott.” The caretaker removed himself and Mr. Ronsonby added, “Sparshott is not a bright individual, but it seems that when the body was found he began to put two and two together. Routh must hear about the chickens. Margaret’s notes should give him a vital clue as to when the body was buried.”

  “But not when the murder itself took place,” said Dame Beatrice. “I should also like a word with the builders’ foreman.”

  “I know where they’re working,” said Margaret Wirrell. “It’s on that new estate on Carne Hill.”

  “Excellent. Perhaps you could direct Dame Beatrice to it. Would you care to have Margaret go with you, Dame Beatrice? She has had dealings with the foreman while his men were working here, and could effect the necessary introductions.”

  The foreman greeted Margaret as an old friend.

  “Who’d have thought we’d get mixed up in a murder?” he said. “Been in the Sunday papers and everything. Be something to talk about in the long winter evenings when the telly goes on the blink, won’t it?”

  “Dame Beatrice is from the Home Office and would like a bit of help from you.”

  “Welcome, I’m sure, though I don’t know what I can tell her that I haven’t already told the police.”

  “There is just one thing,” said Dame Beatrice. “I wonder whether you recollect having a hole dug in the school quadrangle so that your men could bury some rubbish there instead of carrying it right through the building and disposing of it outside?”

  “That would have been before Christmas, as I recollect it, when they dug that hole in the quad.”

  “Yes,” said Margaret, “that’s right. They dug the hole before breaking-up day and when I looked in on the Monday before Christmas Day it was still there and I said to one of your boys, ‘How long have we got to put up with that eyesore?’ He said, ‘Sorry, miss’ (well, that was a compliment to a woman who’s been married for fifteen years), ‘well, sorry, miss, but there’s no point in us filling it in until we’ve got the rest of the rubbish to put in it.’ Well, I get office holidays, not school holidays, so a couple of days after Christmas I popped into school again to see if there was any correspondence and to clear up one or two oddments and I just put my head inside the hall and that’s when I saw out of the windows that the hole had been filled in, roughly, it’s true, but filled in, all the same.”

  “And the thing about that is,” said the foreman, “as my lads never done it. We thought one of the masters had rounded up a squad of boys to do the job, as there had been complaints about the hole being an eyesore.”

  12

  Lost, Stolen, or Strayed

  The school re-assembled after the Easter holiday to find that, by the end of the first week of term the timetable, in the expression of young Mr. Scaife, had “gone very elastic.” He meant that boys were called out of class during the afternoon sessions (Mr. Ronsonby refused to have the important morning lessons upset) for choral and orchestral rehearsals, verse-speaking practice (the junior English master had won the day and was now prepared to offer Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market” to the opening-day audience), extra coaching for the first eleven, practices in the school hall for the prize-giving ceremony which the governors, in spite of Mr. Ronsonby’s disapproval, had insisted upon featuring in the programme, and extra sessions for the star woodwork pupils who were to stage an exhibition of children’s toy horses and go-carts.

  Meanwhile, Mr. Ronsonby and Mr. Burke, with the calm and expert help of Margaret Wirrell, were compiling, altering and amending lists, lists, and more lists of visitors, and in working out the seating accommodation and the food and drink for the notables.

  The prize-giving to which the headmaster had agreed with so much reluctance was in lieu of the lily pond. Even the chairman of the governors felt that it would be inappropriate to disturb any further the last resting-place of Mr. Pythias.

  “Later on, perhaps,” he said regretfully. “Anyway, lots of prizes, Ronsonby, each book autographed by myself. The boys would like that, eh?”

  “It comes hard on the majority who will not win anything, Sir Wilfred. That is my objection to the awarding of prizes.”

  “Oh, nonsense! Battle of life, eh? Anyway, I rely on you to offer prizes for everything, not just for school-work. Never did any good at school myself and look at me now!”

  Yes, thought Mr. Ronsonby, and was reminded of a phrase he had read: Look at you now, you super-fatted bore!

  “We could offer prizes for good attendance and punctuality,” he said. “Those would include some of the less able boys perhaps, but it would be a return to the Victorian age, wouldn’t it?”

  “Victorian age, yes, and none the worse for that,” said Sir Wilfred sturdily. “Anyway, lots of prizes, Ronsonby. We want the boys to remember the day.”

  Mr. Ronsonby thought that the day would best be remembered not by the boys but by himself and the staff, who would be bearing the
burden and heat of it. He made a last suggestion that the governors might prefer to spend their money on sports equipment, but this was flatly turned down.

  Meanwhile there were other problems. On the first day of term, a Monday, as it happened, young Mr. Scaife called the names of his pupils as usual and then asked, “Anybody know anything about Travis and Maycock?”

  “They went camping, sir.”

  “I didn’t know they were Scouts.”

  “No, they went on their own, sir.”

  “I was about to add, Kemp, that how they spent the holiday is to me immaterial. My only concern is that this morning they ought to have shown up and they have not done so.”

  “No, sir, they couldn’t, sir. They’ve joined a union, sir.” (This from the form’s “funny man.”)

  Mr. Scaife prided himself upon being a broadminded person and was sufficiently to the left in politics to be interested in this statement.

  “Oh, yes?” he said. “What sort of a union?”

  “Travis said he didn’t see any point in coming back to school on a Monday, sir. He said that Monday morning was a dead loss anyway, so he and Maycock would be back on Tuesday, sir. That’s tomorrow.”

  “Well, it will be nice to see them and very nice for them to explain themselves to the headmaster.”

  “The difficulty there, sir, is that they may not turn up tomorrow, either. Their union may not allow them to work a broken week, sir.”

  “Take fifty lines for insolence!” snapped Mr. Scaife, coming to his senses. He inserted two black noughts in the register, closed it, and mustered his class for assembly. However, his absentees did not show up on Tuesday, either, so again he had to mark them absent. As there was now only a fortnight to go before the great day, Mr. Ronsonby, having conducted the assembly service on Tuesday morning, left the platform to Mr. Burke, who surveyed and then addressed the school.

  “I am giving you ample time,” said Mr. Burke, “to present yourselves on opening day in a manner which will do us and yourselves credit. You now have a full fortnight in which to get school blazers cleaned, grey flannel trousers pressed, and school ties bought—if yours looks like some I have seen lately. On the day, every boy will be personally inspected by his form master. Any boy falling short of what is expected of him so far as his appearance is concerned will be referred to me. Shoes are to shine, hair is to be trimmed and then well brushed to present a tidy appearance, and I need hardly say that a clean shirt and a sweater free of the ravages of the moth’s tooth and Old Father Time are de rigueur. Every boy will also come provided with a clean pocket handkerchief. We need no midshipmen here. Right? First-year boys, lead off.”