No Winding Sheet (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “I don’t know anything about that, sir.”

  Dame Beatrice produced a sheet of paper.

  “This document appears to bear your signature,” she said.

  “Oh, please, sir!” said Prouding, appealing to his headmaster. “It was only a lot of rot, sir. I never meant a word of it.”

  “Address yourself to Dame Beatrice, boy.”

  “Yes, sir. Please, madam, I don’t live with my aunt and I never have to take babies out in prams and truly I have never drowned one or buried people alive or anything.”

  “Oh, as to that, Mr. Prouding, we are in sympathy with most of the views you have expressed in your essay. What we should like you to explain is the passage which reads, ‘I shall write some anonymous letters. People who are always bumming about seeing the school murderer are asking for it.’ Please tell us what you meant by ‘asking for it.’”

  “I didn’t mean anything.”

  “Well, retreat into your shell if you think it best,” said Dame Beatrice, “but to confide in us may save a great amount of time and trouble later on.”

  “We got a bit sick of being told they’d seen the murderers when we knew jolly well they hadn’t. If they had, the murderers would have murdered them before this. Murderers always murder people they think might recognise them.”

  “So you wrote an anonymous letter purporting to come from the murderers because you were tired of the boastings of Travis and Maycock. Yes, I see.”

  “It was only a joke, honest it was.”

  “You need to minimise your sense of humour, Mr. Prouding, before it gets you into trouble. I will say no more.”

  “Off you go then, Prouding,” said Mr. Ronsonby, “and don’t be so stupid again. I shall deal with you later.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” There was present now no follower of Pan, but only a small boy who could not escape quickly enough from the headmaster’s presence.

  Mr. Ronsonby asked, “What else can I do for you, Dame Beatrice? Thank goodness it seems more likely that the two boys have run away than that they have been kidnapped or worse.”

  14

  Hounds in Cry

  “The trouble is,” said Laura, when she and Dame Beatrice were at home again, “we still don’t know whether those two boys have run away because of that young fathead’s anonymous letter, or whether the murderers have got hold of them, because I suppose that is still a possibility.”

  “All that we can do has been done. We have given the police this new theory and directed their attention to Southampton. They must do the rest. A description of the lads has been circulated and their photographs displayed outside police stations and in the press. The police will have found out from their parents what they would have been wearing and what they are likely to have taken with them. There is nothing we ourselves can do now but wait.”

  “Except that there is still Mr. Pythias to think about—not that thinking gets me personally much further.”

  “To go back to your first remark, one thing strikes me. It seems that the boys went camping without parental permission and did not leave home until the last weekend of the holiday, yet other boys in their form knew, before the term ended, that the plan to go camping had been made. I think I would like to talk to Mrs.—not Mr.—Travis. It looks as though holiday plans had been made by the parents for one, if not both, of the boys, so that they were not free to please themselves what they did until that last weekend. We shall obtain a more detailed account from Travis’s mother than from his father, I think, and Mrs. Maycock may be able to add her quota. In any case, the two may be glad to have one another’s support at our interview with them. I suppose we shall have to talk with them at the school. Ring Mr. Ronsonby tomorrow morning and see what he has to say.”

  Mr. Ronsonby’s reply was that he would be delighted to arrange anything which might help in tracing the boys and that Margaret would ring back when she had contacted the mothers and arranged the meeting. The next telephone call came from the school secretary. Mrs. Travis and Mrs. Maycock were willing and anxious to co-operate in any way they could and, if the notice was not too short for Dame Beatrice, they would present themselves at the school at half-past two on the following afternoon.

  “I do hope something will come of it,” said Margaret. “I’m quite worried about poor Mr. Ronsonby. What with these two naughty boys and the official opening, he’s nearly badgered to death. There are the parents, the staff, the police, and the governors all on his neck over one thing and another. I just hope he doesn’t end up with a breakdown.”

  “Well, it’s women who go mad in white satin. Men only cut their own throats,” said Laura, reporting to Dame Beatrice. “Half-past two means that we had better stop off for lunch on our way to the school.”

  Mr. Ronsonby met them in the vestibule and told them that the two mothers had arrived.

  “Burke has put his sixth in the library,” he said, “and he and I will be busy making what I hope will be the final arrangements for the opening. His form room, therefore, is at your disposal and Margaret has put the mothers in there. She will show you the way.” Margaret did this and made the necessary introductions before she left the four women together. What came out at the interview was that the Travis family, father, mother, and only son, had booked a caravan at a place called Carvel Bay and that Mr. Travis could only stay over the Easter weekend, but that Mrs. Travis and Donald, with young Bob Maycock as their guest, were to stay for another ten days to finish out the fortnight’s booking. This accounted for the weekend the boys had fixed to go camping. Neither could have gone earlier.

  “I suppose, come to think of it—only, of course, you don’t think of these things at the time,” said Mrs. Travis, “Donald did throw out one or two hints, but they meant nothing to me. I don’t believe, all the same, that he would have gone off like that without saying anything, except to leave a note, unless something had happened which we don’t know about. Besides, he didn’t take his bike.”

  “Bob didn’t take his, either,” said Mrs. Maycock.

  “Did he receive a letter after you had come home from your caravan holiday?” asked Dame Beatrice.

  “Yes, a note had been pushed through our letterbox. I thought it was only from one of the boys at school asking him to go fishing or something, so we thought no more of it.”

  “Did he appear disturbed in any way when he had read the note? We know, you see, Mrs. Travis, that it was an anonymous letter written by a mischievous boy in his class and it may have alarmed him.”

  “I wasn’t with him when he read it. He took it up to his bedroom when he put away his holiday gear.”

  “Did he tell you it was an invitation from a schoolfellow?”

  “No. Both boys seemed a bit quiet at supper that evening and next morning, of course, they had gone; the next thing was that his father found Donald’s note which said they had gone camping and would spend the Sunday night at his aunt’s and go back to school from there.”

  “How did your husband react when he read the note?”

  “He called Donald a young monkey and said he supposed the child knew he wouldn’t have been given permission at that time of year to go camping unless it was with the Scouts or something else properly organised, and that he supposed it was natural for a boy of Donald’s age to kick over the traces now and again. It wasn’t until Donald didn’t come home from school on the Monday that anybody began to worry.”

  “You will have told the police what Donald was wearing, of course.”

  “Yes, his jeans and a sweater and his school blazer and a dark blue waterproof and his school cap.”

  “The boys did not take a tent with them, I imagine.”

  “In the note Donald said they had got permission to sleep in a barn. I think just at first his father was rather pleased he should show his independence. It was a pity Donald had to tell such lies, though.”

  “I understand that your husband searched that part of the moor where he supposed the boys had
made camp, but found no trace of them.”

  “Yes, that was after Donald didn’t come home from school on the Monday. We thought he was playing truant and my husband was angry about that.”

  The questions and answers continued for a while longer, but no new information was forthcoming except that Travis must have taken his post-office savings book with him, as his parents had been unable to find it in his room.

  “That certainly looks as though the boys intended to run away,” said Laura, when, having accomplished nothing, she and Dame Beatrice were on their way home.

  “Yes, undoubtedly. Moreover, the other missing article is also significant.”

  “You mean the Ordnance map of the New Forest area. Mrs. Travis said it was missing from her husband’s collection.”

  “I think the purloining of the map may be very important. It could indicate that the boys had the clear intention of running away, especially if Donald Travis took his accredited capital with him.”

  “If they are really running away and have pinched a map, Southampton is definitely the place they’d make for.”

  “The police will try to find out whether a motorist or lorry driver gave the lads a lift. They would hardly think of walking all the way to Southampton if they could get transport,” said Laura.

  “Young boys might find it difficult to thumb a lift, as I believe it is called.”

  “Yes, it takes bone-headed, gormless girls to make a success of the gesturing thumb and the display of shapely limb, I suppose,” said Laura.

  “Southampton?” said Routh, when he heard Laura’s theory. “Ship aboard as cabin boys? That could well be their idea, Mrs. Gavin. It’s still a young boy’s dream, I suppose, to run away to sea, even in these days. One thing, they are hardly likely to realise their ambition and, that being so, they’ll be left out on a limb unless they do the sensible thing and come straight home. They’ll maybe get a tanning when they get back, and another from the headmaster, but that would be better than having somebody do an Oliver Twist on them.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Oliver Twist fell among thieves, didn’t he? There’s plenty of scope for a thin young boy to be picked up by an experienced gang who prefer to make an illegal entry without breaking windows. A skinny little chap aged twelve or thirteen, like these two, could be put through an open bathroom or lavatory window to open up a house from the inside, if you see what I mean. Once these little lads find themselves left high and dry in a big town, they’re easy money for professional cracksmen.”

  “Well, you had better find them quickly, then.”

  “I’ve got three squad cars out on different routes, ma’am, but no reports have come in yet. The trouble is that the young fools have got such a long start of us. They left home some time early on Saturday morning—perhaps late on Friday night. They could be anywhere by now and in anybody’s hands. Young boys from this area and coming from decent homes haven’t got the savvy of slum kids or London cock-sparrows. They mayn’t be all that innocent, but ignorant of the world and its ways they undoubtedly are.”

  “Is there anything I can do? I suppose not.”

  “Best leave it to us, ma’am. We’ve got the resources.”

  An earlier broadcast appeal had soon brought a response from the public, some of it crackbrained, most of it unhelpful. A medium telephoned to say that she had seen “two little bodies, like the Babes in the Wood, buried under leaves in the New Forest,” but gave no location. More reasonable news began to come in. A shopkeeper reported that on Saturday morning two boys had come in as soon as she opened and had bought buns, sweet biscuits, and cans of soft drinks. Another shopkeeper reported a sale of cheese at around the same time to two boys of, he thought, the age specified in the broadcast.

  The general opinion in the masters’ common room was that a lot of fuss was being made over nothing and that the boys were playing truant and would return home when they had had enough of it or had spent all their money. The only member of staff who could have made a useful contribution was Mr. Pybus, the art master, who had actually seen the boys on the road and spoken to them, but from whose woolgathering and narcissistic mind all recollection of the incident, which had also occurred on the Saturday, had vanished. Indeed, to do him justice, it is doubtful whether he had heard any of the comments which were made in the staffroom, since he spent most of the time when the staff gathered during the break or in part of the dinner-hour in sorting over the store of paintings, drawings, and pottery which he kept ready for displaying to inspectors or, on open days, to the boys’ parents. He proposed to stage a mammoth exhibition at the grand official opening and was planning what he hoped would be some pleasant surprises for the visitors which would bring him much credit and acclaim and perhaps would attract the attention of the local press.

  A very definite clue, however, came to the police from a lorry driver who said that he had heard the broadcast and had seen, in the dusk of Saturday evening, two boys on the road to Cadnam in the New Forest. They said they were on their way to Southampton, where they told him they lived, and the driver had arranged for an empty coach following his lorry to give them a lift.

  The search, thereupon, was focused on the port, although Sergeant Bennett said to Routh that he betted the boys had smuggled themselves on board a boat after all. There was news, however, at the central railway station. The same two boys had bought food at the station buffet more than once, and the girl who had served them had done so for the last time on the Sunday. Following this report there came a flood of information, much of it useless. The usual crop of psychopaths turned up, one of them even going to the police with a toupee which he declared he had snatched from the head of a boy who had stolen his watch and run away.

  Less bizarre information came in and some far more credible stories. The boys had been seen sitting on a park bench talking to a woman. They had been seen down by the pier from which the Solent ferries to the Isle of Wight departed. A woman remembered seeing two rumpled, rather dirty, very tired boys in the waiting room at the central station. This last statement buttressed that made by the girl at the buffet, but did nothing to push the enquiry further forward. There was no doubt that the boys had been in Southampton on the Sunday, but it was not until a post-office clerk telephoned to report that a boy named R. Travis had drawn money out on demand that the police learned that the boys had still been in Southampton on the Monday morning.

  This seemed to narrow the search, but after the post-office report there was no more news to be had. Enquiries at three Southampton railway stations produced no evidence that the lads had bought tickets and taken a train—“although,” said Routh, “I wouldn’t put it past a couple of boys to take platform tickets out of a slot machine, go through the barrier when a train was in, and smuggle themselves on to it. If they did that, they could be anywhere by now, including Portsmouth or somewhere in Somerset or Devon.”

  When Routh heard of the report by the post-office clerk, he drove to Southampton, where the Hampshire constabulary were making every effort to trace the missing boys. Leaving his car (which was his own and not a police vehicle) in a car-park, he sought directions to the branch office where the clerk worked and interviewed her. She could tell him nothing more. One boy, not two, had come into the post office, but she was sure of the name and had recorded it and she gave a description of the boy which fitted.

  On his way back to the car-park, Routh had to pass the shop window in which the notice of an exhibition of Mr. Pybus’s paintings was displayed. He stopped and read the notice, looked at the picture beside it, and felt sufficiently interested to go by way of Brockenhurst and the Stone House and call on Dame Beatrice instead of going straight back to the police station.

  “A pleasant surprise, Detective-Inspector,” she said. “Do you bring news?”

  “Only of a negative nature, ma’am. That is to say there is no doubt those two lads have been in Southampton, but whether they are still there I have to leave to the locals to fin
d out. It’s a big place and there doesn’t seem any particular line to go on. However, if they are still in the city, no doubt they’ll be winkled out in time. I really came about another matter. May I ask what you know about art, ma’am?”

  “Nothing at all, in the technical sense, Mr. Routh. I resemble the honest British working man in the cartoon—I know what I like, and that is all.”

  Routh took from his breast pocket the letter which Pythias had written to Mrs. Buxton. He was not a superstitious man in the ordinary course of events, but he carried the letter with him as a sort of talisman. He had a feeling that, in time, the letter would lead him to Pythias’s murderer.

  “I’m not sure whether I ever showed you this, ma’am,” he said, handing over the letter. “The writing doesn’t signify anything except that it wasn’t the writer who sent back those cheques. It’s the little sketch on the back.”

  “Yes, you did show it to me on one occasion,” said Dame Beatrice. “A very sensitive and evocative little drawing, is it not? So Mr. Pythias was an artist as well as a geographer. But it is clear that the sketch has other importance.”

  “It may have, or it may not, ma’am. I was in Southampton to make a few enquiries when I passed an art dealer’s, and there in the middle of the window was a painting which I could swear was done by the same hand as this little sketch.”

  “I suppose Mr. Pythias sold his pictures when he could find a purchaser.”

  “Ah, but the picture in the window and the exhibition of pictures which the shop was advertising had nothing to do with Mr. Pythias, it seems. The notice credited the works to Mr. Pybus.”

  “And who is Mr. Pybus?”

  “He’s the art master at the Sir George Etherege school, ma’am. I’ve interviewed all the staff there since Mr. Pythias went missing, and this Mr. Pybus was one of them. I recollect him particularly because of his name, it being in some respects a bit like Pythias.”