No Winding-Sheet

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?’

‘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 political, 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.’