No Winding-Sheet

11

Concerning Chickens

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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.’

‘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 till 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 returned 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.’