No Winding-Sheet

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 dead 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.’