‘To begin with, it’s right up his street. He is, after all, Assistant Commissioner for Crime up at headquarters. To go on with, I’m intrigued by the murderer’s choice of a burial ground. Surely there is plenty of wild countryside round about where a body could be buried secretly and never found? After all, until this particular body turned up — and that only for a reason which the murderer could not possibly have foreseen — it was taken for granted that the man had scarpered with the money.’
‘I think that is too sweeping a statement. As I read the accounts given in the various newspapers, it seemed to me that the headmaster who had had Pythias on his staff at a previous school as well as at this one has been convinced throughout that the man would never have made off with money which was not his own. That being so, the theory that Pythias had been murdered for the money was always a possibility and must have been in the headmaster’s mind. I am sure the police suspected it, too, but, so far, have been unable to procure the evidence they need to charge one or more of this Mrs Buxton’s lodgers.’
‘Do you know what I’d really like to do? I’d like to take a room in that boarding-house and turn that rabble of men lodgers inside out.
Dame Beatrice looked at her secretary almost with superstition. She was accustomed to what Laura called ‘hunches’ and, although Laura had never very definitely claimed that she had the Gift, as second sight is tactfully and obscurely described by Highlanders, Dame Beatrice had often had reason to believe that Laura, without being able to explain why, had displayed a knack of hitting what appeared to be hidden nails on the head and forcing them to reveal lethal points protruding from the reverse side of some rough carpentry. She mentioned this in these same metaphorical terms and added, ‘But on no account are you to take lodgings with Mrs Buxton. That must be agreed between us before you go.’
‘Aha!’ said Laura. ‘Right! The villain of the piece has been singled out and will soon be named. I suppose Mrs Buxton is a sort of female Sweeney Todd, is she?’
‘That will be for you to judge,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘I doubt, though, whether she was responsible for disposing of the body.’
10
A Finger in the Pie
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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
‘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
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,
‘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.’
