No Winding-Sheet

‘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 Temeraire 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?’