No Winding-Sheet

‘I don’t take marrieds,’ she said, when she and Margaret had summed one another up, ‘or any other kind of couples. Never know who you might get, do you? Single gentlemen such as Mr Pythias are what I cater for, and no visitors allowed. Like I told you over the phone, the last day I sees him he come back as usual — well, a bit later, actually, because he had had some paperwork to do in connection with the school journey this next summer, he said, kind of apologising for being a bit late for his tea.’

‘Oh, you knew about the journey.’

‘My sister’s boy is going.’

‘Oh, yes? He’s at the school, then, is he?’

‘Wilbey, his name is, Chad Wilbey.’

‘Oh, yes, I know Wilbey. He is in 5A, isn’t he?’

‘That’s right. You must have a wonderful memory for names.’

Margaret, who, as the headmaster could have testified, had a wonderful memory for more important things than the names of the boys who had been in the school longest, said: ‘Mr Pythias has arranged the whole journey, as, of course, he has lived in Greece and knows it well. Did he seem quite like his usual self when you saw him last?’

‘Yes and no.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘He was all of a fidget, so I guessed what he’d got in his briefcase. You see, I knew the deadline for paying in the money for that trip to Greece because some of it was mine, me helping my sister out so her boy could go. Well, nobody pays away good money before they’ve got to, do they? I mean the electricity and the gas and the telephone and the rates and the income tax. You don’t part up until the last minute — well, most people don’t, do they?’

‘No, I suppose that’s true.’

‘So I says — kind of joking, like, not wishing to give offence to a good tenant — as I suppose he’s worth robbing, at which he looks at me very straight and asks what I think I’m talking about, so I looks at him just as straight and says, if his briefcase is crammed with what I think it’s crammed with, I’m not having it under my roof for Friday night, Saturday and Sunday, as it should have been banked Friday dinner-time. “It’s asking for trouble,” I says, “in these wicked, unlawful times,” I says, “when you don’t know who your friends are and all this crime about,” I says. “You should have got that money in earlier,” I says, “and banked it in your dinner-time,” I says, “and not brought it into a respectable house to be a temptation to goodness knows who.”

‘Well, he turned very huffy and said as he had no intention to burden me or himself with any responsibility and as soon as he’d had his tea the money would be put in a safe place — “and not in this house,” he said nasty-like. So I give him his tea — a nice bit of cured haddock off the thick end and a poached egg on top — and then he tells me as he is going off by train that very evening to spend Christmas with his friend.

‘ “I thought as you was going on Monday,” I says. “I’ve changed my mind,” he says, “and my friend will be expecting me.” So off he goes with his briefcase, and that’s the last I seen of him.’

‘Didn’t he take a suitcase?’

‘Not unless he took it in the morning and left it at the station on his way to school. I never seen him actually leave, so I can’t say as to that, but my nephew says he only had his briefcase when he left.’

‘I see. But when he didn’t turn up again, didn’t you wonder what had happened to him?’

‘Well, I seen as he took umbrage when I told him he ought to have banked the money instead of bringing it into my house and I had took umbrage when he said (more or less) as there might be dishonest people here, so when he never come back I guessed he had changed his lodgings, but I did expect to get his notice which has never come, and that do surprise me, because he always acted very proper and as a gentleman should, taking his hat off to me in the street and everything.’

‘But you didn’t do anything about his leaving like that? It must have put you out.’

‘Do anything? I telephoned round all the hospitals, that’s what I done, but I couldn’t get any news. Of course, he had never told me where his friend lived, so he may be in hospital somewhere miles away. I reckon I done all I could. What more could anybody expect?’

‘Perhaps you could have telephoned the school and let us know that he hadn’t come back.’

‘Why should I do that? If a tenant walks out on me, do I want everybody to know?‘

‘You didn’t think he was the sort who would walk out on you. You’ve just said so. I wish we knew the address of this friend of his. He may have been taken ill there. We need a medical certificate to cover his absence, you see.’

‘He never volunteered no address and it wasn’t no business of mine who he went and stayed with. It might have been a lady. You never know, with them quiet ones, what they gets up to on the sly, but I believes in minding my own business so long as my lodgers keeps my rules.’

‘Did he have regular letters from anybody?’

‘I couldn’t say. The girl puts out the post on the little table in the hall and the tenants picks up their letters either, before they go to work or when they come in, the post not arriving at exactly the same time each morning. Here!’ She eyed Margaret and spoke excitedly. ‘You don’t think he’s gone and scarpered with all that money, do you?’

‘Good gracious, no!’ But it was a thought which had been in Margaret’s mind ever since she had left the headmaster’s study. ‘Teachers don’t do that sort of thing.’

‘Only some of the parents have had a job to scrape the money together, you know. It isn’t all that easy, when you’ve got a family, to find eighty pounds.’

‘The school would make everything good, but there’s no question of Mr Pythias doing anything wrong. If you want to know what I think, I think Mr Pythias has met with an accident which hasn’t injured him enough for him to be taken to hospital but has given him a shock and caused him to lose his memory for