No Winding-Sheet

‘There’s a first time for everything, especially with adolescent boys, Mr Travis. You go home. Your wife can do with you and we can do everything that’s necessary. As for the death of Mr Pythias, there was a reason, as you’ll have read in the papers. The unfortunate gentleman was carrying a large sum of money and was mugged and killed for it. Your son is just being a naughty lad and kicking over the traces a bit, that’s all. You skelp him when we bring him home and then you can forget all about it.’

‘I don’t like it,’ said Mr Ronsonby when Travis, muttering and shaking his head, had been ushered out and Scaife and his form captain had gone back to a mysteriously quiet classroom. ‘Travis and Maycock are the boys who bluffed Sparshott into unlocking the school that last time we had intruders. Suppose they recognised those men? They could be in deadly danger.’

‘The sooner we find them the better, sir, I agree. Of course there’s nothing to show that those men were the murderers, but there’s no doubt they broke into the school and the evidence we have is that their purpose could have been to dig up the body and transfer it to a safer place when they heard a fishpond was going to be put there.’

‘What puzzles me, if that is so, is how they came to know that a pond was to be sunk in the quad. Nobody was aware of it at that stage except myself and my staff. The boys did not know. Even Sparshott did not know.’

‘The governors of the school, sir? One of them may have broadcast the plan.’

‘I am sure they would have wanted to keep the nature of their gift a secret until it was a fait accompli.’

‘I wonder whether I might have a word with Sparshott’s son? I believe he is one of your scholars, sir, and he was present when his father was told of the last break-in.’

Young Sparshott, a fine, tall lad with the first faint indications of a moustache which he hoped, but did not expect, that the headmaster would allow him to cultivate during this, his last term at school, stood to attention and said, ‘Sir?’ in the firm voice he was practising for when he joined the police cadets later on.

‘Give your attention to Detective-Inspector Routh, if you please, Sparshott.’

‘Well, Ron,’ said Routh, ‘I’m hoping you can help me. You remember two of the younger boys coming to your home some little time back with a story that there were intruders in the school?’

‘Yes. They turned out to be right.’

‘You went with your father to investigate.’

‘Yes, but I had orders to stay on the front steps while he went in with the dog.’

‘The two men made their escape by way of the open front door. They must have passed you. Did you recognise either of them?’

‘I didn’t have a chance. They rushed past me and knocked me flying.’

‘You have no idea who they were?’

‘Not a clue, I’m afraid.’

‘Thank you, Ron. That’s all,’ said Routh. He added to Mr Ronsonby when the boy had gone, ‘I don’t think there’s much cause for anxiety, sir. If a lad of that age and on the qui vive didn’t have a chance to spot those men, it isn’t likely that two younger boys had any chance to recognise anybody.’

‘I hope you are right. The thing is that this unexplained absence is so unlike these particular boys. Both have good homes and caring parents and neither, so far as I know, has posed any problems here at school. No, I don’t like it. I refused permission to Mr Travis to question Mr Scaife’s form, but a police investigation is a different matter and I am willing, nay, anxious, that you shall obtain any information from the second-year boys which they may be able to impart, if it will help you.’

‘Worth a try, sir.’

It may or may not have been worth a try, but the fact remained that it produced no results. Routh reported to the headmaster that his questions had got him nowhere.

‘Then I think you may take it that the boys have no information to give you,’ said Mr Ronsonby. ‘However, I shall know more about that when I have questioned them myself. They all know about the discovery of Pythias’s murdered body. It was impossible to keep such knowledge from them. Not only were the facts reported in two local and most of the daily papers, but they must have been the subject of discussion and speculation in every household in the town. Boys, on the whole, are callous, cruel, brutal and thoughtless creatures, and I do not suppose that, hard as we try to inculcate some semblance of civilised behaviour, my boys are very different from the norm. However, because of the murder and the consequent horror it has brought — you might not be surprised to hear that I have had a number of parents up to see me on the score of removing their boys from my school — there is a very uneasy spirit abroad among parents, pupils and masters and—’

‘You mean that, if these second-year boys knew anything of the whereabouts of Travis and Maycock, they would have come across with it p.d.q., if you’ll pardon the expression, sir. I agree with you.’

‘Quite. Under ordinary circumstances boys are past-masters at becoming as dumb as oysters when they are called upon to betray one another’s secrets, but we find ourselves in any but ordinary circumstances and I must admit that I share fully in Mr Travis’s anxiety.’

To emphasise the gravity of the occasion, he put on his BA gown with the hood lined with peacock blue, a garment he reserved ordinarily for speech days and the opening and closing assemblies of each school term. However, neither his majestic trappings nor his authoritative questions produced anything helpful except a diffident hand held up by a thin, pale, straw-haired boy in the second row.

‘Yes, Carter?’

‘Please, sir, Maycock borrowed my bike — my bicycle, sir — the Saturday before we broke up.’

‘That was some weeks ago. Are you complaining that he still has it, wherever he is?’

‘Please, sir, no. His own bi-bicycle — had got a puncture and he said he wanted to go to see his aunt.’

‘So you got your bicycle back, then?’