No Winding-Sheet

these artists is very interesting.’

‘Come to think of it, Pythias and Pybus — yes, I see what you mean,’ said Laura. ‘Pybus wouldn’t forge Pythias’s name, but felt he was entitled to use his symbol. I suppose he is entitled to it. Well, either Pythias gave his paintings to Pybus, or Pybus stole them after Pythias was killed. Is that what you think?’

‘I am afraid your second hypothesis is the more likely, but we shall see. I am told that Mr Rattock, the tenant of the attic and, incidentally, Mrs Buxton’s nephew, was the only resident, apart from the Buxtons themselves, who ever entertained visitors. He claims to be an artist. I wonder whether Mr Pybus, the art master at the school, was one of his visitors?’

‘A bit unlikely, don’t you think? How would they have got to know one another?’

‘Possibly because Mr Rattock was a boy at the old school before the present school was built.’

‘What do we do now?’

‘Accept Mr Ronsonby’s kind invitation to attend the official opening of his school and, having made our report on the pictures to Detective-Inspector Routh, we must then wait upon events.’

‘Do you mean that Pybus murdered Pythias and stole his paintings?’

‘Or was given them by Rattock on the understanding that he would not betray him.’

Routh was gratified by Dame Beatrice’s report.

‘It does open up a vista, ma’am,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think I was mistaken about the picture in the shop window. By the way, I’ve tracked down Mr Pythias’s bag of golf-clubs. There is one club missing and forensic think it could easily be the murder weapon. They suggest that one good slosh from behind could have accounted for Mr Pythias and that the club must be hidden somewhere, probably chucked into the river. I’ve given the Super the gen and he is having the river dragged. We’ve never found the murder weapon and, from the state of the body when it was dug up, it wasn’t all that easy to determine exactly what kind of implement could have inflicted the injuries to the head, but we think we know now. Just as a matter of interest, ma’am, I wonder which of the two, Pythias or Pybus, thought of using pi as a signature? You say it appeared at the right-hand bottom corner of all the paintings.’

‘Mr Pythias’s letter may supply the answer. If the symbol appears at the foot of that rough but arresting little sketch —’

‘We shall know where we stand. Yes, indeed, ma’am.’

‘Not that it has much significance in itself. There is no doubt that Pybus is selling Pythias’s paintings.’

The idea of holding a cricket match as one of the attractions on opening day had been abandoned, since not enough fathers had volunteered to form an eleven to oppose the school, and masters who, in other circumstances, might have made up the numbers, were to be far too busy to take part in a match. Instead, an athletics meeting of a sort was to be held on the school field, since there was a governors’ prize (against Mr Ronsonby’s wishes) offered to the victor ludorum. The master for physical education had backed up the headmaster’s objections, but the alliance had not prevailed against the governors’ insistence.

‘Boys specialise and are encouraged to do so,’ Mr Ronsonby had pointed out. ‘A boy who can win the hundred metres is not expected to go in for the fifteen hundred, and a good long-jumper is not necessarily a good high- jumper.’

‘Nonsense! Nothing like a good all-rounder,’ said the chairman bluffly.

Then there were the exhibitions of work inside the building. These included woodwork, art and a meritorious display of mechanical drawings. There were models of Tudor villages, layouts of Norman manors, a model in plasticene of Stonehenge and pictorial time-charts galore, each contributed by a different form. There was even an exhibition of decorated eggs to be donated by the little boys of 1C, when opening day was over, to the local hospital.

There was also Mr Pybus’s exhibition of arts and crafts. Here one of the paintings on show was of a particularly lurid sunset behind whose crimson and blood-red skyscape were streaks of apple-green, deep purple and splashes of primrose yellow. In the left-hand foreground a volcano was in very active eruption, shooting up dark crimson and bright orange flames and much thick smoke. The artist, however, had taken care that none of the smoke obscured any part of his sunset, which he cherished, it seemed, even more than his lurid volcano.

Laura drew Dame Beatrice’s attention to the crude but arresting work, although nobody could have missed seeing it.

‘I wouldn’t be surprised if I could name the man who painted that monstrosity,’ she said. ‘It’s awfully like the Temeraire picture on the wall of the bedsit Pythias used to have.’

Dame Beatrice waited her turn to speak to a beaming Mr Pybus, who appeared to be receiving compliments from gratified parents. When she had the chance, she asked the name of the painter of Vesuvius in Eruption.

‘Oh, that?’ said Mr Pybus. ‘I have really no idea. It was handed in, I believe, by an Old Boy whom I had taught when we were at the old school down the road.’

‘It is very striking.’

At this moment a bell rang and Mr Pybus said, ‘Have you a seat in the hall? I think that was the signal that the prize giving is about to take place. I must lock up this room, I’m afraid. The staff and prefects have orders to marshal the prize winners and get the audience seated.’

‘Will your exhibition be open again when the ceremony is over?’

‘Yes, oh, yes, if anybody cares to come along.’

There was another visitor who had noticed the resemblance of Vesuvius in Eruption to the Temeraire at Sunset. In the early days of his involvement in the case of the missing Mr Pythias, Routh had inspected the bedsitting room and had been extremely interested in the screaming picture which, before he had seen Mrs Buxton’s letter, he supposed that Pythias himself had painted.

Leaving his Detective-Constable on guard over the prizes which were on display in the sixth-form room, Routh had made a tour of the building and had spent more time in the art room than anywhere else. He, too, like Dame Beatrice, had made enquiries about the Vesuvius picture and had received the answer that it had been sent in,