No Winding-Sheet

‘Mr Pythias was last off the premises tonight. Found him in the staffroom when everybody else had gone,’ said Sparshott to his wife.

‘I reckon he was killing time till his girlfriend got home,’ said his son. ‘Not as we’ve ever seen her, but —’

‘What on earth are you talking about? Haven’t you got any respect?’ said his mother.

‘Everybody’s got a bit of homework,’ said her son.

‘Don’t talk so coarse!’ said Mrs Sparshott.

‘You can’t expect him not to know the facts of life at his age,’ said Sparshott senior. ‘Another cup of tea, love, please.’

‘Can I do the rounds with you and Fangs tonight, dad?’ asked young Sparshott.

‘Yes, you generally do of a Friday. You can have a bit of a lie-in on Saturday morning so long as you gets your homework done.’

‘Only the set books to read during the holidays.’

The caretaker’s last round followed a fixed routine. First he visited and tested the front gates. When he walked back towards the school along the drive, he was facing the front entrance with the secretary’s office to the right and the headmaster’s sanctum to the left. He then turned and passed the headmaster’s windows, the window of the main stockroom and the long stretch of the boys’ cloakrooms and washrooms before he came to the end of the school frontage.

This brought him to an angle of the buildings and ultimately to where the back doors would be when they were fixed. Beyond this, another corner brought him round past the school canteen (a separate building which, strangely enough, was not under the headmaster’s jurisdiction but was administered directly from the education department of the local council) and so to the front of the school again, to where he had left his son to keep an eye on the front doors.

Everything was quiet. The dog on the lead remained tranquil and, except for cars and an occasional bus passing along the main road outside the big gates, there was nothing stirring except the man, his son and his dog. They returned to the cottage, had supper and were soon in bed.

It was round about midnight when Mrs Sparshott woke. She, unlike her husband, was a light sleeper, but Sparshott, because of his police training, was wide awake once his eyes were open.

‘What is it?’ he said, in response to a wifely prodding.

‘I don’t know, but I think there’s somebody about.’

‘Oh, dammit! Are you sure?’

‘I heard something.’

‘Suppose I’d better take a look round, then. Boys up to something because of the holidays, that’s all, I expect.’

‘Take Ron with you.’

‘No need to spoil the lad’s sleep. Fangs will frighten them away if there’s anybody about.’

‘It’s a bit late for skylarking boys. More like some of them young workmen after one of the school TV sets or something of that. You’ll be careful, won’t you? There’ll likely be more than one young fellow and they’re tough.’

The night was very dark indeed. On his evening rounds the caretaker always carried a powerful electric torch for, although he knew his way blindfold, the builder’s men sometimes left heaps of bricks, sand, gravel, planks and other unexpected obstacles in the most unlikely places. Sparshott picked up his torch, roused his dog which, in winter, slept in the warmth of the kitchen, put the dog on a short lead and sallied forth.

What his wife thought she had heard he did not know, but there was no doubt about the accuracy of her statement that she had heard something. Conditioned by habit, Sparshott walked along the front of the bicycle shed towards the drive and saw immediately that there was a light showing from inside the building.

The caretaker, with his dog’s muzzle almost touching his left knee, went round to the back entrance. He pushed the heavy tarpaulin aside, inserted himself, slipped the lead from the dog’s collar and put a warning hand on Fangs’s head. Together they walked silently down the long corridor which separated one side of the quad from the classrooms on the other side of the passage.

When they reached the hall, electric lights illuminated the quad, for the hall on that side consisted of one long range of tall windows. Sparshott peered out, but could see nothing in the quad except that, here and there, were chunks of rubbish from the demolished farm building which had once occupied the site.

The caretaker retraced his steps. The corridor led to the entrance vestibule of the school and to another corridor between the hall and, at the vestibule end, the secretary’s office, where the telephone was. As the man and his dog reached the corner where the two corridors met at right angles to one another, the dog growled.

Light was now streaming out from the hall, for the swing doors were open. Sparshott halted and called out, ‘Show yourselves, whoever you are! Come on out of that! The dog’s loose!’

At this, somebody snapped off the hall lights, Sparshott was hurled out of the way with considerable violence, the dog yelped as his paw was trodden on, and the next sounds were those of feet pounding down the corridor towards the back entrance. The dog, receiving no orders, remained where he was.

Only one thing consoled the battered caretaker. Flying arms as well as flying feet had convinced him that when the men — there were two of them for sure — had thrust him out of their way, they were carrying nothing. He collected himself, gripped his torch more firmly and went into the hall, as that — strangely he thought — appeared to have been the centre of the intruders’ operations.

The push-bar doors on the quad side of the great hall were open. He could feel the cold air blowing in and, as well as that, there was the information which his torch disclosed. He went across to close the doors, but then decided to do as the trespassers appeared to have done. This was to switch on the hall lights again to give better illumination to the quad than the beam of his torch could do.