‘You mentioned a piece of paper you found in the lining of that tatty overcoat you got from the student. Can I see it?’
‘You could if I’d got it on me, but I haven’t. I can tell you what was on it, though.’
‘You said I could see it if I wanted to.’
‘Oh, so you can if you likes to go to my place and tell my old woman to take it from under the front leg of the table as it’s propping up, but I don’t reckon it would be hardly worth your while. It’s a London theayter programme and there ain’t nothing writ on it. If it hadn’t been so thick and bulky I’d never have felt it in the lining, but just have got my old woman to cobble up the slit.’
‘These things you bought recently, there wasn’t a bag of golf-clubs included, I suppose?’
‘Golf-clubs? No. Them as can afford to play golf wouldn’t sell their stuff to the likes of me.’
At the Stone House, Wandles Parva, a village on the edge of the New Forest and not many miles from the makeshift grave in which the corpse of Mr Pythias had been discovered so accidentally, Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley and her secretary, Mrs Laura Gavin, were having an after-breakfast conversation.
‘Well, the case has certain features of interest,’ said Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley, ‘but I cannot see any reason why I should involve myself with it, neither have I any excuse for doing so.’
‘It’s a muddle and you’re good at sorting out muddles. It’s practically in our neighbourhood, so you could operate from here. It concerns a school, with which, as a once-trained teacher, I feel myself involved. The dead man is a Greek, and foreigners, whether one likes them or not, are always romantic and interesting. There is speculation as to whether this man was merely set upon, robbed and murdered by muggers, or whether he was some sort of undercover agent working either for or against the Greek government, in which case his death may have been an assassination for political reasons. Shall I continue?’
‘I feel you have covered the main points of interest. There is one other, however, which may be worthy of mention. The body, it seems, was buried in the school quadrangle.’
‘Looks like local knowledge of some sort.’
‘And very limited local knowledge. That is what adds to the interest. The murderer knew that the quadrangle was there and he knew that workmen had dug a hole in which to bury their rubbish. He seems to have realised the possibilities of using their labour to save his own, but he does not appear to have known that a later excavation was to be made in order to sink a pond for goldfish and water-lilies.’
‘Why don’t you write to the local paper and point all that out?’
‘You are the scribe in this establishment.’
‘Well, if I wrote to the papers, the first point I would make is that Pythias, in spite of some of the rumours which seem to have been passed around, cannot possibly have been a subversive character at odds with the Greek government, or he would certainly not have been planning and organising this educational trip to Athens.’
‘A valid argument — unless, of course, he was an undercover agent not against the Greek authorities, but for them. In such case, the holiday journey might have been seen as a means of getting him back to his own country without arousing suspicion.’
‘Yes,’ said Laura. ‘Well, I don’t think this cloak-and-dagger stuff is much in our line, do you?’
‘Neither do I think it has any place in this particular case. I think the people where Mr Pythias lodged are far more likely to know why he was murdered. I feel sure that this was a simple matter of robbery, although possibly not by his landlady or her husband. There were others living in the house.’
‘Would you remove my name from your visiting list if I got on to Gavin at the Yard and urged him to persuade the Bankshire police to co-opt you?’
‘No. I have become addicted to your society.’ Dame Beatrice looked at an unusually serious-faced Laura and added, ‘I wish you would tell me why, apart from its connection with a school, this particular case fascinates you to such an extent that you want to drag your beloved and ever-busy husband into it.’
‘To begin with, it’s right up his street. He is, after all, Assistant Commissioner for Crime up at headquarters. To go on with, I’m intrigued by the murderer’s choice of a burial ground. Surely there is plenty of wild countryside round about where a body could be buried secretly and never found? After all, until this particular body turned up — and that only for a reason which the murderer could not possibly have foreseen — it was taken for granted that the man had scarpered with the money.’
‘I think that is too sweeping a statement. As I read the accounts given in the various newspapers, it seemed to me that the headmaster who had had Pythias on his staff at a previous school as well as at this one has been convinced throughout that the man would never have made off with money which was not his own. That being so, the theory that Pythias had been murdered for the money was always a possibility and must have been in the headmaster’s mind. I am sure the police suspected it, too, but, so far, have been unable to procure the evidence they need to charge one or more of this Mrs Buxton’s lodgers.’
‘Do you know what I’d really like to do? I’d like to take a room in that boarding-house and turn that rabble of men lodgers inside out. One of them must know something and I bet I could chisel it out of him. I wouldn’t mind betting there’s one of them who doesn’t go out to work as a general rule. He’s our man.’
Dame Beatrice looked at her secretary almost with superstition. She was accustomed to what Laura called ‘hunches’ and, although Laura had never very definitely claimed that she had the Gift, as second sight is tactfully and obscurely described by Highlanders, Dame Beatrice had often had reason to believe that Laura, without being able to explain why, had displayed a knack of hitting what appeared to be hidden nails on the head and forcing them to reveal lethal points protruding from the reverse side of some rough carpentry. She mentioned this in these same metaphorical terms and added, ‘But on no account are you to take lodgings with Mrs Buxton. That must be agreed between us before you go.’
‘Aha!’ said Laura. ‘Right! The villain of the piece has been singled out and will soon be named. I suppose Mrs Buxton is a sort of female Sweeney Todd, is she?’
‘That will be for you to judge,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘I doubt, though, whether she was responsible for disposing of the body.’
10
A Finger in the Pie
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Are you one of those reporters?’ demanded Mrs Buxton.
Laura briskly replied, ‘Certainly not. I understand you have a room to let.’
‘Oh, well, you must excuse me asking. I can’t be too careful. You’d be surprised the trouble I’ve had since they found poor Mr Pythias. Gawpers and reporters and the police, there’s been no end to it.’
‘Who is Mr Pythias?’
‘Was, you mean. Don’t you read the papers?’
‘I scan the front page of The Times occasionally.’
‘You better come in. This is my sitting room. Next door is the room poor Mr Pythias had when he was among us. I haven’t let it yet. It didn’t seem decent, somehow, so soon afterwards and with the rest of the inquest still in the future. Well, it does seem strange you don’t seem to have heard of our troubles; still, the room won’t give you no bad dreams. Me and my husband and all my five gentlemen been so harried and worried and badgered by the police and the reporters as you’d never believe. There’s never been anything like it. Ours is a quiet little town, as you must have noticed. Of course there’s been a lot of strangers about while the school was being built, but they’re all gone now. Nothing like strangers for bringing trouble, is there?’