Laura gave both and Margaret wrote them down and then looked up at her. ‘Wandles Parva?’ she said. ‘But that isn’t in this county.’
‘Oh, the boy doesn’t live with me. I am not his mother. I am merely making enquiries. The address would be Padginton. That is not very far from here, is it?’
‘Padginton?’ said Margaret Wirrell. ‘Well, I know our catchment area has widened quite a bit now the new buildings are finished, but I think Padginton will still be outside our range. I’ll ask the headmaster whether he can see you. Even if he can, you may have to wait for a bit. We’ve been kept very busy lately. I expect you’ve heard about it. I think the police are with him now.’
‘Oh, yes, I read about it. It happened a long time ago, though, didn’t it? I’m surprised the police haven’t worked something out by now.’
‘It’s been some weeks, yes.’ Margaret picked up the newly installed intercom. ‘A Mrs Gavin is here, Mr Ronsonby. Is it any good asking her to wait?’
‘What does she want?’
‘To enter a boy from Padginton village.’
‘We can’t take him. Padginton is still out of our catchment area.’
‘Even if she insists upon a single-sex school for the boy? That’s still her right, isn’t it? She seems a very nice type of woman.’
‘All right. There won’t be much chance that we can take the boy, but Routh is just going. The local police may be handing over to the Yard.’
Margaret turned to Laura. ‘He’ll see you in a minute,’ she said, ‘but I don’t think you’ll have much luck.’
‘My husband is a policeman. He is at New Scotland Yard,’ said Laura.
Margaret exclaimed, ‘Not really? Is there any chance he would be sent down here?’
‘I hardly think so.’
‘I must tell Mr Ronsonby, all the same. He will be very interested, as it happens.’
Receiving the news, Ronsonby relayed it to Routh.
‘This Mrs Gavin who wants to park a boy on me next term has a husband at New Scotland Yard. How’s that for coincidence?’
‘Gavin?’ said Routh., ‘I saw a Gavin and his missus once at a special police do. There’s no coincidence about this, sir, if you ask me. He’s the Assistant Commissioner for Crime and his good lady devils for Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley and Dame Beatrice is the psychiatric consultant to the Home Office.’
‘Good gracious! We must be mixed up in something bigger than we know. I wonder whether the Greek embassy comes into it somewhere,’ said Mr Ronsonby.
‘Could well be, sir. I’ll pass the time of day with the lady on my way out. Not that she’ll remember me.’
‘Ah,’ said Margaret, as the headmaster’s door opened, ‘here comes the inspector. Mr Ronsonby will see you now, I expect.’ But Routh, as he had indicated, did not take his departure from the school until he had looked in at the secretary’s little window which opened on to the vestibule. Margaret came to the opening. ‘Is he ready to see Mrs Gavin?’ she asked. Laura got up from the chair Margaret had given her and went to the secretary’s door to meet Routh.
‘Detective-Inspector Routh, ma’am,’ said he.
‘Just the man,’ said Laura. They looked at one another. ‘Haven’t I seen you before?’
Routh recalled the occasion to her.
‘It was one of those times, ma’am,’ he said, ‘when, as they say at the Olympic Games, the important thing is not to succeed, but to take part. I was in our section of the police choir. Unfortunately we didn’t win.’
‘As Robert Louis Stevenson said,’ remarked Laura, ‘to travel hopefully is better than to arrive.’
‘I expect, all the same, ma’am, most people would prefer to arrive. I suppose you know the Yard will probably be called in on this case of ours?’
‘I don’t see why. It sounds to me a very local affair.’
‘Political undercurrents, the Chief Constable thinks.’
‘And what do the rest of you think?’
‘Not ours to think, ma’am. As soon as a thing looks like being political, to some extent it’s out of our hands.’
‘But there’s no real evidence that it is political, is there?’
‘Pythias was a Greek, ma’am.’
‘And was prepared to conduct a school party to Greece. He would hardly do that if he was in trouble with the Greek government. Come with me to the headmaster,’ said Laura. ‘I want to get all the low-down on this murder that I can. It doesn’t sound like politics to me. I might tell you, as I shall now tell the headmaster, that this boy of mine from Padginton is a myth. It was an excuse to get into the school, but I never expected to have the luck to run into you, Inspector, in this helpful, informal kind of way. I’m trying to get Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley interested. If I do, you won’t need anybody to come muscling in from London. It will remain your case, as it should.’
‘I’m afraid that, so far as the Chief Constable and my Detective Chief Superintendent are concerned, Mrs Gavin, the die is cast. As soon as we were sure it was a case of murder, the Super and the Chief Constable took over. As it is, I’m only the dogsbody now.’
‘That seems hard luck after all the work I’m sure you have put in,’ said Laura sympathetically.
‘Well, ma’am, if we’d known from the first that it was murder — although, of course, we had our suspicions of that — the Detective-Superintendent would have taken over the case from the beginning, but we thought this man had simply absconded with the money, so I can’t grumble. I’ve had quite an interesting time.’
‘What happened at the inquest?’
‘Just routine, ma’am, and an adjournment. The county pathologist couldn’t find out exactly how the murder had been committed owing to the length of time the body had been underground. There were details of putrefaction, ravages by maggots and all the other nasty things which take away the dignity of death. What we do know is that there had been a knock on the head, but we don’t know yet what the murder weapon was. There’s only one thing I’m certain about in my own mind. Whether the Buxtons have any knowledge of it or not, Pythias was killed in their house. I’m as certain of that as I am of my own identity.’
‘So when you mentioned a political murder, you did not really see it as that.’
‘Certainly not at first. I reckoned it was a straightforward mugging until we found where the body was buried.’
‘Mrs Buxton knew Mr Pythias had the journey money on him,’ said Margaret Wirrell. ‘She admitted as much to me when I went round there at the very beginning of this dreadful business before any idea of murder had entered anybody’s mind.’
‘Well, I had better not keep the headmaster waiting,’ said Laura, as Mr Ronsonby came to the door and opened it. Routh, postponing his departure, allowed Laura and Margaret to precede him into the headmaster’s sanctum and said, ‘It seems we are entertaining angels unaware, sir. It turns out that Mrs Gavin is the wife of an Assistant Commissioner at New Scotland Yard.’
‘Dear me! Then why does she wish to enrol a boy at my school? Is he to act as copper’s nark?’ asked Mr Ronsonby, smiling at Laura. ‘I remember a most interesting detective story by Cyril Hare — Judge Gordon Clark, you know, Mrs Gavin — in which the vicar’s wife insisted upon inserting herself into the police force in just that capacity.’
‘I’m afraid,’ said Laura, taking the armchair he offered her, ‘there isn’t any boy. I had to think up a plausible reason for getting into the school to see you, that’s all. I certainly didn’t expect to run into Mr Routh as well. That is a bit of luck.’
11
Concerning Chickens
« ^ »
So there we were,’ said Laura, on her return to the Stone House, ‘all cosy and relaxed in the headmaster’s den and, thanks to Detective-Inspector Routh, with me the belle of the ball. He was present at a police jamboree which Gavin and I attended some time back and he recognised me and sort of guaranteed my bona fides to Mr Ronsonby. I got all the gen they could give me about Mr Pythias and then the caretaker came in with a story about chickens.’