‘And so?’
‘Oh, Mr Routh, can you really imagine that Mr Pythias, alive, would have allowed that daub to disfigure his apartment? He must have been dead when Rattock got in and painted that picture on the wall. It was done long before you locked and sealed the room. Although Pybus states that it was Pythias’s absence from school which gave him concern, I think he had seen the Téméraire at Sunset and it was that which caused him to challenge Rattock. The result we now know. Rattock took the money and, as the price of his silence, Pybus took the Pythias pictures and not only for the money they would bring him. Pybus may not be a genius at painting, but I am sure he is a true connoisseur of art. He is unprincipled enough, moreover, to have been prepared to pass off the pictures as his own work.’
‘Where’s my proof, though, unless Pybus was an eyewitness to the murder and I can make him come clean? I still haven’t a story I can take into court.’
‘Get an expert to remove those thick layers of paint on Pythias’s wall. Unless I am much mistaken, there are bloodstains underneath. Why else should Rattock have put up that hideous and (I am certain) sinister attempt at camouflage in a room which was not his own? Confront Pybus and Rattock with the result when the paint has been removed. They are not habitual criminals, so I think you will have little difficulty in breaking down even Rattock’s resistance, should he attempt to — what is the expression Laura uses?’
‘Bluff it out, ma’am?’
‘The person I am sorry for, ’ went on Dame Beatrice, ‘is Mr Ronsonby. To have a member of staff and one of the Old Boys taken to court for conspiracy, theft and murder is not the best of recommendations for the Sir George Etherege school. Another thing: do not let us forget that Pybus knew about the hole which was dug in the quad.’
‘My own fear is for Pybus, ma’am. Now he knows his little game is up, isn’t he the type to do himself a mischief?’
‘Unless he becomes a patient of mine at the instigation of the Home Office, I cannot undertake to say. However, let us leave the last comment with Sir George Etherege himself, who, some time between 1635 and 1691, wrote:
‘Were it not madness to deny
To live because we’re sure to die?’
I do not think you have a potential suicide on your hands. Pybus will still have something to look forward to, one hopes, when his sentence is completed.’
‘He’s an artist, ma’am. They’re apt to fly off the handle when things go wrong.’
‘An artist? Yes, I suppose, if one stretches a point, one may call him that.’
‘He’s better than young Rattock is, anyway, 1 reckon.’
‘He could hardly be worse, judging by the two examples of Rattock’s work which have come to our notice, but he has been both foolish and dishonest. The dishonesty may be excusable, but the foolishness is not. Imagine putting his mediocre paintings side by side with Mr Pythias’s work in that shop in Southampton and attempting to pass both off as his own! Is there no limit to human self-deception and vanity?’
‘Those are matters we’re all guilty of from time to time, I suppose, ma’am. Maybe we couldn’t bear to live with ourselves if we saw ourselves as we really are.’
‘You are a philosopher, Mr Routh.’
‘No, just a good stupid horse that will eat his oats, ma’am.’
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[scanned anonymously in a galaxy far far away]
[A 3S Release— v1, html]
[April 25, 2007]