No Winding Sheet (Mrs. Bradley)
Page 20
“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, I 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.”
About the Author
Gladys Mitchell was born in the village of Cowley, Oxford, in April 1901. She was educated at the Rothschild School in Brentford, the Green School in Isleworth, and at Goldsmiths and University Colleges in London. For many years Miss Mitchell taught history and English, swimming, and games. She retired from this work in 1950 but became so bored without the constant stimulus and irritation of teaching that she accepted a post at the Matthew Arnold School in Staines, where she taught English and history, wrote the annual school play, and coached hurdling. She was a member of the Detection Club, the PEN, the Middlesex Education Society, and the British Olympic Association. Her father’s family are Scots, and a Scottish influence has appeared in some of her books.