No Winding-Sheet

4

Parade of Tenants

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Mrs Buxton’s gentlemen lodgers were not very pleased to find themselves of interest to the police. Routh handled them gently since, so far as he knew, he had nothing against any of them. His immediate concern was to find somebody who had seen Pythias leave the house on that Friday evening and then to find somebody else who could confirm the time when this had happened and, if possible, a witness who had passed him in the street or seen him take a train or bus.

The police, although they never publicised the fact, had a list of all landladies who let rooms to more than one lodger, so Routh’s first self-imposed task was to fill in a little of the background from which these lodgers had emerged or against which they now functioned.

Mrs Buxton had six bedsitters to let, so now, without Pythias, she had five tenants. The two attics were let cheaply as a bedroom and a studio to Mrs Buxton’s nephew, an artist named Rattock. There was nothing but a loft ladder to the attics and as they housed the hot-water tank, which insisted upon making itself heard, often in the middle of the night, Rattock’s rent was low and not only for reasons of family sentiment. No other tenant wanted to live in the attic. According to Mrs Buxton, it was Rattock who had seen Pythias leave the house.

Routh was not impressed by the man. Rattock struck him as a worthless layabout who was probably living on his aunt’s charity. In this he did the artist an injustice and awarded Mrs Buxton a guerdon she did not merit. Rattock’s rent was certainly very low, but it represented pure profit for Mrs Buxton, since she could not have let the draughty, noisy, uncomfortable attics to anybody else. Moreover, although he made very little money from his paintings, he spent fine summer days each year at a neighbouring watering-place where he had become a familiar figure as a pavement artist. Here he made enough money out of the holiday visitors to pay for his food and to cover his very modest rent. He also made enough to buy his canvases and paints and the other materials he needed for his studio work.

Routh interviewed him first because he was the only one of the tenants at home when the inspector called. Mrs Buxton, flustered by a further visit from the police, announced this and said that Routh had better have her private sitting room for the interview.

‘Not as he’ll be able to tell you anything about poor Mr Pythias,’ she said, ‘for, beyond passing good-evenings at supper-time, you couldn’t hardly say they knew each other. Anyway, Lionel hated school and the very fact that poor Mr Pythias was a schoolmaster would have meant Lionel didn’t have any very friendly feelings towards him.’

The Buxtons themselves kept house in the basement, and Pythias had rented a room on the ground floor. This was next door to a sitting room which Mrs Buxton retained for her own use. When she entertained, which was seldom, parties were held in it, and every Friday evening she sat in state there to collect her weekly dues from her tenants. Except for the short time that the rent-collecting covered, Pythias had enjoyed the privilege of having the ground floor to himself.

The first floor was shared by two tenants in adjoining rooms. One of these was a bird of passage. His name was Durswell and he travelled for a firm which specialised in labour-saving gadgets for the housewife. He returned to his lodgings only intermittently, therefore, since he was often ‘on the road’. Routh knew a little more about him than Mrs Buxton did. He was paying alimony to a divorced wife living elsewhere in the country and he had been county-courted for non-payment. He also contributed to the support of a woman and two children who lived in Wigan.

In the room next door lived a younger man named Cummings. He worked as a meter reader for the Electricity Board and supplemented his wages by working on Friday and Saturday evenings as a barman at the local pub. He was saving up to get married and he wanted to put down the deposit for a mortgage on a bungalow.

On the second floor were two very different characters. Both were bachelors, Peters from choice, Murch because he had his eye on the bank manager’s daughter and knew that he stood little chance until he could contrive, in the old-fashioned phrase, to ‘better himself’. He was a plumber in the employment of a local firm of builders who were putting up small bungalows on an estate outside the town, and his ambition was to get free of the tie of a weekly wage which, in any case, he thought inadequate, considering what his employer charged the customers who called in a plumber, and set up in business for himself. Meanwhile he entertained the bank manager’s daughter in the style to which he supposed she was accustomed and was often hard put to it to pay even the second-floor rent demanded by Mrs Buxton.

Peters came into a different category. He had taken a second-floor room on the understanding that, if a better apartment became vacant, he should be given the first refusal of it. He was employed at the town hall as assistant to the town clerk and most of his spare time was spent in a study of the law, as, although he had no ambition to succeed his chief, he liked to be called into consultation and to air his views.

He had said once to Cummings, when he learned one evening at the communal supper table that the latter was saving with a building society for the money to put down on a bungalow, ‘Why don’t you put your name on our housing list for a council flat? I daresay I could get you preferential treatment, my position being what it is.’

‘Nice of you to offer,’ said Cummings, ‘but my young lady has her heart set on one of the bungalows we’re building out on the Thorne Estate. Says she knows the taps will run and the chain pull if Murch here has a hand in the doings.’ The two young men exchanged grins.

‘Oh, just as you like,’ said Peters somewhat huffily. ‘If you change your mind my offer is still open, of course.’

When Pythias’s disappearance was confirmed, Peters approached Mrs Buxton. She had thrown out hints in his direction to the effect that she was ready and willing for him to change his second-floor room for the vastly superior bedsitter on the ground floor, but Peters had thought it better to defer the change until it was certain that Pythias was not coming back.

‘Oh, well, perhaps you’re right,’ said Mrs Buxton, who regarded him as the most superior of her tenants and treated him accordingly. ‘I can’t afford to leave the room empty for long, though, Mr Peters. When the time comes, I’ll offer it on a weekly basis, one week’s notice to be given on either side. Would that suit you?’

‘Oh, admirably, Mrs Buxton. It is only that I should not relish having to move out of the room if Mr Pythias resumed his option on it. I take it that his lease has not run out.’

‘Not so long as he pays the rent he will owe me if he does come back,’ said Mrs Buxton, ‘but my thought, Mr Peters, is as he won’t. I think he took umbrage, and foreigners are funny like that.’

Routh’s questions were much the same to each tenant. He took the answers back with him to the police station and consulted with his chief.

‘They’ve all got much the same story, sir. Only one of them claims to have been at home when Pythias would have got back from school. The landlady gave me the time for that because he was a bit later than usual and she was cooking him something for his tea, so she kept her eye on the clock. After tea they had their little argy-bargy about the money in his briefcase and he paid his week’s rent and took himself off.’

‘Which one was at home when Pythias got in?’

‘The landlady’s nephew. He’s a bit of a down-and-out, I fancy. Lives in the attic for a peppercorn rent and says he didn’t see Pythias that Friday evening, but that he must have been in when Pythias arrived from school, for the simple reason that he’d been indoors painting all day — claims to be something of an artist — and hadn’t left the house. May be very short of money, but it’s fair to say he may not be the only one of the tenants who’s a bit skint. Funny Mrs Buxton saying he told her he saw Pythias leave the house. He swears he said nothing of the sort, only that he heard the front door slam.’

‘What sort of things did you ask the others?’

‘Oh, only routine stuff at this stage. “When did you last see Pythias? Was he friendly, standoffish, easy to get on with? Do you know of any problems he had — marital, financial, difficulties at his school? How well would you say you knew him? Were you surprised when you heard he had left his digs without notice?” — those sort of obvious questions.’

‘What about them as individuals? We’ve never had any complaints, either from them or from the landlady.’

Routh produced his notebook.

‘I didn’t fancy Rattock overmuch and we know that Durswell was brought to court for non-payment of alimony and collected an attachment order. No further complaints from the ex-wife, so far as I know, but he may be a bit stretched for money because I believe he has to subsidise another little nest in Wigan. The others seem all right, although one of them is keen to buy a house and get married and another has ambitions to start his own plumbing business. Either of them might be glad of Pythias’s suitcase hoard, and so might Rattock, of course.

‘As to reactions to Pythias himself, the general opinion is that he was quiet and inoffensive, but kept himself very much to himself. He met the others at supper on the first four evenings of the working week, but supper isn’t provided on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, so there is no getting-together on those evenings.’

‘Mrs Buxton seems to have her own way of doing things and is maybe a bit of a martinet. Still, it’s probably better that way.’

‘Her rules are strict. If they want companionship or entertainment, they get it outside her premises. There certainly don’t seem to be any one-to-one friendships among her lodgers, but no disagreements, either. As to a lurid sunset painted on Pythias’s wall, I wouldn’t want to live with it myself. Perhaps it reminded Pythias of sunsets in Greece. It’s a splashing great eyeful of a daub which, to my mind, quite spoils an otherwise very good room.’

‘I didn’t know you were an art critic. What did these lodgers actually say?’

‘Young Murch said,’ replied Routh, referring to his notebook, ‘ “Some years ago, when we were still at the Old School, I was in Pythias’s form, so I rather side-stepped him in private life. No, I didn’t exactly dislike him, but I didn’t like him much either. Oh, yes, as a master he was quite fair, I suppose, but he had a habit of doing most of his teaching from the back of the class, so there was no bonus in being in the back row. He used to creep up and down the gangways when we were map-making or tabulating things and you would suddenly feel a sharp tweak to your hair and hear him say, ‘Imbecile! Can you not even copy correctly?’ Then he’d stick you in detention and make you do whatever it was all over again. Mind you, it made us a lot more careful next time he set us some work to do. He was mean about marks, too. I don’t believe I ever got more than a C plus from him, no matter how hard I tried.”

‘Well,’ Routh went on, ‘that’s beside the point, sir. Anyway, I asked the lad when he had last seen Pythias. He said it must have been on the Thursday, the day before Pythias took himself off. “I came home a bit early on the Thursday to get washed and changed because I was taking a girl out that evening,” he said, “and I believe I remember hearing Pythias asking Ma Buxton what there was going to be for supper. He was always a bit finicky about what he ate and, if he hadn’t been the ground-floor tenant and very quiet and soft-spoken as well, it’s my belief that Ma would have told him to leave if he wasn’t satisfied with the food. She is very proud of her catering.” ’

‘So none of them could tell you anything useful?’ said the Detective-Superintendent.

‘Not really, sir. Peters, in reply to my question as to how he got on with Pythias, said, “I suppose he had the most stable job of any of the residents except myself, and I respected him accordingly. It is almost impossible to get a teacher or a prominent member of the town-hall staff dismissed, whereas all the other tenants were, to some extent, vulnerable.” ’

‘I picked him up on this, sir, and asked him whether he had any reason to suppose that Mr Pythias was in danger of being dismissed from his teaching post and so had chosen to leave of his own accord before that happened, but Peters was emphatic in declaring that he had no reason for thinking anything of the kind.

‘ “I have the confidence of the chairman of the education committee,” he said, “and there has never been a word of criticism against his teaching or his discipline.” I asked him whether there was a woman mixed up in the disappearance. He said one never knew about that sort of thing, but that, so far as he knew, Pythias seldom went out in the evenings and was never absent from his digs except for taking an occasional holiday abroad. “It was news to me when I heard he had friends to stay with at Christmas,” he said, “and I only heard that after he left here.” ’

‘What about the Buxtons?’ asked the Detective-Superintendent. ‘Buxton is a van driver for those furniture dealers in the high street, isn’t he?’

‘That’s right, sir. I’ve been round there. They’ve nothing against Buxton. Been working for them for the past six years. He told me that he leaves his van at the warehouse most evenings, but on Fridays he parks it in his own drive so that he can get away first thing on Saturday morning and get through his work by midday so as to get to football. He’s a Southampton fan and never misses a home match.’

‘So his van was probably parked in his own drive on the evening when Pythias walked off. What did any of the others have to say?’

‘Nothing which seemed of any importance or help, sir. Except for Rattock, they declare they were not at home when Pythias left and all he can say is that he thinks he heard the front door slam at round about seven o’clock, but, of course, that need not have been Pythias leaving. I pressed him, but he declared he had seen nothing of Pythias that Friday evening. “As I’ve told you,” he said, “my aunt provides a high tea on Fridays for those who come in. Not everybody does, you see, so she has ascertained at breakfast who she is to expect and who not. She is a very hard-working, capable woman and the digs here are excellent. If you get the opportunity, I wish you would tell her I said so.”

‘ “Are you behind with your rent, then, Mr Rattock?” I asked him. “Do you want me to butter her up?”

‘ “Dear me! How cynical you policement are! Of course I’m not behind with my rent — well, only a week, and we’re allowed one week’s grace unless my aunt has a strong reason for wanting to get rid of anybody.’

‘ “So you saw Pythias neither come nor go on that Friday evening?” I said.

‘ “I may have heard the front door slam at about seven, as I’ve already told you,” he said, “but that need not have been Pythias, as you and I have agreed. It could have been one of the others coming in or going out, couldn’t it?” ’

Routh emphasised there had been nothing more to be obtained from the lodgers, though there still remained the Buxtons themselves.

‘If only Ronsonby would come out with what he really thinks, which is that Pythias has skipped with the journey money, we should know where we are,’ Routh said to Sergeant Bennett.

‘It’s a very unlikely thing for a schoolmaster to do, sir, especially one as well established as Pythias seems to have been. Do we know what the money would have mounted up to?’

‘More or less. It’s a package tour by air both ways and the cheap fares operate until the end of June. Ronsonby says that the adult fares are a hundred and fifty-three and the boys have to pay eighty. Thirteen adult fares are in question, as three of the six masters go free. Ten parents are going and sixty boys. Working that out, Pythias seems to have had something round about seven thousand pounds in his briefcase that Friday evening.’

‘Nice sugar, sir, but surely not worth risking his job and his pension for, unless he had a very urgent need to lay his hands on some ready cash. So far, we’ve no evidence that he had such a need. You seem to have lined up one or two people who might be glad of a bit of extra money, sir, and I don’t only mean the chap who occupies the attic.’

‘You’re right there. Then there’s Buxton himself. A van driver has opportunities, if you know what I mean, that are denied to the nine-to-five office blokes. All those jokes about the milkman apply equally well to any long-distance driver. I was told at the furniture dealers that they deliver as far away as Yorkshire and Durham, or anywhere else on the English mainland if they get an order for goods or a removal. There must be lots of nights when Buxton doesn’t sleep at home.’

‘That would apply equally well to the chap who travels in household appliances, sir.’

‘Yes, and he is a fellow who has to keep two homes going. Somehow I have a feeling that there’s something more credible behind the disappearance of Pythias than that he’s absconded with the money. On the face of it, he and Peters are the last among those tenants who rather desperately need some extra cash.’

The interview with Buxton took place at the police station. Routh arranged this as a piece of gamesmanship, hoping to alarm the man into admitting something which might be of use to the police, for Routh had come to the conclusion that a crime had been committed and that Pythias was the victim not the perpetrator of it.

He admitted to himself that, in the face of such evidence as he had, this was an illogical conclusion, but, although he had never been called upon before to investigate a serious crime, he had become adept at summing up the petty criminals who had been brought to his notice and he already distrusted Rattock, Buxton and Durswell and had taken a personal dislike (which he did his best to discount) to the rather unctuous Peters of the town-hall staff.

Buxton turned up at the police station in the blustering mood which Routh had expected and expressed himself freely.

‘Look, what the hell is all this?’ he said. ‘My employers aren’t going to like me having to come here, you know. I got my job to think about. My job’s depending on my good name. I got a reputation to keep up, haven’t I?’

‘Just a few questions which I didn’t want to ask in front of your wife,’ said Routh.

‘Oh, like that, is it? Well, let me tell you, Mr Inspector Nosey, as I don’t have no women in bed on the sly. I got another chap on the van with me, haven’t I? Have to, with beds and wardrobes and sideboards and God knows what to lug about. You ask my mate. You ask Bill Watts what I gets up to when we’re on the road. Go on, you ask him.’

Routh got nothing helpful and went back to the house to see Durswell. Mrs Buxton greeted him without joy and asked when this persecution of the innocent was going to cease. Yes, Durswell was in, as it happened. She took Routh up to his room. The commercial traveller cordially invited him to have a drink. Routh politely refused and put his first question.

‘You asked me that the last time,’ said Durswell. ‘What did I think when Pythias gave up staying here? And when did I see him last? Well, that would have been on the Friday before the Friday he went off. He offered to take my rent in to Ma, if I wanted to get round to the Dog and Duck. As for t’other, well, I assumed he’d had a bust-up of some sort with Ma Buxton, but I can’t honestly say I thought much about it at all. Got plenty on my own plate without bothering about other people’s problems. I’m not here all that often, anyway, so I don’t know much about the other chaps.’

‘Do you mean that from the time you and he met when he offered to hand in your rent, you have never seen him again?’

‘That’s right, like I told you before. For one thing, I was not in for supper all the next week and, by the time I did come back here, he was gone. After supper, by the time I got in those nights, everybody had gone to his own pad or to the Dog and Duck for a drink, so you wouldn’t expect me to see anybody if I got in after about nine-thirty.’

Peters, the town-hall employee, questioned along the same lines, repeated his former assertions. He remembered the Friday in question for a particular reason. The mayor’s Christmas party to the councillors was looming and it had come to Peters’s notice — he did not explain how — that the mayoral drinks cupboard was in need of replenishment. At four o’clock, therefore, he had telephoned the only off-licence in the town to ask that replacements should be sent up forthwith.

‘So I had to wait at the town hall for them,’ he explained, ‘and that made me later than usual in getting home. Still, I had telephoned Mrs Buxton to tell her that I should be kept. She serves individual high teas instead of a sit-down supper on Fridays, as you have been informed, I believe. Mine is always bacon and sausages and I did not want to be presented with a dried-up plateful which had been kept hot in the oven. Anyhow, Pythias must have left the house before I got in. He was not there to pay his rent, so I suppose he had settled before he left. The last time I saw him? Well, I suppose it would have been at supper on the Thursday, wouldn’t it? I am sure he would have left the house before I got back on the Friday. I not only had to wait for the off-licence — they were very late with the delivery because they were inundated with Christmas orders — but I then had to see to the proper stowage of the bottles and sign a chit for them.

‘What kind of man was Pythias? It is quite beyond me to say. We all had our private quarters and there was never very much conversation at supper-time. Hungry, tired men are not given to loquacity at meal-times. He was quiet and a member of a respectable profession, but, of course, it would hardly do for an official in my position to become too friendly with one of the council’s schoolmasters.’

‘Oh, why not?’ asked Routh, who, with a lapse into unprofessional bias, was again finding Peters somewhat insufferable. ‘A proper Uriah Heap’ was the way he described him to Sergeant Bennett.

‘Jockeying for preferment, corruption, undue influence with regard to obtaining headships — you would be surprised, Inspector, at what people will stoop to. Was I surprised when Pythias did not come back to this house? Neither surprised nor the reverse. It made no difference whatever to my life-style and anyhow it was no business of mine. I have learnt in my journey through this uncertain world where traps and stratagems await the unwary, that to mind one’s own business and nobody else’s is the secret of a successful and problem-free career. I hope you agree.’

Routh toyed with the idea of having another go at the artist in the attic, but thought it was an interview which would keep.