No Winding-Sheet

6

Labour in Vain

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Routh allowed himself an hour and a half to drive to Springdale although, if there were no hold-ups, it was possible, without speeding, to do it in about an hour and ten minutes.

The roads were reasonably clear and he made good time. His appointment with the Superintendent was at ten-thirty, so he pulled up before he entered the town, got out of the car to stretch his legs and looked around him.

Springdale was a town of some considerable size. Its high street went steeply uphill and from where he stood Routh could make out a church spire and another church with a tower, while directly in front of him was a fine old bridge across the river. He had fished the river, although not the reach at which he was looking. It was a pleasant stream bordered by wide, flat meadows and the fishing was mostly barbel, chub and dace, although there were also plenty of pike to be taken with dead bait.

Routh was no believer in the theory that the pike is a sort of devil-fish which, when caught, should be despatched immediately. He followed the theory of that master of coarse fishing the Dorset man Owen Wentworth, always throwing the pike back when he had caught them, just as he did the other coarse fish which came to his rod and line. However, there was no fishing to be done that day. Routh strolled on to the bridge, spent a few pleasant minutes looking down at the flowing water and then returned to the car.

The police station was in the high street and a narrow turning on the left brought him into a fair-sized yard where other police cars were parked. At the front entrance to the building a constable recognised and saluted him, and a moment or two later he was in the Superintendent’s office greeting his old friend.

‘You were a bit mysterious over the phone,’ said Superintendent Bellairs. ‘What can we do for you?’

‘Find me a couple of Greeks, a man and a woman, who may be nursing another Greek who was taken ill in their house over Christmas.’

‘What’s their name?’

‘That’s the trouble. I don’t know.’ He gave the Superintendent a short but sufficient account of the disappearance of Pythias and the money, the return of the cheques in an envelope postmarked Springdale and the visit of the two strangers to Pythias’s room to collect his belongings.

‘Looks an open and shut case to me,’ said Bellairs. ‘The chap has absconded with the money and the Buxtons suspect that they won’t see him again. The Buxtons have invented these two foreigners to cover the fact that they have sold Pythias’s clothes and golf-clubs to cover the rent he probably owes them. That fits the facts as you’ve given them to me, I think.’

‘It doesn’t cover Mrs Buxton’s definite statement that they live here in Springdale and the fact that the cheques were sent to the bank from here. She knew nothing about the Springdale postmark on the envelope that went to the bank, so she didn’t get the name of the town from that. I think these two foreigners exist all right.’

‘All you need is the local directory, then.’

‘The directory may not be much help because, as I say, I can’t put a name to these people. I’ve come to you because I thought you were the likeliest person to put me in touch with any foreigners you’ve got on your patch. After all, if these people do exist, I must get in touch with them.’

‘I know of only one foreigner, but he’s an Armenian. He’s the librarian at the agricultural college here and a very nice chap indeed. I don’t suppose for a moment that he’ll be able to help you, but I’ll take you over there if you like.’ He rang through and was told that they would be expected.

The agricultural college was several miles outside the town and even when they reached its gates there was a drive of about a mile and a half before they reached the college building. Here a porter, who obviously had been told to expect them, conducted them up two flights of stairs to a large room furnished with tables and chairs and surrounded on three sides by bookshelves. There were racks for newspapers and periodicals and a railed-off space containing a desk, a chair and a library ladder for the custodian.

This was a slender little man in a neat grey suit and an unobtrusive tie. The noticeable thing about him was his beard. It was spade-shaped and immensely, luxuriantly thick. Mrs Buxton had mentioned the Russian cap and the astrakhan collar of one of her supposedly Greek visitors, but (thought Routh) she could never have missed the beard. Whoever (if he existed at all) her male mysterious caller could have been, it was certainly not this man. Routh explained his errand. The librarian was polite but puzzled.

‘Greeks?’ he said. ‘There are none among the students and I know of none in the town. Pythias? I have never heard of him except as the legendary friend of Damon.’

‘Well,’ said Bellairs, when they had returned to the car, ‘he is the best I can do for you. We’re very short of foreigners here. No blacks, no Pakis, one or two old-established Jewish families, and now and again the gypsies who camp on the riverside verges and have to be moved on. I think the directory is your only hope unless — yes, there is one more chap you might try. Pythias is a schoolmaster, you say, so any close friends of his would likely be more or less literate, I suppose. Let’s try the public library in the town. Paxton, the chief librarian, has a card-index memory for names. If these people use the public library he is bound to know of them, especially as they won’t have English surnames. You can look through the directory there, too, if he can’t help you.’

Again Routh drew a blank.

‘Well, I’m not going to try the post office,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to start up a lot of gossip, especially if these Greeks don’t exist. I haven’t nearly enough to go on to take any action at present, but I agree with you that Mrs Buxton and her husband can bear watching. I have to keep in mind that Buxton is a van driver and could get here very easily to post an envelope.’

‘I doubt whether he’s his own master to any great extent,’ said Bellairs. ‘Wouldn’t his employers keep him to a pretty strict timetable? You will have seen by the postmark when those cheques were sent to the bank. Can’t you check up with the furniture people?’

‘And find out whether Buxton had an assignment to deliver or collect furniture in Springdale at about the right time? Yes, of course I could, but I don’t believe it would help much. What’s forty miles in a van which can bucket along at fifty on open roads? There’s very little congestion on the roads around here until you actually get into the town.’

‘The firm probably checks his mileage and his fuel consumption, don’t you think?’

‘He probably pays for any extra journeys himself. You know, I’m beginning to like the look of things less and less. If Buxton posted those cheques, it means he’s got the rest of the money. If he’s got the money, it can only mean that Pythias is dead. If Pythias is dead, either he was murdered or else he succumbed to a heart attack or something. If he did, and the Buxtons took the banknotes and the cheques, he must have died in the Buxtons’ house and the Buxtons have concealed the death. I’ll try the firm and see what comes of that. Of course, Buxton and his van may not have come into the matter at all. Springdale has a railway station. Pythias himself may have posted the cheques and hung on to the rest of the money. I don’t suppose he could have hit upon any way of converting the cheques to his own use. They were not made payable to him, but were entered in a special school fund.’

The firm gave Routh no help. They had nothing against Buxton and they had not sent him to deliver any orders in Springdale for nearly a year. They did their best, looked up their order books and all the rest of their delivery records, but came up with no information from which the Detective-Inspector could obtain a clue to Buxton’s involvement or any other kind of a lead.

Meanwhile, Mr Ronsonby had been turning over in his mind the matter of the postmark.

‘Whatever is still in the dark about Pythias,’ he said to Mr Burke, ‘one thing is absolutely clear. Those cheques were posted in Springdale, so whoever posted them was in Springdale at the time of posting. It seems to me that this person was most likely to have been Pythias himself. I think I ought to go over there and take a look round. If it was not Pythias, it could have been those Greeks who are said to have called at his lodgings to collect his effects and, if it were not they, it was probably Buxton. He, as we know, has a means of transport which people are so much accustomed to seeing all over the county that it seems hardly noticeable. It is like Poe’s letter and Chesterton’s postman.’

‘Springdale is a biggish town,’ said Mr Burke. ‘How do you propose to make a start? Do you know anybody there?’

‘Yes, of course I do. I propose to enlist the help of Miss Edmunds. She has the big mixed school there and I have met her a number of times at educational gatherings. If there are Greeks living in Springdale, she will know of them.’

‘Only if they have children of senior-school age, I would have thought.’

‘Well, even if she does not know of them, I can depend upon it that some of her pupils will.’

Miss Edmunds’s school was aptly named Hillmoor, for it was on top of the hill which led out of the town on the south side. Several acres of moorland had been cleared of heather and gorse, and then levelled and grassed to form playing fields. Sharp bends on a dangerous road which ran down the other side of the hill had been ironed out to make a safe approach to the school, not only for children on bicycles, but for the staff cars and the fleet of school buses. The school buildings were larger than those of the Sir George Etherege would be, and, in fact (thought Mr Ronsonby, driving carefully in at the school gates), Miss Edmunds had gathered for herself an educational plum.

Miss Edmunds, who had been apprised of the visit, although she had not been told its purpose, was waiting to receive Mr Ronsonby in her sanctum. It was as different from his own austere and business-like office as can be imagined. True, it boasted a large desk and a swivel chair, filing cabinets and a timetable which, like his own, covered a considerable part of one wall, but the floor was expensively carpeted in place of the parquet flooring and one solitary rug to which he was accustomed. There were two deep armchairs and there were vases of flowers, the early spring flowers, on a small table and on Miss Edmunds’s vast desk.

The really incongruous addition to the room and the one which, in Mr Ronsonby’s opinion, detracted from its charm, was a screen rather obviously made by covering an old-fashioned wooden clothes-horse with brown paper. On to the brown paper had been pasted cut-outs of childish art in the form of large, unidentifiable flowers and equally mythological birds. All this futuristic décor was presided over by a couple of angels with hideous faces, flaring nostrils and eyes set so high in their foreheads as almost to meet their hair.

Miss Edmunds saw Mr Ronsonby looking at the screen. She laughed and said, ‘Yes, isn’t it? But it was a Christmas gift from 2C, so I must keep it until half-term. Then the cleaners will have orders to lose it. Do sit down. To what do I owe the honour? Don’t tell me you are trying to enlist support for this tinpot idea the county have put up to us to introduce a non-failure public exam for all the lazy little wretches who could get CSE if they worked instead of fooling around and making nuisances of themselves. I’ve no patience with soft options and I’ve told the county so.’

‘Nothing like that. I haven’t come on school business, exactly, but to ask for your help. The fact is that I am short of my senior geography master and I have reason to think that he may be ill in this town and is being cared for by some Greek friends of his. Have you time to hear the whole story? It has some interesting and slightly mysterious features.’

Miss Edmunds rang a bell and told the secretary who answered it that she was not to be disturbed until she rang again.

‘Chase off any parents, publishers’ travellers, staff and children who want to see me,’ she said. ‘I am about to have my blood curdled and I want to enjoy the sensation without having it broken into by school business.’ She turned to Ronsonby. ‘Do go on,’ she said. So he told her all. She listened without interrupting him. At the end she said, ‘So you think this Pythias has absconded and is lying low in this town with these Greek friends of his.’

‘Oh, no, no. I have every confidence in his probity. But, having obtained this lead to his possible whereabouts, I feel I must trace the man and find out how he is. Things may look bad in a way, but I refuse to abandon all faith in him.’

‘Hm!’ said Miss Edmunds. ‘Well, my practice is always to believe the worst of everybody. It almost always turns out to be the truth about them.’

‘You terrify me!’

‘Yes, so I do most of the children and three-quarters of the staff, thank goodness,’ said Miss Edmunds complacently. ‘Well, where do you want me to begin? I can tell you one thing straight away. I have no children of Greek extraction on my registers.’

‘It would have been too much to hope that you had. I wondered, though, whether any of your staff or your pupils knew of any Greeks or other foreigners living in or around Springdale.’

‘We can soon find out, ‘ She rang the bell and asked the secretary to take a message round the school. ‘At break I want to see any child who knows of a foreign family living in the town or on one of the new estates.’

At break the queue outside her door numbered some forty children. They were marshalled by the secretary, who admitted them four at a time. Nothing which came out of the interviews was of any help at all to Mr Ronsonby.

‘There’s the MacKenzies down our road, miss. They talk kind of funny.’

‘Thank you, Walter. The MacKenzies are Scots and Scottish people are not foreigners.’

‘There’s a couple of infants goes to St Martin’s name of Llanwyn, miss.’

‘Thank you, Maisie. The Llanwyns are Welsh. Queen Elizabeth the First was the granddaughter of a Welsh prince. The Welsh are not foreigners.’

‘No, miss, but they jabber among theirselves in a foreign language.’

‘Themselves, not theirselves. The Welsh language is an ancient Celtic tongue, as are Highland Gaelic and the Irish language in which, nowadays, all the street signs in the Republic of Ireland are posted up. Did your family not go to Eire last summer? ’

‘Yes, miss.’

‘Well, then, you know all about the Irish language, don’t you?’

So on and so forth, but nothing came up about Greeks or anything else which could lead Mr Ronsonby forward in his tracking down of Mr Pythias.

‘I’m afraid I’ve wasted an awful lot of your time,’ he said remorsefully.

‘Not at all. Now we’ll have a cup of coffee and a biscuit to restore our wasted tissues and at twelve you can treat me to lunch at the Majestic, where we shall see the chairman of the education committee entertaining his latest girlfriend. He and his wife are separated, so he always has some young thing in tow. I shall greet him effusively and make him squirm, because he knows I know that the floozie he will introduce to us as his niece is nothing of the sort.’

‘I’m afraid,’ said Mr Ronsonby, stirred to gallantry, ‘that you are a very naughty woman.’ He wagged a finger at her.

‘Toujours l’audace,’ said Miss Edmunds, ‘has been my motto since college days. I love prodding the mighty in their seats.’

Looking back at the immense building over which she reigned, Mr Ronsonby, as he left by way of the wide-open gates, after he had given her lunch, reflected that she had probably selected a wise motto for the furtherance of her career. She had certainly been audacious. He knew two of the men who had been shortlisted for the headship of this very desirable post and he had shared their surprise, although not their disappointment and discomfiture, when Miss Edmunds had received preferment. He was fully satisfied with his own job and, although all the additions which had been made to the original plans for the new Sir George Etherege school would still not make his buildings as large as hers, or his numbers as great, he had never wanted to be head of a mixed school, let alone to have a staff on which women figured as well as men. As for having a woman deputy head in place of the tried and trusted Mr Burke (and a woman deputy would almost certainly have had to be appointed if there were women and girls in the school)… Mr Ronsonby shook his head at the very thought of it.

‘Margaret,’ he said to the secretary when he got back that afternoon, ‘I don’t believe those Greeks who are supposed to have visited his digs to collect Pythias’s effects have any foundation in fact.’

‘My husband tells me the pro has a nice set of secondhand golf-clubs to dispose of, but I don’t suppose there’s any connection,’ said Mrs Wirrell. ‘I expect he often has second-hand clubs for sale.’

‘You had better tell the Detective-Inspector, all the same. I didn’t know you knew that Pythias’s golf-clubs and clothes had gone from his lodgings.’

‘Well, I do take all the incoming calls, don’t I? — and that includes the calls from the police. Right, I’ll ring them.’

Her telephone message sent Routh on another wild-goose chase. Reason told him that the person who had obtained possession of the bag of golf-clubs would hardly have sold the contents to the professional of the local golf-course, who would probably recognise them and ask some awkward questions. It also seemed unlikely that Pythias himself would have sold the clubs locally if he were planning to leave the neighbourhood either with or without the money for the school journey.

Routh went along the next morning and found the pro in the little shop adjoining the club-house. He was cleaning a set of irons. He knew Routh as a club member, although as one who had little time to spare for the most fascinating and infuriating game in the world.

‘Well, well!’ said the pro. ‘There’s nobody here yet to give you a game, but I’ll play you nine holes if you like, Mr Routh.’

‘No, Joe, I haven’t come for a game. I’m here on duty.’

‘Nobody’s robbed my till and the secretary hasn’t complained of missing anything from the club-house, has he?’

‘Nothing like that. I hear you’ve got a second-hand set of clubs for sale.’

‘A very old-fashioned lot of junk they are, too! Wouldn’t suit a gentleman of your ability. Ought to be sold as museum pieces.’

‘They didn’t belong to Mr Pythias, then?’

‘Good Lord, no! Though, for the amount of golf he played, they might as well have done.’

‘Could I have a look at them?’

‘Why not?’ The pro put down the polishing rag he had been using and went to the back of the shop. ‘Here we are,’ he said, coming back with a tatty-looking golf-bag. ‘There’s nothing like a full set of clubs here and those there are must have come out of the ark, like I told you.’

‘What on earth possessed you to buy them?’

‘It wasn’t buy, it was barter. I gave half a dozen used golf balls for them. They’ll come in useful for Mr Turnbull. He collects antiques.’

‘And you’re sure they’ve never belonged to Mr Pythias?’

‘Quite sure. I sold him his set only a couple of years ago. I’d know them again anywhere.’

‘He seems to have been rather a quiet sort, so far as I know. Did he have any friends among the members here?’

‘News to me if he did. He seldom came here, and when he did come it was usually to have a round with me or go round on his own, unless one of a foursome hadn’t turned up and he was pressed to play. I don’t suppose I saw him here more than twice a month, if that. His set of clubs was almost as good as new.’

‘If it should ever come your way, will you let me know?’

‘Sure.’ The pro eyed Routh speculatively and added, ‘What’s the big mystery?’

‘Well, he seems to have walked out of his digs and hasn’t gone back to his job since Christmas. There’s a rumour that he’s ill, but we think he may also be short of money,’ said Routh, juggling with what might be either fact or fiction.

‘Woman trouble?’

‘It usually is.’ They laughed and parted.

‘It wasn’t worth following up,’ said Routh, when he met Bennett again. ‘I’m getting tired of shooting at dead ducks.’

‘I’ve got that letter Pythias wrote to Mrs Buxton last summer, sir. She didn’t want me to have it and said she wanted it back as soon as we’d done with it.’ He handed over the letter and Routh took out an envelope and laid it and the letter side by side.

‘Well, I’m no handwriting expert,’ he said, ‘but I can’t imagine that the same person wrote the inscription on this envelope which contained those cheques and this letter from Pythias. What’s your view?’

‘That’s a very pretty little drawing on the inside page of the letter, sir, isn’t it?’

‘Agreed. What about it?’

‘I wonder whether a man who can sketch as well as that wouldn’t be quite capable of disguisng his handwriting, sir.’

‘They say a real handwriting expert can’t be fooled, even if the subject chooses to print his letters instead of using ordinary handwriting, or writes with the hand he doesn’t ordinarily use. I’ll get the Super to dig up some expert for us.’

When the envelope and the letter came back, the expert opinion was that they could not both have been scripted by the same hand.

‘So it wasn’t Pythias who sent the cheques to the bank,’ said Detective-Sergeant Bennett.

‘Unless he got somebody else to address the envelope,’ said Routh. ‘I think it’s time we dropped this case. If Ronsonby won’t charge Pythias with the theft of the money and then bunking off with it, there’s really nothing we can do.’