by J F Straker
*
Robert Avery paused to search hastily through a few circulars lying on the hall table. Then, still wearing his raincoat, he pushed open the lounge door. His wife looked up from her knitting and scowled at him. She was not a pretty woman, and the scowl served to increase and highlight the lines on her face.
‘You’re late,’ she said accusingly.
Avery was accustomed to the scowl. But he was relieved to see that it appeared to be no more belligerent than usual. There was nothing in her words or her expression to suggest that the letter had come.
‘I was delayed,’ he said curtly, too worried to seek to pacify her. ‘Has the postman been?’
‘No. And don’t tell me what delayed you, will you? And take off your raincoat and those wet shoes before you come in here. The woman did the room this morning.’
He hesitated. ‘I think I’ll go and meet the postman,’ he said. ‘He’s late.’
He hurried from the room, ignoring his wife’s astonished and angry protest. Eve might have relented, he thought. But it was safer to assume that she had not, that her letter was already in the post — to be delivered that very afternoon, perhaps. If he could intercept it…It was unlikely Eve would write a second time…
He turned right towards Tanmouth on leaving the house, putting his head down to protect his face from the stinging rain. It was a relief to know that he was in time. He had thought, when the old man had sent for him just as he was leaving, that he would never make it. Nor would he have done so had not the postman been so late. Praises be, he thought gratefully, to whoever or whatever had delayed the man.
Headlights from an oncoming car illumined him briefly. It was gathering speed, and water sprayed from its wheels as it passed, spattering his trousers. An Austin, he noticed. Probably the Alsters, off on their holiday. A late hour to start, though.
A new doubt assailed him. What if the postman refused to hand over the letter? He would be within his rights, for it would be addressed to Susan. It would be pushed through the letterbox of No. 25, Susan would pounce on it — as she always did — and that would be that!
He stopped, turning his back to the wind and the rain. Should he go home and hope to intercept the letter there? But Susan was already suspicious, no doubt, and would be waiting in the hall or peering from a front window. Better to go on. The postman knew him well; there shouldn’t be any difficulty.
His mind made up, Avery turned and plodded on down the road.
*
‘Good gracious me!’ exclaimed Mrs Gill. ‘Why on earth is Mr Avery going out again on a night like this? He’s only just come in.’
Miss Plant could offer no reasonable explanation apart from a suggestion that Mrs Avery’s tongue might have been too much for the poor man.
‘But why didn’t he take the car?’ said Mrs Gill. ‘Never walks a foot unless he has to. Well, if he meets the postman I hope he gives him a piece of his mind. I certainly will when I see him.’
Had she but known it, her threat was an idle one. Neither she nor anyone else in Grange Road was destined to set eyes again on that particular postman.
2—A Lovely Spot for a Murder
Detective-Inspector Richard Aloysius Pitt (‘Loy’ to his intimates) leaned back in the armchair and surveyed with satisfaction his slippered feet resting on a log by the side of the fire.
‘I had almost forgotten I possessed a pair of slippers,’ he said. ‘Must be months since I had the leisure to wear them.’
‘Make the most of it while you’re here, then,’ said his sister. ‘Tomorrow I might even give you breakfast in bed.’
He chuckled. It was an odd sound to emerge from such a gaunt and forbidding face, and one that his colleagues seldom heard. But Wendy Ponsford experienced no surprise. She knew her brother better than most.
‘Don’t overdo it,’ he warned. ‘I might decide to retire and become a parasite, battening on you and Dick for the rest of my life. It’s a tempting thought.’
Not for you it isn’t,’ she answered. ‘Leave is one thing, retirement another. It wouldn’t suit you at all. Come to that, it wouldn’t suit me and Dick either. You’re an uncomfortable person to have around the place for long.’
‘Perhaps you’re right,’ her brother agreed; ‘although only a sister would be so uncomplimentary.’
Wendy Ponsford looked at the clock and stood up. ‘Seven-fifteen. Time to get the supper; Dick’ll be home soon. Help yourself to a drink if you want one, Loy. And don’t let the fire out.’
Left to himself Pitt sank farther into the armchair, lifted his feet to the mantelshelf, and closed his eyes. He was too comfortable to bestir himself, even for a glass of beer. But he was not destined to relax for long. The telephone rang in the hall. ‘Answer that, Loy, will you?’ his sister called from the kitchen. ‘My hands are covered with flour.’
He heaved himself up resignedly and padded out to the hall.
‘That you, Loy?’ came his brother-in-law’s loud voice over the wire. Detective-Sergeant Ponsford, slightly deaf, always shouted on the telephone. He meant to make himself heard. ‘Good — you’re the chap I want. Listen. A ruddy postman has vanished; absconded with the mail, probably. I’m going round now to the G.P.O. to get the details. Thought you might like to come along.’
‘Think again,’ said the Inspector. ‘This is the first evening of the first spot of leave that has been granted to yours truly within living memory, and I don’t intend to turn it into a busman’s holiday. And I might add that Wendy is now preparing what from here smells like an extremely tasty supper. I’ll think of you and your postman while I’m eating it.’
‘The Super thought it was a good idea,’ said Dick.
‘Do you mean to tell me, you — you miserable policeman, you — that you had the nerve to let the Superintendent know I was here?’ exploded Inspector Pitt.
‘Come off it, Loy,’ said his brother-in-law. ‘I’m not saying we’ll need you; but you know damn well that if we do no one’s going to worry two hoots about your being on leave. Or maybe you haven’t heard that there’s a shortage of coppers? You’re on the spot, Loy — in more senses than one. So I thought (and the Super agrees with me) that you might as well be in on this from the beginning. Just in case, you understand. Nothing definite.’
‘Wrong again, my lad,’ said Pitt. ‘Here’s something quite definite: I’m not playing.’
‘I’ll pick you up in ten minutes,’ said Dick. ‘Don’t keep me waiting. I want my supper, too.’
He rang off before his brother-in-law could reply.
‘Was that Dick?’ called Wendy from the kitchen. ‘Don’t say he’s going to be late again?’
‘There are many adjectives I could apply to your wretched husband,’ Inspector Pitt said with feeling. ‘I only regret that “late” is not one of them.’
Mr Templar was a very worried man. Nothing like this, he said, had happened in all his experience as postmaster at Tanmouth.
‘He should have returned here by ten past six at the latest,’ he explained to Dick. (Inspector Pitt stayed in the background. His was a watching brief he had insisted on that. He would take no active part in the investigations until officially involved.) ‘The men work on a basis of two minutes per house, and we can gauge fairly accurately the time needed to complete a delivery.’
‘What’s the man’s name?’ asked Dick.
‘Laurie. John Laurie.’
‘Address?’
‘25 Tilnet Close. Off Hamshott Lane.’ The Sergeant nodded. ‘Anyone been to look for him?’
‘Yes. I sent a mail-van round the route at 6.30. No sign of him, the driver said; although it would be easy to miss him in weather like this, of course. They went to his house, too. Laurie had no reason to call there — it would have been most irregular had he done so, for Tilnet Close isn’t on his round — but I was taking no chances. Then I tried the police-station and the hospital; I thought he might have met with an accident. After that there was nothing I could do b
ut call in the police. And I hope to goodness you find him soon, Sergeant.’
‘We’ll do our best, Mr Templar. Was he on a bike?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can you give me a list of the roads he was due to visit?’
‘I have it here,’ said the postmaster. ‘I doubt if you’ll need it, though. I’ve telephoned to selected persons on his round — some of those who were due to receive registered packets — and it seems fairly certain he ceased delivery in Grange Road.’
‘Well, that’s a help,’ said Dick. ‘And Grange Road is a nice quiet spot in which to disappear. Any idea how far down the road he got?’
‘Yes, roughly. A Miss Weston, at No. 13, said she saw him pass the house and go next door. I tried No. 25 next; 14 to 24 are either not on the telephone or did not reply. Laurie didn’t call there, nor at 31 either; yet he had registered packets for both those houses.’ He paused, frowning. ‘That’s odd. Now I come to think of it, he also had a registered packet for No. 13. I wonder why he didn’t deliver that, as he actually passed the house?’
‘Swelling the loot, perhaps,’ the Sergeant suggested.
‘But he delivered them correctly as far as the beginning of Grange Road,’ the postmaster objected. ‘To those I telephoned, anyway.’
‘We’ll sort that out later,’ said Dick. ‘The first thing is to circulate Laurie’s description (I suppose he is still in uniform, which will help), and then get down to Grange Road and make a few inquiries on the spot.’
‘There’s one other point,’ said Mr Templar. ‘Laurie was not on his usual round. Normally he works the Cambersleigh Park district; did so this morning, in fact. It was only because Gofer was taken ill at lunch-time that I switched Laurie on to it. He’d worked over that way some years back.’
‘He’d know the route, then?’
‘Most of it. But there’s been a lot of new building north of the golf-links, and last year we altered some of the rounds. It so happens that Grange Road would be new to Laurie. But I don’t see how that can be important, do you?’
‘What sort of chap is this Laurie?’ asked Inspector Pitt, unable to resist taking a hand. ‘Has he been with the post-office long?’
Mr Templar eyed him with interest. The Inspector’s silence had puzzled him. ‘He’s pretty average,’ he said. ‘Flies off the handle at times, and inclined to be moody. But he’s a steady-living chap; doesn’t drink, doesn’t smoke. He’s been with us nearly six years. Got married the year before last.’
‘What are his outside interests?’
‘I’m told he’s a keen fisherman,’ said the postmaster. ‘I don’t know about any other interests.’
Inspector Pitt, apart from occasional wistful references to the supper he had not eaten, had recovered his good humour by the time he and Sergeant Ponsford had left the post-office. The mystery of the missing postman had begun to intrigue him.
‘If Laurie really has pinched what remained of the mail it seems a daft job to pull,’ said Sergeant Ponsford. ‘Why deliver half of it? Why not take the lot? You’d think he’d have stuck to the registered stuff, anyway. There can’t be much profit in Christmas cards and bills.’
‘What sort of a district is Cambersleigh Park?’ asked Pitt.
‘Not as grand or as green as it sounds. Pretty near a slum, I’d say. Why?’
‘Just a fancy that occurred to me. We’re taking it for granted that the mail has been stolen, but maybe it’s only missing. Maybe Laurie just dumped it somewhere.’
‘Why should he do that?’
‘To get rid of it, of course — along with his job. Suddenly became fed up and decided to clear out. Tramping the streets day after day must become monotonous; perhaps the change of locality made him realise what a mug he was to go on with it. So off he went — just like that.’
‘And where would he go?’
‘Anywhere, so long as it wasn’t Cambersleigh Park.’
Sergeant Ponsford stared at him. This was a new Pitt. ‘Cut out the James Barrie act,’ he said. ‘A man doesn’t get notions like that in this sort of weather. If he rebelled at all it would be in favour of home and a warm fire.’
The Inspector sighed. ‘I know. As I said, it was only a fancy. Blame it on my empty stomach and the leave that looks like being cancelled.’
Grange Road ran parallel to the coast, with only the golf-links between it and the sea. Where the houses petered out it began to climb the Downs, eventually joining the Tanmouth — Durnbourne road. The houses, all on the north side of the road, were varied in size and character — bungalows, villas, chalets, detached and semidetached — and apparently owned no allegiance to town-planning. Because of the uneven lie of the land Nos. 11 to 17 were below the level of the road, and those from No. 22 onward were increasingly high above it. It was, in fact, an untidy-looking road.
Yet it had a charm of its own.
Between Nos. 19 and 20 there was a break in the houses of some two hundred yards, where the golf-links crossed over to the north side of the road. Most of Grange Road was badly lit, but along this stretch there was no lighting at all.
‘A lovely spot for a murder,’ said Inspector Pitt, peering out of the rain-streaked windows of the car. ‘Let’s hope the missing postman didn’t come to a sticky end on the thirteenth tee.’
‘That’s the eleventh,’ Dick corrected him. ‘I think we’d better start at No. 24 and work back from there. We know he didn’t get as far as No. 25.’
If Mrs Gill had had the slightest suspicion that anything further of interest might occur that evening she would never have left the parlour window. She hastened back to it at the sound of the car and peered between the curtains. Visitors for the Averys, she decided. But as the headlights were dimmed and she saw the beam of a torch approaching up her own garden path, she almost ran to the front door in her eagerness.
The appearance of two men in raincoats and trilby hats, and behind them a more shadowy but unmistakable police-constable, was one of the major events in Mrs Gill’s fifty-eight years. She clutched the door-handle for support as they filed past her into the little hall. Then, remembering her manners, she darted ahead of them into the parlour and began to stoke the dying fire. She did not wish them to escape her too soon.
‘We won’t bother you for long, ma’am,’ said Dick. ‘We just want to know if the postman called here this evening.’
Mrs Gill was all attention.
‘He certainly did not,’ she said. ‘And I’d very much like to know what became of him. He never passed this house, that I’ll swear. Miss Plant and I — she lives down the road, at No. 3 — we were sitting here, right in the window, having our tea. And I kept a special lookout for the man, seeing as I was expecting a letter.’
Inspector Pitt peered out of the bay-window at the gate, clearly illumined by the streetlamp outside, and nodded to himself.
‘You couldn’t have missed him, I suppose?’ asked the Sergeant. ‘I understand he was late this evening.’
Mrs Gill, thus put on her mettle, proceeded to justify herself.
‘Miss Plant saw him outside No. 5,’ she said. ‘Twenty-five past four, that was. She came straight here, and we sat over our tea until half-past five. We hadn’t drawn the curtains, either. It wouldn’t take him an hour to get here, would it?’
‘It shouldn’t,’ Dick agreed.
‘I hope nothing’s happened to him,’ Mrs Gill continued. ‘Such a nice man always so cheerful and polite. Oh, I’m forgetting. It was a different postman, wasn’t it? Not Mr Gofer.’
‘How did you know that, ma’am?’
‘Miss Plant told me. A rather surly little man, she said he was. Just grunted when she said good-evening to him. Still, weather like this is enough to make anyone bad-tempered, isn’t it?’
The Sergeant agreed that it was.
‘What can have happened to him, I wonder? Miss Plant suggested he might have been murdered by Miss Fratton. She was only joking, of course. But it makes one think, doesn’t it?’
Interested but bewildered, the Sergeant begged for enlightenment.
‘Miss Fratton? She lives at No. 14 she’s supposed to have a “down” on postmen. Goodness knows why. But then she’s half-crazy anyway.’ She paused thoughtfully. ‘Why not call next door at No. 25? Mr Avery ought to have seen the postman when he went out.’
‘When was that, Mrs Gill?’
‘Just after five o’clock. He had only been home a few minutes, and then out he pops again. On foot, too, which is most unusual for him. He nearly always takes the car. I happened to notice him because a car was passing at the time. And he was going towards the town, so he should have met the postman, shouldn’t he?’
‘Did you notice what time he returned?’ asked Dick.
‘Oh, yes. At half-past five.’
This prompt answer did not surprise the detectives. It was obvious that Mrs Gill took a deep interest in the affairs of her neighbours. Outside in the street Pitt said, ‘I suppose we look in at No. 25?’
Dick nodded. ‘I suppose so. I don’t like pandering to the old girl’s nosey-parkering, but we can’t afford to disregard her remarks about this chap Avery. He seems a better bet than the Fratton woman, despite all that talk of murder.’
Susan Avery was surprised, Robert Avery surprised and uneasy. As Sergeant Ponsford explained the reason for their visit Pitt watched them both. The woman was about forty-five, and looked as though she had been that age for many years; there were no traces left of youth in her hard, unhappy face. It was difficult to realise that she had once been young, and presumably possessed of some attraction. Avery was about the same age as his wife, but had been endowed with more good looks. His dark hair was greying at the temples, his suit was new and well cut, his hands manicured. A bit of a dandy, the Inspector thought him, and no doubt a success with the ladies.
No, said Mrs Avery, she had not seen the postman that afternoon, nor had any letters been delivered at the house. That was what she had told the people at the post-office when they had rung up; why were they making fresh inquiries now? ‘My husband went out to look for him when he got home at five o’clock,’ she added. ‘But you didn’t see him, did you, Robert?’
