by J F Straker
Avery frowned and shook his head. ‘He had probably passed here by then,’ he said.
‘At what time does the afternoon post usually arrive?’ asked Dick.
‘About half-past four or a little earlier,’ said Mrs Avery. ‘He’s very regular.’
Sergeant Ponsford looked at Avery.
‘Weren’t you rather optimistic, sir, expecting to meet him half an hour later? What made you think he hadn’t got as far as this?’
‘Because I didn’t pass him down the road, as I sometimes do. I guessed he must be late.’
‘It must have been an important letter you were expecting, sir, going out in weather like this to anticipate its delivery,’ said Inspector Pitt. ‘Bad luck you never got it.’
Both pairs of eyes switched their attention from the Sergeant to the Inspector.
‘There was a registered packet addressed to Mrs Avery,’ said Dick. ‘It wouldn’t have been that you were after?’
‘To me?’ A gleam shone in the woman’s eyes. ‘How did you know there was a letter for me, Robert?’
‘Damn it, woman, I didn’t!’ said her husband. ‘Haven’t I just explained that? I went to meet the postman, that’s all. No law against it, is there?’
For a moment there was silence in the room. Then Sergeant Ponsford said, ‘It sounds rather an odd thing to do, sir, if you’ll forgive my saying so. However you didn’t see the postman?’
‘No, I didn’t. Nor his bicycle.’
‘Meet anyone else?’
‘No. No pedestrians, anyway. There were one or two cars.’
‘In which direction were they going?’
‘Well, there was one coming from the town just as I left the house, and there was another parked near the eleventh tee, pointing the other way. I thought it was empty; but the driver can’t have been far away. It overtook me some minutes later, farther down the road.’
‘And how far down Grange Road did you go, Mr Avery?’
‘To No. 4.’ The man was more confident now. His previous unease had vanished. ‘I called there, but the people were out.’
‘You came straight home after that?’
‘Yes.’
‘Thank you, sir. Now, about this parked car. You are sure there was no one in it?’
‘I’ve said so, haven’t I? Of course, they may have been lying on the floorboards. I can’t answer for that.’
‘Did you notice the make or registration number?’ asked Dick, unperturbed by the other’s sarcasm.
‘It was an old Vauxhall — same model as mine. The number was 439, I think. But I haven’t a clue about the letters. They’re not as well lit as the numbers, being away from the rear light. Maybe that’s why I don’t remember them.’
Dick glanced inquiringly at his brother-in-law, who nodded.
‘You are sure it was the same car that overtook you later?’ he asked.
‘Damn it, man! Don’t you chaps ever believe anything you’re told at the first time of asking? Of course I’m sure.’
‘Thank you, sir. How far down the road did it overtake you?’
‘Somewhere around No. 6, I think.’
‘I suppose you didn’t notice the number of occupants?’
‘No, I didn’t. I was keeping my head down to shield my face from the rain. Anyway, it was too dark to see.’
Pitt nodded. That seemed reasonable enough.
‘There was one of the firm’s vans outside No. 19,’ Avery volunteered. ‘That would be Archer. I dare say he dropped in for his tea before taking the van to the garage. It wasn’t there when I returned, anyway.’
As they left the house Pitt glanced at the windows of No. 24. They were in darkness except for a faint, flickering glow behind the parlour curtains. ‘Mrs Gill will be glad to see us go,’ he said. ‘Now she can switch on the light and relax.’
‘What did you make of Avery?’ asked Dick.
‘Not much. He was lying about the letter, of course. But that was for his wife’s benefit, I imagine, not ours.’
‘But it was addressed to her.’
‘The registered letter was. He may have been expecting another. And I bet he’s on the receiving end of a rocket now. She didn’t look too pleased, did she?’
They reached the break in the houses without obtaining any news of the missing postman. He had not been seen by the occupants of Nos. 23 to 20, nor had any mail been delivered. As they passed the eleventh tee Dick said, ‘We’ll look there later. That’s where Avery said he saw the Vauxhall.’
‘It’s where I said would be a good place for a murder,’ Pitt reminded him. ‘Don’t give Avery all the credit.’
Maisie Archer was a cheerful little woman with untidy hair and few claims to beauty. When she opened the door of No. 19 to the police she had a black smudge on her forehead and her hands were grimed with coal-dust.
‘I’ve been cleaning out the kitchen grate,’ she excused herself. ‘If it’s my husband you want, he’s down at the Goat. You could get him there if it’s important. He doesn’t leave till closing-time as a rule.’
Dick explained the object of their visit.
‘Oh, the postman. Yes, Sam did say something about seeing him go past around five o’clock,’ said Mrs Archer. ‘Fancy that, now! Whatever can have happened to the poor man?’
But the Sergeant was not prepared to speculate on an answer to that question. ‘When did your husband go out, Mrs Archer?’ he asked.
She considered this before replying.
‘I wouldn’t like to say for certain, but it’d be about quarter past five, I think. He had to take the van back to the garage first, you see.’
Nos. 17 and 18 were a pair of semidetached villas, poorer in character than most of the houses in Grange Road. But Mr Morris, of No. 18, had no air of poverty about him. He was short and plump and genial, and a bright yellow waistcoat stretched like a gleaming desert across the vast expanse of his stomach. Smoking a cigar, he ushered them into a cheerful room in which a large television set was the outstanding piece of furniture.
‘No. No delivery here this afternoon,’ he said decisively, producing a bottle of whisky. ‘I was expecting a letter from my bookie, too. Had a good win Wednesday — over seven quid to come. Have a drink, gentlemen?’
They declined with regret. ‘Did you see the postman pass the house?’ asked Dick. ‘We’re trying to find out how far down the road he got.’
Mr Morris shook his head, poured himself a generous whisky, added the merest splash of soda, and sipped with relish. Inspector Pitt experienced a slight constriction of the throat, and moistened his dry lips with his tongue.
‘I’d like the name and address of your bookie, sir,’ said Dick. ‘We don’t yet know what’s happened to the mail; but if the money was actually in the post…’
He did not finish the sentence, but the other took his meaning readily.
‘Jack Oakie, 37 High Street,’ he said. ‘And the money would be in postal orders. He don’t pay me by cheque because I haven’t got a banking account. Don’t believe in paying a bank to look after my money. I can do it better myself.’
‘He’d send it by registered post, I suppose?’
‘No. Nothing under ten quid. He says it’s cheaper to insure against loss for small amounts.’
As they were leaving Dick said, ‘There was a car parked a short way up the road earlier this evening, Mr Morris. A Vauxhall. Anything to do with you?’
‘Nothing. Nothing at all,’ said Morris hastily. ‘I’ve had no visitors this evening, officer.’
‘A most hospitable gentleman,’ said Pitt, as the front door closed behind them. ‘Would his dislike of banking-accounts have any connection with income-tax, d’you think?’
‘I shouldn’t be surprised,’ said Dick.
The interior of No. 17 was very different from that of its neighbour. No covering of any sort adorned the bare boards of the hall; the carpet in the living-room was worn almost threadbare. Furniture was sparse and ill-assorted, and no fire burned in
the grate. Mrs Harris, who opened the door to them, apologised for the coldness of the room, explaining that she and her husband had been sitting in the kitchen to save fuel.
‘Oh, yes,’ she said nervously, in answer to Dick’s question. ‘He certainly called here. Two letters, I think there were. Or was it three? I know my husband put one in his pocket, but…well, I’d better get him for you, hadn’t I?’
She almost ran from the room.
‘Life comes a bit hard for the Harrises, I imagine,’ said Pitt. ‘It doesn’t look as though they’re burdened with too much money.’
William Harris was even more nervous than his wife. Yes, he said, the postman had delivered three letters that afternoon. No, he had not seen the man. He had not been out of the house since he returned from work at lunch-time.
‘Lunch-time? That’s early to knock off, isn’t it?’ said Dick.
‘Most of us are on short time up at Cabell’s,’ Harris explained. ‘I’m one of them.’
‘Hard luck,’ sympathised the Sergeant. ‘But about this postman now. You didn’t open the door when he called?’
‘No. I heard the knock, and when I went into the hall the letters were on the floor.’ He had a nervous trick of running the tips of the fingers of each hand across the ball of the thumb. They were moving now at an ever-increasing speed. ‘What’s up, Sergeant? With the postman, I mean.’
Dick explained that the man had disappeared.
‘Pinched the mail, d’you think? Well, it’s a pity he didn’t do it a bit earlier. He could have had my letters with pleasure. Bills, all of ‘em.’
‘So he got as far as this,’ said the Sergeant, when the two officers were outside the house. ‘And probably as far as No. 19. It looks as though your hunch about the eleventh tee has it, Loy.’
‘You can always depend on Aloysius Pitt,’ the Inspector said modestly. ‘I wonder what put the wind up friend Harris?’
‘We did, I imagine.’
‘I know that, you ass. But what made him lie to us?’
‘Lie? What are you getting at?’
‘Notice his slippers?’ asked the Inspector. ‘No? Well, I did. There was mud all round the soles — and yet he said he hadn’t been out since lunch. The rain didn’t start till after two o’clock, remember.’
‘Neither it did. And it’s been fine for the last few days. So he did go out this afternoon, eh?’
‘Looks like it. Come on, let’s investigate that ruddy tee.’
But the eleventh tee yielded nothing. They enlisted the aid of the constable and extended their search, moving in a line parallel to the road. The ground was open but uneven; and they had almost reached the end of the gap when the constable’s torch passed over and then came back to rest on something that made him call out to the others.
‘Here’s his bike, Sergeant,’ he said excitedly.
There was no mistaking the post-office red. ‘Well, that’s that,’ said Dick. ‘But no mail, and no postman.’
‘What now?’ asked Pitt. ‘Do we play round the course until we find the body?’
‘You’re getting too old for that sort of lark,’ said his brother-in-law. ‘I think this is where we report back to the Super. We might call in at the Goat on our way, though.’
The Goat was crowded. As they opened the door of the public bar waves of hot, beer-laden air engulfed them. They made their way to the bar amid a dying clatter of tongues.
The publican was nervous. He was not aware of having transgressed the law, but one never knew…He sighed with relief when Dick asked for Archer. ‘Sam?’ he said. ‘Over there, playing darts. The big fair-haired chap.’
If Archer’s companions were uneasy at this sudden appearance of the Law, Sam himself was unperturbed.
‘We’ll finish the game when I come out, lads,’ he said, finding the double top with his last dart and grinning broadly as he accepted the Sergeant’s invitation to step outside. ‘Shouldn’t be more than six months, I reckon. Not with my record.’
His testimony established what the police had already presumed: that the postman had certainly got as far as No. 19. ‘He was just pushing off on his bike when I looked out of the window. A few minutes to five that was, and raining like stink.’
Dick asked him at what time he had left the house.
‘Me? About twenty-past. I took the van back to the garage and collected my bike. Then I came on here. Never miss a game of darts if I can help it.’
*
Superintendent Howard greeted the Inspector cordially. ‘You’re in on this officially now,’ he said. ‘The Chief Constable got on to your department right away. The old man’s worried about this case; mail robberies are priority with him. The last one we had was the very devil. Of course, the post-office people will be sending down one of their own men; which is just as well, as I gather your department is damned shorthanded. Sorry about your leave, of course. But there it is.’
‘That’s all right, sir,’ Pitt assured him. ‘As long as I’m allowed to eat occasionally.’
The Superintendent laughed. ‘Tummy rumbling, eh? Well, I won’t keep you now. Sergeant Ponsford here will also be working on the case; I expect you’d like him with you. We’ll send out a party to search the links. Anything else?’
‘You may be able to trace that car. The Vauxhall, number 439. And I’d like any available information on Avery and Harris. They may fit in somewhere.’
‘Do you think the Vauxhall is connected with Laurie? That he cleared off in it, perhaps?’
‘Could be, sir; although the bicycle was dumped some way from where Avery said he saw the car. I think we’ll have to know a bit more before we start theorising.’
It was nearly ten o’clock when they reached the post-office, but Mr Templar was still there. He was distressed to hear that no trace had been found of the missing postman.
‘I simply can’t understand it,’ he exclaimed. ‘Why should a man like Laurie suddenly turn into a thief? I suppose the mail must have contained some articles of value — though he couldn’t even be sure of that — but most of it would be useless to him. Even if he gets away with it, how can he expect to profit sufficiently to compensate him for the loss of his job here? It just doesn’t make sense. Oh, I forgot! This is Mr Hennessy. He’s investigating on behalf of the Post Office.’
Hennessy, a fair-haired, cheerful man of medium height, shook hands with the two police officers. ‘I’d have been here before this,’ he said, ‘but I had a spot of bother with the car. How’s it going, Inspector? Any luck?’
‘Well, we’ve found his bike,’ said Pitt. ‘That’s about the lot to date.’
‘The mail is my main concern, of course,’ said the other. ‘What has happened to the man may turn out to be more your pigeon. But I dare say one will lead us to the other.’
Pitt nodded. ‘What I want now is information about post-office routine. For instance…‘ He turned to the postmaster. ‘Who sorts the mail preparatory to the postman taking it out for delivery?’
‘The man himself, as a rule,’ said Templar. ‘Sometimes the office staff gives him a hand. But Laurie sorted his own mail this afternoon — with a little help from me.’
‘Would he be able to memorise most of the addresses?’
‘I should think so. It becomes a habit, you know.’
‘Any particular system in the sorting?’
‘Yes. We divide the mail into bundles, each bundle containing the letters for a street or group of houses. The bundles are tied with string, so that if the postman happens to drop the letters in his hand it only disorganises the sorting of a small fraction of the mail.’
‘A long street like Grange Road would have to be subdivided, I suppose?’ said the Sergeant.
‘Yes. A side-turning or some other obvious break would be used as the division. Actually, I made up the mail myself for Grange Road, on account of it being new to Laurie. The first bundle went up to No. 19 — there’s a break in the houses there — and the second to Wadhams Lane.’
‘How about registered mail?’ asked Pitt.
‘Well, it’s signed for at every stage, of course. I give a receipt for it when it arrives here, the postman does the same when he takes it out, and the addressee when he receives it.’
‘Is it bundled separately?’
‘No. It goes in with the rest of the mail, and on top of each packet is the receipt form.’
‘Attached to it?’ asked Dick.
‘No.’
‘What would happen if a postman returned without the receipt?’ asked the Inspector. ‘Said he’d lost it, perhaps?’
‘There would be an inquiry, of course. If the addressee admitted receiving the packet I imagine no further action would be necessary. If not — well, that would depend on the result of the inquiry. But the postman is the responsible person. It’s his pigeon.’
Hennessy, when invited by Pitt to accompany them on their proposed visit to Mrs Laurie, declined the invitation. ‘I want to work from this end first,’ he said. ‘Remember I’ve only just got here. But I’ll keep in touch with you fellows.’
As they neared Tilnet Close Dick said, ‘I’m not looking forward to this. I hate interviewing the wives. And she will probably be a tearful young woman of unspeakable proportions. They always are.’
But Jane Laurie was more frightened than tearful, and neither Dick Ponsford nor any other man could have found fault with her proportions. In fact, she was a remarkably beautiful young woman. She wore a red dressing-gown with a low-cut neck, and a transparent ninon nightgown showed between the folds of the gown as she walked. Jet-black hair fell in deep curls to her shoulders. Her eyes were grey and set wide apart, her skin almost translucent in its clarity. The Sergeant decided that John Laurie must have had a very strong motive for absenting himself from such a charmer.
The living-room into which she led them was untidy and not over-clean. The fire had died in the grate, but the room was still warm. ‘I’m sorry I’m not dressed,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t expecting anyone.’ Her voice was disappointing. It had a thin, tinny quality, and an obvious striving after refinement it did not quite achieve. ‘Was it about my husband you wanted to see me? You’ve found him?’
