‘To the best of your knowledge, did he get on with the other masters?’
‘So far as I know, yes, he did. My staff are a very united and friendly bunch.’
‘Can you tell me anything more about this money the landlady says he was carrying? You cannot name the exact sum, but is there anything else you know about it?’
‘I know people were very slow at paying it in to him. Practically all of it, I believe, came in on his deadline, which was the last day of term. He was occupied during that last school dinner-hour, and that meant that he took the money home with him, no doubt with the intention of placing it in a safe deposit for the weekend, as the bank would not be open to receive it over the counter until the Monday morning. That was too long a time to leave it unprotected.’
‘How many persons had opted to make the trip, sir?’
‘According to the figures I was given, sixty boys, ten parents and six staff. It was a package deal, of course, and three members of staff went free of charge, as each was responsible for twenty boys. The other three opted to accompany them and I imagine there was some arrangement about sharing expenses and all six taking equal responsibility.’
‘But not only those who were to make the journey would have known about the deadline for payment, I take it? The rest of the staff would have known, too, and the rest of the boys. A good many parents, too, whether they were going or not.’
‘Undoubtedly. So far as I am aware, the whole town could have known. It is the first time we have embarked upon quite so ambitious a project, and I have no doubt that, in a town of this comparatively small size, a great deal of general interest has been taken in it.’
‘It’s a pity about the lapse of time before the disappearance of the gentleman was reported, sir.’
‘I agree, but if the landlady did not report it, I hardly see who else could have done so. When the school is on holiday one hardly keeps tabs on the staff.’
‘These friends with whom I understand he was to spend Christmas. You wouldn’t know anything about them, I suppose? The landlady doesn’t seem to have seen anything of them at any time.’
‘I know neither their name nor where they live. My assumption, for what it’s worth, is that Mr Pythias never got to them.’
‘In that case, wouldn’t they have reported him as missing, sir? Presumably they would have been expecting him.’
‘One would think they would at least have made contact with the landlady, although my secretary tells me that she may not have been very anxious to encourage visitors to her rooms.’
‘Well, it’s all rather unsatisfactory, sir. If you don’t mind my asking, haven’t you a senior member of staff who might have his finger on the staff pulse, so to speak, somebody in touch in a different way from yourself with the other schoolmasters? It might be helpful to get his views.’
‘Somebody who is constantly in the staff room with the other men, you mean. Yes, there is Mr Burke, my deputy.’ Mr Ronsonby went to the secretary. ‘Margaret, could you page Mr Burke? He should be with the sixth in the library.’
‘Very good, Mr Ronsonby. Have you decided what I’m to do about this letter from the travel agents which came this morning?’
‘Ring them and say we’ll settle with them before the end of the week. It will take me that time to arrange to pay them the money.’
Mr Burke, a black-haired, blue-eyed man with a chin as blue as close-shaving of his face could make it, presented himself and greeted the inspector as an old friend.
‘Rodney is a pushover for his A-level English,’ he said. ‘Maths less certain, but stands a fair chance if he’s lucky with the questions, I’m told.’
‘That’s very gratifying, sir, but I haven’t come up about Rodney. You will know, I’m sure, that there is some anxiety about the non-appearance of Mr Pythias this term.’
‘Lord, yes. Speculation is rife. All sorts of rumours are flying around.’
‘How do you mean, sir?’
‘I’ve heard all shades of opinion expressed, from murder with intent to rob down to (from a graceless lad in the fourth year whose form master repeated it in the staff-room) “The Old Python has done a bunk with the boodle.” ’
‘Could there be any substance in such an opinion, sir?’
‘From what I know of Pythias, there is not a miserable milligram of weight in it, and I cautioned the staff about retailing jokes of that kind. Still, there it is. These things are bound to be said when a man disappears without leaving any tracks and was carrying a considerable amount of ready cash. Some of the money was in the form of cheques, but quite a lot was in big coarse banknotes. I told Pythias at the time that, if only he’d mentioned the matter, I would have found somebody to take on his dinner duty or seen to it myself so that he could get to the bank that Friday morning, but he said he hadn’t thought of it and that the money would be put away safely.’
‘So he didn’t seem perturbed to have a large sum of money, some of it easily negotiable, in his charge?’
‘Lord, no. He said he had only got to bung it in a night safe as soon as he’d had his tea and I’m sure that’s what he intended to do. He said Mrs Buxton — that’s his landlady — didn’t like him to keep tea waiting, as she always cooked him a bit of fish on Friday evenings, so he would go home to tea and then park the cash.’
‘So you talked to him quite a bit, sir, on that breaking-up Friday afternoon?’
‘Only casually, during the afternoon break. There were the usual jokes from the others to the effect that he would be worth robbing, of course, but there was nothing in that.’
‘And he seemed perfectly normal, so far as you could judge?’
‘Oh, yes, absolutely normal. Just smiled at the jokes, that’s all.’
‘Was he popular with the boys, sir?’
‘Neither popular nor unpopular, like most of us. He was an experienced teacher and nobody took any liberties, but I don’t think the boys either liked or disliked him; they simply accepted him for what he was, a man capable of doing his job and getting them through their exams.’
‘And the staff, sir?’
‘Much the same. He had no close friends on the staff, but I’m sure he had never got up against anybody. He wasn’t the quarrelsome type.’
‘You wouldn’t know anything about the friends he proposed to visit for Christmas, sir?’
‘Not a thing. We’re a friendly, co-operative lot in the staffroom, but we know almost nothing of one another’s private lives. Wives turn up to the school play and on sports days and are introduced to the rest of the staff or not, as the case may be and as opportunity offers — which isn’t often, because we are all so busy on these occasions. I imagine it’s the same at most schools — friendly atmosphere in the staffroom, but little or no contact once we’re off the premises.’
‘And I have little opportunity, either,’ said the headmaster, ‘to meet the staff’s visitors. There are always the mayor and mayoress and, of course, the hordes of parents, who, like the poor in the Bible, are always with us, especially on these occasions.’
‘Well, if that’s all Mr Burke can tell us… ’ said the inspector.
‘Afraid it is,’ said Burke. ‘Anything more, Headmaster?’
‘Oh, no, no. Sorry to have interrupted your lesson.’ When Burke had gone, Mr Ronsonby said to the inspector that he hoped ‘this worrying business’ could be kept dark, at any rate for the time being, ‘There is no problem about the money,’ he said, ‘It will be made good. I hope, therefore, that it won’t be necessary to put emphasis on Pythias’s disappearance.’
‘You can rely upon our discretion, sir, but I can’t go bail for the press. Somebody will have leaked things to them, I’m afraid. There is bound to be speculation among your scholars, too, and that will soon reach the parents.’
‘Perhaps I can find a way of dealing with that situation. I will make an announcement at tomorrow’s assembly that Pythias is ill, but that I fully expect him to be back in school before the end of
term. Surely we shall know something about him by then.’
‘It’s to be hoped so, sir. We shall do our best to trace his movements after he left his lodgings last December, but it may be a long job unless we strike lucky, especially as you want to avoid publicity as much as possible.’
‘Gone missing, with all that money on him?’ said the sergeant who had accompanied Routh. ‘Looks a pretty open case to me, sir, though we could hardly say so to the headmaster.’
‘I know, nor he to us. We couldn’t expect a headmaster to foul his own nest, but the man and the money have both disappeared and there’s been no report of any violence. I think you had better go round and lean on that landlady. She knows more than she’s said, I’ll be bound. There’s a husband. Find out where he was and what he was doing on that Friday night. His wife told me he works as a van man for Foster’s the furniture removers. Later on we may have to see what they’ve got to say about him.’
‘There were some cheques as well as money, it seems, sir. Wonder whether they were made out to the tour people or to Pythias himself?’
‘Good point. I’ll get on to the teachers who were going on the trip. They will have paid by cheque, no doubt. As for finding the chap, my opinion is that he’s probably in Greece by now. For a man with money and a passport and, as far as we know, no ties, it’s the simplest of matters to disappear. More than three weeks have gone by since the fellow was last seen by anybody who knew him. The trail is dead cold.’
‘A good many people knew about this expedition, sir, and that Pythias had the money.’
‘If he’s as honest as he is supposed to be, I can’t think why, if he couldn’t get to the bank himself on that Friday, he didn’t ask one of the other masters to pay in for him. Surely one of those who had paid up for the trip would have done him that much of a favour, if only to make sure that his own contribution was safe. It looks very bad indeed for Pythias, I’d say. I’m pretty certain in my own mind that, underneath all this loyalty to a member of his staff, that headmaster thinks as we do.’
‘You mean that Pythias has cut his stick and taken the money with him? I don’t believe there is any other reasonable way to look at it, but is there any chance the head will admit that’s what he thinks, sir?’
‘I doubt it. It isn’t so much Pythias as the good name of the school which is involved. Well, we’ll make a few enquiries, but if nobody will make a move to charge Pythias, or his body doesn’t turn up, or the man himself with a complaint of being mugged, there isn’t a lot we can do. All we know for certain is that he had the money and both he and the cash have disappeared.’
‘I certainly think the Buxtons need leaning on, sir.’
‘Well, have a try, but don’t go too far. We have never had any complaints about the woman from any tenants of hers or from any of her neighbours. It’s a perfectly respectable boarding-house and has been going for years. Oh, well, you go and have a word with her. I’m going back to the school. They won’t be expecting me again so soon, and an element of surprise is often effective. I’m going to sort out some of the masters who opted to go on this trip to Greece and see whether I can’t turn up a lead from one or other of them.’
This tactic met with little success. The only morsel of information which seemed to offer Routh any kind of a lead came from the junior geography master who, because he and Pythias shared the same subject, was not only going on the tour to Athens, but was in closer touch with Pythias than was any other member of the staff — although, as he himself admitted, that was not saying very much.
What his information amounted to was that Pythias had mentioned no plans to leave his bedsitter at Mrs Buxton’s house to stay with friends, either on that breaking-up Friday or on the following Monday, the day Mrs Buxton asserted that she had expected him to go on holiday for Christmas.
‘He told me he expected to get in some indoor putting practice to improve his game, that’s all,’ said the young schoolmaster, ‘but had not really decided. It sounded more like staying at his digs to me.’ Routh went back to his office and waited for his sergeant’s report on the visit to Mrs Buxton.
‘Buxton wasn’t home from work,’ said Detective-Sergeant Bennett, ‘but we don’t need him at present, so far as I can see, sir, because, according to his wife, he wasn’t home when Pythias took himself off that Friday night.’
‘No, we don’t need him yet, if we need him at all. I’ve just heard, though, that Pythias wasn’t expecting to leave his digs for Christmas, so either he had a worse row with Mrs Buxton than we know about or else he was lying to that young colleague of his and was deliberately laying a false trail about his movements, both to his colleague and to Mrs Buxton. I’m going to that house again and I’m going to find one of the lodgers — more than one, if I can manage it — who saw Pythias go out on that Friday night and can give me some idea of what time it was. Then it will be hard if we can’t turn up somebody who saw him in the street or at the railway station or somewhere. I don’t like all this double talk he seems to have indulged in. It sounds mighty suspicious to me, with all that money involved.’
4
Parade of Tenants
« ^ »
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.
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