‘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.