No Winding-Sheet

more credible behind the disappearance of Pythias than that he’s absconded with the money. On the face of it, he and Peters are the last among those tenants who rather desperately need some extra cash.’

The interview with Buxton took place at the police station. Routh arranged this as a piece of gamesmanship, hoping to alarm the man into admitting something which might be of use to the police, for Routh had come to the conclusion that a crime had been committed and that Pythias was the victim not the perpetrator of it.

He admitted to himself that, in the face of such evidence as he had, this was an illogical conclusion, but, although he had never been called upon before to investigate a serious crime, he had become adept at summing up the petty criminals who had been brought to his notice and he already distrusted Rattock, Buxton and Durswell and had taken a personal dislike (which he did his best to discount) to the rather unctuous Peters of the town-hall staff.

Buxton turned up at the police station in the blustering mood which Routh had expected and expressed himself freely.

‘Look, what the hell is all this?’ he said. ‘My employers aren’t going to like me having to come here, you know. I got my job to think about. My job’s depending on my good name. I got a reputation to keep up, haven’t I?’

‘Just a few questions which I didn’t want to ask in front of your wife,’ said Routh.

‘Oh, like that, is it? Well, let me tell you, Mr Inspector Nosey, as I don’t have no women in bed on the sly. I got another chap on the van with me, haven’t I? Have to, with beds and wardrobes and sideboards and God knows what to lug about. You ask my mate. You ask Bill Watts what I gets up to when we’re on the road. Go on, you ask him.’

Routh got nothing helpful and went back to the house to see Durswell. Mrs Buxton greeted him without joy and asked when this persecution of the innocent was going to cease. Yes, Durswell was in, as it happened. She took Routh up to his room. The commercial traveller cordially invited him to have a drink. Routh politely refused and put his first question.

‘You asked me that the last time,’ said Durswell. ‘What did I think when Pythias gave up staying here? And when did I see him last? Well, that would have been on the Friday before the Friday he went off. He offered to take my rent in to Ma, if I wanted to get round to the Dog and Duck. As for t’other, well, I assumed he’d had a bust-up of some sort with Ma Buxton, but I can’t honestly say I thought much about it at all. Got plenty on my own plate without bothering about other people’s problems. I’m not here all that often, anyway, so I don’t know much about the other chaps.’

‘Do you mean that from the time you and he met when he offered to hand in your rent, you have never seen him again?’

‘That’s right, like I told you before. For one thing, I was not in for supper all the next week and, by the time I did come back here, he was gone. After supper, by the time I got in those nights, everybody had gone to his own pad or to the Dog and Duck for a drink, so you wouldn’t expect me to see anybody if I got in after about nine-thirty.’

Peters, the town-hall employee, questioned along the same lines, repeated his former assertions. He remembered the Friday in question for a particular reason. The mayor’s Christmas party to the councillors was looming and it had come to Peters’s notice — he did not explain how — that the mayoral drinks cupboard was in need of replenishment. At four o’clock, therefore, he had telephoned the only off-licence in the town to ask that replacements should be sent up forthwith.

‘So I had to wait at the town hall for them,’ he explained, ‘and that made me later than usual in getting home. Still, I had telephoned Mrs Buxton to tell her that I should be kept. She serves individual high teas instead of a sit- down supper on Fridays, as you have been informed, I believe. Mine is always bacon and sausages and I did not want to be presented with a dried-up plateful which had been kept hot in the oven. Anyhow, Pythias must have left the house before I got in. He was not there to pay his rent, so I suppose he had settled before he left. The last time I saw him? Well, I suppose it would have been at supper on the Thursday, wouldn’t it? I am sure he would have left the house before I got back on the Friday. I not only had to wait for the off-licence — they were very late with the delivery because they were inundated with Christmas orders — but I then had to see to the proper stowage of the bottles and sign a chit for them.

‘What kind of man was Pythias? It is quite beyond me to say. We all had our private quarters and there was never very much conversation at supper-time. Hungry, tired men are not given to loquacity at meal-times. He was quiet and a member of a respectable profession, but, of course, it would hardly do for an official in my position to become too friendly with one of the council’s schoolmasters.’

‘Oh, why not?’ asked Routh, who, with a lapse into unprofessional bias, was again finding Peters somewhat insufferable. ‘A proper Uriah Heap’ was the way he described him to Sergeant Bennett.

‘Jockeying for preferment, corruption, undue influence with regard to obtaining headships — you would be surprised, Inspector, at what people will stoop to. Was I surprised when Pythias did not come back to this house? Neither surprised nor the reverse. It made no difference whatever to my life-style and anyhow it was no business of mine. I have learnt in my journey through this uncertain world where traps and stratagems await the unwary, that to mind one’s own business and nobody else’s is the secret of a successful and problem-free career. I hope you agree.’

Routh toyed with the idea of having another go at the artist in the attic, but thought it was an interview which would keep.

5

Hounds in Leash

« ^ »

There have been developments, sir,’ said Detective-Sergeant Bennett a day or two later.

‘Wish I could say the same,’ said Routh. ‘Tell me.’

‘I went round to the lodgings again, as you suggested I should, but the day before I got there Mrs Buxton had had visitors. They came to collect the gear Pythias left behind him.’

‘She didn’t let them have it?’