‘And find out whether Buxton had an assignment to deliver or collect furniture in Springdale at about the right time? Yes, of course I could, but I don’t believe it would help much. What’s forty miles in a van which can bucket along at fifty on open roads? There’s very little congestion on the roads around here until you actually get into the town.’
‘The firm probably checks his mileage and his fuel consumption, don’t you think?’
‘He probably pays for any extra journeys himself. You know, I’m beginning to like the look of things less and less. If Buxton posted those cheques, it means he’s got the rest of the money. If he’s got the money, it can only mean that Pythias is dead. If Pythias is dead, either he was murdered or else he succumbed to a heart attack or something. If he did, and the Buxtons took the banknotes and the cheques, he must have died in the Buxtons’ house and the Buxtons have concealed the death. I’ll try the firm and see what comes of that. Of course, Buxton and his van may not have come into the matter at all. Springdale has a railway station. Pythias himself may have posted the cheques and hung on to the rest of the money. I don’t suppose he could have hit upon any way of converting the cheques to his own use. They were not made payable to him, but were entered in a special school fund.’
The firm gave Routh no help. They had nothing against Buxton and they had not sent him to deliver any orders in Springdale for nearly a year. They did their best, looked up their order books and all the rest of their delivery records, but came up with no information from which the Detective-Inspector could obtain a clue to Buxton’s involvement or any other kind of a lead.
Meanwhile, Mr Ronsonby had been turning over in his mind the matter of the postmark.
‘Whatever is still in the dark about Pythias,’ he said to Mr Burke, ‘one thing is absolutely clear. Those cheques were posted in Springdale, so whoever posted them was in Springdale at the time of posting. It seems to me that this person was most likely to have been Pythias himself. I think I ought to go over there and take a look round. If it was not Pythias, it could have been those Greeks who are said to have called at his lodgings to collect his effects and, if it were not they, it was probably Buxton. He, as we know, has a means of transport which people are so much accustomed to seeing all over the county that it seems hardly noticeable. It is like Poe’s letter and Chesterton’s postman.’
‘Springdale is a biggish town,’ said Mr Burke. ‘How do you propose to make a start? Do you know anybody there?’
‘Yes, of course I do. I propose to enlist the help of Miss Edmunds. She has the big mixed school there and I have met her a number of times at educational gatherings. If there are Greeks living in Springdale, she will know of them.’
‘Only if they have children of senior-school age, I would have thought.’
‘Well, even if she does not know of them, I can depend upon it that some of her pupils will.’
Miss Edmunds’s school was aptly named Hillmoor, for it was on top of the hill which led out of the town on the south side. Several acres of moorland had been cleared of heather and gorse, and then levelled and grassed to form playing fields. Sharp bends on a dangerous road which ran down the other side of the hill had been ironed out to make a safe approach to the school, not only for children on bicycles, but for the staff cars and the fleet of school buses. The school buildings were larger than those of the Sir George Etherege would be, and, in fact (thought Mr Ronsonby, driving carefully in at the school gates), Miss Edmunds had gathered for herself an educational plum.
Miss Edmunds, who had been apprised of the visit, although she had not been told its purpose, was waiting to receive Mr Ronsonby in her sanctum. It was as different from his own austere and business-like office as can be imagined. True, it boasted a large desk and a swivel chair, filing cabinets and a timetable which, like his own, covered a considerable part of one wall, but the floor was expensively carpeted in place of the parquet flooring and one solitary rug to which he was accustomed. There were two deep armchairs and there were vases of flowers, the early spring flowers, on a small table and on Miss Edmunds’s vast desk.
The really incongruous addition to the room and the one which, in Mr Ronsonby’s opinion, detracted from its charm, was a screen rather obviously made by covering an old-fashioned wooden clothes-horse with brown paper. On to the brown paper had been pasted cut-outs of childish art in the form of large, unidentifiable flowers and equally mythological birds. All this futuristic décor was presided over by a couple of angels with hideous faces, flaring nostrils and eyes set so high in their foreheads as almost to meet their hair.
Miss Edmunds saw Mr Ronsonby looking at the screen. She laughed and said, ‘Yes, isn’t it? But it was a Christmas gift from 2C, so I must keep it until half-term. Then the cleaners will have orders to lose it. Do sit down. To what do I owe the honour? Don’t tell me you are trying to enlist support for this tinpot idea the county have put up to us to introduce a non-failure public exam for all the lazy little wretches who could get CSE if they worked instead of fooling around and making nuisances of themselves. I’ve no patience with soft options and I’ve told the county so.’
‘Nothing like that. I haven’t come on school business, exactly, but to ask for your help. The fact is that I am short of my senior geography master and I have reason to think that he may be ill in this town and is being cared for by some Greek friends of his. Have you time to hear the whole story? It has some interesting and slightly mysterious features.’
Miss Edmunds rang a bell and told the secretary who answered it that she was not to be disturbed until she rang again.
‘Chase off any parents, publishers’ travellers, staff and children who want to see me,’ she said. ‘I am about to have my blood curdled and I want to enjoy the sensation without having it broken into by school business.’ She turned to Ronsonby. ‘Do go on,’ she said. So he told her all. She listened without interrupting him. At the end she said, ‘So you think this Pythias has absconded and is lying low in this town with these Greek friends of his.’
‘Oh, no, no. I have every confidence in his probity. But, having obtained this lead to his possible whereabouts, I feel I must trace the man and find out how he is. Things may look bad in a way, but I refuse to abandon all faith in him.’
‘Hm!’ said Miss Edmunds. ‘Well, my practice is always to believe the worst of everybody. It almost always turns out to be the truth about them.’
‘You terrify me!’
‘Yes, so I do most of the children and three-quarters of the staff, thank goodness,’ said Miss Edmunds complacently. ‘Well, where do you want me to begin? I can tell you one thing straight away. I have no children of Greek extraction on my registers.’
‘It would have been too much to hope that you had. I wondered, though, whether any of your staff or your pupils knew of any Greeks or other foreigners living in or around Springdale.’
‘We can soon find out, ‘ She rang the bell and asked the secretary to take a message round the school. ‘At break I want to see any child who knows of a foreign family living in the town or on one of the new estates.’
At break the queue outside her door numbered some forty children. They were marshalled by the secretary, who admitted them four at a time. Nothing which came out of the interviews was of any help at all to Mr Ronsonby.
‘There’s the MacKenzies down our road, miss. They talk kind of funny.’
‘Thank you, Walter. The MacKenzies are Scots and Scottish people are not foreigners.’