‘There’s a couple of infants goes to St Martin’s name of Llanwyn, miss.’
‘Thank you, Maisie. The Llanwyns are Welsh. Queen Elizabeth the First was the granddaughter of a Welsh prince. The Welsh are not foreigners.’
‘No, miss, but they jabber among theirselves in a foreign language.’
‘Themselves, not theirselves. The Welsh language is an ancient Celtic tongue, as are Highland Gaelic and the Irish language in which, nowadays, all the street signs in the Republic of Ireland are posted up. Did your family not go to Eire last summer? ’
‘Yes, miss.’
‘Well, then, you know all about the Irish language, don’t you?’
So on and so forth, but nothing came up about Greeks or anything else which could lead Mr Ronsonby forward in his tracking down of Mr Pythias.
‘I’m afraid I’ve wasted an awful lot of your time,’ he said remorsefully.
‘Not at all. Now we’ll have a cup of coffee and a biscuit to restore our wasted tissues and at twelve you can treat me to lunch at the Majestic, where we shall see the chairman of the education committee entertaining his latest girlfriend. He and his wife are separated, so he always has some young thing in tow. I shall greet him effusively and make him squirm, because he knows I know that the floozie he will introduce to us as his niece is nothing of the sort.’
‘I’m afraid,’ said Mr Ronsonby, stirred to gallantry, ‘that you are a very naughty woman.’ He wagged a finger at her.
‘Toujours l’audace,’ said Miss Edmunds, ‘has been my motto since college days. I love prodding the mighty in their seats.’
Looking back at the immense building over which she reigned, Mr Ronsonby, as he left by way of the wide-open gates, after he had given her lunch, reflected that she had probably selected a wise motto for the furtherance of her career. She had certainly been audacious. He knew two of the men who had been shortlisted for the headship of this very desirable post and he had shared their surprise, although not their disappointment and discomfiture, when Miss Edmunds had received preferment. He was fully satisfied with his own job and, although all the additions which had been made to the original plans for the new Sir George Etherege school would still not make his buildings as large as hers, or his numbers as great, he had never wanted to be head of a mixed school, let alone to have a staff on which women figured as well as men. As for having a woman deputy head in place of the tried and trusted Mr Burke (and a woman deputy would almost certainly have had to be appointed if there were women and girls in the school)… Mr Ronsonby shook his head at the very thought of it.
‘Margaret,’ he said to the secretary when he got back that afternoon, ‘I don’t believe those Greeks who are supposed to have visited his digs to collect Pythias’s effects have any foundation in fact.’
‘My husband tells me the pro has a nice set of secondhand golf-clubs to dispose of, but I don’t suppose there’s any connection,’ said Mrs Wirrell. ‘I expect he often has second-hand clubs for sale.’
‘You had better tell the Detective-Inspector, all the same. I didn’t know you knew that Pythias’s golf-clubs and clothes had gone from his lodgings.’
‘Well, I do take all the incoming calls, don’t I? — and that includes the calls from the police. Right, I’ll ring them.’
Her telephone message sent Routh on another wild-goose chase. Reason told him that the person who had obtained possession of the bag of golf-clubs would hardly have sold the contents to the professional of the local golf-course, who would probably recognise them and ask some awkward questions. It also seemed unlikely that Pythias himself would have sold the clubs locally if he were planning to leave the neighbourhood either with or without the money for the school journey.
Routh went along the next morning and found the pro in the little shop adjoining the club-house. He was cleaning a set of irons. He knew Routh as a club member, although as one who had little time to spare for the most fascinating and infuriating game in the world.
‘Well, well!’ said the pro. ‘There’s nobody here yet to give you a game, but I’ll play you nine holes if you like, Mr Routh.’
‘No, Joe, I haven’t come for a game. I’m here on duty.’
‘Nobody’s robbed my till and the secretary hasn’t complained of missing anything from the club-house, has he?’
‘Nothing like that. I hear you’ve got a second-hand set of clubs for sale.’
‘A very old-fashioned lot of junk they are, too! Wouldn’t suit a gentleman of your ability. Ought to be sold as museum pieces.’
‘They didn’t belong to Mr Pythias, then?’
‘Good Lord, no! Though, for the amount of golf he played, they might as well have done.’
‘Could I have a look at them?’
‘Why not?’ The pro put down the polishing rag he had been using and went to the back of the shop. ‘Here we are,’ he said, coming back with a tatty-looking golf-bag. ‘There’s nothing like a full set of clubs here and those there are must have come out of the ark, like I told you.’
‘What on earth possessed you to buy them?’
‘It wasn’t buy, it was barter. I gave half a dozen used golf balls for them. They’ll come in useful for Mr Turnbull. He collects antiques.’
‘And you’re sure they’ve never belonged to Mr Pythias?’
‘Quite sure. I sold him his set only a couple of years ago. I’d know them again anywhere.’
‘He seems to have been rather a quiet sort, so far as I know. Did he have any friends among the members here?’
‘News to me if he did. He seldom came here, and when he did come it was usually to have a round with me or go round on his own, unless one of a foursome hadn’t turned up and he was pressed to play. I don’t suppose I saw him here more than twice a month, if that. His set of clubs was almost as good as new.’
‘If it should ever come your way, will you let me know?’
‘Sure.’ The pro eyed Routh speculatively and added, ‘What’s the big mystery?’
‘Well, he seems to have walked out of his digs and hasn’t gone back to his job since Christmas. There’s a rumour that he’s ill, but we think he may also be short of money,’ said Routh, juggling with what might be either fact or fiction.
‘Woman trouble?’
‘It usually is.’ They laughed and parted.
‘It wasn’t worth following up,’ said Routh, when he met Bennett again. ‘I’m getting tired of shooting at dead ducks.’
‘I’ve got that letter Pythias wrote to Mrs Buxton last summer, sir. She didn’t want me to have it and said she wanted it back as soon as we’d done with it.’ He handed over the letter and Routh took out an envelope and laid it and the letter side by side.
‘Well, I’m no handwriting expert,’ he said, ‘but I can’t imagine that the same person wrote the inscription on this envelope which contained those cheques and this letter from Pythias. What’s your view?’
‘That’s a very pretty little drawing on the inside page of the letter, sir, isn’t it?’
‘Agreed. What about it?’
‘I wonder whether a man who can sketch as well as that wouldn’t be quite capable of disguisng his handwriting, sir.’
‘They say a real handwriting expert can’t be fooled, even if the subject chooses to print his letters instead of using ordinary handwriting, or writes with the hand he doesn’t ordinarily use. I’ll get the Super to dig up some expert for us.’
When the envelope and the letter came back, the expert opinion was that they could not both have been scripted by the same hand.
‘So it wasn’t Pythias who sent the cheques to the bank,’ said Detective-Sergeant Bennett.
‘Unless he got somebody else to address the envelope,’ said Routh. ‘I think it’s time we dropped this case. If Ronsonby won’t charge Pythias with the theft of the money and then bunking off with it, there’s really nothing we can do.’