The Players And The Game by Julian Symons Page B

able to continue for a long time in this vein. Plender broke in. ‘I’d just like to get straight about your procedure in letting people look at empty houses. Do you go round with them?’
    ‘Sometimes. When it seems justified. In the case of Planter’s Place I fear that wouldn’t be the case.’
    ‘You take a note of their names and addresses, give them the keys, and let them go out alone.’
    There was a rusty noise like a crow’s caw which Plender did not identify for a moment. It was Mr Borrowdale laughing. He wiped his eyes with a large, not very clean handkerchief. ‘In theory that would be the procedure.’
    ‘But not in practice?’
    ‘In practice junior staff is junior staff, idle and inefficient. That has been my experience in recent years. I dare say Gammon may get some bright young fellows, but even Gammon was telling me when I met him at the yearly conference–’
    It was clearly necessary to cut Mr Borrowdale short. ‘Do you mean you’ve got no list of the people who were given an order to view?’
    ‘I have a list.’ He handed it across the table and Plender saw that there were ten names on it. ‘But it is far from complete. People have come in, they have been given the key, no note has been taken of their names. I fear that often happens.’
    ‘You would have no record of them at all?’
    ‘I fear not.’ Mr Borrowdale paused, cracked his knuckles, decided to confide still worse news. ‘In some cases keys are not returned.’
    ‘I see.’
    ‘We make allowances for that.’ A wan smile said that estate agents, Gammon and Pilbeam apart perhaps, needed to make allowance for every sort of human frailty. ‘We always keep one extra set of keys for every property. Then if a set is not returned we have another one made. Our bill over the year for new keys would surprise you.’
    ‘Do you know whether anybody kept the keys for Planter’s Place?’
    ‘By the law of averages I should say it would be two or three people each year.’ Another wan smile appeared, like weak sun breaking through cloud. ‘But we know, don’t we, that the law of averages doesn’t always work.’
    That was the effective end of an interview which left Plender feeling rather low-spirited. The names on the list were checked out, and none of the people appeared to have any conceivable connection with the case. There this line of approach finished, in an end apparently dead. When the whole thing was over, however, Plender realised that there was a question he might and perhaps should have asked, a question that arose from what had been said. If he had asked the question, would the answer have made any difference? He was never able to make up his mind. But nobody else commented on his omission, and like a wise man Plender never mentioned it.
    It was Plender also who talked again to Ray Gordon. The journalist’s movements on that Monday evening had involved going from one place to another in search of a story, and they had proved almost impossible to check in detail. It was not this, however, so much as the nature of his relations with Louise that interested the police.
    ‘Look, I’ve told you, I didn’t have any relations. I said that when I first spoke to you.’
    ‘You didn’t say then that she’d been passed on to you by the Lowson girl. I still don’t see quite how that could happen.’
    ‘I took Sally Lowson out a few times. She was a good dancer and she’s quite a piece, if you like big girls. Then, I don’t know, she seemed to go off me.’ His nutty face screwed up into displeasure at the idea. ‘One night she just said “We’ve had it,” and that was that. I suppose a journalist on a local paper wasn’t interesting enough for her. Snobbish bitch.’
    ‘And how did Louise come into it?’
    ‘Then she said, “I’ll tell you a girl who’s really got hot pants for you, Louise Allbright. You should do something about her sometime.” So I took her out a couple of times. Three, actually.’
    ‘But