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By Root 1036 0

—and this suicide in Yorkshire was unrelated. (An entire flock of laying hens had vanished in a night—but no, they were later found in a neighbour's henhouse.) Or perhaps Fiona Cartwright and Albert Seaforth were the two who were related, linked by an affair, or inheritance, or a place of employment. (A bull had been struck by a lorry, which fled the scene, although it didn't make it far since a bull is large enough to reduce an engine block to dead weight.) Or if “Smythe” had actually wanted a secretary and found Fiona lacking, then tried a male secretary at his next stop—but don't be ridiculous, Russell (A pig was killed by a Wiltshire farmer in June after it broke into his house and wouldn't leave.), there is no Smythe, your brain is fatigued, go to bed.

I looked up. But there were jobs. And Seaforth was out of work just as Fiona Cartwright had been—and Marcus Gunderson. I dropped my pencil. “I'm going to York,” I announced. “Now. I'll telephone when I know where I'm staying—see if you can talk someone there into letting me read the police file on Seaforth's death. And maybe not arrest me, either.”

“Take a room at the Station Hotel, I'll leave any message for you there.”

I managed to catch a good train, and reached York while there was still life in the Station Hotel. They had a room, and a message:

Inspector Kursall, central station, 11 a.m.

I slept very little, ate early, and at nine o'clock stepped into the first on my list of York employment agencies. The question I had come here for was, if Cartwright, Seaforth, Gunderson, and Dunworthy were all jobless when he found them, did Brothers habitually use employment agencies?

At half past ten, I found the right one: small, run-down, and specialising, apparently, in the chronically unemployable.

“Yais, I dew recall him.” The thin, pallid, buck-toothed man adjusted a pair of worn steel spectacles on his narrow nose. “Mr Seaforth encountered some difficulties at his last place of employment.”

“He was fired for making unwelcome advances,” I said bluntly.

“Well, yais. I suggested that his expectations of finding another school willing to take him on might be overly optimistic. Unless he were to leave York, of course. The last possibility I sent him out on was the tutoring of a fourteen-year-old boy who had been expelled for setting fire to his rooms at school.”

In other words, Seaforth had been scraping the bottom of his profession's barrel.

“You're not surprised he killed himself, then.”

“Not ectually, no.”

“Did you meet this boy?”

“Oh no. Just the father.”

“Can you tell me what he looked like?”

“Why should you—”

“Please, I'll go away and stop bothering you if you just tell me.”

Why that should convince him to talk to me, I don't know, but I thought it might, and so it did.

“A pleasant man in his early forties, dark hair and eyes, a good suit. Seemed quite fond of his son, truly puzzled by the lad's behaviour.”

“Did he have a scar?”

“A scar? Yes, I believe he did. Like the splash of a burn, going back from his eye. I recall thinking that he'd been lucky not to lose his sight.”

“Back from his eye—not down?”

“Not really, no. A dark triangle extending towards the hair-line, wider at the back. My own dear mother had a scar on her cheek,” he explained, “from a pan of burning fat. I might not have noticed it, other.”

“I see.” I did not know why it mattered, although it was helpful to have a description as accurate as possible, and if the scar ran one way rather than the other, it might jog the memory of a witness. “Did this gentleman give you a name, or any way to get into contact with him?”

“His name was Smythe. He is new to this area, still looking at houses, but he was particularly concerned with his son's welfare. He took the names I suggested and told me he would be back into touch when he had chosen a man for the position.”

“How many names were there?”

“Er, only the one.”

“Right. And do you know how Smythe found you?”

“I suppose he saw my sign from the street. I don't advertise anywhere, and as for word of mouth, he was new to the area, and