by Rob Falconer
John put the paper down on the desk.
“No fingerprints” said Sarge, again happily.
“How much of this is true?” asked John.
“Well, everything in the letter is true, because it doesn’t really say anything, does it? Harry Sadler is our Bank Manager. He does eat his sandwiches on the bench by the girls playing netball, or whatever. But it’s the only bench there since the one on the other side of the park was vandalised and burnt a few months ago.” He shrugged his shoulders.
John picked up the letter and re-read it.
“There’s one strange thing about this,” he said. “The whole letter is very matter-of-fact throughout … except for one point, where it becomes almost surreal.”
“The idea of Mr. Sadler eating gossip sandwiches,” suggested Sarge.
“Yes,” agreed John, “It’s rather odd, and more than a little bizarre.”
John thought for a moment.
“Could you write down that list of possible suspects for me, please?” he said. “And I’ll try and predict who our poison-pen letter-writer is.”
It was Sarge’s turn to be thoughtful. He wrote down a few names, then looked into space for a while and wrote down a few more.
“Is nineteen enough?” he asked, a smirk on his face.
“So who’s our Mrs. Gossip?” he prompted.
John felt like a conjuror who was about to reveal the name of the card a member of the audience had chosen.
“Well,” he said, “I very much doubt that there’s a Mrs. Cheese there.”
Sarge smiled and shook his head, as if he expected failure all along and was relishing it.
“So, let’s go with Mrs. Ham then,” said John with a flourish that suggested rather more confidence than he actually felt.
“Jean Ham?” spluttered Sarge. “She’s certainly on the list. And one of the more likely candidates, if not THE most likely candidate.”
“OK, I’m sure we can stop all this if we visit her. But you’ve got to give me some proof, John, or at least some idea why you chose her name out of the proverbial hat.”
John wondered how best to explain it. “Well, it really revolved around those gossip sandwiches. That phrase was rather too surreal to fit in with such an otherwise plainly-written letter.”
“Then it occurred to me that the writer might have originally decided to use her real name, but then chickened out at the last minute. Instead of just changing her name from Mrs. Ham to Mrs. Gossip, she used a global “replace all” change …”
“… And poor Mr. Sadler’s ham sandwiches became surreal,” continued Sarge, thoughtfully for once.
“OK, I think I’ll call in on our Mrs. Ham this afternoon.”
“And one final point,” said John as he went off to visit his relative, “I think I’d also find out whether our Mr. Sadler has an alibi for when the other park bench was vandalised and burnt.”
Sarge was left thinking for while, before picking up the station phone.
Chapter 3
Elizabeth the Third