by Faith Martin
A brief and polite smattering of applause from the public rang out as PC Broadstairs began frogmarching the thief back to the pavement. One member of the public diffidently offered Trudy her cap back, which she took with a smile and a weary word of thanks.
She also retrieved the lady’s handbag for evidence.
But the admiring looks from the bystanders and the murmuring of approval for ‘the plucky little thing’ as she limped grimly after PC Broadstairs and the bag-snatcher did little to improve her now sour mood. Because she knew, after nearly a year’s bitter experience, just how things were going to go now.
Broadstairs, having been the one to deliver the caution and put on the cuffs, would be accredited with the arrest. It would be the good-looking PC, not the humble probationary WPC, who would get the nod of approval from her superior officers.
She would no doubt be told to go home to her mum and dad and get some rest, nurse her burgeoning black eye and then type up her report first thing in the morning. Oh, and to go and get the deposition of the woman whose bag had been snatched. And all the time having to endure the whispers and snide asides about how that was all WPCs were good for.
Disconsolately, as she trooped back to St Aldates, she could only hope that DI Jennings wouldn’t use her minor injuries as an excuse to put her back on desk duty again.
In front of her, PC Rodney Broadstairs looked over his shoulder at her and winked.
As WPC Trudy Loveday wrestled with the desire to swear in a most unladylike manner at her male colleague, five miles away, in the small and pretty village of Hampton Poyle, Sir Marcus Deering had stopped work for his elevenses.
Although he was still nominally in charge of the large chain of department stores that had made his fortune, at the age of sixty-three he now worked two days a week from the study in his large country residence in Oxfordshire. He was confident his managing directors, plus a whole board of other executives, could safely be left to do the bulk of the work without any major mishaps, and now rarely travelled to the main offices in Birmingham.
He sighed with pleasure as his secretary came into the book-lined room with a coffee tray laden with fresh-baked biscuits and that morning’s post. A rather portly man, with thinning grey hair, a neatly trimmed moustache and large, hazel-green eyes, Sir Marcus liked to eat.
His appetite, however, instantly fled as he recognised the writing on one large, plain-white envelope. Addressed to him in block capital letters, it had been written in a rather bilious shade of green.
His secretary deposited the tray on his desk and, noticing the way his lips had thinned into a very displeased line, hastily beat a retreat.
Sir Marcus scowled at the pile of correspondence and took a desultory sip of his coffee, telling himself that this latest in a line of recent anonymous letters was nothing more than a nuisance. No doubt written by some crackpot with nothing better to do with his time, it was hardly worth the effort of opening and reading it. He should just consign it straight to the wastepaper basket instead.
But he knew he wouldn’t do that. Human nature wouldn’t let him. The cat wasn’t the only creature curiosity was capable of killing, after all. And so, with a slight sneer of distaste, he snatched the offending envelope from the pile of correspondence, reached for his silver paper knife, and neatly slit it open. He then pulled out the single piece of paper within, knowing what it would say without even having to look at it. For the letters always made the same preposterous, ambiguous, infuriatingly meaningless demand.
He’d received the first one a little under a month ago. Just a few lines, the implication of a veiled threat, and unsigned, of course. Nonsense, through and through, he remembered thinking at the time. It was just one of the many things a man of his standing – a self-made, very wealthy man – had to put up with.
He’d crumpled it up and tossed it away without a second thought.
Then, only a week later, another one had come.
And, oddly enough, it hadn’t been more threatening, or more explicit, or even more crudely written. The message had been exactly the same. Which was unusual in itself. Sir Marcus had always assumed that nasty anonymous letters became more and more vile and explicit as time progressed.
Whether it was this anomaly, or sheer instinct, he couldn’t now say, but something about it had made him pause. And this time, instead of throwing it away, he’d kept it. Not that it really worried him, naturally.
But he’d kept the one that had come last week too, even though it had said exactly the same thing. And he’d probably slip this one, also, into the top drawer of his desk and carefully lock it. After all, he didn’t want his wife finding them. The wretched things would only scare her.
With a sigh, he unfolded the piece of paper and read it.
Yes, as he’d thought – the same wording, almost exactly.
DO THE RIGHT THING. I’M WATCHING YOU. IF YOU DON’T, YOU’LL BE SORRY.
But this letter had one final sentence – something that was new.
YOU HAVE ONE LAST CHANCE.
Sir Marcus Deering felt his heart thump sickeningly in his chest. One last chance? What was that supposed to mean?
With a grunt of annoyance, he threw the paper down onto his desk and stood up, walking over to the set of French windows that gave him a view of a large, well-maintained lawn. A small brook cut across the stretch of grass marking the boundary where the formal flower garden began, and his eyes restlessly followed the skeletal forms of the weeping willows that lined it.
Beyond the house and large gardens, which were so colourful and full of scent in the summer (and the pride and joy of his wife, Martha) came yet more evidence of his wealth and prestige, in the form of the fertile acres being run by his farm manager.
Normally, the experience of looking out over his land soothed Sir Marcus, reassuring him and reminding him of just how far he’d come in life.
It was stupid to feel so bloody … well, not frightened by the letters exactly; Sir Marcus wouldn’t admit to being quite that. But unsettled. Yes, he supposed that was fair. He definitely felt uneasy.
On the face of it, they were nothing. The threat was meaningless and tame. There wasn’t even any foul language involved. As far as nasty anonymous notes went, they were rather pathetic really. And yet there was something about them …
He gave himself a little mental shake and tramped determinedly back to his desk, sitting down heavily in his chair. And with a look of distaste on his face, he swept the letter into a drawer along with all the others, and locked it firmly.
He had better things to do with his time than worry about such stupid nonsense. No doubt the mentally deficient individual who’d written them was sitting somewhere right this moment, chortling away and imagining he’d managed to put the wind up him.
But Sir Marcus Deering was made of sterner stuff than that!
Do the right thing … Surely, it couldn’t be referring to the fire, could it? A spasm of anxiety shot through him. That was all so long ago, and had had nothing to do with him. He’d been young, still working in his first executive position, and had no doubt been wet behind the ears; but the fire hadn’t even occurred on his watch, and certainly hadn’t been his responsibility.
No. It couldn’t be about that.
Defiantly, he reached for a biscuit, bit into it, opened the first of his business letters and pondered whether or not he should introduce a new line in wireless sets into his stores. The manager at the Leamington Spa emporium was all for ordering in a large batch of sets in cream Bakelite.
Sir Marcus snorted. Cream! What was wrong with Bakelite that was made to look like good solid mahogany? And what did it matter if it was 1960 now, and the start of a whole new exciting decade, as the manager’s letter insisted? Would housewives really fork out their husband’s hard-earned money on cream Bakelite?
But at the back of his mind, even as he called in his secretary and began to dictate a reprimand to his forward-thinking executive in the spa town, his mind w
as furiously churning.
Just what the devil did the letter mean by ‘do the right thing’? What was the right thing? And what would happen if he, Sir Marcus, didn’t do the right thing?
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