by Joyce Porter
‘No, there’s no doubt about it,’ said Charlie Chettle, letting Jack lick the froth off his beer. ‘It’s somebody local. They’re all sure about that. Who else could it be, anyhow?’
‘He’s quite right, Mr Dover, even the local police were certain it’s a local man – woman. Most of the letters aren’t what you might call decent, straightforward filth. There’s a good few sly cracks in them as well. Old things, scandal that’s been kicked around in Thornwich for donkey’s years. Nothing that anybody in the village wouldn’t know all about, but I can’t see how any stranger could have got hold of it. He – she – might have picked up a bit of gossip here and there, but they’d have taken years to collect all of it. Besides, apart from a few trippers in the summer, and the lorry drivers who pull up at Freda’s, we don’t have any strangers hanging around the place.’
‘Hm,’ said Dover, wrinkling his nose in a way he hoped indicated deep and productive thought. ‘Where were the letters posted?’
‘All in the village, as far as I know,’ said Mr Tompkins promptly. ‘We’ve got two boxes, one outside the post office – well, it’s a sub really – and one up at the top just beyond the vicarage. The old squire – that was Dame Alice’s father-in-law, I expect you’ve heard about her – he had it installed, oh, fifty years or more ago. He said he didn’t want his footman coming right down here to post the letters and then popping into The Jolly Sailor for a quick one. He was a character, the old squire was.’
‘So’s his daughter-in-law,’ said Charlie Chettle sourly. ‘Interfering old busybody! Told me I ought to be in a Home and then when me daughter come back to look after me she tried to get her to go up to the Lodge and do some charring for her. Blooming cheek! If she comes poking around in my affairs again she’ll get the rough edge of my tongue and no mistake about it. I don’t know what she stays on in Thornwich for at all. It’s a pity she doesn’t clear off and land herself on some of her swanky friends and leave decent people alone.’
‘Oh, come off it, Charlie! She’s not as bad as all that.’
‘Oh, isn’t she? Well, I’ve heard you call her a name or two in your time, young Arthur. What about when she had the inspectors in that time she said you were giving short weight, eh?’
‘Oh, that was just a stupid mistake,’ said Mr Tompkins with an embarrassed sideways glance at Dover. ‘I know she’s inclined to be a bit bossy but she’s not a bad old trout in her way.’
‘Thinks she’s God Almighty,’ muttered Charlie Chettle.
‘Well, she got cracking on this poison-pen business, didn’t she? She got the whole thing- organized almost as soon as it started.’
‘What are we talking about?’ said Dover who had a nasty suspicion that he was beginning to lose track of the conversation. Mr Tompkins’s generosity in the distribution of alcohol was rather overwhelming. No sooner had Dover’s eyes focused with some difficulty on an empty glass than it turned into a full one. As the evening progressed, these optical illusions were beginning to take their toll.
‘Dame Alice Stote-Weedon,’ explained Mr Tompkins, surprised at Dover’s apparent ignorance. ‘You know, the one who fixed it up for you to be sent down here in the first place. She lives up at the top of the village in a house called Friday Lodge – it used to be part of the big estate, the one they’re going to build on. She married the old squire’s son. When he died she sort of carried on the family tradition – lady of the manor stuff – though she’s only a Stote-Weedon by marriage. She’s very interested in welfare work.’
‘And telling everybody else how to live their lives,’ added Charlie Chettle.
‘Oh, her,’ said Dover vaguely. ‘Has she had some of these poison-pen letters, too?’
‘Well, of course she has.’ Mr. Tompkins eyed Dover doubtfully. The chap didn’t seem to know much about the case he had come to investigate. Oh well, it was early days yet. All this bleary-eyed, gaping-mouth business must just be part of the act. Underneath there must be a sharp old brain firing away on all cylinders and detecting like mad. ‘Practically every woman in the village has had them, Mr Dover. My wife, Mrs Tompkins, got one of the first. She was very upset about it. I told her to chuck the damned thing in the fire and forget all about it – only thing to do with muck like that. But, of course, being a woman, she wouldn’t. She insisted on taking it to the police. I told her she was making a lot of fuss about nothing, but when she got to the station she found Dame Alice there reporting the same thing. Well, they started comparing letters, and obviously they’d both come from the same source, and Dame Alice began wondering if anybody else had had one. She called at every house in the village and found three or four more of the things. She told everybody what to do if they got one. They were to keep the envelope and take it straight round to the police station in Bearle – that’s the nearest one to us. The inspector said she’d been a great help. Then we all had to have our fingerprints taken to see if they could find out who was sending the things. Oh, we had a proper field day in Thornwich, I can tell you. Not that it did much good.’
‘So I heard,’ said Dover vaguely.
‘They reckon whoever’s writing them wears rubber gloves. There isn’t a single print on any of these letters – and there’s more than sixty of them now, so I’ve heard – that can’t be accounted for by the people who’ve handled them. It’s a fair old mystery and no mistake, and it’s making a very nasty atmosphere in the village, too. You mark my words, Mr Dover, if this strain keeps up we’re going to have real trouble on our hands.’
Dover twitched his nose and made a stout effort to sit upright in his chair. ‘Be a’right now I’m here,’ he said with bleary confidence and reached out to give Mr Tompkins a friendly pat on the shoulder. He missed.
Charlie Chettle looked at the Chief Inspector with wry amusement, transferred his glance to Mr Tompkins and winked. Mr Tompkins shook his head in mild reproof and ordered one for the road.
‘Wa’road?’ demanded Dover, staring suspiciously round the bar. He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘You’ll see,’ – he addressed Mr Tompkins with touching solemnity – ‘now I’ve arrived, she’ll pack it in. They a’ways do.’ He tapped the side of his nose with owlish sagacity. ‘Never fear, Dover’s here!’
‘Shall we give you a hand with him upstairs, Bert?’ – Charlie Chettle rose to his feet. ‘If we don’t get him moving now while he’s still got a bit of strength in his pins, we’ll never shift him. He’ll be a fair weight, that one.’
Bert Quince came out from the warmth of his electric fire and a short tactical conference was held. Eventually it penetrated Dover’s befuddled brain that the party was breaking up and they were trying to get rid of him. He protested loudly and tearfully. The whippet started barking. Elsie Quince returned empty- handed and in a bad temper from her bingo session. MacGregor came rushing downstairs to see what all the row was about.
Eventually, by a combined effort, Dover was hoisted to his feet and swept in a headlong rush to the foot of the stairs with sufficient impetus to carry him up the first three or four steps, after which it was a matter of heaving and pushing up to the top. A mortified MacGregor-put him on his bed.
By about three o’clock in the morning, however, Dover had made a partial recovery. He was somewhat surprised to find himself lying fully clothed on his bed with only an eiderdown tossed carelessly over him, but he wasn’t one to be bothered by little things like that. Making noise enough to waken the dead, never mind the other occupants of The Jolly Sailor, he got up and slaked his raging thirst with the water from his flower-bespattered ewer. Then he ventured out to the little room at the end of the corridor and succeeded in breaking the piece of string. Cursing loudly he lumbered back to his room, undressed and collapsed thankfully on to his bed. Next door Sergeant MacGregor lay wide awake, fuming impotently.
Nobody was surprised when, on the following morning, Sunday, Dover indicated that he did not intend to rise early. MacGregor had to cart his breakfast tray up to him since Mrs Quince made it cle
ar that she had no intention of obliging that far.
Dover didn’t get up for lunch either, though he was much more lively when MacGregor made his second appearance with sustenance.
‘Wath is ith?’ he asked as he heaved himself up into a sitting position.
‘Roast beef, sir,’ said MacGregor, carefully stepping over the pile of clothes which lay where Dover had tossed them, on the floor.
‘Oh,’ said Dover. ‘Well, in thath cathe, you’d better fetch me my teeth.’
‘Your teeth, sir?’
‘Yeth, my teeth, you fool! They’re in that glath over there.’
MacGregor stared in blank disbelief at the Chief Inspector who was already reaching imperturbably for his plate of roast beef. Surely the old fool couldn’t . . .? Oh, no – this was too much! This time he’d really have to put his foot down. But as MacGregor observed Dover’s beady eye and toothless scowl, he went meekly over to the washstand and picked up a tumbler. The dentures – a full top and bottom set – gleamed triumphantly at him through the milky water. With eyes averted he carried the glass at arm’s length back to the bed.
‘For God’th thake!’ lisped Dover in outraged disgust. ‘Rinthe them out firth!’
When at last Dover had munched his teeth into position, he waved a fork at MacGregor and gave the wilting young gentleman his orders.
‘You push off now! You can bring my tea at four o’clock and I don’t want to see your ugly mug before then. Got it?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said MacGregor faintly.
It may seem an unusual way to conduct a criminal investigation, but Chief Inspector Dover was a very unusual detective. He himself always claimed that he got most of his best ideas in bed, a fact which is not surprising considering how much time he spent there.
When he had had his afternoon tea he accepted one of MacGregor’s cigarettes and graciously indicated that he was now prepared to discuss the problem of the poison-pen letters. He had abandoned the idea of explaining to MacGregor that he had been temporarily incapacitated by a bilious attack. He had a faint suspicion that he’d used that excuse before. Besides, even MacGregor wasn’t such a fool as he looked. It would be better just to ignore the whole episode.
He dropped a lump of cigarette-ash down the front of his pyjamas. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘how far have we got?’
MacGregor blinked. Sometimes it was a bit difficult to know what the old fool was rambling on about. ‘Got, sir?’ he asked stupidly.
‘With the case, you idiot!’ snarled Dover. ‘You’ve gone through the file, haven’t you?’
‘Oh, yes, sir,’ said MacGregor hastily. ‘Well, the local police don’t seem to have achieved very much.’
‘I know that, you blithering nit!’ snapped Dover. ‘We wouldn’t be here if they’d solved the bloody case, would we?’
‘No, sir,’ said MacGregor.
‘All right, you just give me a brief outline of how things stand at the moment.’ Dover settled back on his pillows, closed his eyes and prepared – no doubt – to listen.
‘Well, sir,’ began MacGregor, rapidly marshalling his facts and translating them into language simple enough for a moronic child of two to understand, ‘the anonymous letters started arriving just about a month ago. They’ve been coming at irregular intervals ever since. We’ve now got a total of seventy-two. All the letters have been posted in the village, either at the post office or in the box at the top of the hill. There seems to be no pattern.’ Dover opened one yellowish eye and looked at MacGregor. MacGregor hastened to explain. ‘What I mean is, sir, that if the writer had posted the letters in – say – the post office on Wednesdays and in the other box on – say – Fridays, it might have given us some sort of a clue as to his movements.’
Dover rolled his eyes towards the ceiling. ‘ ’Strewth!’ he murmured.
MacGregor took a deep, temper-controlling breath and went on, ‘Almost every woman in the village has received a letter – some of them have had a comparatively large number. All the letters are couched in obscene language but contain no spelling or grammatical mistakes. I think that may be not without significance, sir.’
Dover didn’t bother to open his eyes this time. ‘Humph,’ he said.
‘All the letters were typewritten, sir, on Tendy Bond writing paper, white, post quarto size – that’s nine inches by seven, sir, and you can buy it in every stationer’s shop in the country. They even sell it in the supermarkets.’
Dover grunted.
‘They’ve identified the make of typewriter, sir. It’s a Pantiles Portable with a ten-point long primer type. These machines were produced three or four years after the end of the war and sold like hot cakes. There must be thousands kicking around and you can buy them in practically any typewriter shop for about £15 second-hand. The villagers co-operated well with the local police – thanks mainly to this Dame Alice woman from what I can gather – and a house-to-house search was carried out. There was no sign of the typewriter, though a number of people use the Tendy Bond writing paper – which is only what you’d expect.’
‘Humph,’ said Dover again, just to show that he was still awake.
‘Whoever is typing the letters, sir, is – according to the experts – an efficient two-finger typist. Not a professional touch-typist, but somebody who’s done a fair amount of typing in his time. Neat and fairly quick.’
‘Very interesting,’ mumbled Dover. ‘Anything else?’
‘No, I don’t think so, sir. The writer is being extremely canny about not leaving fingerprints and obviously he’s somebody well up in all the local scandal. It looks very much as though it must be somebody actually in the village.’
‘Yes,’ said Dover and yawned. ‘Shouldn’t be too difficult to find. It’s a woman, of course.’
‘I suppose so, sir.’
‘No supposing about it!’ retorted Dover crossly. ‘Typical woman’s crime. Always has been. Everybody knows that. Now then, which of these women have had the most letters?’
‘Well, up to the present, sir,’ – MacGregor hunted amongst his papers and produced a list – ‘there are four women who’ve received more than fifteen each : Mrs Tompkins, Dame Alice Stote-Weedon, Miss Poppy Gullimore and Mrs Grotty – she’s the vicar’s wife.’
‘It’ll be one of them.’
MacGregor looked anxiously at his recumbent superior officer. God knows, he ought to be used to the old idiot going off half-cock and jumping to conclusions, but this was going a bit too far, even for Dover. He hadn’t read a single one of the poison- pen letters nor even opened the local police file on the case, but he had already narrowed down his list of suspects to one of four women.
Some of MacGregor’s astonishment and outraged professional feeling must have communicated itself to Dover. The Chief Inspector opened his eyes, sat up and actually showed signs of getting out of bed.
‘These cases are all the same,’ he explained offhandedly. ‘Some blasted woman goes off her nut and starts writing dirty letters. Form of exhibitionism, really. Naturally – chuck my trousers over, there’s a good lad – naturally she writes a good few to herself to avoid suspicion.’
‘But would she write so many to herself, sir? I mean, what’s the point?’
‘Circulation,’ said Dover with a grunt as he pulled his stomach in and struggled to fasten the top button of his trousers. ‘She wants as many people as possible to read her literary efforts. Naturally, she doesn’t burn her letters. No, she carts ’em straight round to the police like an upright and conscientious citizen and has a fine old time watching some sweating young copper plough his way through the muck she’s written. Nine times out of ten she even goes so far as to persuade her friends to take their letters to the cops as well. The more people who read ’em, the merrier. It’s always the same.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said MacGregor with a marked lack of enthusiasm.
‘It’s all a question of psychology,’ Dover pointed out kindly, in an effort to blind MacGregor with science. ‘You’ve
got to analyse the motives of the criminal and put yourself in his shoes and see what he’d do.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said MacGregor who hadn’t much sense of humour left where Dover was concerned.
‘Well, tomorrow morning, we’ll start off and have a look at these women. An exploratory interview, you might call it – shove my boots over, laddie – we’ll cast our eyes over the field.’
MacGregor nodded. What else could he do?
‘Of course,’ Dover went on, red in the face from the effort of tying his laces, and anxious not to have any misunderstandings, ‘I don’t want you to think we’re going to clear this up in a couple of shakes of a lamb’s tail. No, I reckon we shall have to go very carefully. Softee, softee, catchee monkey,’ he added, somewhat to MacGregor’s surprise. ‘No, this is going to be a long job. It’ll probably take us’ – a sideways glance at MacGregor – ‘several weeks.’
MacGregor nodded again. He understood all right. The departure of Dover’s sister-in-law would no doubt coincide with the solution of Thornwich’s poison-pen case if Dover had anything to do with it. And, thought MacGregor with a shudder, Dover, as the senior officer in charge of the case, was going to have a great deal to do with it.
‘Is there anything else, sir?’ he asked, gathering up the file which Dover had contemptuously pushed to one side.
‘Just one question, laddie,’ chuckled Dover in spanking good humour. ‘Are they open yet?’
Chapter Three
LATE ON Monday morning, Dover set out to make a show, at least, of doing some work. The day was cold and wet and the bitter east wind blowing straight off the moors cut through their clothing as Dover and MacGregor stood and shivered by the bus stop. They were waiting for the 10.28 bus to take them into Bearle. It was 10.45. Normally Dover would have abandoned the whole idea and retreated back into the relative warmth and comfort of The Jolly Sailor, but things were not normal. There was Dame Alice.