fingered. The paper used was Size A5, pale blue, of a brand available in any stationery shop. It had been rubbed clear of all fingerprints. The stamps had been moistened with water, not spittle, and the envelopes were self- sealing. The letters had all been posted in town but at different times of day.
Next stop was the Central Hospital. Pascoe knocked at a door marked Dr Pottle, and a voice shouted, 'In!' like a short-tempered owner addressing a recalcitrant dog.
Pascoe entered. A small man with an Einstein moustache and his head wreathed in tobacco smoke regarded him over an untidy desk.
'It's you,' he said ungraciously. 'Are you always so prompt?'
'That depends what it tells you about me,' said Pascoe, who had grown used to Pottle's little ways at the same time as he'd come to respect his insights on the occasions he acted as police consultant.
Pottle pulled at his cigarette and said smokily, 'It tells me you've got nothing better to do or else you'd have no compunction about keeping me waiting. Let's see. Your letters are here somewhere if they haven't been stolen. I get some very strange people in this room and I don't mean patients. No. Here they are.'
He unearthed the photocopies Pascoe had supplied him with, shook some ash off them and began to scan them as if for the first time. Pascoe was not deceived. Pottle offered a sense of disorder, a feeling that things around him were in such a constant state of flux that you could safely toss anything you liked into the maelstrom. 'A psychiatrist must be either God or the Devil, Lord of Hosts or King of Chaos. God doesn't need forty fags a day, so that limits my options,' he'd once confided. But even his confidences were lead-ons, as Pascoe had realized fifteen minutes later when he found himself talking about his ambivalent attitudes to the police.
'You've got trouble here,’ Pottle said after a moment. 'What do you want - close reasoning or quick conclusions? Or need I ask?'
'I look forward to following your close reasoning in your written report,’ said Pascoe. 'But to be going on with...’
'Right.' He lit a cigarette from the one he was smoking and stubbed the butt out in a huge but overflowing ashtray. His raggedy moustache was dyed yellow with nicotine. Pascoe hoped he didn't drink a lot of soup.
'Gender,’ he began. 'Six to four on it's a woman so I'll refer to she but without prejudice. As with Shakespeare's Dark Lady, ours may turn out to be a fellow, though I doubt it. Age is equally indefinite. Upper cut-off, fiftyish; lower cut-off, fifteenish. OK so far, Mr Pascoe?'
'Er, yes, thank you,' said Pascoe.
'Why do you say
Pascoe grinned sheepishly and nodded.
'Stereotyping may help catch petty criminals,' said Pottle, 'but it's no use here. Assuming our Dark Lady is a lady, I can find no evidence of a menopausal syndrome, nor any of a mind which thinks itself old. The lower age limit is merely that of potential maturation. Now can I go on?'
'Please do,' said Pascoe, trying to set his face into a Wield-like mask.
'OK. Our Dark Lady is intelligent and literate, these things are self-evident. But you should rid yourself of any prejudice that this means she is highly educated and middle-class. This may well be true but it does not follow from anything I can see in these letters. Nor does her evident acquaintance with hagiology necessarily predicate religiosity, though I would guess there might be a Catholic or High Anglican background. Or even a reaction against a hard-line Nonconformist upbringing. I can't go much further forward as far as what we might call the external profile is concerned. Nothing on job, marital status, politics, preferred soap powder, et cetera. Not much help for an identification parade, is it?'
'It'd stretch a long way,' agreed Pascoe. 'But the internal profile . . . ?'
'Have you had much to do with suicides, Mr Pascoe?' asked Pottle.
'As a young cop, I picked up the pieces a couple of times, once almost literally. A chap stepped in front of a train . . . And a lot of car accidents seemed to me inexplicable without some degree of intent. Since I've been in CID, there've been at least two suicides I can think of in connection with cases I've been working on.'
'So you've had more practical experience than most. What about the theory? You did social studies at university, didn't you?'
'I had a nodding acquaintance with Durkheim, but more in terms of methodology than subject.'
'Durkheim,’ said Pottle dismissively. 'I thought even sociologists found him pretty irrelevant other than historically nowadays.'
'I did read some more modern stuff,’ said Pascoe defensively.
'Since you joined the police?' asked Pottle. 'No? Too busy picking up the pieces to be bothered with the theories, I suppose.'
'The reason I'm here is that in this case I don't want there to be any pieces to pick up,' declared Pascoe angrily. And then he grew angrier with himself for letting Pottle get under his skin.
'So you want me to tell you if our not impossible she is serious about killing herself? And if I say she is, what then? As she herself says, it's not a crime. Hardly a police problem.'
Pascoe was well aware of how Dalziel would probably react if he found out the hours and resources that were being spent on the letters. Yet it had been Dalziel who drew his attention to the problem in the first place, Dalziel who'd been so certain the third letter would come.
He said, 'It would be a crime not to do anything, I think.'
Pottle suddenly grinned.
'You're quite right. So let us proceed. My reading is that yes, she's undoubtedly serious. It's a commonplace of prospective suicides that they send out strong hints of their intention. Partly these are simply the spontaneous overflow of naturally strong emotion as the moment of this most final of acts approaches. Partly they are a warning, an appeal for interference. And partly they are a solacing game, or even a responsibility-shifting gamble. From her
