“Well, what is this?” replied the deputy flatly as he held the note out before him. He continued to wave the letter in the air until Amanda finally snatched it back.
“I found it while clearing out the house in Balfour Lane. It backs up what I’ve been saying. This ‘S’ gives clear instructions to call me and invite me back to the house. It was when I went back to the house that all the commotion started, with someone breaking windows and street lights. I now believe all of this was done with the intention to reveal Peter’s hiding place.”
“It seems to me that you might be reading a little too much into things,” responded the deputy with more than a hint of weariness in his voice. “And anyway, what did Mrs O’Hare have to say to you when you talked to her?”
“Well, I didn’t actually manage to speak to her. The first time, she sent me away due to the broken window. The second…”
“Then how can you be sure this ‘S’ person isn’t just a friend who wanted to push Mary to talk to you about something else entirely. These words could just be a bit of helpful reassurance from someone who didn’t even know what Mary wanted to talk about.”
A surge of frustration built up within Amanda and almost burst out from her lips in the form of something she knew she would have regretted saying. She regained control just in time and managed to say something else entirely.
“Then let me talk to Mary. Let me find out who left the letter.”
“Come now, Amanda. We’ve been over this before. If we’re not careful, we’ll soon have ourselves trapped in a terrible circle of a conversation that will do nothing positive for either the situation or the school’s needs. They’re going down to the Tunnels tomorrow and, as I said before, I see no reason to trouble them further. Now, that’s the end of it.”
Though Amanda wanted to say something more, to force the deputy to see what the letter meant, it was clear from the uncharacteristically stony expression the man wore that he would not listen to a further word she said. She felt as if she had failed. Failed the O’Hares even, despite their obvious guilt that meant they should be sent to the Tunnels. But what was worse than this was that she had failed to mention the name of the one she suspected of composing the letter: who else could ‘S’ be but Samuel Packard? And if it was this man, which Amanda was all but certain of, then what motive could he have had to go to all the trouble of getting the O’Hare’s to reveal their secret instead of just taking the simple step of informing someone at the school? These questions would now go unanswered as the case was seen as having been resolved: soon enough, it would be forgotten.
“But what about the author…” splurted out Amanda, she just could not let it go.
“No!” interrupted the deputy, the intent of which he then reinforced by slamming his fist down on the cheap wood of his desk. The unexpected volume of the action silenced both Amanda and the deputy for some time. Eventually, the deputy took a long sigh to release a tension that had continued to build as the quiet continued. “As I said,” continued the deputy with a calm voice that was tarnished with a slight croak, “the thing is done with.” He dropped his eyes to one of the collections of papers that sat, piled up in a corner behind Amanda, reflected on something for a second, and then added hurriedly, “Perhaps it would also be best if you did not come tomorrow to see the O’Hares on their way. I believe that you’ll have enough on your plate anyway. With the news of your solving this case, you’ll have plenty of individuals at your door asking for assistance. Investigators who can actually dig something up are hard to find in our world, and due to the nature of how most of us have arrived here, there’s always another case to solve. My suggestion is that you take a little time, away from the school, and see if you cannot make use of this opportunity. Of course, the school is very grateful for all your assistance. I also hope that in the not too distant future, we will see you here again. But not, I may add, tomorrow.”
Amanda struggled to take in the meaning of what the deputy had said, suddenly finding herself exhausted after the man’s unexpectedly forceful interruption. She even found she did not believe it all that important that she had been barred from the school until the O’Hare’s were put away. More important was the chance to talk with the couple, and her anger over being denied this – something she knew as the right thing to do – pressed at her to demand the deputy to change his mind. However, a growing fatigue and her certainty that the deputy would not listen to a further word she said persuaded her that all she could really do was leave. She mumbled something, though even a moment later she could not recall what it was, and left without really saying goodbye.
It was only when she reached her car, which was waiting for her on a patch of overgrown grass not far from a crumbling sealed up exit to the school’s main building, that the spell of what had happened in the deputy’s office started to wear off. Her frustration began to weigh on her, not only because she had failed to persuade the deputy to accept what she believed Mary’s letter to mean, but also as she came to see the deputy’s actions as telling of something,
