Dover shook his head wearily.
‘Oh,’ said Dr Hawnt, ‘they ought to have told you about that. Yes, they certainly ought to have told you about that.’
‘What did the letter say?’ asked Dover automatically. He’d long got past the stage of caring.
‘She’s the one who’s been writing all these sexy letters, you know,’ said Dr Hawnt, smacking his dry lips. ‘It was a long letter addressed to the coroner but it wasn’t stuck down so I had a look at it. I thought it might help me with my diagnosis,’ he added primly.
‘She confessed to writing the anonymous letters?’ said Dover, feeling that things were getting too much for him.
Dr Hawnt pulled his pocket watch out. ‘Dear me, I’ve wasted enough time here. I’ll be toddling along now. Good night to you, my dear fellow, and do try to stop ’em calling me in. There’s a perfectly good doctor over at Bearle.’ Dr Hawnt got to his feet with some difficulty. He looked round vacantly. ‘Now, which way’s the front door, eh?’
Dover pushed his bowler hat to the back of his head and watched Dr Hawnt let himself out of the house. They ought to shoot ’em when they get like that, he thought to himself, it’d be a kindness, really.
He went upstairs and located Miss Gullimore’s room. It was not too difficult a feat for a trained and experienced detective because only one door had her name on it. Inside he found a fat, comfortable-looking woman seated on the edge of the bed. She was just finishing off the last page of what could only be Poppy Gullimore’s suicide note.
‘Well,’ she said as Dover poked his head round the door, ‘you took your time about getting here, I must say! I was going to phone you half an hour ago, but Miss Tilley said Mrs Quince told Dame Alice you’d already left. What happened? Couldn’t you find the house?’
‘I’ve been talking to Dr Hawnt downstairs!’ snapped Dover. ‘And, if that’s the note she left, you can hand it over! You’ve no right to be reading it, anyhow.’
‘Don’t you speak to me like that!’ said Mrs Leatherbarrow. ‘If I haven’t got the right to read her last words, I don’t know who has. I’ve been like a mother to that girl. Two pounds ten a week inclusive, a front-door key and keep her own room tidy.’
‘Do you call this tidy?’ scoffed Dover, looking with distaste at the litter in which Miss Gullimore had wallowed. There were at least half a dozen table lamps made out of old chianti bottles, interspersed with mis-shapen woolly toys and the left-overs of innumerable hobbies. Miss Gullimore had been (and probably still was) a person of wide interests : hand weaving, book binding, painting by numbers – she’d tried the lot.
‘She was always talking about expressing herself,’ said Mrs Leatherbarrow defensively. ‘Besides, how was I to know what she was up to? She was a funny sort of girl, I grant you, but I always put that down to her being educated. I never thought she was at the back of anything like this.’ She waved the letter at Dover. ‘She’s the one who’s been writing these anonymous letters, you know. It’s all down here. A full confession.’
Dover grabbed at the sheets of paper but Mrs Leatherbarrow whipped them smartly out of his reach.
‘You can have it in a minute,’ she said generously. ‘I just want to phone Dame Alice first and read a few bits out to her.’
‘That letter is evidence!’ shouted Dover. ‘It’s mine! Hand it over!’
This time he was quicker and managed to get one podgy hand on the untidy sheets of paper. With a yelp of triumph, he pulled.
Mrs Leatherbarrow held firm. The letter parted quite neatly down the middle.
‘Now look what you’ve done!’ they said in unison, each clutching a handful of evidence.
‘There is such a thing,’ snorted Dover furiously, ‘as hindering the police in the execution of their duty. If you don’t give me the rest of that letter . . .’
With a resigned sigh Mrs Leatherbarrow handed it over. After all she could remember enough to give a pretty accurate summary to Dame Alice.
‘And now,’ said Dover, sitting down resolutely in the armchair, ‘I should be obliged if you would answer a few questions.’ He fished around in his pockets and produced an old envelope. Mrs Leatherbarrow, impressed in spite of herself, found him a pencil in one of Miss Gullimore’s drawers.
‘Right!’ said Dover, licking the pencil to make the scene look more official. ‘Full name?’
‘Emily Leatherbarrow,’ said Mrs Leatherbarrow and watched Dover solemnly write it down.
‘Married?’
‘Widow. I buried Mr Leatherbarrow ten years ago next Tuesday.’ Touched by the nearness of this sad anniversary Mrs Leatherbarrow dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief.
‘Age?’ said Dover, removing the kid gloves and getting really nasty.
Mrs Leatherbarrow bridled. ‘I don’t see what you want all this for. I haven’t done anything wrong.’
‘Just routine, madam,’ leered Dover happily. ‘Age?’
For a moment Mrs Leatherbarrow hesitated. ‘Forty-nine,’ she said quickly.
Dover examined her slowly. He twitched his nose. ‘Fifty-five if you’re a day,’ he announced flatly.
‘I’m fifty-four, if you must know,’ said Mrs Leatherbarrow with great indignation. ‘And you’ve no cause to go spreading that round the village, either. It is a lady’s privilege, after all.’
‘Well,’ said Dover, shoving his envelope back in his pocket, ‘now we’ve got those little formalities out of the way we can get down to the real business. What happened this evening?’
Mrs Leatherbarrow had had all the stuffing knocked out of her. She was more than willing to
