Eventually Dover settled down to his studies and Sergeant MacGregor was dispatched into the fresh air with the vague instruction to go and ask some questions and see what he could find out. It wasn’t long before Dover discovered, once again, that it is better to travel than to arrive. The Chief Inspector had as healthy an interest in smut as anybody you could name, but these poison- pen letters were a bit too much of a good thing. There were now nearly a hundred of them on the police file and Dover’s initial interest had palled rapidly after he had ploughed through the first ten. They really were amazingly disgusting and, for a moment, his conviction that Dame Alice had typed them was severely shaken. However he gallantly steeled his resolution and his confidence in his ability to spot a wrong ’un and read doggedly on. Compared with Thornwich, Sodom and Gomorrah must have been purer than the driven snow. All the women who had been honoured by this unwanted, one-sided correspondence were accused of a wide range of exotic deviations, the detailing of which left nothing to the imagination. If one-tenth of the accusations were true, the village ought to be a happy hunting ground for students of morbid psychology. It had everything from algolagnia to zoophilism, and a lot of nasty things in between.
Dover was so punch drunk by this battering of obscenity that he had to take a short nap after lunch to get his strength back. Following his nap he had his tea, then he went on desultorily leafing through the file. The notes made by the local police on the various lines they had investigated were totally uninteresting. All the ideas had crumbled into dead ends and even Dover’s critical eye, ever ready to spot the faults of others, couldn’t pick out anything which ought to have been done which hadn’t.
Dover blew fretfully down his nose and scratched his head. He got up from the table and went to look out of the window. The sky had clouded over and it looked as though the rain would start again at any minute. Dover sighed hopelessly. What a life! He watched the stream of lorries thundering by. He had been pursuing his studies in the bar parlour. There was nobody else about at this time of day, and it was a locale less open to malicious misrepresentation than his bedroom. It was even, fractionally, less depressing. He went on staring through the window. The shops opposite, Arthur Tompkins’s grocery store and a scruffy little sweetshop and tobacconist’s, had blinds lowered across their windows. Wednesday afternoon. It must be early-closing day. Dover leaned his elbow on the window-sill. The place was like a bloody morgue. He had just started wondering what MacGregor was up to, when he saw a small black saloon car pull up and park on the other side of the road. For want of something better to do, he watched it. The car door opened and Arthur Tompkins, looking quite natty in a swagger overcoat and light-coloured driving gloves, got out and carefully locked the door behind him. As he was turning away from the car, he glanced across the road at The Jolly Sailor and saw the pathetic figure of Dover standing in the window. Arthur Tompkins waved. Hopefully Dover waved back. Arthur Tompkins crossed the road, having looked carefully in both directions, and a few moments later joined Dover in the bar.
‘Hallo, Mr Dover! I wondered if I’d find you in here. I’d heard you were spending the day catching up with your paperwork.’
‘We can’t afford to leave any stone unturned,’ said Dover. ‘Every little detail is important on a job like this.’
‘Oh, I’m sure it is,’ agreed Mr Tompkins. ‘I must say, you make me feel quite guilty. Here you are, stuck indoors, and there I am, gadding off enjoying myself.’
‘Where’ve you been?’ asked Dover enviously.
‘Oh, well, just into Cumberley, as a matter of fact,’ admitted Mr Tompkins, ‘doing a bit of shopping. They close early on Saturday so it’s quite convenient, really.’
‘You didn’t take your wife with you?’ observed Dover, who had reached the stage when he was grateful for anybody to talk to.
Mr Tompkins frowned. ‘No, she wasn’t feeling at all herself. She got another of those blessed letters this morning and she seemed really upset about it. I tried to laugh it off but you know what women are like. She seemed to take it really to heart, this one. Even more than the others and, heaven knows, those played enough havoc with her nerves. I was really worried about her this morning and I said I’d stay at home this afternoon, but she wouldn’t hear of it. Said she’d have a nap after dinner and that she’d be all right by tea-time. Well, now,’ – Mr
