Mr Tompkins proved a tower of strength. When he wasn’t engaged on burying his wife or attending the coroner’s inquest on her remains, he sat by the invalid’s bedside and kept him amused. Dover had been reluctantly excused from personal attendance at the inquest. He had been allowed to submit his evidence, duplicating everything that Mr Tompkins had said about the discovery of the body, in writing.
Mr Tompkins, luckily, was one of those people who feel embarrassed if they visit the sick empty-handed, so Dover was kept well supplied with those little luxuries which make all the difference. While Dover smoked Mr Tompkins’s cigarettes and ate Mr Tompkins’s chocolates and drank the occasional glass of Mr Tompkins’s champagne, the two men chatted companionably about many things. Sometimes they even discussed the case of the poison-pen letters. Dover was prepared to talk about this otherwise taboo subject with Mr Tompkins because he had become quite fond of the inoffensive little man. Besides, Mr Tompkins was still talking about establishing his own detective agency and naturally Dover (a detective himself, let it be remembered) was interested. Of course this project, so dear to everybody’s heart, would probably have to wait until Mr Tompkins returned from his world cruise and might even have to be postponed until after the expedition to shoot grizzly bears in the Rockies, but Dover quite understood that the demands of the time of a rich man were many and varied.
Dover scrupulously obeyed the instructions of the physician, who was fetched to see him once a day in spite of his protests, all through Saturday, Sunday and Monday. By Tuesday he was beginning to get a bit bored. Not bored enough actually to get up, but bored all the same. Mr Tompkins was all right but a lot of him went a very long way. And then there was the fact that Dover had, when he’d nothing else to do, been thinking on and off about the case and one small point had struck him. When he’d had his nap after lunch on the Tuesday, he sent for MacGregor.
‘Listen, laddie,’ he said, heaving himself up on the pillows and making a mental note to ask old Hawnt about the danger of bedsores, ‘I’ve been going over the case in my mind while I’ve been lying here. I’m not sleeping very well at night, you know. Insomnia. And I’ve been wondering if you haven’t been tackling this case from the wrong end, as you might say. Now, you’ve been looking at it from the angle of the women who’ve received these letters, haven’t you?’
‘Well, yes, sir,’ admitted MacGregor. ‘If you recall, sir, that was your theory right at the beginning. You said that the woman who was sending these letters would be sending some, probably a lot, to herself as well – a natural precaution. And you said that she’d never burn any of her letters, obviously. She’d make a point of taking them all to the police. And you said . . .’
‘Oh, never mind what I said!’ snapped Dover who was allergic to having his opinions quoted back to him in the light of a subordinate’s hindsight. ‘You’ve been working on those lines, haven’t you? Well, where’s it got you?’
‘Not very far, I’m afraid, sir. I’ve interviewed practically all the women in the village now, sir, and really nothing significant has emerged at all. I concentrated on the ones you originally selected as being the most likely, but I haven’t been able to turn up anything which points to one more than the others. You remember who they were, sir? Dame Alice, Mrs Tompkins, Mrs Grotty – the vicar’s wife – and that girl who tried to commit suicide, Poppy Gullimore. Of course, Mrs Tompkins is dead now.’
‘Of course,’ said Dover who remembered it quite clearly. He remembered Dame Alice and that stupid little nit, Poppy Gullimore, quite clearly, too. ‘What about this Mrs Grotty?’ he asked. ‘Did you get anything out of her?’
‘Hardly, sir,’ said MacGregor with a wealth of feeling. ‘She’s only just got back from hospital. She’d been there a fortnight so it’s quite out of the question that she could have been writing and posting those poison-pen letters.’
‘She’s been ill, too, has she?’ asked Dover with a great show of sympathy.
‘Not quite, sir,’ said MacGregor drily. ‘She’s just been having her eighth.’
‘Her eighth what?’ asked Dover, reaching under the bed and depositing his cigarette-end in the outsize receptacle provided.
‘Child, sir. She’s already got seven under seven, if you see what I mean. Of course, there is one set of twins.’
‘Cripes!’ said Dover who was not fond of children. ‘Hasn’t she ever heard of birth control?’
‘Apparently not, sir.’ MacGregor grinned slyly. ‘They call Mr Crotty Brer Rabbit in the village.’
Dover thought this was funny and chuckled. ‘Oh, well,’ he said, ‘I reckon you’re right. She’s obviously been too busy to get up to writing poison-pen letters. Besides, she doesn’t sound the type of woman we’re looking for. Scrub her! Now then, what were we talking about?’
‘You were saying something about me having been wasting my time, sir.’
‘Oh yes. Well, I wouldn’t put it quite like that. We’ve got to explore every avenue and you mustn’t despise dull slogging routine, MacGregor. It’s what solves cases nine times out of ten,’ said Dover pompously. He must have read it somewhere. ‘Now then, to get back to the point. Have you ever considered the women who haven’t been getting these blessed letters?’
‘Well, of course I have sir,’ said MacGregor, who might be bound body and soul with fetters of steel to the Chief Inspector, but who could still call his thoughts his own. ‘Not counting the few teenage girls who don’t seem to come into the picture, there’s only one woman in the entire village who hasn’t had at least one letter.’
‘Two,’ said Dover.
‘Two letters, sir?’
‘No, you fool! Two women.’
‘Are there, sir? I only know of one – old Charlie Chettle’s
