‘The absconding Miss Thickett.’
‘Oh, yes.’ MacGregor nodded his head and acknowledged this as one up to Dover. It didn’t happen often and MacGregor felt he could afford to be generous. ‘I’d forgotten her. Incidentally, there’s still no sign of her, sir. She seems to have disappeared completely.’
‘Let’s hope it stays that way,’ grumbled Dover. ‘I’m damned if I know what we’d charge her with if we did catch her.’
‘We wouldn’t need to charge her,’ grinned MacGregor, ‘not if Freda Comersall finds her first. She’s still threatening to make mincemeat out of her. But surely Miss Thickett couldn’t be the letter-writer, could she? I shouldn’t have thought she was well enough up in the local gossip. She doesn’t seem to have mixed very much with the rest of the village – apart from Mrs Comersall and Mrs Tompkins, that is.’
‘No,’ said Dover, trying to look enigmatic. ‘The question you’ve got to ask yourself, laddie, is why neither Miss Thickett nor Charlie Ghettle’s daughter has had a poison-pen letter.’
‘Oh,’ said MacGregor, wondering whether he ought to point out that this obvious question had crossed his mind. ‘Well, as far as Charlie Ghettle’s daughter is concerned, I just put it down to the fact that she’s a comparative newcomer to the village. The same thing would apply to Miss Thickett, wouldn’t it, sir? She’s not been with Dame Alice for more than a few months.’
‘Precisely,’ said Dover, ‘that’s the crux of the whole matter. Now listen, why hasn’t anybody been able to find that typewriter? Why hasn’t anybody heard anybody else doing all that typing – and it’s a fair amount, you know. Why hasn’t anybody been spotted buying large supplies of Tendy Bond notepaper and stamps, too, if it comes to that? Why have no letters been sent to the only two women in the village who have lived here for less than a year?’
‘I don’t know, sir.’
‘Well, I do, laddie! Up to now we’ve assumed that those letters have been written just before they were posted, haven’t we? But suppose whoever wrote them got them all ready, typed, envelopes addressed, stamps stuck on – the lot – and got ready as long as – say twelve months ago?’
‘I don’t quite see, sir . . .’
‘And chucked the typewriter away! That’s why we haven’t been able to find it. That’s why nobody’s drawn attention to themselves by sitting up all hours of the night typing with a pair of rubber gloves on. That’s why Charlie Chettle’s daughter and Miss Thickett alone haven’t had any letters. They weren’t living in the village when the letters were originally written.’
‘That sounds quite a bright idea, sir.’ MacGregor’s surprise was unflattering.
‘I thought it was,’ agreed Dover smugly.
MacGregor searched frantically for objections. ‘It makes the whole thing look very – well – deliberate and premeditated, though, doesn’t it, sir?’
‘ ’Strewth!’ said Dover. ‘It looked that before, didn’t it? She’s an intelligent woman and she’s thought out the whole business very carefully. The absence of fingerprints, the concealing of the typewriter – it all points the same way. If she did write those letters months and months ago, it just proves she is a bit cleverer and more cautious than we gave her credit for.’
‘It doesn’t sound much like the behaviour of a sexually disturbed, frustrated woman though, does it, sir?’ said MacGregor doubtfully.
‘It’s what happened,’ said Dover flatly. ‘I’ll stake my reputation on it. She’s cut the risks down to a minimum. All she has to look out for now is not actually being caught posting the things.’
‘Or being found with the unposted letters in her possession,’ MacGregor pointed out.
‘Easy enough to conceal,’ snorted Dover, ‘especially when nobody was looking for them. Much easier than hiding that bloody typewriter.’ He helped himself to one of Mr Tompkins’s liqueur chocolates. ‘Only problem now is how do we catch her? If we set a watch on the pillar boxes she’d be sure to spot it, and just walk on with the bloody letters safe in her handbag.’
‘I don’t think there’s much point in watching the pillar boxes now, sir,’ said MacGregor. ‘As a matter of fact, the letters seem to have stopped.’
‘Stopped!’ yelped Dover. ‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me about this before?’
‘Well, we weren’t really sure, sir, but there doesn’t seem much doubt about it now. There hasn’t been an anonymous letter posted in Thornwich – or anywhere else, come to that – since last Tuesday. The day,’ said MacGregor in case Dover had missed the point, ‘before Mrs Tompkins killed herself.’
‘Oh, help!’ said Dover morosely.
‘You see the implications, sir? The whole village is buzzing with it. They think that the poison-pen letter writer was Mrs Tompkins.’
‘Poppycock!’ said Dover, but his heart wasn’t in it.
‘Oh, but it’s pretty obvious, sir, surely? As soon as she’s dead, the letters stop. You’ve only got to put two and two together.’
‘And you’ve only got to think like a detective instead of a blinking mathematician!’ retorted Dover, gathering strength. He’d long ago made up his mind on whom he was going to pin the poison-pen letters, and he wasn’t a man to give up his prejudices lightly. Winifred Tompkins was innocent. She’d got to be! ‘Look, laddie,’ said Dover, fighting strongly now that a matter of principle was at stake, ‘you searched the Tompkinses’ place from top to bottom, didn’t you, when Mrs Tompkins killed herself? And you didn’t find anything, did you? Not one bloody thing to connect her with these letters.’
‘But, according to your theory, I wouldn’t, would I, sir? If all the preparations had been made a year ago there wouldn’t be any incriminating
