‘Oh,’ said Dover.
‘I thought you said we’d seen the last of these letters,’ said Mrs Quince accusingly.
‘Well . . . ’ said Dover.
‘Well, nothing!’ snapped Mrs Quince. ‘You’re like all the rest of ’em, say the first thing that comes into your head.’ She folded her arms. ‘There’s four ladies downstairs waiting to see you. They wanted to come up here but I told ’em I wasn’t having any goings on, not in The Jolly Sailor. Shall I tell ’em you’ll be down?’
‘What do they want?’ asked Dover.
‘Your guts for garters, I shouldn’t wonder! They want to show you what they found in their letter boxes this morning, Mr Dover. And Dame Alice phoned. She’s had one, too, and she wants you to collect it as soon as possible.’
By the time Dover had got rid of Mrs Leatherbarrow, Miss Tilley and two other ladies whom he’d not had the pleasure of meeting before, the greater part of the morning had gone. After the second post which was delivered round about twelve o’clock he had three more callers. All of them were angry and two of them in tears. Dover’s rash statement in The Jolly Sailor had received a wide circulation and the women were doubly annoyed that the poison-pen letter nuisance had started up again.
Dover rang through to the Headquarters of the County Police and, having traced MacGregor, told him what had happened.
‘Oh Lord!’ said MacGregor. ‘Well, I’m not surprised. I didn’t think Mrs Quince’s would be the only one. I’d better come back and pick the others up then, sir, hadn’t I?’
Dover weighed the pros and cons. ‘No, don’t bother,’ he said, having reached his painful decision. ‘I’ll bring ’em in myself.’
‘Really, sir?’ MacGregor was surprised. He hadn’t realized that the going in Thornwich was as tough as all that. ‘Well, O.K., sir. I’ll be in the laboratory. Anybody’ll tell you where it is when you get to the main building.’
Dover had his lunch – and a very scrappy affair it was, too – at The Jolly Sailor and eventually set out in pursuit of MacGregor. He’d plenty of time to think about things as the bus trundled slowly over the moors. It was a mess. Even for one of Dover’s investigations, it was a mess. This was about as far as his meditations had got when the bus deposited him at the bus station in Castleham and he ambled over to a young constable to ask him the way to the County Police Headquarters.
MacGregor, happy as a sandboy, was installed in the laboratory helping with the detailed analysis of the letter which Mrs Quince had received. He took charge of the other letters which Dover had brought.
‘Oh?’ he said as he looked through them, handling them carefully because of possible fingerprints. ‘Mrs Jones – that’s Charlie Chettle’s daughter, isn’t it?’
‘It is,’ said Dover sourly. ‘A poor widow woman, or so she told me. One who pays her rates and taxes regularly and thinks she’s entitled to police protection in return. Fair make you sick, some of these people! You’d think we’d nothing else to do except run around looking after them.’ He stared around with some distaste at the long benches packed with odd-looking machines and equipment. ‘How are you getting on?’
‘Well, we’re still eliminating at this stage, sir,’ explained MacGregor, ‘but it’s going quite well. We shan’t have anything definite for three or four hours yet.’
‘Oh,’ said Dover.
‘Are you going back to Thornwich, sir? Because, if not, you can use Inspector Tedlow’s office. He’s going to be out for the rest of the day.’
Dover wasn’t one to hang around where he wasn’t wanted. Besides, the laboratory had a funny smell which made him feel quite queasy. He’d no intention of going back to Thornwich until he had MacGregor to protect him and, somehow, he didn’t fancy sitting all by himself in Inspector Tedlow’s office with nothing to do. He decided to go to the pictures and eventually passed quite an enjoyable afternoon, sleeping fitfully through a double feature horror programme.
‘Oh, here you are, sir!’ said MacGregor brightly when he at last ran Dover to earth in the police canteen. ‘I think I’ll have a bite to eat, too. I didn’t get any lunch, and we can’t get a bus back to Thornwich for nearly a couple of hours. Can I get you another cup of tea, sir?’
‘Well, have you got the answers?’ asked Dover when MacGregor returned to the table with a tray full of food. ‘Ugh! You’ve spilt my tea in the saucer!’
‘Sorry, sir,’ said MacGregor. ‘Here, take mine! Yes, I think we know where we are now, sir. Not that what we do know looks as though it’s going to be any more helpful than it was with the last lot. The letters were all posted in Thornwich again, some time yesterday. It looks as though Madam X posted them in two or three batches, but we’ll have to do a thorough check with the Post Office to get anything more definite. Of course, these letters don’t look like the last lot, so the postmen who were doing the collections won’t have been on the look-out for them. And, once again, sir, it looks as though we’re going to draw a complete blank on the fingerprints. They’re still working on them but I don’t think for a minute she’s been careless at this stage in the game. Incidentally, sir, it’s just struck me that the woman who’s writing them must be wearing gloves when she posts them. I don’t know whether this might help us spot her.’
‘Everybody wears gloves at this time of year,’ grunted Dover, helping himself to a piece of MacGregor’s bread and butter. ‘Got a cigarette, laddie? I seem to have left mine behind somewhere.’
‘Well, sir,’ MacGregor went on, dutifully wielding the cigarette-case and lighter, ‘the
