‘Enjoy your supper? asked Charlie Chettle, who was still waiting for his pint.
Dover grunted.
‘She does a good pie, Freda does. I’d have put you some tomato ketchup on it, if I’d thought. Always tastier with a bit of tomato ketchup, if you ask me.’
Dover grunted again:
‘You’ll be all right tomorrow,’ said Mr Tompkins reassuringly. ‘They can say what they like about Elsie Quince, but she can cook. Her steak and kidney puddings are out of this world, you’ll see.’
‘She were trained up at the big house,’ said Charlie Chettle. ‘That’s where they learned her. Up at the big house.’
‘Really?’ said Dover with massive indifference.
Charlie Chettle didn’t mind. At his age he was happy to have any kind of audience. It didn’t have to be a listening one.’
‘Course, it’s gone now,’ he went on. ‘They pulled it down years ago. They’re going to build one of these housing estates on it, you know. I’ll bet the old squire’s spinning round in his grave. He wouldn’t let ’em chop down not a single one of his trees while he was alive, never mind build a lot of blooming houses on his land. Mind you, all this was before the war. I used to know the bailiff in the old days. And he was a queer old cuss, too. He used to . . .’
‘Well, I don’t think the Chief Inspector’s interested in that sort of thing, Charlie,’ said Mr Tompkins with an indulgent smile. ‘It’s modem Thornwich you’ll be dissecting, isn’t it?’
Dover indicated that this was so, managing to embrace his empty glass in his nod. Reinforcements were ordered immediately.
‘Well, I reckon you’ll have a pretty tight job on your hands,’ said Charlie Chettle, affectionately screwing up his dog’s ears. ‘The local police didn’t get very far and it wasn’t for want of trying. They came and asked me if they could look around me cottage. “Typewriter?” I says, “You won’t find more than a nine-penny ballpoint pen that I use for me pools, but you’re welcome to come and look.”’
‘They searched every house in the village,’ Mr Tompkins explained eagerly. ‘They were looking for the typewriter and the notepaper. You didn’t have to let them look through your house, of course, but nobody refused.’
‘They’d have been putting the noose round their necks if they had,’ said Charlie Chettle with a chuckle. ‘Some of them women are in such a state, they wouldn’t think twice about a lynching party.’
‘That’s very true,’ Mr Tompkins assured Dover earnestly. ‘Feelings are running very high, very high indeed. Mrs Tompkins has always been what I call a very nervous woman – very sensitive, you know – but you should see her now. Trembles like a leaf every time she hears letters drop through the box. Shocking, it is, the way this business has pulled her right down. It wasn’t so bad at the beginning when it was only one or two, but it’s been going on and on for weeks now. Do you know she’s had sixteen of the dratted things? I don’t know how much longer she’ll be able to stand it.’
‘It’s a crying shame,’ agreed Charlie Chettle.
‘And it’s not knowing who’s writing them that makes it ten times worse,’ said Mr Tompkins, waxing indignant.
‘They do say a couple of women came to blows at the Christian Fellowship t’other night,’ said Charlie Chettle, smacking his lips.
Dover felt it was time he got in on the act. After all it was his case, even if he did know considerably less about it than his two companions. ‘Who’s the favourite candidate?’ he asked.
Charlie Chettle gave a bitter laugh. ‘You name him,’ he said, ‘we’ve got him. Do you know’ – he leaned across the table and tapped Dover’s arm in a friendly way – ‘some of them old bosoms even suggested that my daughter was at the back of it! Ruddy sauce! I soon gave ’em a piece of my mind, I can tell you. Just because she was about the only lass in the whole perishing village who hadn’t had one of them letters.’
‘Go on!’ said Dover with some surprise. ‘I thought everybody’d had at least one.’
‘Well, my Doris hadn’t. That’s why they picked on her, see? Because she hadn’t had one.’
Dover leaned back in his chair and, encouraged by the whisky, prepared to pontificate. ‘In my experience,’ he announced, ‘these poison-pen cases are all much of a muchness. ’Frinstance, the person who writes them always writes some to herself. She thinks’ – Dover gave a pitying laugh – ‘she thinks it’ll put us off the scent. So you see, Mr Chettle, if your daughter hasn’t had any letters that automatically crosses her off the list.’
‘Oh, but nobody really thought it was Doris,’ protested Mr Tompkins. ‘She’s much too nice a person. But, Mr Dover, you can’t seriously be suggesting that it’s a woman writing these letters?’
‘Thousand to one it is,’ said Dover grandly.
‘Oh, no! Surely not? I mean – the language! Well, I’ve knocked around a bit in my time and I flatter myself I’m pretty broadminded, but some of the filth in those letters to my wife – well, they made my hair curl, I can tell you!’
‘It’ll be a woman.’ Dover’s speech lacked its usual clarity of diction but he made his point firmly enough. ‘It always is. Whoever heard of a man writing poison-pen letters? No, if a man goes off the rails in that sort of way, he starts flashing. Men don’t write anonymous letters.’
‘Flashing?’ Charlie Chettle asked. ‘And what’s that when it’s at home?’
‘Indecent exposure of the person with intent to insult,’ explained Dover, ‘in a public place.’
‘Oh,’ said Charlie Chettle. ‘Well, you live and learn, don’t you?’
‘But, surely, Mr Dover’ – Arthur Tompkins shook
