‘Any your wife didn’t understand?’ asked Dover dryly. ‘Of course there weren’t! Same with every other woman in the village. They all look as though butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths and Lord knows where they pick it all up, but pick it up ‘ they do. Talk about fishwives – you ought to hear what some of these well-born, posh young ladies can come out with when they’ve had a few. Filth? You wouldn’t believe it!’
‘But, we know all the women in Thornwich,’ wailed Mr Tompkins. ‘They’re not like that!’
‘They are, sonnie!’ Dover was very patronizing. ‘You can take my word for it. Besides, who says it’s a Thornwich woman, anyhow?’
‘Oh, there’s no doubt about that, seemingly.’ Charlie Chettle resumed the conversation after a short break for reordering. Dover’s shrewd eye noted that Mr Tompkins was doing all the treating. Charlie Chettle had made a half-hearted offer at one point to stand his round but Mr Tompkins had said kindly that he’d never taken a drink from an old age pensioner in his life and he’d no intention of starting now. Dover, in a very relaxed and benign mood, thought this was a charming sentiment though not, as it happens, one to which he subscribed.
‘No, there’s no doubt about it,’ said Charlie Chettle, letting Jack lick the froth off his beer. ‘It’s somebody local. They’re all sure about that. Who else could it be, anyhow?’
‘He’s quite right, Mr Dover, even the local police were certain it’s a local man – woman. Most of the letters aren’t what you might call decent, straightforward filth. There’s a good few sly cracks in them as well. Old things, scandal that’s been kicked around in Thornwich for donkey’s years. Nothing that anybody in the village wouldn’t know all about, but I can’t see how any stranger could have got hold of it. He – she – might have picked up a bit of gossip here and there, but they’d have taken years to collect all of it. Besides, apart from a few trippers in the summer, and the lorry drivers who pull up at Freda’s, we don’t have any strangers hanging around the place.’
‘Hm,’ said Dover, wrinkling his nose in a way he hoped indicated deep and productive thought. ‘Where were the letters posted?’
‘All in the village, as far as I know,’ said Mr Tompkins promptly. ‘We’ve got two boxes, one outside the post office – well, it’s a sub really – and one up at the top just beyond the vicarage. The old squire – that was Dame Alice’s father-in-law, I expect you’ve heard about her – he had it installed, oh, fifty years or more ago. He said he didn’t want his footman coming right down here to post the letters and then popping into The Jolly Sailor for a quick one. He was a character, the old squire was.’
‘So’s his daughter-in-law,’ said Charlie Chettle sourly. ‘Interfering old busybody! Told me I ought to be in a Home and then when me daughter come back to look after me she tried to get her to go up to the Lodge and do some charring for her. Blooming cheek! If she comes poking around in my affairs again she’ll get the rough edge of my tongue and no mistake about it. I don’t know what she stays on in Thornwich for at all. It’s a pity she doesn’t clear off and land herself on some of her swanky friends and leave decent people alone.’
‘Oh, come off it, Charlie! She’s not as bad as all that.’
‘Oh, isn’t she? Well, I’ve heard you call her a name or two in your time, young Arthur. What about when she had the inspectors in that time she said you were giving short weight, eh?’
‘Oh, that was just a stupid mistake,’ said Mr Tompkins with an embarrassed sideways glance at Dover. ‘I know she’s inclined to be a bit bossy but she’s not a bad old trout in her way.’
‘Thinks she’s God Almighty,’ muttered Charlie Chettle.
‘Well, she got cracking on this poison-pen business, didn’t she? She got the whole thing- organized almost as soon as it started.’
‘What are we talking about?’ said Dover who had a nasty suspicion that he was beginning to lose track of the conversation. Mr Tompkins’s generosity in the distribution of alcohol was rather overwhelming. No sooner had Dover’s eyes focused with some difficulty on an empty glass than it turned into a full one. As the evening progressed, these optical illusions were beginning to take their toll.
‘Dame Alice Stote-Weedon,’ explained Mr Tompkins, surprised at Dover’s apparent ignorance. ‘You know, the one who fixed it up for you to be sent down here in the first place. She lives up at the top of the village in a house called Friday Lodge – it used to be part of the big estate, the one they’re going to build on. She married the old squire’s son. When he died she sort of carried on the family tradition – lady of the manor stuff – though she’s only a Stote-Weedon by marriage. She’s very interested in welfare work.’
‘And telling everybody else how to live their lives,’ added Charlie Chettle.
‘Oh, her,’ said Dover vaguely. ‘Has she had some of these poison-pen letters, too?’
‘Well, of course she has.’ Mr. Tompkins eyed Dover doubtfully. The chap didn’t seem to know much about the case he had come to investigate. Oh well, it was early days yet. All this bleary-eyed, gaping-mouth business must just be part of the act. Underneath there must be a sharp old brain firing away on all cylinders and detecting like mad. ‘Practically every woman in the village has had them, Mr Dover. My wife, Mrs Tompkins, got one of the
