Johnny Swanson - Eleanor Updale [67]
Mrs J. W. Morgan
Craig-y-Nos Castle
Near Brecon
Wales
He couldn’t remember where he had seen the writing before. He was pretty sure that it was different from the earlier, menacing, note from Brecon, but he thought he’d better make sure. He’d put that one aside in his mother’s box, safe with the medals and birth certificates in case he ever needed to show it to the police. He compared the two. He was right. There was no similarity at all. And yet he was sure he had seen the writing on the new envelope recently. Was it an old customer? One of his lonely hearts, perhaps? If it was someone unlucky in love, they might well want to change their appearance. But how could he ever check? He had burned all their desperate letters, to keep himself warm when he had been alone at home.
He went to put the threatening letter back in the box. And that was when he saw it. There, alongside the telegram announcing his father’s death, was the testimonial that Mrs Langford had written for his mother on Remembrance Day. The envelope said simply:
To whom it may concern
The similarity to the writing on the new envelope was unmistakable. The ‘w’ of ‘whom’ began with a swirl on top of the first downstroke, almost like a child’s drawing of a snail’s shell. ‘Wales’ in the new address began in the same way, and so did the ‘w’ in J. W. Morgan. The ‘con’ in ‘concern’ matched the end of ‘Brecon’. Johnny unfolded the letter of recommendation. The ‘w’s in the heading ‘Mrs Winifred May Swanson’ both had snail-shell swirls. There was also a flourish on the last leg of the ‘m’s, just like the ‘m’ in Morgan on today’s envelope. Johnny knew what that meant: Marie Langford and J. W. Morgan were the same person; Marie Langford was not in France – she was living in a castle in Wales; and for some reason she wanted to transform herself instantly, and for ever.
Chapter 32
THE DARK ROCK
Johnny put the stack of new letters under his mattress and ran down to show Hutch the new envelope from Brecon.
‘Hutch! Hutch! We’ve got a reply,’ he shouted as he bounded into the shop.
Hutch had only just returned from delivering the papers, and he was preoccupied with opening up for the day.
‘Look, Hutch! Look! It’s in Mrs Langford’s handwriting.’ Johnny thrust the envelope in front of Hutch, who took it and examined it carefully.
‘And what does she say?’ he asked.
Johnny was silent.
‘We said, Langford. Any News? What’s the reply?’ Hutch looked inside the envelope. It was empty. He was puzzled for a moment, and then furious. And Johnny knew at once that he should have covered his tracks more carefully.
‘Johnny,’ said Hutch, sternly. ‘Johnny, tell me, and tell me honestly. Why has this woman sent us an envelope addressed to herself?’
It was a sorry scene, which might have had terrible consequences for Johnny had it not been pensions day, with a stream of customers coming in to use the post office. In whispered conversations between transactions, Johnny admitted that he had run one final scam in the Welsh paper, and Hutch left him in no doubt that he was even angrier than before. But his rage was tempered by the need to be polite to the customers, and the dawning realization that at last they had a lead on Mrs Langford’s whereabouts. Hutch was intrigued by the address:
‘Craig-y-Nos Castle. It sounds like an imposing place.’
‘How can we find out more about it?’ said Johnny. ‘Shall I go to the library?’
‘No. I doubt you’d find much about Wales in there.’ Hutch pushed back his shoulders and straightened his tie. ‘I think this is a sufficiently important matter for me to use my Post Office contacts.’
So Hutch put in a long-distance call to his opposite number in Brecon, more than 150 miles away. Johnny listened in to them sharing Post Office chit-chat (both of them had received a circular from Head