The Moving Finger - Agatha Christie [30]
“I wonder, Mr. Burton, if you would mind coming down to the station with me? We could have a conference there and it would save a good deal of time and overlapping.”
“Certainly,” I said. “You would like me to come now?”
“If you don’t mind.”
There was a police car at the door. We drove down in it.
I said:
“Do you think you’ll be able to get to the bottom of this?”
Nash nodded with easy confidence.
“Oh yes, we’ll get to the bottom of it all right. It’s a question of time and routine. They’re slow, these cases, but they’re pretty sure. It’s a matter of narrowing things down.”
“Elimination?” I said.
“Yes. And general routine.”
“Watching post boxes, examining typewriters, fingerprints, all that?”
He smiled. “As you say.”
At the police station I found Symmington and Griffith were already there. I was introduced to a tall lantern-jawed man in plain clothes, Inspector Graves.
“Inspector Graves,” explained Nash, “has come down from London to help us. He’s an expert on anonymous letter cases.”
Inspector Graves smiled mournfully. I reflected that a life spent in the pursuit of anonymous letter writers must be singularly depressing. Inspector Graves, however, showed a kind of melancholy enthusiasm.
“They’re all the same, these cases,” he said in a deep lugubrious voice like a depressed bloodhound. “You’d be surprised. The wording of the letters and the things they say.”
“We had a case just on two years ago,” said Nash. “Inspector Graves helped us then.”
Some of the letters, I saw, were spread out on the table in front of Graves. He had evidently been examining them.
“Difficulty is,” said Nash, “to get hold of the letters. Either people put them in the fire, or they won’t admit to having received anything of the kind. Stupid, you see, and afraid of being mixed up with the police. They’re a backward lot here.”
“Still we’ve got a fair amount to get on with,” said Graves. Nash took the letter I had given him from his pocket and tossed it over to Graves.
The latter glanced through it, laid it with the others and observed approvingly:
“Very nice—very nice indeed.”
It was not the way I should have chosen to describe the epistle in question, but experts, I suppose, have their own point of view. I was glad that that screed of vituperative and obscene abuse gave somebody pleasure.
“We’ve got enough, I think, to go on with,” said Inspector Graves, “and I’ll ask you gentlemen, if you should get anymore, to bring them along at once. Also, if you hear of someone else getting one—(you, in particular, doctor, among your patients) do your best to get them to come along here with them. I’ve got—” he sorted with deft fingers among his exhibits, “one to Mr. Symmington, received as far back as two months ago, one to Dr. Griffith, one to Miss Ginch, one written to Mrs. Mudge, the butcher’s wife, one to Jennifer Clark, barmaid at the Three Crowns, the one received by Mrs. Symmington, this one now to Miss Burton—oh yes, and one from the bank manager.”
“Quite a representative collection,” I remarked.
“And not one I couldn’t match from other cases! This one here is as near as nothing to one written by that milliner woman. This one is the dead spit of an outbreak we had up in Northumberland—written by a schoolgirl, they were. I can tell you, gentlemen, I’d like to see something new sometimes, instead of the same old treadmill.”
“There is nothing new under the sun,” I murmured.
“Quite so, sir. You’d know that if you were in our profession.”
Nash sighed and said, “Yes, indeed.”
Symmington asked:
“Have you come to any definite opinion as to the writer?”
Graves cleared his throat and delivered a small lecture.
“There are certain similarities shared by all these letters. I shall enumerate them, gentlemen, in case they suggest anything to your minds. The text of the letters is composed of words made-up from individual letters cut out of a printed book. It’s an old book, printed, I should say, about the year 1830. This has obviously been done to avoid the risk of recognition through handwriting which is,